This does differ from what I learned growing up and in fact until very recently, and I’m 60 years old. Until I encountered Christian writers and teachers who like McDermott and a few others who see a continuity between Judaism and Christianity, I always thought that Jesus and Paul started a new religion and rejected the Old Covenant and the Law, even though they somehow assimilated the Hebrew Scriptures into their new faith. Though of course I knew on an intellectual level that the old Evangelical bumper sticker “My boss is a Jewish carpenter” was a correct assessment of Jesus, yet, it didn’t mean much until I first watched the TV series “The Chosen.” Then, I finally got a living picture of Jesus and his apostles as faithful Jews, through their observance of Jewish rituals and customs, their study and citation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and parallels between events in the New Testament and those in the old presented through historical flashbacks sometimes at the beginning of an episode. I was so struck by the Judaic milieu of “The Chosen” that I learned the Ha Motzi and Borei Pri HaGafen blessings on meals and wine — and I know say them in (badly pronounced) Hebrew daily, though I’m a practicing Catholic.
