Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss three prompts based on a patron's insightful questions posed during the Salvation Is from the Jews series:

1. How do the Synoptic Gospels and Acts portray early conflict between Christ-followers and synagogue authorities and in what way does John's Gospel deepen, reflect, or reinterpret this dynamic?
2. How can we responsibly talk about early Jewish opposition to the Jesus movement in a way that neither distorts history nor fuels anti-Jewish sentiment in our interpretation and preaching today?
3. What it would look like for the Church to fully embrace the self-critical stance of the Hebrew prophets? Not to accuse others, but to repent ourselves in our identification alongside and with Israel?

Having solved all the world's problems regarding the relationship between the Jewish and Christian traditions, we're bringing the season to a close.

We jest! We have, however, come to a good time to pause and reflect on what we've discussed so far, before we return with a follow-up season later on. We also are sharing a talk that Fr Geoffrey gave at a conference titled "The Orthodox Church and the Shoah" which encapsulates what we've done so far, and looks ahead to what the implications are.

Who are we? Are we the new Israel? Or are we the gentiles that have come alongside Israel to worship the One True God? The answer to this question will frame how we move forward in our reflections, relationships and dialogue in this re-membering.

Please click the link to view the presentation by Fr Geoffrey: https://youtu.be/46zkjUGoSUU

Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of many of the Nazi death camps in the final months of the Second World War, OTSA's working group Orthodox Christians in Dialogue with Jews (chaired by Fr Geoffrey Ready, Director of Orthodox Christian Studies at Trinity College) partnered in April 2025 with The Wheel journal, Volos Academy for Theological Studies, and ACER-MJO in hosting an online conference on “The Orthodox Church and the Shoah.”

This presentation on "The theological problem of the Shoah in Orthodox Christian tradition" was one of the introductory talks contextualizing the wider issues discussed during the conference.

A full blown Christology was in place long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. There was an understanding in ancient Judaism that God related to the world through a property of Himself that was called Son of God, the Word of God, and God's Glory. One aspect of the parting of the ways between what is now called Christianity and what is now called Rabbinic Judaism is a result of theological wrestling on both sides around this Yahweh Christology.

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss the theological debates on both sides that framed each group's view, along with Melito of Sardis, a church father of the 2nd century who could either be seen as the source of everything antisemitic, or as someone who saw himself as being part of the very family he was critiquing.

Can we say that the parting of the ways is complete, even in our time?

In this episode, we move out of the discussion on New Testament writings and into the writings of the Apostolic Fathers (or to borrow Fr Yuri's turn of phrase, "The Bible: The Next Generation"). How are they speaking to their communities about Jesus-following Jews continuing to follow Torah, and also gentiles coming in to the church who find this practice attractive? We've already seen how for Paul, gentiles do not need to become Jewish, because in and through Jesus, we are now in the eschatological moment when the nations come together alongside the Jews to worship the one true God of Israel. This is a beautiful theology! However, the practicalities of that on the ground is what these authors are now dealing with, and some of the rhetoric can be very harsh indeed.

Of course, this is not just happening on one side! Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri also discuss how the compilation of the Mishnah by the end of the second century draws its own line in the sand as well. On the early Christian side, the focus is more on belief (the right way of thinking about who Jesus is), and on the other side, who can be considered to be part of the Jewish family.

Today there is clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, but it wasn't always so. The family resemblance is quite strong! Rather than think of Judaism and Christianity as having a mother-daughter relationship, its helpful to think of them as sisters, both born from the womb of Second Temple Judaism. As any siblings who fight, it can get quite nasty at times, and they can squabble over seemingly trivial things.

This is the first of three episodes discussing the "parting of the ways", the scholarly term for the process of the gradual distinction between what we now call Judaism and what we now call Christianity. This complicated process took place over a long period time; we can see its beginnings in the tensions of the New Testament, but its end point is probably a lot later than you would have imagined!

In today's episode, we're going to go "there". We're going to step back in to the Graeco-Roman world and learn about some unquestioned medical truths of their day, held by Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle, which pertain in particular to hair and why Paul is so concerned about veils. Once you know about it, you'll see it everywhere in ancient literature, and things will start to make more sense. But also, once we all learn it, can we all just agree to forget it?! Asking for a friend.

Thankfully we don't need to accept first century Graeco-Roman medicine in order to be an Orthodox Christian, but we really should use this opportunity to be challenged - are we living our lives in a way that looks like we've been transformed by participating already in God's future kingdom? The way we dress, the clothes we choose to buy, the clothes we choose to store, it's so much more than modesty. For us, as for Paul, this must point to the primordial, cosmological battle that we're involved with at all times.

In light of a listener question, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss a passage in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where Paul speaks about women covering their heads while praying, "on account of the angels".

We can consider this a case study into how Paul, a Pharisee who believes Jesus is the Messiah, engages with a pastoral topic in a community. We must bear in mind that this was a particular issue for a particular people in a particular place, that place being Corinth, a metropolis noted for its wild pagan culture. As a Pharisee, Paul is a follower of Torah who wants to see it applied contextually, in the current time and place, not because of religious conservatism, but because he is keen to see a real living and meaningful practice in people's everyday lives. Paul brings all of his Jewish tradition to bear, a deeply rich tradition that is complex, multi-faceted, storied and mythological.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey cover the hierarchy of relationship, what it means for a woman to have "exousia" or authority and agency over her own personhood, the book of Enoch (a text which cannot be ignored), and the narrative accounts of Genesis that explain why Paul was concerned with angels and women in the act of worship.

If you think this episode got wild, just wait until the next episode! It will offer further cultural context in which what was covered becomes all the more pertinent, and even further removed from our contemporary mindset. It'll be a fun one!

Some imagine that the the first people in Jerusalem who accepted Jesus as the Messiah radically broke away from the Jews, forming a new religion. We might even picture the apostle James, brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem, wearing Byzantine Orthodox robes and serving at a Christian temple across from the synagogue. Of course, this was hardly the case. So what did the first century ecclesia in Jerusalem look like?

The early Jesus followers were primarily Jews, continuing on in their Jewish faith and practice. They would not have thought of themselves as fundamentally departing in any way from what they believed before. They still believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and they would have still participated in temple worship.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss what these believers would have added to or complemented their synagogue and temple practice with, the relationship between gentile believers and Jews, and how the destruction of the temple and then the fall of Jerusalem drastically changed the culture of the ecclesia.