[Dialogue] Re - Spong on Christian anti-Judaism

[Charles or Doris Hahn]

Thanks John for these four offerings.  I doubt that I
will get around to reading them all, but it gives some
direction for one who's sister-in-law converted to
Judaism.  Just your commentary is very challenging and
thought-provoking.  Thanks again.
Charles Hahn 
--- John Montgomery <monkeyltd at comcast.net> wrote:

> Thanks to Dick for sharing Spong's latest post. As a
> movement, we would do
> well to reflect for some time about these questions.
> For example, while I
> loved JWM's Christ of History, many of the terrible
> stereotypes we
> perpetuated as we taught that paper about Jews,
> Judaism and Jewish thought,
> relying as we did on an existentialist perspective,
> are nowadays downright
> embarrassing. I just posted the following review of
> four recent books that
> address these concerns on my blog - I hope I can fit
> it into this e-mail
> without it crashing.
> 
> Summer Books! - Four Great Reads about
> Jewish/Christian Relations
> 
> Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures
> Through the Ages
> 
> Jaroslav Pelikan (Viking - Penguin Group, New York)
> 2005
> 
> This represents one of the last efforts by the
> eminent late Yale historian,
> Jaroslav Pelikan, and like the bulk of his former
> work it both challenges
> our too easily repeated assumptions and yet provides
> a framework that allows
> us to see his new proposals in the broader
> historical context. Two important
> themes play the part of sub-text in what, in the
> first instance, is a
> history of the development and evolution of
> scripture and its interpretation
> over the past two millennia. 
> 
> The first is captured by the title and confronts us
> with the fact, that we
> often lose track of, that there is great diversity
> in terms of what we mean
> by Scripture. Personally, I will never forget the
> day when my former
> professor at Chicago, now Harvard, Jon Levenson
> suggested that even if we
> had a Jewish text and a Christian text, what some
> call the Hebrew scripture
> and the Old Testament, side by side, words exactly
> the same (and, of course,
> they are not), but even if they were physically
> identical - they are still
> two different books.
> 
> The second theme has to do with the notion of the
> "Word" of God and the
> relationship between the spoken and oral traditions.
> Having read this book,
> you may find yourself less comfortable with the
> liturgical response
> repeatedly mumbled in our churches following the
> readings of the lectionary
> texts, "The Word of God for the People of God." 
> 
> Maybe, and maybe not! 
> 
> The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of
> the Jewish Jesus
> 
> Amy-Jill Levine (HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco)
> 2005
> 
> While I often recommend a variety of books for study
> and reflection, I
> seldom find myself saying that you should not pass
> go until you have read a
> copy of this highly provocative work. Amy-Jill
> Levine, a self-styled "Yankee
> Jewish feminist - with a commitment to exposing and
> expunging anti-Jewish,
> sexist and heterosexist theologies," is an Orthodox
> Jew teaching New
> Testament at Vanderbilt. She has written what is
> perhaps the most disturbing
> yet insightful book to emerge in the religious
> publishing market for some
> time.
> 
> Levine's book is a carefully crafted mix of wry
> humor and severe criticism.
> It is a challenging discourse on the problem of
> latent Christian
> anti-Judaism and concrete suggestions about what to
> do about it. This is not
> about blatant bigotry and religious prejudice, but a
> scathing critique of
> well-meaning progressive gestures such as Sunday
> readings taken from "the
> Hebrew Scriptures" and the celebrating of Christian
> Seders.
> 
> Not since Rosemary Ruether published her watershed
> study, Faith and
> Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism,
> in 1974 have these
> issues been examined so carefully. This is a book
> written for lay people.
> While it is about theology, more importantly, it is
> about how we live our
> faith in a world where not only the globe is a
> village, but the where
> village is the globe.
> 
> The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament's
> Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book
> 
> Julie Galambush (HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco)
> 2005
> 
> In the previously mentioned book, Amy-Jill Levine
> comments how little the
> issue of Christian anti-Judaism is broached in
> college and seminary
> classrooms, partly because it is not generally
> addressed in the text books
> commonly used. While her book is written primarily
> for Jewish readers,
> Galambush's text begins to close that gap for
> Christian students of the
> Bible as well. In the first instance, this book is
> an "Introduction to the
> New Testament" and after the first several chapters,
> the next 27 essays take
> her basic theme and apply it book by book on a
> journey through the Christian
> texts. The book's origins are found in synagogue
> classes that Galambush
> taught to fellow Jews (she is a converted Baptist
> preacher) about the New
> Testament. One of her students even named playfully
> the project "The New
> Testament for Jewish Dummies." 
> 
> In what can be seen as a radical proposal, Galambush
> begins with the
> assumption that all, not just some, of the writers
> of the New Testament are
> ethnically and religiously Jewish. She then proceeds
> to make her case book
> by book. Reminding us that the followers of Jesus
> initially were simply "one
> more sect in an era of Jewish sects," She writes:
> 
> "From the Jewish perspective, the story of Christian
> origins is not a tale
> of heavenly triumph; in Jewish terms, the Jesus
> movement was a failure: more
> Gentiles than Jews signed on, and eventually the
> group was denied any place
> within the larger Jewish community"  Again she
> notes, that  "the New
> Testament authors fought, ultimately in vain, to
> maintain their legitimacy
> as Jews. Read as a Jewish book, the New Testament
> becomes the story of a
> reluctant parting - the closing argument, the last
> hopes - before Christians
> ceased, sometimes angrily, sometimes sadly, to be a
> part of the Jewish
> people.
> 
> Of course, at the point that these Jewish texts
> became scripture for what
> finally emerges as the Hellenistic pagan cult known
> as the Christian
> religion from which our modern sensibilities, dogma,
> theologies, and
> liturgies are drawn. They become the seedbed of
> virulent anti-Jewish
> prejudice that is at the base of centuries of
> horrific genocidal persecution
> of those who are essentially family.
> 
> Tenebrae: Holy Week after the Holocaust
> 
> Theresa Sanders (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, New York)
> 2006
> 
> I have shared this story on several occasions, but
> for me it powerfully
> illustrates the concern that all of these books
> address. Several years ago,
> one of our local United Methodist ministers provoked
> intense public debate
> by "dis-inviting" a prominent Rabbi who had been
> nominated by several
> students as the keynote speaker at their high school
> baccalaureate ceremony.
> The service was to be held in the growing suburban
> church to which that
> 
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