There is so much in the New Testament authenticating the Jewishness of faith in Yeshua. Some of it is blatantly obvious, while some is more subtle. Either way, our understanding of Scripture is enhanced by the revelation of this truth.
How can anyone miss Jesus’ proclamation in Matthew 15:24, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” or how He regularly quoted the Hebrew Scriptures. In Mark 12:29-30, He instructed the greatest of all God’s commandments is the most sacred prayer in all of Judaism, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and in Luke 24:44, on the road to Emmaus after His resurrection, He declared the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, pointed to Him.
Yeshua was born and raised Jewish, circumcised on the eighth day and dedicated to the Lord in the Holy Temple according to the law of Moses. After His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Yeshua told the high priest (John 18:20), “I always taught in synagogues and in the temple.” Dying on the cross, He quoted the Hebrew Scriptures. From start to finish, His life was about Jewishness.
Similarly, the Jewish Apostle Paul’s life was all about Jewishness, both before and after he believed in Jesus as Messiah. However, while some of the indications of his Jewish identity are easy to decipher, the bent of Christian interpretation tends to ignore them, and even miss those which are less conspicuous.
To be sure, Paul never referred to himself as anything other than Jewish. In Romans 11:1 he said, “For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin;” in 2 Corinthians 11:22, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I;” and in Philippians 3:4-6, “ . . . circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee.”
When Paul was still called Saul (read on for more about his name) and was persecuting the believers, his authority came from Jewish religious leaders, not from the Roman government. That’s an oft overlooked issue which clearly shows the only people he could arrest were Jews. Acts 9:1-2 specifically recounts that he was going to the synagogues to find them.
That lines up with other references which show it was considered Jewish to believe. After Messiah's ascension described in Luke 24, His followers were (v53) continually in the temple. Likewise at the first revival of Acts 2 where three thousand Jewish men professed faith in Yeshua, (v 46) they continued daily in the Temple.
Three times in the Book of Acts, the believers in Jesus were referred to as a sect. In other words, even though the mainstream religious leaders rejected His disciples because of their faith, they were still considered part of Judaism.
The last of these references is quite telling. It appears in Acts 28 when Paul is in Rome and has invited the Jewish leaders of the city to hear his presentation of Messiah. He explains to them he has been accused, (v17) “though I have done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers.” By saying our people and our fathers, he was absolutely affirming his Jewishness. His guests reply they want to hear from him (v22) “concerning this sect.”
This encounter occurred after the vast majority of Paul’s missionary journeys to the Gentiles. Yet he continued to reach out to Jewish people as a Jewish man with a Jewish message about Yeshua. It is stunning that the last recorded activity in Acts is Jewish witnessing. But Acts is actually replete with Paul’s Jewish witnessing as he regularly visited and ministered in synagogues throughout the Mediterranean. Even though on several occasions after facing rejection, he said he would go only to the Gentiles, he nevertheless continued in the synagogues.
Then there’s the matter of his name. God never changed it. Acts 13:9 states, “Then Saul, who also is called Paul.” It is broadly agreed Saul was his Hebrew name, and Paul was his Roman name, both likely given at birth. Although he is exclusively referred to as Paul for the remainder of the New Testament, He used Saul when recounting his testimony about his heavenly experience on the road to Damascus.
Furthermore, when giving his defense before King Agrippa in Acts 26, Paul revealed that Jesus spoke to him in Hebrew during that confrontation. That’s powerful because it shows Messiah presented Himself to Saul in a Jewish context. That same Jewish context is a theme in many other scriptures. When writing to the Gentile Ephesians, Paul tells them in 2:12, that before they came to faith they were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.” In Acts 3:13, Peter, speaking to Jews, identified himself as Jewish saying, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers.” Incidentally, that same phrase is still in use in Judaism today as an intro to several prayers.
Peter further asserted his Jewishness to the Roman centurion Cornelius in Acts 10:28, saying “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation (Gentile).” But his successful ministry at Cornelius’ house led the Council at Jerusalem to a breakthrough revelation. Although they had believed Jesus was only for Jewish people, they proclaimed in Acts 11:18, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.”
Perhaps this is best summed up by the Jewish Apostle Paul in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Gentile.”