Previous generations of scholars frequently approached the ethics of Jesus from a naïvely Christian perspective, by categorically asserting the superiority of his love command and the Sermon on the Mount to the supposed legalism and hide-bound casuistry of his Jewish contemporaries. More recently, however, the blossoming study of ancient Judaism has enabled us, perhaps for the first time since the first century, to explore Jesus' moral teaching meaningfully in its original setting.

All the main features of Jesus' ethics are deeply conversant with Jewish moral presuppositions. God is one and he is supreme. Ethics is therefore inalienably theonomous rather than autonomous: both the substance and authority of right behaviour have their source in the God of Israel. ‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus asks. ‘No one is good but God alone’ (Mark 10.18 par.). The commandment to love God in the Shema' Israel, along with the love of one's neighbour, is for Jesus the heart of the Torah – as it was for some of his contemporaries (see Deut. 6.4f.; Mark 12.29; cf. Test.Iss. 5.2; t.Peah 4.19; R. Aqiba in y.Ned. 9, 41C36–37; Philo, Spec. 1.299–300).

To this day, textbooks continue to make much of the fact that explicit use of the Torah plays only a very minor role for the gospel writers. This in itself might seem to cast doubt on Jesus' indebtedness to Jewish moral teaching. Three points, however, must be raised in defence of our proposition.