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In this pioneering study of Scripture and reception history, Tucker S. Ferda shows that the hope for Jesus's second coming originated in his own message about the coming of the kingdom after a time of distress. Most historical Jesus scholars take for granted that Jesus's second coming was invented by his zealous early followers. In Jesus and His Promised Second Coming, Tucker S. Ferda challenges this critical consensus. Using innovative methodology, Ferda works backward through reception history to Paul and the Gospels to argue that the hope for the second coming originated in Jesus's own grappling with the prospect of death and his conviction that the kingdom was near; he expected a return that would coincide with the final judgment and the end of the age within the space of a generation. Ferda also makes a major contribution to the reception history of the Bible, shedding light on how Christians distinguished their faith from Judaism by deriding “Jewish messianism” as earthly minded and militaristic. In the early modern period, critics found an expedient way to distance Jesus from this caricature of “Jewish messianism”: they pinned the expectation for the second coming on Jesus's early followers. A new appreciation for the diversity of Judaism and messianism in the Second Temple period makes possible a fresh reconstruction of Jesus. Bold and historically astute, Jesus and His Promised Second Coming breathes new life into a long-stagnant conversation. It also offers readers fresh insight into the history of Jewish-Christian relations. Students and scholars of the New Testament will need to read and engage with Ferda's provocative argument.

Between the sixth and eighth centuries CE, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies is a multivolume series that seeks to introduce key ancient texts that form the cultural, historical, and literary context for the study of the New Testament.Each volume will feature introductory essays to the corpus, followed by articles on the relevant texts. Each article will address introductory matters, provenance, summary of content, interpretive issues, key passages for New Testament studies and their significance.Neither too technical to be used by students nor too thin on interpretive information to be useful for serious study of the New Testament, this series provides a much-needed resource for understanding the New Testament in its first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman context. Produced by an international team of leading experts in each corpus, Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies stands to become the standard resource for both scholars and students.Volumes include:Apocrypha and the SeptuagintOld Testament PseudepigraphaThe Dead Sea ScrollsThe Apostolic FathersPhilo and JosephusGreco-Roman LiteratureTargums and Early Rabbinic LiteratureGnostic LiteratureNew Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

Re-imagining at the Sources offers the fruits of a lifetime's reflection on the Bible and its role within the Christian faith, from a respected scholar and priest. Atwell lays out the history of Israel, and the biblical roots of Christian faith from the origins of Israel's religious traditions to Jesus of Nazareth.This book explores the sources of faith and analyses the complex faith-journey that has taken place as Israel's religious traditions have developed. The book provides a single coherent account which joins up the period covered by Israel's early religious traditions with that of Second Temple Judaism, and the world of Jesus of Nazareth. A distinctive feature of the volume is its focus on apocalyptic literature.

Martin Goodman's forty years of scholarship in Roman history and ancient Judaism demonstrates how each discipline illuminates the other: Jewish history makes best sense in a broader Greco-Roman context; Roman history has much to learn from Jewish sources and evidence. In this volume, Martin's colleagues and students follow his example by examining Jews and non-Jews in mutual contemplation. Part 1 explores Jews'views of inter-communal stasis, the causes of the Bar Kochba revolt, tales of Herodian intrigue, and the meaning of “Israel.” Part 2 investigates Jews depiction of outsiders: Moabites, Greeks, Arabs, and Roman authorities. Part 3 explores early Christians'(Luke, Jerome, Rufinus, Syriac poetry, Pionius, ordinary individuals) views of Jews and use of Jewish sources, and Josephus's relevance for girls in 19th century Britain.

On March 27, 1933, representatives from across the American religious spectrum came to Madison Square Garden, united in a shared purpose to speak out against the rise of fascism in Germany and Adolph Hitler's seizure of power. This rally—the first of several held at the Garden before, during, and after World War II—represents an unexplored moment of Jewish and Christian relations, challenging assumptions about Christian leaders'indifference to the Jewish plight and their guilt as the realities of the Holocaust came to light. In Uncommon Allies, Alan Shore uses an impressive range of primary and secondary sources, including English and Yiddish newspapers of the time and neglected histories of various religious organizations, to shine a light on these pivotal rallies. From the groundbreaking 1933 rally to a series of events in 1943 as the reality of Hitler's'Final Solution'came to light, and ending in a postwar rally in 1945, as religious groups struggled with finding a way to help displaced and struggling Jews, Shore unearths the united religious front in the face of the horror of Nazism. Each rally is vividly presented and analyzed in terms of its background, planning, execution, content, and press coverage. Tracing the impact of these rallies through the years, Shore draws a clear line to the partnership between Christian and Jewish Zionists and the rhetorical use of'Judeo-Christian values.'

Une certaine interprétation de la Bible a été à l'origine des mécompréhensions sur le statut, le rôle et le destin du peuple juif. D'Origène à Augustin en passant par Jean-Chrysostome et Jérôme, des commentaires bibliques ont contribué à entretenir un antijudaïsme chrétien qui a emaillé de méfiance les rapports entre Juifs et Chrétiens pendant plusieurs siècles. Des études modernes du Nouveau Testament soutiennent encore que les évangiles sont des textes de tendance antijuive pour avoir disculpé Pilate et chargé les Juifs de la mort de Jésus. Ceux qui, par ailleurs, ont commenté Mathieu 27, 25 y ont trouvé une explication étiologique aux tragédies connues par le peuple juif comme résultantes de sa propre auto-malédiction pour avoir rejeté le Messie. Mais cette théologie rétributive est difficilement conciliable avec le reste du Nouveau Testament. Cet ouvrage tente d'apporter un éclairage sur le procès de Jésus en étudiant de plus près, au moyen des techniques d'interprétation juive de l'Écriture, la portée sémantique de cette terrible phrase « Son sang sur nous et sur nos enfants », prononcée par « tout le peuple » en Mathieu 27, 25.

Luke and the Jewish Other takes up the debated question of the orientation of Luke toward the Jewish people. Building on recent studies in the social history of early Jewish-Christian relations, it offers an analysis of Luke's portrayal of Jewish and Christian identities that challenges the common assumption that the construction of religious identity in antiquity necessarily depended upon antagonistic relations with others. Taking account of the deep and often divisive difference that belief in Jesus made in Luke's community, the author argues that Luke hoped to bring about both a rapprochement with and the conversion of contemporary Jews. Through this account of identity and alterity in the Gospel of Luke, the book cuts across boundaries of biblical studies, history, theology, and social theory, proposing a way forward for the study of Luke's relation to Judaism and of the'parting of the ways'between Jews and Christians in the early Common Era.

Since the groundbreaking publication of Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (2005), Mark Kinzer has challenged theologians and religious leaders to consider the essential ecumenical vocation of Jewish disciples of Jesus. Proposing a bilateral ecclesiology in solidarity with Israel, he argued that the overcoming of Christian supersessionism required a robust affirmation of the distinctive calling of Jews within the community of Jesus the Messiah. In this way, Kinzer's work put the issue of Jewish followers of Jesus on the theological agenda for those seeking a reparative reconfiguration of the relationship between the church and the Jewish people. In recent years, Kinzer has attended to the theological implications of this perspective and has widened his focus to include not only the Messianic Jewish movement but also Jews within Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches. The present collection of essays reflects this wider concern. According to Kinzer, the theological stones of contention are Christology conceived of as Messianology, ecclesiology understood as Israelology, and eschatology imagined as Zionology. Moreover, it is the presence of Jewish disciples of Jesus that concretizes these theological abstractions in the form of Jewish flesh and blood, summoning Jews and Christians to rethink their relationship to one another in ways that express their essential mutual dependence.

In the spring of 2022 a group of Muslim, Christian and Jewish practitioners, leaders and scholars met in Toledo, Spain to discuss ways to respond to our present world-crisis of mistrust and misapprehension. This book is the result of that historic encounter. Inspired by the new approach to interreligious dialogue that has arisen from the work of Catholic popes, theologians and lay activists over the past half a century,'Dialogues, Disputes and Dreams among Jews, Christians and Muslims'seeks to lay the foundations of a new approach to dialogue between the three Abrahamic faiths. After setting out the principles of dialogue in its opening chapters, it explores the implications of that dialogue for a wide range of social and cultural spheres of influence including politics, spirituality, art and music. Containing chapters from leading scholars and practitioners, the book will be of interest to all who value the precious gift of faith in a time of social stress and challenge.

In this volume, A. Boyd Luter initially makes the case that the Letter of James was the first New Testament document and that it was written for a primarily Messianic Jewish audience in the Diaspora. Its early origin places James as the foundational Messianic Jewish Scripture of the new covenant era. That, however, is a drastically different take on the letter's dating, audience, and purpose from the long-held supersessionist view in which Israel is replaced by the church. In the supersessionist understanding, James is one of the later New Testament books, originating supposedly at a time when it was already expected for the church to be symbolically'the twelve tribes in the Diaspora.'And, since a common first impression of the letter is that its style is reflective of Old Testament wisdom literature, it was taken as dealing with practical issues of the Christian life through a staccato format much like Proverbs. Instead, through the elegant literary vehicle of an overarching inverted parallel structure, the Letter of James communicates its author's approach to issues among his Messianic Jewish audience related to spiritual growth and purity, as well as putting away class-based favoritism and the relationship between faith and works.