Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash

Volume 3, Romans through Revelation

Hermann Strack, Paul Billerbeck, Jacob N. Cerone, Joseph Longarino

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781683595472
• eBook ISBN: 9781683595489
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Introduction to the English Translation

David Instone-Brewer

The work commonly known as “Strack-Billerbeck” is a rich compendium of rabbinic sources that help illustrate the language and thinking of many of the authors and initial readers of the New Testament. It is an invaluable resource that has been underused, partly because it was in German and partly because its aim and character was misunderstood by many scholars.

Hermann Strack’s academic life was devoted to combating anti-Semitism based on ignorance of Jewish sources. This involved court battles, pamphlet campaigns against powerful opponents, and academic publications. Despite his Christian convictions about the superiority of the New Testament, he refused to allow Jewish traditions to be denigrated and misrepresented. A recent reappraisal recognizes that Strack and Franz Delitzsch, “despite a theological starting-point inimical to Judaism, their Judaica scholarship, their contacts with Jewish scholars and their opposition to prevailing trends in German Christianity consistently led them in pro-Jewish directions.”1

The sources amassed to illustrate each New Testament phrase represent Judaism in all its diversity. They are, as much as possible, quoted along with their surrounding context and assigned rough dates—though these need to be assessed intelligently (see below). These quotations are not designed to form a compendium of Jewish theology, though the topic of soteriology (an example explored below) illustrates how caricatures such as “salvation by works” are avoided and a balanced view is presented.

Historical Background

The commentary and accompanying excurses are the product of a collaboration between Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck. Strack (1848–1922) served as assistant professor of Old Testament exegesis and Semitic languages at the University of Berlin. His expertise in rabbinic literature is clearly seen by the fact that he edited numerous rabbinic tractates, published widely on rabbinic Judaism, and wrote one of the first scholarly introductions to rabbinic literature.2 Strack developed close ties with Jewish scholars and Jewish communities in Germany and defended Jews in court amid rising anti-Semitism. Strack’s interest in rabbinic literature served his commitments to his Protestant faith. While he had an appreciation of rabbinic texts in their own right, his aim was to better understand them in order to demonstrate the inherent Jewishness of the New Testament documents and to demonstrate the fulfillment of the Old Testament and Jewish expectations in the Christian religion.3

Although Strack held a professorship and was a distinguished, well-published member of the academic guild, Paul Billerbeck (1853–1932) was an outsider to academia. Billerbeck studied Protestant theology at the Universities of Greifswald and Leipzig, but he did not pursue doctoral studies4 or the life of the academy. After completing his studies, he entered the ministry as a Lutheran pastor. During his time as a pastor, Billerbeck participated in the mission to the Jews in Berlin (Institutum Judaicum), which had been cofounded by Strack, and exerted his efforts toward producing scholarly treatments of and publications on rabbinic literature in the periodical Nathanael.

Billerbeck’s publications in Nathanael and his work for the mission eventually attracted the attention of Strack and led to an invitation in 1906 for Billerbeck to work on the commentary.5 The forewords to the separate volumes provide conflicted testimony about the various responsibilities of the collaborators. Volume 1 seems to indicate the project was conceived by Strack and executed with Billerbeck’s aid. However, after Strack’s death in 1922, Billerbeck was pressed by his supporters to disclose the true nature of the work. He writes in the foreword to volume 4:

Finally, a word of a personal nature. I have been asked several times to clarify the late Professor Doctor Strack’s share in the composition of the commentary. In this regard, I refer to the preface of the first volume, in which Strack did not claim any involvement in the writing of the work. As editor, Professor Strack has earned the greatest merit for the publication and dissemination of the work. It is solely due to the efforts of his name and personality that the printing could be started in the time of greatest economic need shortly after the end of the War, and that the work immediately attracted attention not only in Germany, but also widely abroad, which made the printing of further volumes economically possible. For this demand of my work, I would like to call upon him, who would not live to see its appearance, now that it is ready, my warm thanks.6

If this is indeed accurate, and Joachim Jeremias believes it is,7 Billerbeck’s accomplishment of almost single-handedly assembling this vast collection of parallels is even more impressive.

The Purpose

The overall aim of Strack-Billerbeck is perhaps best expressed by Schoettgen, whose thousand-page work in 1733 had a similar agenda, which he described thus:

The main use of this volume is that the phrases and sayings of the New Testament are illustrated from the ancient rabbinic writings in far greater light than can ever be expected from heathen writers.8

The Greek and Latin classics were part of every gentleman’s education and every scholar’s foundations, so it was understandable that the New Testament was largely interpreted through them. Looking for linguistic and cultural parallels in classical literature works fairly well in the epistles or Acts, but the world of the Gospels stood apart from the culture of the occupying army in the land. Strack and Billerbeck recognized the value of Schoettgen’s work but also highlighted its limitations.

Historical verification of Gospel events was not the aim, though they did not shy away from this. For example, they faced the issue of whether Passover occurred on the night of the Last Supper (as in the Synoptics) or on the eve of the crucifixion (as in John), and this question became the topic of a long excursus.9 Modern readers also seek historical verifications of this kind, but the Jewish traditions explored here are not well-suited for answering such questions.

Illustrating the sayings, concepts, parables, theological background, and cultural assumptions is the main aim of Strack-Billerbeck. When read with this purpose, it is an unparalleled sourcebook.

Potential Misuse

The richness of rabbinic quotations collected in Strack-Billerbeck can save a scholar hours of work with Hebrew concordances and background reading. Almost invariably there are more quotations than necessary, which means that the key text one needs to follow up on is very likely to be found there (or is present in the other sections referred to). Paradoxically, this richness has been criticized, not because of the resource itself but because of the way that it has been used.

Easy access to all these texts can be both a valuable research tool and a source of temptation for lazy scholarship. Almost every phrase and idea in the New Testament that could possibly have an origin in Judaism has been annotated with likely parallels in rabbinic literature. This presents the temptation to assume that all these parallels are significant—as well as the more insidious temptation to regard these sources as the conclusions of one’s research rather than a starting point. This can also tempt the lazy reader to use Strack-Billerbeck as a key to New Testament interpretation or a summary of Jewish thought, when it is neither.

The stated aim of this work is to collect excerpts that may illustrate the language and concepts found in the New Testament. To understand any text, it is essential to know how a reader at the time would have understood it. If a modern writer refers to “pork-barrel politics,” a reader in two thousand years’ time could be forgiven for thinking this relates to pigs. So a list of con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Preface (Jacob N. Cerone)
• Introduction to the English Translation (David Instone-Brewer)
• Foreword (Volume 3)
• The Letter of Paul to the Romans
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 11
• The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 16
• The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians
• Chapter 12
• The Letter of Paul to the Galatians
• Chapter 5
• The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians
• The Letter of Paul to the Philippians
• The Letter of Paul to the Colossians
• The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians
• The Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians
• The First Letter of Paul to Timothy
• The Second Letter of Paul to Timothy
• The Letter of Paul to Titus
• The Letter of Paul to Philemon
• The Letter to the Hebrews
• Chapter 10
• The Letter of James
• The First Letter of Peter
• The Second Letter of Peter
• The First Letter of John
• The Second Letter of John
• The Third Letter of John
• The Letter of Jude
• The Revelation of John
• Chapter 21
• Bibliography