Not long ago, I was attending a Methodist service, and during the sermon I heard these words: “Jesus came to make the message of God known to the world.” It’s a familiar statement, and it was offered without controversy, almost as a given. And yet, sitting there as a Jewish writer and researcher, I couldn’t help but wonder: Have we lost an older story? A story in which Judaism, too, once crossed land and sea to share a message meant not only for those born Jewish but for all humanity?
That moment brought me back to something Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew that I’ve long found fascinating: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert” (23:15). Jesus’ words here are often cited in relation to his broader critique of the Pharisees. But they also reveal something else: that Jews in Jesus’ time were actively seeking converts. Judaism, in other words, was not always as inwardly focused as later history might suggest. Judaism had a universalist vision.
I don’t mean universalist in the sense that all people are saved through Judaism regardless of their background or faith. I mean that Judaism offers a spiritual and ethical path open to all who are drawn to it—not only those born into it. Historians such as Shaye J. D. Cohen and Louis H. Feldman have found substantial evidence that Judaism in the Roman period—especially before the Bar Kokhba revolt—was remarkably open to converts. Jewish communities spanned the Mediterranean, and some scholars suggest that at various points in the early Roman era, as much as 10 percent of the empire’s population may have engaged with Jewish teachings or practices. This openness existed long before Christianity emerged as a distinct religion. What, then, happened to that expansive impulse?
