Disinheriting the Jews is a scholarly work of great interest and significance for both Christians and Jews. Jeffery Siker shows how strongly the figure of Abraham has shaped our religious identities. He also uses the portrayals of Abraham by early Christians as a new means of understanding the dynamics involved in the church's separation and estrangement from Judaism. Siker argues that the separation was precipitated by historical contingencies more so than by Christian identity, and in so doing suggests self-corrections that could mend the rift between Christianity and Judaism.

Justin Martyr, a second-century Gentile Christian apologist, was active in the Christian-Jewish propaganda war to convert each other and the pagans. He radicalized the ideas of St. Paul on the divine Election, Abraham, the Pentateuch, and the Gentiles. Justin's background, sources, and thought, and his place in the inter-religious propaganda war, are discussed, as are the irreconcilable views of Jesus and Paul on the Pentateuch and the Gentiles. Justin Martyr and the Jews considers the place of Paul and Justin's teachings in today's Christian-Jewish dialogue about the roots of early Christian Antisemitism, showing that the presuppositions of Paul and Justin must be abandoned if Christians and Jews today are to reach true understanding. As part of the search for such understanding, recent scholarly literature has been concerned with pre- and post-Holocaust inter-religious relations, as well as with the roots of Christian Antisemitism. Some scholars have endeavoured to show that Pauline teachings were misunderstood, and thereby exonerate Paul from the responsibility for Christian persecutions of Jews through the ages. These scholars have also attempted to make Paul a bridge between Christians and Jews in their modern dialogue. The present writer argues that this interpretation of Pauline teaching, followed and even radicalized by Justin, is unfounded.

“Unheil,” curse, disaster: according to German scholar Gerhard Kittel, this is the Jewish destiny attested to in scripture. Such interpretations of biblical texts provided Adolf Hitler with the theological legitimatization necessary to realizing his “final solution.” But theological antisemitism did not begin with the Third Reich. Ferdinand Baur’s nineteenth-century Judaism-Hellenism dichotomy empowered National Socialist scholars to construct an Aryan Jesus cleansed of his Jewish identity, building on Baur’s Enlightenment prejudices. Anders Gerdmar takes a fresh look at the dangers of the politicization of biblical scholarship and the ways our unrecognized interpretive filters may generate someone else’s apocalypse.

By exploring how Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, and John Calvin interpreted a set of eight messianic psalms (Psalms 2, 8, 16, 22, 45, 72, 110, 188), Sujin Pak elucidates key debates about Christological exegesis during the era of the Protestant reformation. More particularly, Pak examines the exegeses of Luther, Bucer, and Calvin in order to (a) reveal their particular theological emphases and reading strategies, (b) identify their debates over the use of Jewish exegesis and the factors leading to charges of 'judaizing' leveled against Calvin, and (c) demonstrate how Psalms reading and the accusation of judaizing serve distinctive purposes of confessional identity formation. In this way, she portrays the beginnings of those distinctive trends that separated Lutheran and Reformed exegetical principles.

What were Jews saying and doing about the followers of Jesus in the first two centuries? In this provocative and comprehensive study, Claudia Setzer argues persuasively that Jews saw the early followers of Jesus as Jews for some time after the Christians viewed themselves as separate from the larger Jewish communities. This book provides historical context and nuanced exegesis of texts that continue to be "trouble spots" in Jewish-Christian relations. It illuminates the diverse strands of early anti-Judaism while providing the reader with some surprises.

Debate abounds on the future of Israel and Israel's relation to the church, not only between dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists, but among dispensationalists themselves. In the past that debate has sometimes been acrimonious, and proponents of the differing viewpoints have found little common ground. In recent years, however, views have been modified and developed so that the dialogue is increasingly by cooperation and a mutual exploration of diverse ideas. The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism is intended to enlighten the debate in that same irenic spirit. The book is solidly dispensational in perspective in affirming that the Old Testament prophecies are completely fulfilled in the future, that the nation of Israel has a prophetic future, and that Israel is not the church. Dr. Saucy departs from classic dispensationalism, however, in showing that (1) the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy begins in the present church age, and (2) the church is not a parenthesis in God's program but represents a continuity with the Old Testament messianic program. This modified dispensationalism seeks to satisfy many of the objections of non-dispensational approaches to eschatology while retaining the crucial elements of biblical interpretation that characterize dispensational thought.

This volume is part of a series which provides a fundamental resource for feminist biblical scholarship, containing a comprehensive selection of essays, both reprinted and specially written for the series, by leading feminist scholars. The contributors to this volume are Lyn Bechtel, Mark Bredin, Athalya Brenner, Edna Brocke, Carole Fontaine, Lillian Klein, Amy-Jill Levine, Judith Lieu, Heather McKay, Adele Reinhartz, Jane Schaberg, Marla Selvidge, Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Beverly Stratton, Arie Troost, Pieter van der Horst, and Bea Wyler.

"Jewish-Christianity" is a contested category in current research. But for precisely this reason, it may offer a powerful lens through which to rethink the history of Jewish/Christian relations. Traditionally, Jewish-Christianity has been studied as part of the origins and early diversity of Christianity. Collecting revised versions of previously published articles together with new materials, Annette Yoshiko Reed reconsiders Jewish-Christianity in the context of Late Antiquity and in conversation with Jewish studies. She brings further attention to understudied texts and traditions from Late Antiquity that do not fit neatly into present day notions of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. In the process, she uses these materials to probe the power and limits of our modern assumptions about religion and identity.

The essays, excerpts, homilies, and personal reflections in this collection have all been published previously, publicly presented, or both. These selections, however, are not merely being republished, but rather recontextualized and resituated with the expectation that they will become more than the sum of their individual parts, that they will be mutually informing. In most cases, a period of time has elapsed since they were first written or spoken, and that has given time, with the help of reflective memory, to think about how these various selections might relate to each other and to the larger body of James W. Aageson’s professional work as a teacher and scholar. These relationships and connections in most cases have only become apparent in retrospect, as Aageson has been able to see the larger mosaic of his own work and thinking. In some cases, he has changed his mind. In other cases, Aageson’s thinking has only been reinforced and expanded. But are there conceptual threads that run through the selections in each of the book’s three sections? Indeed there are. For these reasons, Aageson is presenting them together here to a new set of readers.

"Richard Bell examines the impact of Paul's life changing experience before Damascus on his theological understanding of Israel. The book considers the development of Paul's view concerning the election and salvation of Israel, paying special attention to 1 Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans. The author examines Paul's critique of Israel's religion in the light of traditional protestant approaches and the 'new perspective'. The work concludes by considering some contemporary issues relating to Israel in the light of Paul's theology."--BOOK JACKET.