Priest’s Journey from Jo’burg to Jerusalem

Fr David Neuhaus SJ, will present this year’s Winter Living Theology on themes of Scripture. Born into a Jewish family in Johannesburg, he moved to Jerusalem as a young man and converted to Catholicism, and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 2000.

This year’s Winter Living Theology series of lectures will be presented in August and September by world-renowned Bible scholar Fr David Neuhaus, a Jesuit who was born into a Jewish family in Johannesburg and found his vocation in Jerusalem. Fr Russell Pollitt SJ interviewed him.

After a successful first Winter Living Theology (WLT) back in-person in 2022, the Jesuit Institute, partnering with the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, is preparing for a more substantial series in 2023. The Institute will offer three different formats to create more opportunity for people to attend this year’s series.

The Scriptures will be the focus of this year’s WLT series. Jesuit biblical scholar Fr David Neuhaus will present the series and look at where the Scriptures come from and why we need these ancient texts, whether one Gospel account would have been enough, and how one might learn to read backwards from the beginning.

Fr David, please tell us a little about yourself. Where do you come from?

I was born in Johannesburg and grew up in the Jewish community, my parents having been refugees from Nazi Germany. At the age of 15, in 1977, I went to Jerusalem for the first time and fell in love with the city. So I moved to live there. It was then that I encountered Jesus and soon after met the Jesuits in the city, who eventually prepared me for baptism.

After completing my PhD at the Hebrew University, I entered the Jesuit order and did my years of formation in Boston, Cairo, Paris and Rome. I was ordained in Jerusalem in 2000 and immediately began teaching Scripture in various places: at the diocesan seminary, at the Salesian seminary, in programmes to form tour guides, in a Jewish rabbinical seminary.

Until the end of 2022, I taught Scripture, worked in Hebrew-speaking, Arabic-speaking and migrant parishes, prepared children for the sacraments, and engaged in interfaith dialogue with Jews and Muslims. Trying to communicate the faith to children has preoccupied me for many years.

But now you’re back in South Africa.

Yes, I arrived in South Africa for a time of service at the beginning of 2023. I am at present working at the Jesuit Institute in Johannesburg: writing, teaching, doing spiritual direction and helping out at different parishes in the area

What attracted you to the Jesuits?

The first Catholic priests I encountered were Jesuits and one of them prepared me for baptism. I was struck by how they were able to formulate pertinent questions and not be satisfied with perfunctory answers. I realised through them that on our faith journey, questions were often more important than answers. Afterwards, I was deeply impregnated by the Ignatian way of looking at the world, attempting to be a contemplative in action, struggling to work for justice and remain rooted in prayer.

What do you enjoy doing the most?

I enjoy most encountering other people, those I know and those I meet for the first time. I enjoy encountering people through what they produce too: literature, music, paintings, sculpture… I am fascinated by people. When the opportunity arises, I love discussing the Bible with them. The encounter between the world and the Word intrigues me. I am in constant search of how the Word imprints itself on the world through what people say and what they produce.

What sparked your interest in Scripture?

It all began with obedience! My Jesuit superior, at the end of my theology studies, sent me to study Scripture in Rome. I had specialised in social sciences, and my PhD before entering the Society of Jesus was in political science.

I obeyed and fell in love. I was plunged into the world of Scripture and realised that it was a world in which I could seek more fully the mystery of who God is, who the human person is, and what the relationship between the two can be. It gave me an ever-deepening sense of how to think and talk about these matters, providing a vocabulary, a syntax and grammar to make sense of all this for myself and for those I am called to serve.

Do you have any interests besides the teaching of Scripture?

I remain very interested in politics, sociology and history. I try to read as much as possible: novels, biographies, poetry… I am fascinated by languages and try to read in the various languages I have learnt: English, Hebrew, Arabic, French and Italian. I am fascinated by how many ways one can say the same thing.

Being here in South Africa, I am enjoying trying to remember the Afrikaans I learnt at school and I’m spending a few minutes each day trying to acquire some Zulu.

What will you be covering at Winter Living Theology, and what do you hope people will get out of it?

Unsurprisingly, WLT this year will focus on Scripture. We, at the Jesuit Institute, have developed three different themes, depending on how much time and energy people have.

A first session, three days long, will examine the theme: “Our Bible: Where does it come from and why do we need it?” Christians refer to the Bible as the Word of God. However, when they open the Bible, they are often bewildered by this motley collection of texts from different historical periods that are sometimes very difficult to understand. This session will deal not only with the origins of the Bible but also examine what purpose it serves in our lives as Christians. It will analyse the different ways we can read it.

A second session, a day long, will examine the theme: “The Gospel: Would not one book have been enough?” In the second century, a Christian thinker proposed merging the four Gospel accounts into one harmonised text. The Church rejected this proposal. Would it not have made our lives simpler?

This series of presentations will illustrate the richness of having a multiplicity of renditions of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By engaging in a reading of select texts from the books of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, we will discover how four complementary portraits of Jesus emerge that deepen our understanding of who he is in our lives.

Finally, the third session is for those who have time or energy for just one lecture. The theme will be: “Learn to read backwards from the beginning”. Right at the beginning of the New Testament, the first text we find is a long genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 1:1-17). A careful reading of this text prepares us for how to approach the New Testament in all its parts, firmly established on the foundation of the Old Testament. This presentation will focus on the seminal elements in this genealogy that take the reader back to important moments in the history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament. These elements shed important light on the identity and mission of Jesus of Nazareth.

Who do you think will benefit from WLT?

We are hoping that these three different sessions will all be useful for any Christian, theologically educated or not, who seeks to deepen his or her understanding of the Bible and what role it can play in our lives today.

We are all certainly aware of the treasure that the Bible can be in our lives as within it we can encounter the living Word of God. However, we are also aware that it is no easy task reading literature that was written millennia ago in languages — Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek — that we do not understand, using a vocabulary which is often foreign to us. It is my hope that these three sessions will bring the Christian reader of the Bible closer to an experience of the Word of God in our modern lives, an experience mediated by a deeper understanding of these ancient texts.

Winter Living Theology will take place in Cape Town at St Francis Xavier Seminary from July 13-15, St Joseph’s in Durban from August 25-27, St Luke’s in Gqeberha from August 22-24, and at Lumko in Johannesburg from September 5-7. For details (and specials) see the Jesuit Institute website www.jesuitinstitute.org.za or email .

Published in the June 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine