The authors address the issue of God in this world which, in the classical documents of formative Judaism, encompasses the diverse ways in which we meet God in the here and now. The counterpart in Christianity is meeting God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. As heirs to the common scripture of ancient Israel, both Judaism and Christianity identify humanity as the worldly image of God. The two traditions concur that, since we are made in God's image, we see God in the face of one another. The conception of incarnation is therefore as Judaic as it is Christian. The point of difference between the two becomes clear when we ask how incarnation is realized. This book is the final volume in a trilogy. Previously published volumes include 'Revelation: The Torah and the Bible' and 'The Body of Faith: Israel and the Church'.
Bruce By: Bruce Williams Bruce is a lesson to let people know you can change in your life. You don’t have to settle. You can choose life and choose GOD.
Until his death in 4 BCE, Herod the Great's monarchy included territories that once made up the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Although he ruled over a rich, strategically crucial land, his royal title did not derive from heredity. His family came from the people of Idumea, ancient antagonists of the Israelites. Yet Herod did not rule as an outsider, but from a family committed to Judaism going back to his grandfather and father. They had served the priestly dynasty of the Maccabees that had subjected Idumea to their rule, including the Maccabean version of what loyalty to the Torah required. Herod's father, Antipater, rose not only to manage affairs on behalf of his priestly masters, but to become a pivotal military leader. He inaugurated a new alignment of power: an alliance with Rome negotiated with Pompey and Julius Caesar. In the crucible of civil war among Romans as the Triumvirate broke up, and of war between Rome and Parthia, Antipater managed to leave his sons with the prospect of a dynasty. Herod inherited the twin pillars of loyalty to Judaism and loyalty to Rome that became the basis of Herodian rule. He elevated Antipater's opportunism to a political art. During Herod's time, Roman power took its imperial form, and Octavian was responsible for making Herod king of Judea. As Octavian ruled, he took the title Augustus, in keeping with his devotion to his adoptive father's cult of "the divine Julius." Imperial power was a theocratic assertion as well as a dominant military, economic, and political force. Herod framed a version of theocratic ambition all his own, deliberately crafting a dynastic claim grounded in Roman might and Israelite theocracy. That unlikely hybrid was the key to the Herodians' surprising longevity in power during the most chaotic century in the political history of Judaism.
The Cambridge Companion to the Bible, Second Edition focuses on the ever-changing social and cultural contexts in which the biblical authors and their original readers lived. The authors of the first edition were chosen for their internationally recognized expertise in their respective fields: the history and literature of Israel; postbiblical Judaism; biblical archaeology; and the origins and early literature of Christianity. In this second edition, all of their chapters have been updated and thoroughly revised, with a view towards better investigating the social histories embedded in the biblical texts and incorporating the most recent archaeological discoveries from the Ancient Near East and Hellenistic worlds.
The authors seek to identify the recurrent tensions, the blatant points of emphasis, the recurring indications of conflict and polemic. Framing the issue of the disposition of the Scriptural heritage in broad terms, they describe what characterizes the Gospels and the Mishnah, the letters of Paul and the Tosefta. In other words, if they take whole and complete the writings of first and second century people claiming to form the contemporary embodiment of Scripture's Israel and ask what they all stress as a single point of insistence, the answer is self-evident. Nearly every Christianity and nearly all known Judaisms appeal for validation to the Scriptures of ancient Israel, their laws and narratives, their prophecies and visions. To Scripture all parties appeal - but not to the same verses of Scripture. In Scripture, all participants to the common Israelite culture propose to find validation - but not to a common theological program subject to diverse interpretation. From Scripture, every community of Judaism and Christianity takes away what it will, but not with the assent of all the others.
Here is a superb resource for all who wish to deepen their understanding of Judaism and Christianity and the relationship between these two great traditions. The authors compare and contrast the paramount theological categories of Judaism and Christianity, specifically Torah, God, and Israel for Judaism, and Bible, God, and church for Christianity. 'Revelation' is the first of three volumes in support of this effort. It consists of a conversation between the Torah and its authoritative representation in the Talmud of Babylonia (a complete and exhaustive statement of God's will for Judaism) and the Christian Bible (Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament), including the interpretation of scripture within the primitive church as the foundation of Christian authority. Within this conversation the authors do not sidestep profound disagreement in favor of proposing obscure theological difference. Each believes in his tradition and its affirmations, and each seeks to grasp the rationality of the views of the other.
Among the world's religions, Christianity and Judaism are the most symmetrical. But in our day of religious tolerance, a tendency to overlook the vital differences between the two religions in the name of good will can undermine constructive Jewish-Christian dialogue. In this book, Bruce D. Chilton describes early Christian thought and Jacob Neusner describes early Judaic thought on fundamental issues such as creation and human nature, Christ and Torah, sin and atonement, and eschatology. At the end of each chapter, each assesses the other's perspective, and a final chapter explains why the authors believe theological confrontation--not just comparison--defines the task of interfaith dialogue today.
This remarkable survey introduces critical knowledge and insights that have emerged over the past forty years, including targum manuscripts discovered this century and targums known in Aramaic but only recently translated into English. Prolific scholars Flesher and Chilton guide readers in understanding the development of the targums; their relationship to the Hebrew Bible; their dates, language, and place in the history of Christianity and Judaism; and their theologies and methods of interpretation.
The Synoptikon presents the texts of the Synoptic Gospels alongside one another and in relation to their Judaic contexts. Discrete typefaces highlight particular streams of tradition that interacted so as to produce the Gospels. The depth of the Synoptic tradition consequently emerges, as well as its breadth.
The authors address the issue of God in this world which, in the classical documents of formative Judaism, encompasses the diverse ways in which we meet God in the here and now. The counterpart in Christianity is meeting God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. As heirs to the common scripture of ancient Israel, both Judaism and Christianity identify humanity as the worldly image of God. The two traditions concur that, since we are made in God's image, we see God in the face of one another. The conception of incarnation is therefore as Judaic as it is Christian. The point of difference between the two becomes clear when we ask how incarnation is realized. This book is the final volume in a trilogy. Previously published volumes include 'Revelation: The Torah and the Bible' and 'The Body of Faith: Israel and the Church'.
About the Contributor(s): Bruce Chilton is the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College. He also serves as Chaplain and Executive Director of Bard's Institute of Advanced Theology. He is the author of several books on early Christianity, including The Temple of Jesus.
The Proclamation of Jesus seeks to place Jesus in the context of first-century Palestinian Judaism. The authors hope to discern the essence of his preaching, his concept of the kingdom of God, and the place of purity in his teaching and activities. Better methods for assessing not simply the authenticity of reported sayings and deeds, but for tracing the development of tradition are considered. The authors are convinced that most of the Synoptic tradition is authentic, but that much of it has been reinterpreted and recontextualized. Herein lies the real challenge for those investigating the historical Jesus. The Proclamation of Jesus opens up new avenues of study and makes new proposals for understanding Jesus in the context of his place and time.
The exiles of Israel and Judah cast a long shadow over the biblical text and the whole subsequent history of Judaism. Scholars have long recognized the importance of the theme of exile for the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, critical study of the Old Testament has, at least since Wellhausen, been dominated by the Babylonian exile of Judah. In 586 BC, several factors, including the destruction of Jerusalem, the cessation of the sacrificial cult and of the monarchy, and the experience of the exile, began to cause a transformation of Israelite religion which supplied the contours of the larger Judaic framework within which the various forms of Judaism, including the early Christian movement, developed. Given the importance of the exile to the development of Judaism and Christianity even to the present day, this volume delves into the conceptions of exile which contributed to that development during the formative period.
This volume offers critical assessments of Life of Jesus research in the last generation, with special emphasis on work that is quite recent. It will introduce graduate students to the field and will provide the veteran scholar with current bibliography and discussion of the issues. Topics treated include Jesus and Palestinian politics, Jesus tradition in Paul, Jesus in extracanonical Gospels, and Jesus' parables, miracles, death, and resurrection. The contributors are among the most widely recognized and respected Life of Jesus scholars. They include Marcus J. Borg, James H. Charlesworth, James D.G. Dunn, Sean Freyne, Richard Horsley, and Helmut Koester.
The lack of serious and sustained investigation of the historical figure of James "the Just", brother of Jesus, is one of the curious oversights in modern critical study of Christian origins. James the Just and Christian Origins addresses this problem. The questions that surround this exceedingly important, yet largely ignored figure are several and complicated. Was he really the brother of Jesus? How influential was he in the early church? What was the nature of his relationship to the other apostles, especially to Paul? How did James understand Christianity’s relationship to Judaism and to the people of Israel? Out of this grows a very important question: In its generative moment, was Christianity in fact as well as in its self-awareness, a species of Judaism? Contributors from several countries are currently engaged in collaborative study in James and early Jewish Christianity. James the Just and Christian Origins is the first of several planned volumes to be published.
This is the first attempt systematically to explain the growth, background and ideology of the Targum to Isaiah. Its principal stages of development between the first and fourth centuries CE are described in order to understand as precisely as possible its hope for God's messianic vindication of his people. Chilton's work demonstrates the paradigmatic significance of the Isaiah Targum within the Prophets Targum as a whole, and convincingly places the Targum in its chronological and theological context.
If Moses, Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad were to meet, what would they tell one another about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Three of today’s leading scholars explore the topics such a conversation might entail in this comparative study of the three monotheistic faiths. In systematic, side-by-side descriptions, they detail the classical theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the authoritative writings that convey those theologies—Torah, Bible, and Qur’ān. They then compare and contrast the three faiths, which, though distinct and autonomous, address a common set of issues. While asserting that this book is by no means a background source for issues and conflicts among contemporary followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the authors nevertheless aspire to reveal among the three a common potential for mutual understanding. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
This Comparative Handbook surveys the Judaic environment of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Analogies are traced with the Pseudepigrapha (together with Philo and Josephus), discoveries related to Qumran, and Rabbinic Literature (inclusive of the Targumim).
The monograph analyses eucharistic texts on the basis of the social practices which generated them. Six stages of ideology are identified. Jesus himself practised fellowship at meals as celebrations of Israel's purity (stage 1), and later insisted that a pure meal was a better sacrifice than an offering in the Temple (stage 2). The circle of Peter made such meals into covenantal celebrations; Jesus became a new Moses (stage 3). In order to militate against the full participation of non-Jews, the circle of James invented the full identifications with Passover (stage 4). Paul resisted any such limitations (stage 5). The Synoptic tradition accepted the Jacobean chronology, but joined Paul in developing the Hellenistic theme of Jesus as heroic martyr, and in explaining eucharist as a means of effecting solidarity with Jesus (stage 5). The Johannine ideologies transformed the idiom of eucharist by making Jesus into the paschal lamb which is consumed (stage 6). A conclusion relates the practices identified to the sources behind the Gospels; and shows how practice is key to the meanings of eucharistic texts.
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