6. The God We Share

The Christian Statement

Before any point of divergence, the disciple must establish and celebrate the extraordinary common ground between Judaism and Christianity. This is not a strategic warm-up. It is the truth.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of both traditions. The God who spoke from the burning bush, who parted the Red Sea, who gave the Torah at Sinai, who spoke through the prophets, who restored the exiles from Babylon — this is the God the Christian worships. There is no Christian God who is separate from the Jewish God. There is one God, the God of Israel, who has acted in Jewish history and who, in the Christian claim, acted in a specific and unprecedented way in the first century in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

The disciple who approaches a Jewish person as though they need to be introduced to God has misunderstood the conversation entirely. They do not need to be introduced to God. They have been in relationship with Him for four thousand years. What the disciple wants to share is not a new God but a new understanding of what the God they both know has done.

Common ground worth celebrating explicitly:

• Absolute monotheism — one God, creator of heaven and earth, without partner or associate
• The moral law — the commands given at Sinai, the prophetic call to justice and righteousness
• The covenant — God's binding commitment to His people, initiated by grace, not earned by merit
• The Psalms — the shared prayer book of both traditions, still read in Jewish synagogues and Christian churches
• The hope of redemption — the expectation that God will act to restore what has been broken
• The responsibility of the people of God — to be a light to the nations

7. The Scriptures We Share

The Christian Statement

The Hebrew Bible — the Tanakh — is the foundational text of both Judaism and Christianity. Every word of it was written by Jewish hands, preserved by Jewish communities, and carried across centuries of exile and dispersion with extraordinary faithfulness.

The Christian Old Testament is the Jewish Tanakh. Not a replacement. Not a superseded version. The same text, read in the same language (or in the same ancient translations), carrying the same authority. When Jesus said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17, NET), He was identifying Himself with the text, not departing from it.

This shared scripture is the common ground from which the entire apologetic of Volume V proceeds. The disciple does not argue from a Christian document against a Jewish one. They argue from within the shared text — asking the Jewish person to read their own scriptures carefully and to see what is there.

The approach is Socratic, not prosecutorial. Not: "Your scriptures prove Jesus is the Messiah." But: "Can we read Isaiah 53 together? I'd like to know what you see there."

★ Disciple Tip: Obtain a Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible — the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh is widely available. Read the key prophetic texts in it. When you sit with a Jewish person and open Isaiah 53, use their translation. This demonstrates respect for their tradition and removes the objection that Christian translations have manipulated the text.