Information Resources
New and Notable
Recent Publications of Interest
(List posted in July 2007)
In an effort to help interested readers keep abreast of new publications in the disciplines that lie at the heart of the work of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies, we offer a short list of recently-published books and brief descriptions of each book. These descriptions are not reviews: No positive or negative judgments are offered with regard to the books' contents.
New and Notable:
Talking With Christians, by David Novak
Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, by Jon D. Levenson
Christians & Jews in Dialogue, by Mary C. Boys and
Sara S. Lee
The One Who Is to Come, by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.
Opening the Sealed Book, by Joseph Blenkinsopp
Voting About God in Early Church Councils, by Ramsay MacMullen
Jewish Christianity Reconsidered, edited by Matt Jackson-McCabe
David Novak. Talking With Christians: Musings of a Jewish Theologian. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. This volume is a collection of essays written over the past twenty-five years by one of the world's leading Jewish theologians. Although the essays are based on lectures delivered to audiences consisting primarily of Christians, they originated in conversations with serious Christians, including some important Chris-tian theologians. The language Novak employs in these essays is more philosophical than theological because
he believes that philosophical language allows Jews and Christians to speak together on neutral ground and religious language does not. Like many other authors who have written about Jewish-Christian dialogue, Novak explores significant theological concerns of Judaism and Christianity. What sets these essays apart is their focus on Christianity viewed from a Jewish perspective.
David Novak is J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. He has written numerous books and articles and is one of the co-authors of Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity, an important document that emerged from the work of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
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Jon D. Levenson. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. Yale University Press, 2006. Challenging the double-barreled notion that bodily resurrection of the dead was a Christian innovation imported into Judaism and that, in any case, it was never anything more than a tangent in Judaism, Levenson presents the argument that both the ancient rabbis and the Hebrew Bible were committed to the belief that God would restore the deserving dead to life at the end of time. Levenson works backward from attestations in rabbinic literature and in the Book of Daniel and concludes that the idea of resurrection did not suddenly spring up in Second Temple Judaism but developed slowly and unevenly over preceding centuries. He believes that resurrection was integrally connected both to the rabbis' vision of redemption and to their understanding of Jewish peoplehood: Without a restoration of the Jewish people in flesh and blood (i.e., not simply in terms of immortality of the soul), God's promises to the Jewish people would be unfulfilled and the world would remain unredeemed. Although Levenson does not believe that the notion of resurrection came into Judaism via Christianity, his work does serve to develop a continuity between Judaism and Christianity generally neglected by scholars.
Jon D. Levenson is Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University. Perhaps the best known of his previous books is The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
If you would like to purchase The Death and Resurrec-tion of the Beloved Son, click here.
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Mary C. Boys and Sara S. Lee, Forward by Dorothy C. Bass. Christians & Jews in Dialogue: Learning in the Presence of the Other. Skylight Paths Publishing, 2006. This a volume in which two educators -- one Jewish and one Roman Catholic -- demonstrate the importance of learning about the religious "other" in the other's presence. In this engaging book the two authors reflect on what they have learned in twenty years of facilitating dialogue between Jews and Catholics. They argue that serious religious education is the key to reconciliation among adherents of different religious traditons, and they offer a model for fostering religious pluralism. Mary Boys and Sara Lee share with the reader their own religious autobiographies, their early miscon-ceptions of one another, and their later growing understanding of and respect for the other. This book can serve as a valuable resource not only for Catholics and Jews, but also for anyone seeking authentic dia-logue with different religious traditions.
Mary C. Boys is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. She has written many books, includ-ing Has God Only One Blessing?: Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding, and is the editor of Seeing Judaism Anew: A Sacred Obligation of Christians. She formerly served as president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education
and currently chairs the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations.
Sara S. Lee is director of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. She is a recipient of the Samuel Rothberg Prize in Jewish Education from Hebrew Univer-sity in Jerusalem and of the Pras HaNasi, the President of Israel's Award for Distinguished Leadership of Jewish Education in the Diaspora. Like Mary Boys, Sara Lee has served as president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religions Education. She has also served as co-editor of Congregation of Learners and Touching the Future: Mentoring and the Jewish Professional.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
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Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. The One Who Is to Come. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. Many people find the popular -- and controversial -- notion of messiah in early texts of the Hebrew Bible/ Christian Old Testament. Joseph Fitzmyer considers this a misreading of the texts and sets out to correct it carefully and comprehensively, dating the emergence of messianism much later -- in the second century B.C.E. Fitzmyer begins his book with a linguistic discussion of the term messiah (its use and misuse), then discusses the gradual emergence of the concept of a future, dynasty-continuing David and examines the messianic language in Daniel 9. Fitzmyer also explores the use of messiah in the Septuagint, extrabiblical Jewish writings, the New Testament, the Tagrums, and the Mishnah. As Fitzmyer himself says, his intention in The One Who Is
to Come is to put data gathered by others in what he regards as the proper historical perspective in order to show how the biblical tradition developed gradually in pre-Christian Judaism and then fed into both the Jewish tradition of a coming "Messiah" and the early Church's tradition about Jesus of Nazareth.
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., is professor emeritus of biblical studies at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He has written more than forty books, including the two-volume Anchor Bible commentary on the Gospel According to Luke, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins, and Spiritual Exercises Based on Paul's Epistle to the Romans.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
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Joseph Blenkinsopp. Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Antiquity. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006. Blenkinsopp's book offers a comprehensive history of the interpretation of Isaiah in late Second Temple Judaism, in particular among Jewish apocalyptic and sectarian movements, including Christianity. This study examines
a number of Isaianic themes, e.g., exile, the "remnant
of Israel," martyrdom, and "the servant of the Lord." Blenkinsopp argues that three extremely influential interpretive trajectories concerning the function and place of prophecy and the prophetic role have their origin in the Book of Isaiah. He identifies these three trajectories as the critic of social structures (i.e., the "classical" prophetic role), the apocalyptic seer, and
the "man of God." One of the important contributions
of Blenkinsopp's work is the way in which it furthers understanding of the use of scripture by formative Jewish and Christian communities. Opening the Sealed Book will appeal primarily to Jewish and Christian schol-ars, but it is not beyond the reach of the interested layperson.
Joseph Blenkinsopp is John A. O'Brien Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Treasures Old and New: Essays in the Theology of the Pentateuch and the three-volume Anchor Bible commentary on Isaiah.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
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Ramsay MacMullen. Voting About God in Early Church Councils. Yale University Press, 2006. It would prob-ably surprise many Christians to discover that in the early church councils -- all fifteen thousand or so of them -- the official doctrines of Christianity were determined by the majority votes of bishops. Drawing
on extensive verbatim stenographic records, Ramsay MacMullen analyzes the ecumenical councils that took place between 325 and 553 C.E. -- their planning and staging, the role played in them by emperors, the debates at the heart of the councils, the participants' understanding of the issues, and even the bloodshed and violence that often served as the backdrop to council proceedings. MacMullen's book concludes with
an examination of the significance of the councils and the impact of the decisions made in them on the history of Christianity.
Ramsay MacMullen is emeritus professor in the Depart-ment of History at Yale University. He has written many books, including Christianizing the Roman Empire, Cor-ruption and the Decline of Rome, and Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
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Matt Jackson-McCabe, editor. Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts. Fortress Press, 2007. The category "Jewish Chris-tianity" has been a part of the scholarship on the origins and early history of Christianity since the nineteenth century, but to this day the term remains ambiguous and unclear. There is no consensus on the definition of the term, on the body of data that belongs to the category, or on the relationship of "Jewish Christianity" to Judaism and Christianity. The intent of this book is twofold: to provide an orientation to what has traditionally been called "Jewish Christianity," and to provide a point of entry into this controversial subject by presenting a representative sample of ancient texts and groups that have figured in the discussion, along with a variety of approaches to classifying these texts and groups. This volume is geared not to scholars, but to university and seminary students and to the general reader. The lan-guage and analysis in the book are not overly technical, and endnotes are kept to a minimum. Each chapter con-tains suggestions for further reading, and there is a comprehensive bibliography. Contributing scholars include: William Arnal, Warren Carter, Jonathan A. Draper, Raimo Hakola, Patrick J. Hartin, Craig C. Hill, F. Stanley Jones, Petri Luomanen, John W. Marshall, and Jerry L. Sumney.
Matt Jackson-McCabe is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Niagara University. He is the author of Logos and Law in the Letter of James. Jackson-McCabe is the founding chairman of the Jewish Christianity Consultation at the Society of Biblical Literature.If you would like to purchase this book, click here.
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