Ancient Wisdom Today » Jesus http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org Ancient Wisdom Today: seeking to understand the past to make sense of the present Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:09:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 The Misunderstood Jew http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/2009/11/21/the-misunderstood-jew/ http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/2009/11/21/the-misunderstood-jew/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:03:16 +0000 Maer http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/?p=601

Levine, Amy-jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. HarperOne, 2006.

To me, the main value of this book is seeing the perspective of someone who is committed to Judaism but also  happens to be a New Testament scholar.  She begins by drawing an analogy—a tad strained, she admits—that, I believe, shapes the way she writes the book: “the Torah functions for the synagogue as Jesus does for the church: it is the ‘word’ of the divine present in the congregation” (Levine 2006: 17). Therefore, looking carefully at the worldview of each community is important if one is to understand the relationship between the two.  She has many things to say about the interaction between Jews and Christians throughout history and the different ways that each misunderstands the New Testament. Although some will quibble about Levine’s exegesis of some passages, she does challenge Christians to take a closer look at those passages more critically, and I personally found her discussion of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-collector to be illuminating. All in all, it is a fascinating read even when there are points of disagreement.

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]]> http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/2009/11/21/the-misunderstood-jew/feed/ 0 The Historical and Theological Jesus http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/2009/01/28/the-historical-and-theological-jesus/ http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/2009/01/28/the-historical-and-theological-jesus/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:53:22 +0000 Maer http://maer.vidanovaphilly.org/?p=104 Baylor University has several lectures and sermons that you may want to check out. One of the lectures I recently listened to was by Dr. Dale C. Allison who is currently a professor of New Testament exegesis and early Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the author of several books. His lecture is entitled The Historical Jesus and the Theological Jesus and the main question that he asks is if it is possible to separate the two. I enjoyed the lecture mainly because, in my opinion, it was “not boring.” Dr. Allison talks about his feelings about “assured critical results,” his own work, the Jesus Seminar and ends the lecture with interesting (albeit debatable) examples that show that Jesus is present in places where modern historians typically see “only the church.”

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