Abstract

This article undertakes to isolate those stories about Jesus that Paul described as "stumbling blocks to the Jews" of his day from other Jesus stories that circulated in the early churches. It then attempts to discern which implicit claims in such stories would not have been objectionable to most Jews and to explain why. It achieves these objectives through a consideration of predications about God in some of the earliest sections of Jewish liturgy that, though expressed in psalmodic idioms, are drawn ultimately from Biblical narratives. Finally, it suggests why the overwhelming majority of first-century Jews hearing such stories would not have felt compelled to become Christians.

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