Judaism & Christianity: Shared Roots, Real Differences
Judaism and Christianity are deeply connected traditions, yet they are often misunderstood by one another. Both faiths trace their origins to the God of Abraham and share sacred scriptures, moral teachings, and a belief that history has meaning and purpose. At the same time, their differences—especially around the identity of Jesus and the nature of God—remain profound and enduring.
Jesus was Jewish, and Christianity emerged from within a Jewish world. Still, Judaism and Christianity developed in distinct directions, shaping different understandings of divine presence, revelation, and redemption. Judaism emphasizes a single, indivisible God, while Christianity understands God as incarnate in Jesus and revealed through the Trinity.
“I’m of the conviction that the reason we as Christians must go back and appreciate our Jewish roots is so we can go forward into a more authentic kind of Christianity.”
Dwight Pryor, Founder, Center for Judeo-Christian studies
The land of Israel holds sacred meaning for both traditions, though in different ways: as an expression of Jewish peoplehood and survival, and as the setting of Jesus’ life and death for Christians. These shared spaces and stories reveal how closely intertwined the traditions remain.
Recognizing both common ground and real differences is essential. Honest dialogue does not erase disagreement, but it allows Jews and Christians to better understand one another—and themselves—through respect rather than misunderstanding.
Watch the video below, followed by the transcript.
Entire documentary available to rent on Amazon.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
It pains me to say this, but I don’t think the average Jew has any more accurate view of Christianity than the average Christian has of Judaism.
I remember my mother being quite upset once when she saw a bumper sticker that said Jesus was Jewish, and she didn’t know why, but it just rubbed her wrong. She said Jesus was Christian. I said, well, no, actually he was Jewish, mom.
One of the things that is really powerful for me about my encounter with Jews is that the kinds of questions that Jews pose to me, whether they do so directly or whether it’s a kind of an indirect result of a conversation, is a necessity to understand and articulate my own tradition.
I’m of the conviction that the reason we as Christians must go back and appreciate our Jewish roots is so we can go forward into a more authentic kind of Christianity.
If you look at black Christian preaching, for example, the themes that one often hears in the titles of the sermons, as well as in the exposition itself, will be themes drawn from the Jewish scriptures will be the themes of slavery and oppression and emancipation and freedom.
We have a beginning in common in the faith of Abraham. We have our end in common and what we expect at the end of time, and that history has a meaning and is coming to a judgment, and that there is the sense of redemption for humanity.
Christianity was easier to understand and respond to when it was that tradition that taught contempt.Now that it is attempting to redefine its relationship to Judaism in positive terms. The great apprehension of many Jews is that we will embrace Judaism, and we will marry the Jewish community out of existence. We will love them to death.
What I want to find in the other is the differences as well as the similarities.
70% of what one tradition says about the other is a breach of the commandment. Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. What is most difficult for a Jewish person involved in the interfaith dialog is to accept the concept of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus Christ. As Christians understand who Jesus Christ is, is a problem still for Jews. And I would say it’s a problem and it’s going to remain a problem.
And there is this Jewish joke you know, about how does one know Jesus was Jewish? Well, the answer is at the age of 33, he was still living with his parents, that he went into his father’s business and his mother thought he was God. Well, it’s humorous, but at a deeper level it captures much of the truth of this common values, including family and continuity and ambitions for children, and a lot of other qualities, both formal and informal, that Jews and Christians share together.
Narrator:
Abraham, founder of monotheism, the first Jew.
The two most closely related Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity, claim Abraham as their father. Though Jews and Christians share a biblical legacy, their journey for the past 2000 years has been rich yet troubled.
In the journey to their collective past in the land of Israel. Jews and Christians from around the world uncover a history that resonates with how their lives are lived today.
For the Jews, the land is part of their peoplehood…
For the Christians, the land is where Jesus lived and died.
Jewish Tour Guide:
You know, it’s very important. It’s a big mitzvah when we say to plant trees in the land of Israel. It says in the Torah, when you come into the land, you have to put a tree roots in the ground for fruit for the future. First thing you’ve got to do before you do anything else.
Singing:
Sing praises to your name, O praises to your name, O Lord. For your name is praise. That brings me to me for.
Christian Tour Guide:
He. He was a man who didn’t have to die on the cross. But he did anyway. Not because of his human strength, but because of his divine strength. And in that process, we we see his total humility to allow himself to be subjected not just to the physical torture which took place on the cross, which is important, but more importantly to the subjugation, so to speak, of his divinity for a season.
Jewish Tour Guide:
We paid a heavy price. A very heavy price. 6 million people. A million and a half children. And we should remember that. But you also remember that I told you when we came into the site we’re talking today about the destruction, but also about the revival and the return.
Narrator:
Ironically, wherever they live, Jews and Christians are often unaware of how deeply their traditions are intertwined.
“Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This ancient declaration of faith by the Jewish people expresses a core belief of Judaism and Christianity, monotheism
Judaism and Christianity share major commonalities in their view of the divine. On the one hand, one finds the same God, the one God revealed through Scripture. The one God who gave promises to Noah, and to Abraham, and to Moses and to David. On the other hand, there were substantial differences in the view of God.
The abstract God of Jewish monotheism is not an easy concept to come to terms with. People seek something that they can see, that they can feel, they can relate to directly. For some, the notion of an abstraction, the belief in a single god, was not visible and doesn’t have that kind of presence is difficult to accept.
Jews believe that God is spiritual. Christians, however, say he is incarnational. That is, he takes upon himself the form of a man in the person of Jesus. But Christians are also Trinitarian. That is, they believe there is one God, but that one God is revealed as God the Father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit.
But common to both traditions is the notion of God’s presence. Although it’s interpreted in a variety of ways, in both traditions, the sense that God is not distant from the world but is accessible to the world, and in some way it’s possible for human beings to have some access to God’s will, to moral values that come from God, and to the ultimate sense of history or destiny, which is part of God’s plan to see the world moving towards.
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