Festschrift in honor of Arie de Kuiper, a Dutch theologian in Indonesia.

The Christian Bible By: DR. MD. Mohiuddin Ahmed M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. “NEED FOR TRANSFORMATION IN CHRISTIANITY” The substantial and critical objective of the book “The Christian Bible” is to delve penetrably into the most vexatious and frequently raised crucial, undefined, long, indeterminate questions like “What is Christianity,” is it a religion, a philosophy or a Way of Life, “What is Bible,” is it a Word of God? Who founded Christianity, Jesus Christ or Saint Paul or others, if so who? The author Dr. Md. Mohiuddin Ahmed through his in-depth study, systematic research has efficaciously and vividly discussed, considered and placed before Christian priesthood, clergy, preachers, philosophers, scholars and leaders to ponder over his reflections, concerns, conclusions to see, realize and achieve the Truth, the Solemn Truth. Dr. Ahmed says that the present Christian elite feels embarrassed in modifying the ethical, moral, spiritual beliefs systematized as righteous, pure and sacred by the ancient Church and its Ministry. But it is a well-known fact that Christianity has a history of alterations, transmutations and transformations. The author sounds out why another transformation revealing the Solemn Truth, eliminating unresolved beliefs, convictions from the existing obscure confirmities, should not be initiated. In the end pages of the book, the author is raising certain pertinent and qualified issues which need the attention of the concerned spiritual peers, philanthropists, scholars and readers. This is a thought-promoting, contemplative and exciting book, opening the channels for re-looking into the transformational needs in Christianity.

This work, the first of its kind, describes all the aspects of the Bible revolution in Jewish history in the last two hundred years, as well as the emergence of the new biblical culture. It describes the circumstances and processes that turned Holy Scripture into the Book of Books and into the history of the biblical period and of the people – the Jewish people. It deals with the encounter of the Jews with modern biblical criticism and the archaeological research of the Ancient Near East and with contemporary archaeology. The middle section discusses the extensive involvement of educated Jews in the Bible-Babel polemic at the start of the twentieth century, which it treats as a typological event. The last section describes at length various aspects of the key status assigned to the Bible in the new Jewish culture in Europe, and particularly in modern Jewish Palestine, as a “guide to life” in education, culture and politics, as well as part of the attempt to create a new Jewish man, and as a source of inspiration for various creative arts.

We know that, from the fields of politics, economics, culture and social affairs, different motives have emerged for the rejection of some Jewish communities in some nations, but why from Christianity? Is Christianity a monolithic bloc from which these expressions of rejection came out, and has anyone who considers himself a Christian also participated in them, at least in his conscience? Or is Christianity a broad field of thought, one that goes beyond forming a single dogmatic culture in its believers? Fortunately, we know that universal Christianity is not that solid block of thinking. So, for the same reasons why we know that not all politicians, societies, cultures, economies, or religions have been, or are anti-Semitic; neither is the universal of Christianity. For Christians, of virtually every denomination, the Bible is their ultimate teaching book. It is the book whose content has all the information necessary to direct our lives. But why are there so many divisions in the Christian faith? Worse still, why are there different versions of that Christian Bible, even though they contain the basic biblical books? Will the Bible have the answer to this and other questions regarding the inclusion of Christianity in anti-Semitism behave? In this book we will try to find the answer to these questions and see what the Christian Bible has to tell us about it. In this work called: Seven Statements from the Christian Bible that the Jews should know, we try to scrutinize the pages and message contained in the pages of the Bible, hoping to find the information that will help us better understand this complicated matter.

In this meticulously researched study, Konrad Schmid offers a historical clarification of the concept of “theology.” He then examines the theologies of the three constituent parts of the Hebrew Bible—the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings— before tracing how these theological concepts developed throughout the history of ancient Israel and early Judaism. Schmid not only explores the theology of the biblical books in isolation, but he also offers unifying principles and links between the distinct units that make up the Hebrew Bible. By focusing on both the theology of the whole Hebrew Bible as well as its individual pieces, A Historical Theology of the Hebrew Bible provides a comprehensive discussion of theological work within the Hebrew Bible.

In April of 2001, the headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “Doubting the Story of the Exodus.” It covered a sermon that had been delivered by the rabbi of a prominent local congregation over the holiday of Passover. In it, he said, “The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.” This seeming challenge to the biblical story captivated the local public. Yet as the rabbi himself acknowledged, his sermon contained nothing new. The theories that he described had been common knowledge among biblical scholars for over thirty years, though few people outside of the profession know their relevance. New understandings concerning the Bible have not filtered down beyond specialists in university settings. There is a need to communicate this research to a wider public of students and educated readers outside of the academy. This volume seeks to meet this need, with accessible and engaging chapters describing how archeology, theology, ancient studies, literary studies, feminist studies, and other disciplines now understand the Bible.

Ratheiser's study provides the framework for a non-confessional, mitzvoth ethics-centered and historical-philological approach to the Jewish bible and deals with the basic steps of an alternative paradigmatic perspective on the biblical text. The author seeks to demostrate the ineptness of confessional and ahistorical approaches to the Jewish bible. Based on his observations and his survey of the history of interpretation of the Jewish bible, Ratheiser introduces an alternative hermeneutical-exegetical approach to the Jewish bible: the paradigm of examples. His study concludes that the biblical text is a collection of writings designed and formed from a specifically ethical-ethnic outlook. In other words, he regards the Jewish bible to be written as an etiology of ancient instruction by ancient Jews to Jews and for Jews. As such, it serves as a religious-ethical identity marker that provides ancient Jews and their descendants with an etiology of Jewish life. Ratheiser regards this religious-ethical agenda to have been the driving force in the minds of the final editors/compilers of the biblical text as we have it today.

Writing from a Jewish perspective, Jon Levenson reviews many often neglected theoretical questions. He focuses on the relationship between two interpretive communities--the community of scholars who are committed to the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation and the community responsible for the canonization and preservation of the Bible.

Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Septuagint -- 2. The Targums -- 3. Bible Translation into Arabic -- 4. Bible Translation into Yiddish and German -- 5. Translations into Other Selected Languages -- 6. English-Language Versions -- 7. Non-Jewish Translations with Jewish Features -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Subject Index -- Index of Bible Passages.

Tracing its history from Moses Mendelssohn to today, Alan Levenson explores the factors that shaped what is the modern Jewish Bible and its centrality in Jewish life today. The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible explains how Jewish translators, commentators, and scholars made the Bible a keystone of Jewish life in Germany, Israel and America. Levenson argues that German Jews created a religious Bible, Israeli Jews a national Bible, and American Jews an ethnic one. In each site, scholars wrestled with the demands of the non-Jewish environment and their own indigenous traditions, trying to balance fidelity and independence from the commentaries of the rabbinic and medieval world.