Was Jesus unique among the Jews?

[Twelfth_Night]

I don’t know how quite to ask this question, so I hope you’ll forgive any infelicitous phrasing.

Oftentimes, homilists and catechists will say that something Jesus did was something “no other Jew would have done.” For example, when he talked to the Samaritan woman in John 4, it is said that Jesus’s action was “unique” because Jewish men did not speak to Gentile women. Or when he multiplied the loaves and fish, the miracle is “explained away” by saying that Jesus taught the crowds – who were Jewish since they sought to make him their king afterward (John 6:14-15) – to share what they’d hidden away.

Although I know that Jesus was unique among men since he was both God and man, is it correct to distinguish him from his own people in such a manner?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

The phenomenon you report is indeed troubling because it seeks to make a true point in a problematic fashion. Jesus of Nazareth was unique among the Jews – Christians believe he was the Messiah, after all – but trying to prove that point by shading Jewish law or custom as rude, selfish, or in some other way as lacking human decency, only promotes an anti-Jewish viewpoint among Christians that the Church has been trying to stamp out for over forty years now.

In the cases you mention, it would be better to examine what Jesus said and did on its own terms rather than trying to compare those statements or actions in an unfavorable fashion to what is supposed by Christians to be “Jewish law” or “Jewish custom.” Christians are rarely versed well enough in Judaism to make such an unfavorable judgment about it. The resources linked below should be helpful in getting you started.

Recommended reading:

The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine
God’s Mercy Endures Forever by the USCCB
The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures by the Pontifical Biblical Commission