July 2013 Program Advance Readings by Natalie King

7-28 July

S E L E C T E D R E A D I N GS & BIBLIOGRAPHIES For Studies in Judaism & Christianity

Holiness & Wilderness in Leviticus & the Prophetic Readings “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy…”

(Lev. 19:2)

S E L E C T E D R E A D I N GS & BIBLIOGRAPHIES For Studies in Judaism & Christianity

Holiness & Wilderness in Leviticus & the Prophetic Readings “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy…” (Lev. 19:2)

Bat Kol Institute for Jewish Studies POB 8030 Jeru salem 91080 Israel T/F: 972-2-650-7661 admin@batkol.info www.batkol.info

CONTENTS iv Introduction by Katarzyna Kowalska 1 Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate (1965) 3 Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate No. 4. Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (1975) 7 Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis on the Roman Catholic Church (1985) 18 The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (2002) 33 Alliance of Baptists Statement on Jewish-Christian Relations 34 “On Translating Leviticus”, in The Five Books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Standard Edition. A New Translation with Introductions, Commentary and Notes. Schocken Books: New York, 1995. 40 Kent, Orit. “A Theory of Havruta Learning.” 42 Lipshitz, Yair (transl). “Take a Moment to Learn About: Hevruta and the Bet Midrash.” 43 Wolpe, David. “Midrash”, in Etz Hayim Study Companion” by Jacob Blumenthal and Janet L. Liss. Foreword by David Wolpe. The Rabbinical Assembly, 2005. 48 A Selected Bibliography for Studies in Judaism and Christianity

10 March 2013 Dear Participant, Here is your study package. All ready for you to begin reading. This book comprises one of two important pre-reading assignments to complete before your arrival in Israel. Completion of these assignments plus your full participation in the Israel program of studies are the conditions for receiving a certificate at the closing graduation ceremony. First, the book + CD entitled “Introduction to the Hebrew Language” (separate) has a practice test enclosed. Your second assignment is a two to four page typed review of the readings in this book. In these two pages you may give an overall review of what you have learned through the readings or a short review of or response to each article read. Begin now so you meet the deadline of May 15. When you have completed your Hebrew test and a review of the readings in this book, please submit them to: natalie.king@batkol.info before May 15. Your review of the readings will be evalulated by Prof. Maureena Fritz and returned to you upon your arrival in Jerusalem. Your Hebrew test will be corrected by myself and will be returned to you shortly after its reception (via email) so you have time for further improvement before you try it a second time at the beginning of the session in Jerusalem. The Reading Assignment 1. Ecclesial documents on the need of Christians to do Jewish studies and how to integrate these studies into one’s Christian faith. Please read sections 1 to 4 in this book. For further readings see: http://www.jcrelations.net/Statements.65.0.html?&L=3%2F%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_preventive

2. “On Translating Leviticus”, in The Five Books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Standard Edition. A New Translation with Introductions, Commentary, and Notes by Everett Fox. Schocken Books: New York, 1995. (Item 6 in the Table of Contents). 3. Havruta: Texts 7 and 8. 4. Midrash: Text 9. 5. Rashi (CD enclosed). This will take time to read but it is an important reading for the Bat Kol program.

Expect a blessing, =============================== Katarzyna Kowalska NDS Co-ordinator, Bat Kol Institute, Jerusalem

DECLARATION ON THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS

NOSTRA AETATE PROCLAIMED BY HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON OCTOBER 28, 1965

4. As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock.

Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ-Abraham's sons according to faith (6)-are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles.(7) Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles making both one in Himself.(8) The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people. As Holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation,(9) nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading.(10) Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle.(11) In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder" (Soph. 3:9).(12) Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues. True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows. 5. We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8). No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to "maintain good fellowship among the nations" (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men,(14) so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.(15)

NOTES 6. Cf. Gal. 3:7 7. Cf. Rom. 11:17-24 8. Cf. Eph. 2:14-16 9. Cf. Lk. 19:44 10. Cf. Rom. 11:28 11. Cf. Rom. 11:28-29; cf. dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium (Light of nations) AAS, 57 (1965) page 20 12. Cf. Is. 66:23; Ps. 65:4; Rom. 11:11-32 13. Cf. John. 19:6 14. Cf. Rom. 12:18 15. Cf. Matt. 5:45

To read online: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

COMMISSION FOR RELIGIOUS RELATIONS WITH THE JEWS

GUIDELINES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE CONCILIAR DECLARATION "NOSTRA AETATE" (n. 4) PREAMBLE The Declaration Nostra Aetate, issued by the Second Vatican Council on 28 October 1965, "on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions" (n. 4), marks an important milestone in the history of Jewish-Christian relations.

Moreover, the step taken by the Council finds its historical setting in circumstances deeply affected by the memory of the persecution and massacre of Jews which took place in Europe just before and during the Second World War. Although Christianity sprang from Judaism, taking from it certain essential elements of its faith and divine cult, the gap dividing them was deepened more and more, to such an extent that Christian and Jew hardly knew each other.

After two thousand years, too often marked by mutual ignorance and frequent confrontation, the Declaration Nostra Aetate provides an opportunity to open or to continue a dialogue with a view to better mutual understanding. Over the past nine years, many steps in this direction have been taken in various countries. As a result, it is easier to distinguish the conditions under which a new relationship between Jews and Christians may be worked out and developed. This seems the right moment to propose, following the guidelines of the Council, some concrete suggestions born of experience, hoping that they will help to bring into actual existence in the life of the Church the intentions expressed in the conciliar document. While referring the reader back to this document, we may simply restate here that the spiritual bonds and historical links binding the Church to Judaism condemn (as opposed to the very spirit of Christianity) all forms of anti-semitism and discrimination, which in any case the dignity of the human person alone would suffice to condemn. Further still, these links and relationships render obligatory a better mutual understanding and renewed mutual esteem. On the practical level in particular, Christians must therefore strive to acquire a better knowledge of the basic components of the religious tradition of Judaism; they must strive to learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience. With due respect for such matters of principle, we simply propose some first practical applications in different essential areas of the Church's life, with a view to launching or developing sound relations between Catholics and their Jewish brothers.

I. DIALOGUE #6 #7

To tell the truth, such relations as there have been between Jew and Christian have scarcely ever risen above the level of monologue. From now on, real dialogue must be established. Dialogue presupposes that each side wishes to know the other, and wishes to increase and deepen its knowledge of the other. It constitutes a particularly suitable means of favouring a better mutual knowledge and, especially in the case of dialogue between Jews and Christians, of probing the riches of one's own tradition. Dialogue demands respect for the other as he is; above all, respect

for his faith and his religious convictions. In virtue of her divine mission, and her very nature, the Church must preach Jesus Christ to the world (Ad Gentes, 2). Lest the witness of Catholics to Jesus Christ should give offence to Jews, they must take care to live and spread their Christian faith while maintaining the strictest respect for religious liberty in line with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Declaration Dignitatis Humanae). They will likewise strive to understand the difficulties which arise for the Jewish soul rightly imbued with an extremely high, pure notion of the divine transcendence Y when faced with the mystery of the incarnate Word. While it is true that a widespread air of suspicion, inspired by an unfortunate past, is still dominant in this particular area, Christians, for their part, will be able to see to what extent the responsibility is theirs and deduce practical conclusions for the future.

In addition to friendly talks, competent people will be encouraged to meet and to study together the many problems deriving from the fundamental convictions of Judaism and of Christianity. In order not to hurt (even involuntarily) those taking part, it will be vital to guarantee, not only tact, but a great openness of spirit and diffidence with respect to one's own prejudices. In whatever circumstances as shall prove possible and mutually acceptable, one might encourage a common meeting in the presence of God, in prayer and silent meditation, a highly efficacious way of finding that humility, that openness of heart and mind, necessary prerequisites for a deep knowledge of oneself and of others. In particular, that will be done in connection with great causes such as the struggle for peace and justice.

II. LITURGY The existing links between the Christian liturgy and the Jewish liturgy will be borne in mind. The idea of a living community in the service of God, and in the service of men for the love of God, such as it is realized in the liturgy, is just as characteristic of the Jewish liturgy as it is of the Christian one. To improve Jewish- Christian relations, it is important to take cognizance of those common elements of the liturgical life (formulas, feasts, rites, etc.) in which the Bible holds an essential place. An effort will be made to acquire a better understanding of whatever in the Old Testament retains its own perpetual value (cf. Dei Verbum, 14-15), since that has not been cancelled by the later interpretation of the New Testament. Rather, the New Testament brings out the full meaning of the Old, while both Old and New illumine and explain each other (cf. ibid., 16). This is all the more important since liturgical reform is now bringing the text of the Old Testament ever more frequently to the attention of Christians. When commenting on biblical texts, emphasis will be laid on the continuity of our faith with that of the earlier Covenant, in the perspective of the promises, without minimizing those elements of Christianity which are original. We believe that those promises were fulfilled with the first coming of Christ. But it is none the less true that we still await their perfect fulfilment in his glorious return at the end of time.

#10

#11

With respect to liturgical readings, care will be taken to see that homilies based on them will not distort their meaning, especially when it is a question of passages which seem to show the Jewish people as such in an unfavourable light. Efforts will be made so to instruct the Christian people that they will understand the true interpretation of all the texts and their meaning for the contemporary believer. Commissions entrusted with the task of liturgical translation will pay particular attention to the way in which they express those phrases and passages which Christians, if not well informed, might

misunderstand because of prejudice. Obviously, one cannot alter the text of the Bible. The point is that, with a version destined for liturgical use, there should be an overriding preoccupation to bring out explicitly the meaning of a text, 1 while taking scriptural studies into account. The preceding remarks also apply to introductions to biblical readings, to the Prayer of the Faithful, and to commentaries printed in missals used by the laity.

#12 #13

III. TEACHING AND EDUCATION Although there is still a great deal of work to be done, a better understanding of Judaism itself and its relationship to Christianity has been achieved in recent years thanks to the teaching of the Church, the study and research of scholars, as also to the beginning of dialogue. In this respect, the following facts deserve to be recalled. - It is the same God, "inspirer and author of the books of both Testaments", (Dei Verbum, 16), who speaks both in the old and new Covenants. - Judaism in the time of Christ and the Apostles was a complex reality, embracing many different trends, many spiritual, religious, social and cultural values.

#14

- The Old Testament and the Jewish tradition founded upon it must not be set against the New Testament in such a way that the former seems to constitute a religion of only justice, fear and legalism, with no appeal to the love of God and neighbour (cf. Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18, Matt 22:34-40). - Jesus was born of the Jewish people, as were his Apostles and a large number of his first disciples. When he revealed himself as the Messiah and Son of God (cf. Matt 16:16), the bearer of the new Gospel message, he did so as the fulfilment and perfection of the earlier Revelation. And, although his teaching had a profoundly new character, Christ, nevertheless, in many instances, took his stand on the teaching of the Old Testament. The New Testament is profoundly marked by its relation to the Old. As the Second Vatican Council declared: "God, the inspirer and author of the books of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New" (Dei Verbum, 16). Jesus also used teaching methods similar to those employed by the rabbis of his time. - With regard to the trial and death of Jesus, the Council recalled that "what happened in his passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today" (Nostra Aetate, 4).

#15

- The history of Judaism did not end with the destruction of Jerusalem, but rather went on to develop a religious tradition. And, although we believe that the importance and meaning of that tradition were deeply affected by the coming of Christ, it is still nonetheless rich in religious values. - With the prophets and the apostle Paul, "the Church awaits the day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him with one accords (Soph 3:9)" (Nostra Aetate, 4). Information concerning these questions is important at all levels of Christian instruction and education. Among sources of information, special attention should be paid to the following: - catechisms and religious textbooks; - history books; - the mass-media (press, radio, cinema, television).

#16

The effective use of these means presupposes the thorough formation of instructors and educators

in training schools, seminaries and universities. Research into the problems bearing on Judaism and Jewish-Christian relations will be encouraged among specialists, particularly in the fields of exegesis, theology, history and sociology. Higher institutions of Catholic research, in association if possible with other similar Christian institutions and experts, are invited to contribute to the solution of such problems. Wherever possible, chairs of Jewish studies will be created, and collaboration with Jewish scholars encouraged.

IV. JOINT SOCIAL ACTION Jewish and Christian tradition, founded on the Word of God, is aware of the value of the human person, the image of God. Love of the same God must show itself in effective action for the good of mankind. In the spirit of the prophets, Jews and Christians will work willingly together, seeking social justice and peace at every level - local, national and international. At the same time, such collaboration can do much to foster mutual understanding and esteem.

CONCLUSION The Second Vatican Council has pointed out the path to follow in promoting deep fellowship between Jews and Christians. But there is still a long road ahead. The problem of Jewish-Christian relations concerns the Church as such, since it is when "pondering her own mystery" that she encounters the mystery of Israel. Therefore, even in areas where no Jewish communities exist, this remains an important problem. There is also an ecumenical aspect to the question: the very return of Christians to the sources and origins of their faith, grafted on to the earlier Covenant, helps the search for unity in Christ, the cornerstone. In this field, the bishops will know what best to do on the pastoral level, within the general disciplinary framework of the Church and in line with the common teaching of her magisterium. For example, they will create some suitable commissions or secretariats on a national or regional level, or appoint some competent person to promote the implementation of the conciliar directives and the suggestions made above. On 22 October 1974, the Holy Father instituted for the universal Church this Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, joined to the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. This special Commission, created to encourage and foster religious relations between Jews and Catholics - and to do so eventually in collaboration with other Christians - will be, within the limits of its competence, at the service of all interested organizations, providing information for them, and helping them to pursue their task in conformity with the instructions of the Holy See. The Commission wishes to develop this collaboration in order to implement, correctly and effectively, the express intentions of the Council. Given at Rome, 1 December 1974. Johannes Card. Willebrands President of the Commission

Pierre-Marie de Contenson, O.P. Secretary of the Commission

- Thus the formula "the Jews", in St. John, sometimes according to the context means "the leaders of the Jews", or "the adversaries of Jesus", terms which express better the thought of the evangelist and avoid appearing to arraign the Jewish people as such. Another example is the use of the words "pharisee" and "pharisasim" which have taken on a largely pejorative meaning.

To read online: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jewsdocs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19741201_nostra-aetate_en.html

COMMISSION FOR RELIGIOUS RELATIONS WITH THE JEWS Vatican City 1985

NOTES ON THE CORRECT WAY TO PRESENT THE JEWS AND JUDAISM IN PREACHING AND CATECHESIS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH A note on the preparation of the Document: The document published here is the result of long and considered work by our Commission.

At the beginning of March 1982, delegates of episcopal conferences and other experts met in Rome to examine a first draft. It was in the course of preparations for this meeting that requests from various quarters came to the Commission, asking that a guide be prepared. Such a guide would be for the use of all those in the Church who have the difficult task of presenting Jews and Judaism to the Catholic faithful in the light of new pastoral and doctrinal developments. These developments flow from the conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate, 4, published twenty years ago and also from the Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate" (n. 4), published by our Commission at the end of 1974. The idea was to be of help to those engaged in catechetical work, in teaching and also in preaching, and to put into practice the new directions just mentioned, which are not always easy to translate into teaching methods. The preparatory work went on for three years. There were several consultations with our consultors in Rome and elsewhere, resulting in several subsequent drafts. Clearly, throughout these stages of the work, and above all in the final one, the drafters kept well in mind what the Holy Father has had to say on Jewish-Catholic relations. He has addressed this subject on various important occasions, from Paris to Mainz, from Brooklyn to Caracas and Madrid, and many times in Rome itself. Neither could the drafters forget the various documents published in recent years by several episcopal conferences. And, at the same time, the Commission along with its consultors and experts took into account the accumulated experience of many years of nearly daily contact with our Jewish partners. For all of that, the text is and remains a document of the Catholic Church. This means that its language, its structure, and the questions it intends to address belong to the teaching and pastoral practice of the Catholic Church. As is normal procedure with any document published by a department of the Holy See, other departments with competency in the subject matter were consulted. Their observations have been dutifully and carefully taken into account. It is both our duty and our pleasure to express our gratitude and appreciation publicly to them for their patient and fruitful collaboration with us.

The document, in this its final version, bears the title Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church. The first word of the title (Notes) appropriately indicates the aim of the text. It is intended to provide a helpful frame of reference for those who are called upon in various ways in the course of their teaching assignments to speak about Jews and Judaism and who wish to do so in keeping with the current teaching of the Church in this area. As everyone knows, this happens quite often. In fact, it is a practical impossibility to present Christianity while abstracting from the Jews and Judaism, unless one were to suppress the Old Testament, forget about the Jewishness of Jesus and the Apostles, and dismiss the vital cultural and religious context of the primitive Church. Neither is it an alternative to present one and the other in a prejudiced, unfavorable light. It is precisely this way of acting that the Council wanted to put to an end. That was also the aim that

the 1974 Guidelines addressed more or less on the level of general principles. It is exactly the same aim that the present Notes address on a more concrete level—one might almost say in handbook style, as long as one keeps in mind the limitations of a text that cannot and should not be too lengthy. Hence, the structure of the document. It starts with a series of "Preliminary Considerations," which introduce the spirit and the rationale of the text, mostly with the help of quotations from the Council, the Holy Father, or from preceding documents. Thereupon follows a first section called "Religious Teaching and Judaism," in which the doctrinal and pastoral principles underlying such teaching are set forth. Of special note is paragraph n. 3, which speaks about Judaism as a present reality and not only as a "historical" (and thus superseded) reality. Also to be noted is n. 5 on the complexity of both the historical and the religious relationships between the Church and Judaism. In this same section there is an affirmation that is important for the Catholic Church concerning the centrality of Christ and his unique value in the economy of salvation (n. 7). Clearly this does not mean, however, that the Jews cannot and should not draw salvific gifts from their own traditions. Of course, they can, and should do so. A second section is entitled "Relations between the Old and New Testaments". This tries to help put into practice the directions of the Second Vatican Council that call for providing the Catholic faithful with access to a fuller and richer knowledge of Holy Scripture (cf. Dei Verbum, nn. 21-22 and Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 51). This especially includes the Old Testament. It is not always an easy matter to present the relations between both Testaments in a way that fully respects the validity of the Old Testament and shows its permanent usefulness for the Church. At this point, an effort is made to explain the meaning of what is called "typology", since on this a large part of our liturgical use of the Old Testament is grounded. In no way is "typological" usage a devaluation of the validity proper to the Old Testament. Rather, to the contrary. one can see this from another angle, since it has always been taught in the Catholic tradition that there is also a "typological" use of the New Testament with respect to the "last things" or eschatological realities (cf. n. 16). The importance of the Old Testament for Judaism is underlined. So, too, is the importance of Jews and Christians hearing the Old Testament together, so that together, in the path opened by the prophetic tradition, we may become more deeply engaged as fellow partisans for humanity today (nn. 18, 19). The significance of the continuity of the Jewish people in history is again mentioned toward the end of this document (cf. n. 33). It should also be noted that the limits of a "typological" usage are acknowledged, and other possible ways of reading the Old Testament in relation to the New are not excluded (cf. n. 11). The third section speaks about the "Jewish Roots of Christianity". Here we turn to the New Testament and try to show that the Jewishness of Jesus and the Judaism of his time are far from being something marginal or incidental. On the contrary, they are connected with the very dynamic of the Incarnation. Thus, they have a specific value in the divine plan of salvation. The relationship of Jesus to the biblical law is carefully assessed (n. 21). So, too, are his relations to the Jewish religious institutions of his time, including the Temple (n. 22). Also carefully assessed are his contacts with the Pharisees, who constituted a movement within the Judaism of his time with which, beyond doubt, he had very close relations and to which he was very near—notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, about which more is said in the subsequent section. This fourth section is, in fact, given over to the problem of the way "The Jews in the New Testament" are presented. On the basis of an exceedingly superficial analysis, some (Jews and Christians) feel that the New Testament is "anti-Semitic". By contrast, in this document the sound and proven results of recent scholarly exegesis are taken into account. Relying on this evidence, principles and criteria are offered to teachers for the presentation and explanation of texts that can create difficulty, whether these are found in the Gospel of John or in other New Testament writings. There is no intention, however, of hiding the fact of the disbelief of Jews in Jesus, a fact which is here called "sad", just as it is in the well-known text of the Letter to the Romans (9:2). In fact, it is from this point that the division and enmity between Christians and Jews originated, and it is also from this fact that the present urgent need for reconciliation derives, as is very carefully noted (cf. n. 29 D). At the same time, with no less care, it is emphasized that no one can judge the conscience of another, neither of others in the past nor—still less—of others today (ibid. E, F). In this connection, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on religious liberty must constantly be kept in mind, since this is "one of the bases on which rests the Jewish-Christian dialogue

promoted by the Council" (ibid. F). A special paragraph is dedicated to the "delicate question of responsibility for the death of Christ" (n. 30). No attempt is made, however, to enter into complex and difficult historical questions. Rather, in keeping with the viewpoint of the Catechism of the Council of Trent (here quoted explicitly), the text focuses on the theological significance of the death of Christ and our participation in it as sinners. From this perspective, the historical role of "those few Jews" and those few Romans in Jesus’ passion becomes a very secondary matter. (The Creed of the Catholic Church has always mentioned Pontius Pilate in relation with the death of Christ, not the Jews.) In the fifth section reference is made to the liturgy and to similarities and points of contact with Jewish worship. Specific mention is made of the source of our prayers, of the cycle of feasts, and of the very structure itself of our eucharistic prayers. A sixth section contains material altogether new in this series of documents. It intends to offer some information on the common history of Judaism and Christianity down through the centuries, a history that unfortunately is largely unknown or poorly understood if not altogether distorted. In this section, the central elements are chiefly three. First, the permanence of Judaism and, as we say, its theological significance, "which allowed Israel to carry to the whole world a witness—often heroic—of its fidelity to the one God" (n. 33). Second, the "religious attachment" of the Jews to the "land of their forefathers", which Christians are encouraged to try to understand (ibid.). And third, the creation of the State of Israel. This is taken up with extreme precision. It is said that the "perspective" in which the State should be "envisaged" is not "in itself religious". It should be seen "in … reference to the common principles of international law" which govern the existence of the various states and their place in the community of nations (ibid.). It will surely be noted that for the first time in a document of this Commission, in different but related paragraphs, reference is made to the land and the state. A brief sentence at the end of the paragraph refers to the "extermination" of the Jews (in Hebrew, the shoah, i.e., the catastrophe) during the dark years of the Nazi persecution. It calls upon Catholics to understand how decisive such a tragedy was for the Jews, a tragedy that is also obviously ours. Several teaching aids have been prepared, including those by Catholic offices for education, to help Catholics better comprehend the senseless dimensions of this tragedy and to grasp better its significance. Our Commission is gratified by these efforts and, with this brief emphasis, would like to indicate in them the path to be followed. Here again (cf. n. 34), as well as toward the beginning of the document (cf. n. 8), the text repeats its condemnation of anti-Semitism. This time, however, that condemnation is explicitly linked with the necessity of a "precise, objective, and rigorously accurate teaching on Judaism", which is the aim of these Notes. We are well aware that much has been done to dispel what has been called the "teaching of contempt" (the expression comes from the famous Jewish historian from France, Jules Isaac). But much still remains to be done, not least because new forces of racism and anti-Semitism remain ever ready to rise. The aim of the Notes is, thus, a thoroughly positive one, as the "Conclusion" states. They seek to promote the formation of Catholics equipped "not only for objectivity, justice, and tolerance" (which would already mean a lot), but "also for understanding dialogue". Indeed, "our two traditions are so related that they cannot ignore each other (as is still frequently the case). It remains a constant necessity that "mutual knowledge … be encouraged at every level". It is our hope that the in-depth study of this text can be carried out by both parties in an atmosphere free of preconceptions and attentive to meaning and sometimes delicate nuances of many paragraphs. This will help us toward our highly desired goal, which is also the indispensable condition for our united and truly efficacious action together in behalf of the ideals we hold dear and which we have inherited from our shared biblical tradition. Rome, June 24, 1985 Monsignor Jorge Mejìa, Secretary Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews To read online: http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?item=1038

Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church #5

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS On March 6, 1982, Pope John Paul II told delegates of episcopal conferences and other experts, meeting in Rome to study relations between the Church and Judaism: … you yourselves were concerned, during your sessions, with Catholic teaching and catechesis regarding Jews and Judaism … We should aim, in this field, that Catholic teaching at its different levels, in catechesis to children and young people, presents Jews and Judaism, not only in an honest and objective manner, free from prejudices and without any offences, but also with full awareness of the heritage common [to Jews and Christians]. In this passage, so charged with meaning, the Holy Father plainly drew inspiration from the Council Declaration Nostra Aetate, 4, which says: All should take pains, then, lest in catechetical instruction and in the preaching of God’s Word they teach anything out of harmony with the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ; as also from these words: Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred Synod wishes to foster and recommend mutual understanding and respect … In the same way, the Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration "Nostra Aetate" (n. 4) ends its chapter III, entitled "Teaching and Education", which lists a number of practical things to be done, with this recommendation: Information concerning these questions is important at all levels of Christian instruction and education. Among sources of information, special attention should be paid to the following: 33 catechisms and religious textbooks; 34 history books; 35 the mass media (press, radio, cinema, television).

The effective use of these means presupposes the thorough formation of instructors and educators in training schools, seminaries, and universities (AAS 77,1975, p. 73). The paragraphs that follow are intended to serve this purpose.

I. RELIGIOUS TEACHING AND JUDAISM 1. In Nostra Aetate, 4, the Council speaks of the "spiritual bonds linking" Jews and Christians and of the "great spiritual patrimony" common to both, and it further asserts that "the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to the mystery of God’s saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are already found among the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets". 2. Because of the unique relations that exist between Christianity and Judaism—"linked together at the very level of their identity" (John Paul II, March 6, 1982)—relations "founded on the design of the God of the Covenant" (ibid.), the Jews and Judaism should not occupy an occasional and marginal place in catechesis: their presence there is essential and should be organically integrated.

3. This concern for Judaism in Catholic teaching has not merely a historical or archaeological foundation. As the Holy Father said in the speech already quoted, after he had again mentioned the "common patrimony" of the Church and Judaism as "considerable": "To assess it carefully in itself and with due awareness of the faith and religious life of the Jewish people as they are professed and practiced still today, can greatly help us to understand better certain aspects of the life of the Church" (emphasis added). It is a question then of pastoral concern for a still living reality closely related to the Church. The Holy Father has stated this permanent reality of the Jewish people in a remarkable theological formula, in his allocution to the Jewish community of West Germany at Mainz, on November 17, 1980: "… the people of God of the Old Covenant, which has never been revoked …" 4. Here we should recall the passage in which the Guidelines (I) tried to define the fundamental condition of dialogue: "respect for the other as he is," knowledge of the "basic components of the religious tradition of Judaism", and again learning "by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience" (Introduction).

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5. The singular character and the difficulty of Christian teaching about Jews and Judaism lie in this, that it needs to balance a number of pairs of ideas which express the relation between the two economies of the Old and New Testament:    

Promise and Fulfillment; Continuity and Newness; Singularity and Universality; Uniqueness and Exemplary Nature.

This means that the theologian and the catechist who deal with the subject need to show in their practice of teaching that:   

promise and fulfillment throw light on each other; newness lies in a metamorphosis of what was there before; the singularity of the people of the Old Testament is not exclusive and is open, in the divine vision, to a universal extension;  the uniqueness of the Jewish people is meant to have the force of an example. 6. Finally, "work that is of poor quality and lacking in precision would be extremely detrimental" to Judaeo-Christian dialogue (John Paul II, speech of March 6,1982). But it would be above all detrimental— since we are talking of teaching and education—to Christian identity (ibid.). 7. "In virtue of her divine mission, the Church" which is to be "the all-embracing means of salvation" in which alone "the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (Unitatis Redintegratio, 3), "must of her nature proclaim Jesus Christ to the world" (cf. Guidelines, I). Indeed, we believe that it is through him that we go to the Father (cf. Jn 14:6) "and this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (Jn 17:3). Jesus affirms (ibid., 10:16) that "there shall be one flock and one shepherd". Church and Judaism cannot then be seen as two parallel ways of salvation, and the Church must witness to Christ as the Redeemer for all, "while maintaining the strictest respect for religious liberty in line with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Declaration Dignitatis Humanae)" (Guidelines, I).

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8. The urgency and importance of precise, objective, and rigorously accurate teaching on Judaism for our faithful follow too from the danger of anti-Semitism which is always ready to reappear under different guises. The question is not merely to uproot from among the faithful the remains of anti-Semitism still to be found here and there, but much rather to arouse in them, through educational work, an exact knowledge of the wholly unique "bond" (Nostra Aetate, 4) which joins us as a Church to the Jews and to Judaism. In this way, they would learn to appreciate and love the latter, who have been chosen by God to prepare the coming of Christ and have preserved everything that was progressively revealed and given in

the course of that preparation, notwithstanding their difficulty in recognizing in Him their Messiah.

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II. RELATIONS BETWEEN THE OLD1 AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS 9. Our aim should be to show the unity of biblical Revelation (O.T. and N.T.) and of the divine plan, before speaking of each historical event, so as to stress that particular events have meaning when seen in history as a wholeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from creation to fulfillment. This history concerns the whole human race and especially believers. Thus, the definitive meaning of the election of Israel does not become clear except in the light of the complete fulfillment (Rom 9-11), and election in Jesus Christ is still better understood with reference to the announcement and the promise (cf. Heb 4:1-11). 10. We are dealing with singular happenings which concern a singular nation but are destined, in the sight of God who reveals his purpose, to take on universal and exemplary significance.

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The aim is, moreover, to present the events of the Old Testament not as concerning only the Jews but also as touching us personally. Abraham is truly the father of our faith (cf. Rom 4:11-12; Roman Canon: patriarchae nostri Abrahae). And, it is said (1 Cor 10:1): "our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea". The patriarchs, prophets, and other personalities of the Old Testament have been venerated and always will be venerated as saints in the liturgical tradition of the Oriental Church as also of the Latin Church. 11. From the unity of the divine plan derives the problem of the relation between the Old and New Testaments. The Church already from apostolic times (cf. 1 Cor 10:11; Heb 10:1) and then constantly in tradition resolved this problem by means of typology, which emphasizes the primordial value that the Old Testament must have in the Christian view. Typology, however, makes many people uneasy and is perhaps the sign of a problem unresolved. 12. Hence, in using typology, the teaching and practice of which we have received from the liturgy and from the Fathers of the Church, we should be careful to avoid any transition from the Old to the New Testament which might seem merely a rupture. The Church, in the spontaneity of the Spirit, which animates her, has vigorously condemned the attitude of Marcion2 and always opposed his dualism. 13. It should also be emphasized that typological interpretation consists in reading the Old Testament as preparation and, in certain aspects, outline and foreshadowing of the New (cf. e.g., Heb 5:5-10, etc.). Christ is henceforth the key and point of reference to the Scriptures: "the rock was Christ" (1 Cor 10:4).

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14. It is true then, and should be stressed, that the Church and Christians read the Old Testament in the light of the event of the dead and risen Christ and that on these grounds there is a Christian reading of the Old Testament which does not necessarily coincide with the Jewish reading. Thus, Christian identity and Jewish identity should be carefully distinguished in their respective reading of the Bible. But, this detracts nothing from the value of the Old Testament in the Church and does nothing to hinder Christians from profiting discerningly from the traditions of Jewish reading. 15. Typological reading only manifests the unfathomable riches of the Old Testament, its inexhaustible content and the mystery of which it is full, and should not lead us to forget that it retains its own value as Revelation that the New Testament often does no more than resume (cf. Mk 12:29-31). Moreover, the New Testament itself demands to be read in the light of the Old. Primitive Christian catechesis constantly had recourse to this (cf e.g., 1 Cor 5:6-8; 10:1-11). 16. Typology further signifies reaching toward the accomplishment of the divine plan, when "God will be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). This holds true also for the Church which, realized already in Christ, yet awaits its definitive perfecting as the Body of Christ. The fact that the Body of Christ is still tending toward its full stature (cf. Eph 4:12-19) takes nothing from the value of being a Christian. So also the calling of the patriarchs and the Exodus from Egypt do not lose their importance and value in Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s design from being at the same time intermediate stages (cf. e.g., Nostra Aetate, 4).

17. The Exodus, for example, represents an experience of salvation and liberation that is not complete in itself, but has in it, over and above its own meaning, the capacity to be developed further. Salvation and liberation are already accomplished in Christ and gradually realized by the sacraments in the Church. This makes way for the fulfillment of God’s design, which awaits its final consummation with the return of Jesus as Messiah, for which we pray each day. The Kingdom, for the coming of which we also pray each day, will be finally established. With salvation and liberation the elect and the whole of creation will be transformed in Christ (Rom 8:19-23). 18. Furthermore, in underlining the eschatological dimension of Christianity, we shall reach a greater awareness that the people of God of the Old and the New Testament are tending toward a like end in the future: the coming or return of the Messiah—even if they start from two different points of view. It is more clearly understood that the person of the Messiah is not only a point of division for the people of God but also a point of convergence (cf. Sussidi per l'ecumenismo of the Diocese of Rome, n. 140). Thus, it can be said that Jews and Christians meet in a comparable hope, founded on the same promise made to Abraham (cf. Gen 12:1-3; Heb 6:13-18). 19. Attentive to the same God, who has spoken, hanging on the same word, we have to witness to one same memory and one common hope in Him who is the master of history. We must also accept our responsibility to prepare the world for the coming of the Messiah by working together for social justice, respect for the rights of persons and nations, and for social and international reconciliation. To this we are driven, Jews and Christians, by the command to love our neighbor, by a common hope for the Kingdom of God, and by the great heritage of the Prophets. Transmitted soon enough by catechesis, such a conception would teach young Christians in a practical way to cooperate with Jews, going beyond simple dialogue (cf. Guidelines, IV).

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III. JEWISH ROOTS OF CHRISTIANITY 20. Jesus was and always remained a Jew; his ministry was deliberately limited "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt 15:24). Jesus is fully a man of his time and of his environment—the Jewish Palestinian one of the first century, the anxieties and hopes of which he shared. This cannot but underline both the reality of the Incarnation and the very meaning of the history of salvation, as it has been revealed in the Bible (cf. Rom 1:3-4; Gal 4:4-5). 21. Jesus’ relations with biblical law and its more or less traditional interpretations are undoubtedly complex, and he showed great liberty toward it (cf. the "antitheses" of the Sermon on the Mount: Mt 5:21-48, bearing in mind the exegetical difficulties; his attitude to rigorous observance of the Sabbath: Mk 3:14, etc.).

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But, there is no doubt that he wished to submit himself to the law (cf. Gal 4:4), that he was circumcised and presented in the Temple like any Jew of his time (cf. Lk 2:21,22-24), that he was trained in the law’s observance. He extolled respect for it (cf. Mt 5:17-20) and invited obedience to it (cf. Mt 8:4). The rhythm of his life was marked by observance of pilgrimages on great feasts, even from his infancy (cf. Lk 2:41-50; Jn 2:13; 7:10, etc.). The importance of the cycle of the Jewish feasts has been frequently underlined in the Gospel of John (cf. 2:13; 5:1; 7:2,10,37; 10:22; 12:1; 13:1; 18:28; 19:42, etc.). 22. It should be noted also that Jesus often taught in the synagogues (cf. Mt 4:23; 9:35; Lk 4:15-18; Jn 18:20, etc.) and in the Temple (cf. Jn 18:20, etc.), which he frequented as did the disciples even after the Resurrection (cf. e.g., Acts 2:46; 3:1; 21:26, etc.). He wished to put in the context of synagogue worship the proclamation of his Messiahship (cf. Lk 4:16-21). But, above all, he wished to achieve the supreme act of the gift of himself in the setting of the domestic liturgy of the Passover, or at least of the paschal festivity (cf. Mk 14:1,12 and parallels; Jn 18:28). This also allows of a better understanding of the "memorial" character of the Eucharist. 23. Thus, the Son of God is incarnate in a people and a human family (cf. Gal 4:4; Rom 9:5). This takes

away nothing, quite the contrary, from the fact that he was born for all men (Jewish shepherds and pagan wise men are found at his crib: Lk 2:8-20; Mt 2:1-12) and died for all men (at the foot of the cross there are Jews, among them Mary and John: Jn 19:25-27, and pagans like the centurion: Mk 15:39 and parallels). Thus, he made two peoples one in his flesh (cf. Eph 2:14-17). This explains why with the Ecclesia ex gentibus we have, in Palestine and elsewhere, an Ecclesia ex circumcisione, of which Eusebius, for example, speaks (H.E. IV,5).

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24. His relations with the Pharisees were not always or wholly polemical. Of this there are many proofs:   

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It is Pharisees who warn Jesus of the risks he is running (Lk 13:31); Some Pharisees are praised (e.g., “the scribe” of Mk 12:34); Jesus eats with Pharisees (Lk 7:36; 14:1).

25. Jesus shares, with the majority of Palestinian Jews of that time, pharisaic doctrines: the resurrection of the body; forms of piety, like alms-giving, prayer, fasting (cf. Mt 6:1-18), and the liturgical practice of addressing God as Father; the priority of the commandment to love God and our neighbor (cf. Mk 12:2834). This is so also with Paul (cf. Acts 23:8), who always considered his membership of the Pharisees as a title of honor (cf. ibid., 23:6; 26:5; Phil 3:5). 26. Paul also, like Jesus himself, used methods of reading and interpreting Scripture and of teaching his disciples which were common to the Pharisees of their time. This applies to the use of parables in Jesus’ ministry, as also to the method of Jesus and Paul of supporting a conclusion with a quotation from Scripture. 27. It is noteworthy too that the Pharisees are not mentioned in accounts of the Passion. Gemaliel (Acts 5:34-39) defends the apostles in a meeting of the Sanhedrin. An exclusively negative picture of the Pharisees is likely to be inaccurate and unjust (cf. Guidelines, note 1; cf. AAS, loc. cit., p. 76). If in the Gospels and elsewhere in the New Testament there are all sorts of unfavorable references to the Pharisees, they should be seen against the background of a complex and diversified movement. Criticisms of various types of Pharisees are, moreover, not lacking in rabbinical sources (cf. the Babylon Talmud, the Sotah treatise 22b, etc.). "Pharisaism" in the pejorative sense can be rife in any religion. It may also be stressed that, if Jesus shows himself severe toward the Pharisees, it is because he is closer to them than to other contemporary Jewish groups (cf. supra no 17). 28. All this should help us to understand better what St. Paul says (Rom 11:16) about the "root" and the "branches". The Church and Christianity, for all their novelty, find their origin in the Jewish milieu of the first century of our era, and more deeply still in the "design of God" (Nostra Aetate, 4), realized in the Patriarchs, Moses and the Prophets (ibid.), down to its consummation in Christ Jesus.

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IV. THE JEWS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 29. The Guidelines already say (note 1) that "the formula ‘the Jews’ sometimes, according to the context, means ‘the leaders of the Jews’ or ‘the adversaries of Jesus’, terms which express better the thought of the evangelist and avoid appearing to arraign the Jewish people as such". An objective presentation of the role of the Jewish people in the New Testament should take account of these various facts:

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a. The Gospels are the outcome of long and complicated editorial work. The dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, following the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s Instruction Sancta Mater Ecclesia, distinguishes three stages: "The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explicating some things in view of the situation of their Churches, and preserving the form of proclamation, but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus" (no 19) Hence, it cannot be ruled out that some references hostile or less than favorable to the Jews have

their historical context in conflicts between the nascent Church and the Jewish community. Certain controversies reflect Christian-Jewish relations long after the time of Jesus. To establish this is of capital importance if we wish to bring out the meaning of certain gospel texts for the Christians of today. All this should be taken into account when preparing catechesis and homilies for the last weeks of Lent and Holy Week (cf. already Guidelines II, and now also Sussidi per l’ecumenismo nella diocesi di Roma 1982, 144b). b. It is clear, on the other hand, that there were conflicts between Jesus and certain categories of Jews of his time, among them Pharisees, from the beginning of his ministry (cf. Mk 2:1-11,24; 3:6, etc.). c.

There is, moreover, the sad fact that the majority of the Jewish people and its authorities did not believe in Jesus—a fact not merely of history but of theological bearing, of which St. Paul tries hard to plumb the meaning (Rom 9-11).

d. This fact, accentuated as the Christian mission developed, especially among the pagans, led inevitably to a rupture between Judaism and the young Church, now irreducibly separated and divergent in faith, and this stage of affairs is reflected in the texts of the New Testament and particularly in the Gospels. There is no question of playing down or glossing over this rupture; that could only prejudice the identity of either side. Nevertheless it certainly does not cancel the spiritual "bond" of which the Council speaks (Nostra Aetate, 4) and which we propose to dwell on here. e. Reflecting on this in the light of Scripture, notably of the chapters cited from the epistle to the Romans, Christians should never forget that the faith is a free gift of God (cf. Rom 9:12) and that we should never judge the consciences of others. St. Paul’s exhortation "do not boast" in your attitude to "the root" (Rom 11:18) has its full point here. f.

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There is no putting the Jews who knew Jesus and did not believe in him, or those who opposed the preaching of the apostles, on the same plane with Jews who came after or those of today. If the responsibility of the former remains a mystery hidden with God (cf. Rom 11:25), the latter are in an entirely different situation. Vatican II in the declaration on Religious Liberty teaches that "all men are to be immune from coercion … in such wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor … restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs" (no 2). This is one of the bases—proclaimed by the Council—on which Judaeo-Christian dialogue rests.

30. The delicate question of responsibility for the death of Christ must be looked at from the standpoint of the conciliar declaration Nostra Aetate, 4 and of Guidelines (III): "What happened in [Christ’s] passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living without distinction nor upon the Jews of today", especially since "authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ". Again, further on: "Christ in his boundless love freely underwent his passion and death because of the sins of all men, so that all might attain salvation" (Nostra Aetate, 4). The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that Christian sinners are more to blame for the death of Christ than those few Jews who brought it about—they indeed "knew not what they did" (cf. Lk 23:34), and we know it only too well (Pars I, caput V, Quaest. XI). In the same way and for the same reason, "the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy Scriptures" (Nostra Aetate, 4), even though it is true that "the Church is the new people of God" (ibid.).

V. THE LITURGY 31. Jews and Christians find in the Bible the very substance of their liturgy: for the proclamation of God's Word, response to it, prayer of praise and intercession for the living and the dead, recourse to the divine mercy. The Liturgy of the Word, in its own structure, originates in Judaism. The prayer of Hours and other liturgical texts and formularies have their parallels in Judaism, as do the very formulas of our most venerable prayers, among them the Our Father. The eucharistic prayers also draw inspiration from

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models in the Jewish tradition. As John Paul II said (Allocution of March 6, 1982), "… the faith and religious life of the Jewish people, as they are professed and practiced still today, can greatly help us to understand better certain aspects of the life of the Church. Such is the case of liturgy …" 32. This is particularly evident in the great feasts of the liturgical year, like the Passover. Christians and Jews celebrate the Passover: the Jews, the historic Passover looking toward the future; the Christians, the Passover accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ, although still in expectation of the final consummation (cf. supra no 9). It is still the "memorial'" which comes to us from the Jewish tradition, with a specific content different in each case. on either side, however, there is a like dynamism: for Christians it gives meaning to the eucharistic celebration (cf. the antiphon '"o sacrum convivium"), a paschal celebration, and as such a making present of the past, but experienced in the expectation of what is to come.

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VI. JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY 33. The history of Israel did not end in A.D. 70 (cf. Guidelines, B). It continued, especially in a numerous Diaspora which allowed Israel to carry to the whole world a witness—often heroic—of its fidelity to the one God and to "exalt him in the presence of all the living" (Tb 13:4), while preserving the memory of the land of their forefathers at the heart of their hope (Passover Seder). Christians are invited to understand this religious attachment which finds its roots in biblical tradition, without however making their own any particular religious interpretation of this relationship (cf. Statement on Catholic-Jewish Relations, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 20, 1975). The existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law.

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The permanence of Israel (while so many ancient peoples have disappeared without trace) is a historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God’s design. We must, in any case, rid ourselves of the traditional idea of people punished, preserved as a living argument for Christian apologetic. It remains a chosen people, '"the pure olive on which were grafted the branches of the wild olive which are the gentiles" (John Paul II, March 6, 1982, alluding to Rom 11:17-24). We must remember how much the balance of relations between Jews and Christians over two thousand years has been negative. We must remind ourselves how the permanence of Israel is accompanied by a continuous spiritual fecundity, in the rabbinical period, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times, taking its start from a patrimony which we long shared, so much so that "the faith and religious life of the Jewish people, as they are professed and practiced still today, can greatly help us to understand better certain aspects of the life of the Church" (John Paul II, March 6, 1982). Catechesis should, on the other hand, help in understanding the meaning for the Jews of the extermination during the years 1939-1945, and its consequences. 34. Education and catechesis should concern themselves with the problem of racism, still active in different forms of anti-Semitism. The Council presented it thus: "Moreover [the Church], mindful of her common patrimony with the Jews and motivated by the Gospel’s spiritual love and by no political considerations, deplores the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and from any source" (Nostra Aetate, 4). The Guidelines comment: "the spiritual bonds and historical links binding the Church to Judaism condemn (as opposed to the very spirit of Christianity) all forms of anti-Semitism and discrimination, which in any case the dignity of the human person alone would suffice to condemn" (Introduction).

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CONCLUSION 35. Religious teaching, catechesis, and preaching should be preparation not only for objectivity, justice, tolerance, but also for understanding and dialogue. Our two traditions are so related that they cannot ignore each other. Mutual knowledge must be encouraged at every level. There is evident, in particular, a painful ignorance of the history and traditions of Judaism, of which only negative aspects and often

caricature seem to form part of the stock ideas of many Christians. That is what these notes aim to remedy. This would mean that the Council text and Guidelines would be more easily and faithfully put into practice. (May 1985) +Johannes Cardinal Willebrands (President) Pierre Duprey (Vice-President) Jorge MejĂŹa (Secretary) Footnotes 1) We continue to use the expression Old Testament because it is traditional (cf. already 2 Cor 3:14) but also because "Old" does not mean '"out-of-date" or "outworn". In any case, it is the permanent value of the O.T. as a source of Christian Revelation that is emphasized here (cf. Dei Verbum, 3). 2) A man of gnostic tendency who in the second century rejected the Old Testament and part of the New as the work of an evil god, a demiurge. The Church reacted strongly against this heresy (cf. Irenaeus). To read online: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jewsdocs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19820306_jews-judaism_en.html

THE PONTIFICAL BIBLICAL COMMISSION

THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND THEIR SACRED SCRIPTURES IN THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE Preface Introduction I. THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE A. The New Testament recognizes the authority of the Sacred Scripture of the Jewish people 1. Implicit recognition of authority 2. Explicit recourse to the authority of the Jewish Scriptures B. The New Testament attests conformity to the Jewish Scriptures 1. Necessity of fulfilling the Scriptures 2. Conformity to the Scriptures 3. Conformity and Difference C. Scripture and Oral Tradition in Judaism and Christianity 1. Scripture and Tradition in the Old Testament and Judaism 2. Scripture and Tradition in Early Christianity 3. Relationships between the two perspectives D. Jewish Exegetical Methods employed in the New Testament 1. Jewish Methods of Exegesis 2. Exegesis at Qumran and in the New Testament 3. Rabbinic Methods in the New Testament 4. Important Allusions to the Old Testament E. The Extension of the Canon of Scripture 1. In Judaism 2. In the Early Church 3. Formation of the Christian Canon

PREFACE The internal unity of the Church's Bible, which comprises the Old and New Testaments, was a central theme in the theology of the Church Fathers. That it was far from being a theoretical problem only is evident from dipping, so to speak, into the spiritual journey of one of the greatest teachers of Christendom, Saint Augustine of Hippo. In 373, the 19 year old Augustine already had his first decisive experience of conversion. His reading of one of the works of Cicero—Hortensius, since lost—brought about a profound transformation which he himself described later on as follows: “Towards you, O Lord, it directed my prayers... I began to pick myself up to return to you... How ardent I was, O my God, to let go of the earthly and take wing back to you” (Conf. III, 4, 81). For the young African who, as a child, had received the salt that made him a catechumen, it was clear that conversion to God entailed attachment to Christ; apart from Christ, he could not truly find God. So he went from Cicero to the Bible and experienced a terrible disappointment: in the exacting legal prescriptions of the Old Testament, in its complex and, at times, brutal narratives, he failed to find that Wisdom towards which he wanted to travel. In the course of his search, he encountered certain people who proclaimed a new spiritual Christianity, one which understood the Old Testament as spiritually deficient and repugnant; a Christianity in which Christ had no need of the witness of the Hebrew prophets. Those people promised him a Christianity of pure and simple reason, a Christianity in which Christ was the great illuminator, leading human beings to true self-knowledge. These were the Manicheans.1 The great promise of the Manicheans proved illusory, but the problem remained unresolved for all that. Augustine was unable to convert to the Christianity of the Catholic Church until he had learned, through Ambrose, an interpretation of the Old Testament that made transparent the relationship of Israel's Bible to Christ and thus revealed that Wisdom for which he searched. What was overcome was not only the exterior obstacle of an unsatisfactory literary form of the Old Latin Bible, but above all the interior obstacle of a book that was no longer just a document of the religious history of a particular people, with all its strayings and mistakes. It revealed instead a Wisdom addressed to all and came from God. Through the transparency of Israel's long, slow historical journey, that reading of Israel's Bible identified Christ, the Word, eternal Wisdom. It was, therefore, of fundamental importance not only for Augustine's decision of faith; it was and is the basis for the faith decision of the Church as a whole. But is all this true? Is it also demonstrable and tenable still today? From the viewpoint of historical-critical exegesis, it seems—at first glance, in any case—that exactly the opposite is true. It was in 1920 that the well-known liberal theologian Adolf Harnack formulated the following thesis: “The rejection of the Old Testament in the second century [an allusion to Marcion] was an error which the great Church was right in resisting; holding on to it in the 16th century was a disaster from which the Reformation has not yet been able to extricate itself; but to maintain it since the 19th century in Protestantism as a canonical document equal in value to the New Testament, that is the result of religious and ecclesial paralysis”.2 Is Harnack right? At first glance several things seem to point in that direction. The exegetical method of Ambrose did indeed open the way to the Church for Augustine, and in its basic orientation—allowing, of course, for a considerable measure of variance in the details— became the foundation of Augustine's faith in the biblical word of God, consisting of two parts, and nevertheless composing a unity. But it is still possible to make the following objection: Ambrose had learned this exegesis from the school of Origen, who had been the first to develop its methodology. But Origen, it may be said, only applied to the Bible the allegorical method of interpretation which was practised in the Greek world, to explain the religious texts of antiquity—in particular, Homer—and not only produced a hellenization intrinsically foreign to the biblical word, but used a method that was unreliable, because, in the last analysis, it tried to preserve as something sacred what was, in fact, only a witness to a moribund culture. Yet, it is not that simple. Much more than the Greek exegesis of Homer, Origen could build on the Old Testament interpretation which was born in a Jewish milieu, especially in Alexandria, beginning with Philo who sought in a totally appropriate way to introduce the Bible to Greeks who were long in search of the one biblical God beyond polytheism. And Origen had studied at the feet of the rabbis. He eventually developed specifically Christian principles: the internal unity of the Bible as a rule of interpretation, Christ as the meeting point of all the Old Testament pathways.3

In whatever way one judges the detailed exegesis of Origen and Ambrose, its deepest basis was neither Hellenistic allegory, nor Philo nor rabbinic methods. Strictly speaking,—leaving aside the details of interpretation—its basis was the New Testament itself. Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the true heir to the Old Testament—“the Scriptures”—and to offer a true interpretation, which, admittedly, was not that of the schools, but came from the authority of the Author himself: “He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Mk 1:22). The Emmaus narrative also expresses this claim: “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures” (Lk 24:27). The New Testament authors sought to ground this claim into details, in particular Matthew, but Paul as well, by using rabbinic methods of interpretation to show that the scribal interpretation led to Christ as the key to the “Scriptures”. For the authors and founders of the New Testament, the Old Testament was simply “the Scriptures”: it was only later that the developing Church gradually formed a New Testament canon which was also Sacred Scripture, but in the sense that it still presupposed Israel's Bible to be such, the Bible read by the apostles and their disciples, and now called the Old Testament, which provided the interpretative key. From this viewpoint, the Fathers of the Church created nothing new when they gave a Christological interpretation to the Old Testament; they only developed and systematised what they themselves had already discovered in the New Testament. This fundamental synthesis for the Christian faith would become problematic when historical consciousness developed rules of interpretation that made Patristic exegesis appear non-historical and so objectively indefensible. In the context of humanism, with its newfound historical awareness, but especially in the context of his doctrine of justification, Luther invented a new formula relating the two parts of the Christian Bible, one no longer based on the internal harmony of the Old and New Testaments, but on their essential dialectic linkage within an existential history of salvation, the antithesis between Law and Gospel. Bultmann modernised this approach when he said that the Old Testament is fulfilled in Christ by foundering. More radical is the proposition of Harnack mentioned above; as far as I can see, it was not generally accepted, but it was completely logical for an exegesis for which texts from the past could have no meaning other than that intended by the authors in their historical context. That the biblical authors in the centuries before Christ, writing in the Old Testament, intended to refer in advance to Christ and New Testament faith, looks to the modern historical consciousness as highly unlikely. As a result, the triumph of historical-critical exegesis seemed to sound the death-knell for the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament initiated by the New Testament itself. It is not a question here of historical details, as we have seen, it is the very foundations of Christianity that are being questioned. It is understandable then that nobody has since embraced Harnack's position and made the definitive break with the Old Testament that Marcion prematurely wished to accomplish. What would have remained, our New Testament, would itself be devoid of meaning. The Document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission introduced by this Preface declares: “Without the Old Testament, the New Testament would be an unintelligible book, a plant deprived of its roots and destined to dry up and wither” (no. 84). From this perspective, one can appreciate the enormous task the Pontifical Biblical Commission set for itself in deciding to tackle the theme of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. If the impasse presented by Harnack is to be overcome, the very concept of an interpretation of historical texts must be broadened and deepened enough to be tenable in today's liberal climate, and capable of application, especially to Biblical texts received in faith as the Word of God. Important contributions have been made in this direction over recent decades. The Pontifical Biblical Commission made its own contribution in the Document published in 1993 on “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”. The recognition of the multidimensional nature of human language, not staying fixed to a particular moment in history, but having a hold on the future, is an aid that permits a greater understanding of how the Word of God can avail of the human word to confer on a history in progress a meaning that surpasses the present moment and yet brings out, precisely in this way, the unity of the whole. Beginning from that Document, and mindful of methodology, the Biblical Commission examined the relationship between the many great thematic threads of both Testaments, and was able to conclude that the Christian

hermeneutic of the Old Testament, admittedly very different from that of Judaism, “corresponds nevertheless to a potentiality of meaning effectively present in the texts” (no. 64). This is a conclusion, which seems to me to be of great importance for the pursuit of dialogue, but above all, for grounding the Christian faith. In its work, the Biblical Commission could not ignore the contemporary context, where the shock of the Shoah has put the whole question under a new light. Two main problems are posed: Can Christians, after all that has happened, still claim in good conscience to be the legitimate heirs of Israel's Bible? Have they the right to propose a Christian interpretation of this Bible, or should they not instead, respectfully and humbly, renounce any claim that, in the light of what has happened, must look like a usurpation? The second question follows from the first: In its presentation of the Jews and the Jewish people, has not the New Testament itself contributed to creating a hostility towards the Jewish people that provided a support for the ideology of those who wished to destroy Israel? The Commission set about addressing those two questions. It is clear that a Christian rejection of the Old Testament would not only put an end to Christianity itself as indicated above, but, in addition, would prevent the fostering of positive relations between Christians and Jews, precisely because they would lack common ground. In the light of what has happened, what ought to emerge now is a new respect for the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. On this subject, the Document says two things. First it declares that “the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, in continuity with the Jewish Scriptures of the Second Temple period, a reading analogous to the Christian reading, which developed in parallel fashion” (no. 22). It adds that Christians can learn a great deal from a Jewish exegesis practised for more than 2000 years; in return, Christians may hope that Jews can profit from Christian exegetical research (ibid.). I think this analysis will prove useful for the pursuit of Judeo-Christian dialogue, as well as for the interior formation of Christian consciousness. The question of how Jews are presented in the New Testament is dealt with in the second part of the Document; the “anti-Jewish” texts there are methodically analysed for an understanding of them. Here, I want only to underline an aspect which seems to me to be particularly important. The Document shows that the reproofs addressed to Jews in the New Testament are neither more frequent nor more virulent than the accusations against Israel in the Law and the Prophets, at the heart of the Old Testament itself (no. 87). They belong to the prophetic language of the Old Testament and are, therefore, to be interpreted in the same way as the prophetic messages: they warn against contemporary aberrations, but they are essentially of a temporary nature and always open to new possibilities of salvation. To the members of the Biblical Commission, I wish to express gratitude and appreciation for their work. From their discussions, patiently pursued over several years, this Document has emerged which, I am convinced, can offer a precious aid to the study of one of the central questions of the Christian faith, as well as to the search so important for a new understanding between Christians and Jews. Rome, the feast of the Ascension 2001 JosephCardinal Ratzinger

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------INTRODUCTION4 1. Modern times have made Christians more aware of the close fraternal bonds that unite them to the Jewish people. During the second world war (1939-1945), tragic events, or more precisely, abominable crimes subjected the Jewish people to a terrible ordeal that threatened their very existence throughout most of Europe. In those circumstances, some Christians failed to exhibit the spiritual resistance to be expected from disciples of Christ, and did not take the appropriate initiatives to counter them. Other Christians, though, did generously aid Jews in danger, often at the risk of their own lives. In the wake of such an enormous tragedy, Christians are faced with the need to reassess their relations with the Jewish people. Already considerable research and reflection has been done in this direction. The Pontifical Biblical Commission, insofar as it is competent, wishes to participate in this endeavour. Since this obviously does not include addressing all the historical and contemporary aspects of the problem, the Commission confines itself to the current state of research in the field of biblical exegesis.

The question which is asked is the following: What relations does the Christian Bible establish between Christians and the Jewish people? The general answer is clear: between Christians and Jews, the Christian Bible establishes many close relations. Firstly, because the Christian Bible is composed, for the greater part, of the “Holy Scriptures” (Rm 1:2) of the Jewish people, which Christians call the “Old Testament”; secondly, because the Christian Bible is also comprised of a collection of writings which, while expressing faith in Christ Jesus, puts them in close relationship with the Jewish Sacred Scriptures. This second collection, as we know, is called the “New Testament”, an expression correlative to “Old Testament”. That an intimate relationship exists between them is undeniable. A closer examination, however, reveals that this is not a straightforward relationship, but a very complex one that ranges from perfect accord on some points to one of great tension on others. A careful study is therefore necessary. The Biblical Commission has devoted the past few years to this study. The results, which make no claim of being exhaustive, are presented here in three chapters. The first chapter lays the foundations by demonstrating that the New Testament recognises the authority of the Old Testament as divine revelation and that the New Testament cannot be properly understood apart from the Old Testament and the Jewish tradition which transmits it. The second chapter then examines analytically how the writings of the New Testament appropriate the rich content of the Old Testament by developing its basic themes in the light of Jesus Christ. Finally, the third chapter reviews the various attitudes which the New Testament writings express regarding the Jews, following, in this respect, the example of the Old Testament itself. In this way the Biblical Commission hopes to advance the dialogue between Christians and Jews with clarity and in a spirit of mutual esteem and affection.

I.THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE 2. It is above all by virtue of its historical origin that the Christian community discovers its links with the Jewish people. Indeed, the person in whom it puts its faith, Jesus of Nazareth, is himself a son of this people. So too are the Twelve whom he chose “to be with him and to be sent out to proclaim the message” (Mk 3:14). In the beginning, the apostolic preaching was addressed only to the Jews and proselytes, pagans associated with the Jewish community (cf. Ac 2:11). Christianity, then, came to birth in the bosom of first century Judaism. Although it gradually detached itself from Judaism, the Church could never forget its Jewish roots, something clearly attested in the New Testament; it even recognised a certain priority for Jews, for the Gospel is the “power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rm 1:16). A perennial manifestation of this link to their beginnings is the acceptance by Christians of the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people as the Word of God addressed to themselves as well. Indeed, the Church has accepted as inspired by God all the writings contained in the Hebrew Bible as well as those in the Greek Bible. The title “Old Testament” given to this collection of writings is an expression coined by the apostle Paul to designate the writings attributed to Moses (cf. 2 Co 3:14-15). Its scope has been extended, since the end of the second century, to include other Jewish writings in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The title “New Testament” takes its origin from a message in the Book of Jeremiah which announced a “new covenant” (Jr 31:31), the expression is translated in the Greek of the Septuagint as “new dispensation”, “new testament” (kain diathk). The message announced that God intended to establish a new covenant. The Christian faith sees this promise fulfilled in the mystery of Christ Jesus with the institution of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Co 11:25; Heb 9:15). Consequently, that collection of writings which expresses the Church's faith in all its novelty is called the “New Testament”. The title itself points towards a relationship with the “Old Testament”.

A. The New Testament recognizes the authority of the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people 3. The New Testament writings were never presented as something entirely new. On the contrary, they

attest their rootedness in the long religious experience of the people of Israel, an experience recorded in diverse forms in the sacred books which comprise the Jewish Scriptures. The New Testament recognises their divine authority. This recognition manifests itself in different ways, with different degrees of explicitness. 1. Implicit recognition of authority Beginning from the less explicit, which nevertheless is revealing, we notice that the same language is used. The Greek of the New Testament is closely dependent on the Greek of the Septuagint, in grammatical turns of phrase which were influenced by the Hebrew, or in the vocabulary, of a religious nature in particular. Without a knowledge of Septuagint Greek, it is impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of many important New Testament terms.5 This linguistic relationship extends to numerous expressions borrowed by the New Testament from the Jewish Scriptures, giving rise to frequent reminiscences and implicit quotations, that is, entire phrases found in the New Testament without any indication of origin. These reminiscences are numerous, but their identification often gives rise to discussion. To take an obvious example: although the Book of Revelation contains no explicit quotations from the Jewish Bible, it is a whole tissue of reminiscences and allusions. The text is so steeped in the Old Testament that it is difficult to distinguish what is an allusion to it and what is not. What is true of the Book of Revelation is true also—although to a lesser degree—of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters.6 The difference is that in these writings we find, in addition, many explicit quotations, that is, introduced as such.7 In this way they clearly indicate the more important borrowings, recognising thereby the authority of the Jewish Bible as divine revelation. 2. Explicit recourse to the authority of the Jewish Scriptures 4. This recognition of authority takes different forms depending on the case. Frequently, in a revelatory context the simple verb legei, “it says”, is found, without any expressed subject,8 as in later rabbinic writings, but the context shows that a subject conferring great authority on the text is to be understood: Scripture, the Lord or Christ.9 At other times the subject is expressed: it is “Scripture”, “the Law”, or “Moses” or “David”, with the added note that he was inspired, “the Holy Spirit” or “the prophet”, frequently “Isaiah”, sometimes “Jeremiah”, but it is also “the Holy Spirit” or “the Lord” as the prophets used to say.10 Twice, Matthew has a complex formula indicating both the divine speaker and the human spokesperson: “what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet...” (Mt 1:22; 2:15). At other times the mention of the Lord remains implicit, suggested only by the preposition dia “through”, referring to the human spokesperson. In these texts of Matthew, the verb “to say” in the present tense results in presenting the quotations from the Jewish Bible as living words possessing perennial authority. Instead of the verb “to say”, the term frequently used to introduce quotations is the verb “to write” in the Greek perfect tense, expressing the permanent effect of a past action: gegraptai, “it has been written” or simply “it is written”. This gegraptai carries considerable weight. Jesus successfully counters the tempter in the first temptation by simply saying: “It is written: Man does not live by bread alone...” (Mt 4:4; Lk 4:4), adding palin “on the contrary”, the second time (Mt 4:7) and gar, “for”, the third time (Mt 4:10). This “for” makes explicit the weight of argument attributed to the Old Testament text, something already implicit in the first two. It can also happen that a biblical text is not definitive and must give way to a new dispensation; in that case, the New Testament uses the Greek aorist tense, placing it in the past. Such is the case with the Law of Moses regarding divorce: “Because of your hardness of heart [Moses] wrote (egrapsen) this commandment for you” (Mk 10:5; cf. also Lk 20:28). 5. Frequently, the New Testament uses texts of the Jewish Bible for the sake of argument, both with the verb “to say” and the verb “to write”. Sometimes we find the expression: “For it says...”,11 more often: “For it is written...12 The formulae “for it is written”, “because it is written”, “according to what is written” are very frequent in the New Testament; in the Letter to the Romans alone there are 17 instances.

In his doctrinal arguments, the apostle Paul constantly relies on his people's Scriptures. He makes a clear distinction between scriptural argumentation and “human” reasoning. To the arguments from Scripture he attributes an incontestable value.13 For him the Jewish Scriptures have an equally enduring value for guiding the spiritual lives of Christians: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”.14 The New Testament recognises the definitive value of arguments based on the Jewish Scriptures. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus declares that “Scripture cannot be annulled” (Jn 10:35). Its value derives from the fact that it is the “word of God” (ibid.). This conviction is frequently evident. Two texts are particularly significant for this subject, since they speak of divine inspiration. In the Second Letter to Timothy, after mentioning the “Sacred Scriptures” (2 Tm 3:15), we find this affirmation: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Tm 3:16-17). Specifically referring to the prophetic oracles contained in the Old Testament, the Second Letter of Peter declares: “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pt 1:20-21). These two texts not only affirm the authority of the Jewish Scriptures; they reveal the basis for this authority as divine inspiration.

B. The New Testament attests conformity to the Jewish Scriptures 6. A twofold conviction is apparent in other texts: on the one hand, what is written in the Jewish Scriptures must of necessity be fulfilled because it reveals the plan of God which cannot fail to be accomplished; on the other hand, the life, death and resurrection of Christ are fully in accord with the Scriptures. 1. Necessity of fulfilling the Scriptures The clearest expression of this is found in the words addressed by the risen Christ to his disciples, in the Gospel of Luke: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must (dei) be fulfilled” (Lk 24:44). This assertion shows the basis of the necessity (dei, “must”) for the paschal mystery of Jesus, affirmed in numerous passages in the Gospels: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering...and after three days rise again”;15 “But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled which say it must happen this way?” (Mt 26:54); “This Scripture must be fulfilled in me” (Lk 22:37). Because what is written in the Old Testament “must” be fulfilled, the events take place “so that” it is fulfilled. This is what Matthew often expresses in the infancy narrative, later on in Jesus' public life 16 and for the whole passion (Mt 26:56). Mark has a parallel to the last mentioned passage in a powerfully elliptic phrase: “But let the Scriptures be fulfilled” (Mk 14:49). Luke does not use this expression but John has recourse to it almost as often as Matthew does.17 The Gospels' insistence on the purpose of these events “so that the Scriptures be fulfilled”18 attributes the utmost importance to the Jewish Scriptures. It is clearly understood that these events would be meaningless if they did not correspond to what the Scriptures say. It would not be a question there of the realisation of God's plan. 2. Conformity to the Scriptures 7. Other texts affirm that the whole mystery of Christ is in conformity with the Jewish Scriptures. The early Christian preaching is summarised in the kerygmatic formula recounted by Paul: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared...” (1 Co 15:3-5). He adds: “Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed” (1 Co 15:11). The Christian faith, then, is not based solely on events, but on the conformity of these events to the revelation contained in the Jewish Scriptures. On his journey towards the passion, Jesus says: “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him” (Mt 26:24; Mk 14:21). After his resurrection, Jesus himself “interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures”.19 In his discourse to the Jews of Antioch in Pisidia, Paul recalls these events by saying that

“the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognise him [Jesus] or understand the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulfilled these words by condemning him” (Ac 13:27). The New Testament shows by these declarations that it is indissolubly linked to the Jewish Scriptures. Some disputed points that need to be kept in mind may be mentioned here. In the Gospel of Matthew, a saying of Jesus claims perfect continuity between the faith of Christians and the Tôr~h: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil” (Mt 5:17). This theological affirmation is characteristic of Matthew and his community. It is in tension with other sayings of the Lord which relativises the Sabbath observance (Mt 12:8,12) and ritual purity (Mt 15:11). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus appropriates a saying of Isaiah (Lk 4:17-21; Is 61:1-2) to define his mission as he begins his ministry. The ending of the Gospel expands this perspective when it speaks of fulfilling “all that is written” about Jesus (Lk 24:44). On that point, it is essential, according to Jesus, to “hear Moses and the prophets”, the ending of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk 16:29-31) drives home the point: without a docile listening, even the greatest prodigies are of no avail. The Fourth Gospel expresses a similar perspective: Jesus attributes to the writings of Moses an authority comparable to his own words, when he says to opponents: “If you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?” (Jn 5:47). In a Gospel where Jesus affirms that his words “are spirit and life” (Jn 6:63), such an assertion gives primary importance to the Tôr~h. In the Acts of the Apostles, the kerygmatic discourses of the Church leaders—Peter, Paul and Barnabas, James—place the events of the Passion, Resurrection, Pentecost and the missionary outreach of the Church in perfect continuity with the Jewish Scriptures.20 3. Conformity and Difference 8. Although it never explicitly affirms the authority of the Jewish Scriptures, the Letter to the Hebrews clearly shows that it recognises this authority by repeatedly quoting texts to ground its teaching and exhortations. It contains numerous affirmations of conformity to prophetic revelation, but also affirmations of conformity that include aspects of non-conformity as well. This was already the case in the Pauline Letters. In the Letters to Galatians and Romans, the apostle argues from the Law to prove that faith in Christ has put an end to the Law's regime. He shows that the Law as revelation predicted its own end as an institution necessary for salvation.21 The most important text on this subject is Rm 3:21 where the apostle affirms that the manifestation of the justice of God in the justification offered by faith in Christ is brought about “apart from the Law”, but is nevertheless “attested by the Law and the Prophets”. In a similar way, the Letter to the Hebrews shows that the mystery of Christ fulfils the prophecies and what was prefigured in the Jewish Scriptures, but, at the same time, affirms nonconformity to the ancient institutions: the glorified Christ is at one and the same time in conformity with the words of Ps 109 (110):1,4, and in non-conformity with the levitical priesthood (cf. Heb 7:11,28). The basic affirmation remains the same. The writings of the New Testament acknowledge that the Jewish Scriptures have a permanent value as divine revelation. They have a positive outlook towards them and regard them as the foundation on which they themselves rest. Consequently, the Church has always held that the Jewish Scriptures form an integral part of the Christian Bible.

C. Scripture and Oral Tradition in Judaism and Christianity 9. In many religions there exists a tension between Scripture and Tradition. This is true of Oriental Religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) and Islam. The written texts can never express the Tradition in an exhaustive manner. They have to be completed by additions and interpretations which are eventually written down but are subject to certain limitations. This phenomenon can be seen in Christianity as well as in Judaism, with developments that are partly similar and partly different. A common trait is that both share a significant part of the same canon of Scripture.

1. Scripture and Tradition in the Old Testament and Judaism Tradition gives birth to Scripture. The origin of Old Testament texts and the history of the formation of the canon have been the subject of important works in the last few years. A certain consensus has been reached according to which by the end of the first century of our era, the long process of the formation of the Hebrew Bible was practically completed. This canon comprised the Tôr~h, the Prophets and the greater part of the “Writings”. To determine the origin of the individual books is often a difficult task. In many cases, one must settle for hypotheses. These are, for the most part, based on results furnished by Form, Tradition and Redaction Criticism. It can be deduced from them that ancient precepts were assembled in collections which were gradually inserted in the books of the Pentateuch. The older narratives were likewise committed to writing and arranged together. Collections of narrative texts and rules of conduct were combined. Prophetic messages were collected and compiled in books bearing the prophets' names. The sapiential texts, Psalms and didactic narratives were likewise collected much later. Over time Tradition produced a “second Scripture” (Mishna). No written text can adequately express all the riches of a tradition.22 The biblical sacred texts left open many questions concerning the proper understanding of Israelite faith and conduct. That gave rise, in Pharisaic and Rabbinic Judaism, to a long process of written texts, from the “Mishna” (“Second Text”), edited at the beginning of the third century by Jehuda ha-Nasi, to the “Tosepta” (“Supplement”) and Talmud in its twofold form (Babylonian and Jerusalem). Notwithstanding its authority, this interpretation by itself was not deemed adequate in later times, with the result that later rabbinic explanations were added. These additions were never granted the same authority as the Talmud, they served only as an aid to interpretation. Unresolved questions were submitted to the decisions of the Grand Rabbinate. In this manner, written texts gave rise to further developments. Between written texts and oral tradition a certain sustained tension is evident. The Limits of Tradition. When it was put into writing to be joined to Scripture, a normative Tradition, for all that, never enjoyed the same authority as Scripture. It did not become part of the “Writings which soil the hands”, that is, “which are sacred” and was not accepted as such in the liturgy. The Mishna, the Tosepta and the Talmud have their place in the synagogue as texts to be studied, but they are not read in the liturgy. Generally, a tradition is evaluated by its conformity to the Tôr~h. The reading of the Tôr~h occupies a privileged place in the liturgy of the Synagogue. To it are added pericopes chosen from the Prophets. According to ancient Jewish belief, the Tôr~h was conceived before the creation of the world. The Samaritans accept only the Tôr~h as Sacred Scripture, while the Sadduccees reject every normative Tradition outside the Law and the Prophets. Conversely, Pharisaic and Rabbinic Judaism accept, alongside the written Law, an oral Law given simultaneously to Moses and enjoying the same authority. A tract in the Mishna states: “At Sinai, Moses received the oral Law and handed it on to Joshua, and Joshua to the ancestors, and the ancestors to the prophets, and the prophets handed it on to members of the Great Synagogue” (Aboth 1:1). Clearly, a striking diversity is apparent from the manner of conceiving the role of Tradition. 2. Scripture and Tradition in Early Christianity 10. Tradition gives birth to Scripture. In early Christianity, an evolution similar to that of Judaism can be observed with, however, an initial difference: early Christians had the Scriptures from the very beginning, since as Jews, they accepted Israel's Bible as Scripture. But for them an oral tradition was added on, “the teaching of the Apostles” (Ac 2:42), which handed on the words of Jesus and the narrative of events concerning him. The Gospel catechesis took shape only gradually. To better ensure their faithful transmission, the words of Jesus and the narratives were put in writing. Thus, the way was prepared for the redaction of the Gospels which took place some decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. In addition, professions of faith were also composed, together with the liturgical hymns which are found in the New Testament Letters. The Letters of Paul and the other apostles or leaders were first read in the church for which they were written (cf. 1 Th 5:27), were passed on to other churches (cf. Col 4:16), preserved to be read on other occasions and eventually accepted as Scripture (cf. 2 P 3:15-16) and attached to the Gospels. In this way, the canon of the New Testament was gradually formed within the

apostolic Tradition. Tradition completes Scripture. Christianity has in common with Judaism the conviction that God's revelation cannot be expressed in its entirety in written texts. This is clear from the ending of the Fourth Gospel where it is stated that the whole world would be unable to contain the books that could be written recounting the actions of Jesus (Jn 21:25). On the other hand, a vibrant tradition is indispensable to make Scripture come alive and maintain its relevance. It is worth recalling here the teaching of the Farewell Discourse on the role of “the Spirit of truth” after Jesus' departure. He will remind the disciples of all that Jesus said (Jn 14:26), bear witness on Jesus' behalf (15:26), and lead the disciples “into all the truth” (16:13), giving them a deeper understanding of the person of Christ, his message and work. As a result of the Spirit's action, the tradition remains alive and dynamic. Having affirmed that the apostolic preaching is found “expressed in a special way” (“speciali modo exprimitur”) in the inspired Books, the Second Vatican Council observes that it is Tradition “that renders a more profound understanding in the Church of Sacred Scripture and makes it always effective” (Dei Verbum 8). Scripture is defined as the “Word of God committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit”; but it is Tradition that “transmits to the successors of the apostles the Word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and by the Holy Spirit to the apostles, so that, illumined by the Spirit of truth, they will protect it faithfully, explain it and make it known by their preaching” (DV 9). The Council concludes: “Consequently, it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws its certainty about everything which has been revealed” and adds: “That is why both— Scripture and Tradition—must be accepted and venerated with the same sense of devotion and reverence” (DV 9). The Limits of the additional contribution of Tradition. To what extent can there be in the Christian Church a tradition that is a material addition to the word of Scripture? This question has long been debated in the history of theology. The Second Vatican Council appears to have left the matter open, but at least declined to speak of “two sources of revelation”, which would be Scripture and Tradition; it affirmed instead that “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture constitute a unique sacred deposit of the Word of God which is entrusted to the Church” (Dei Verbum 10). It likewise rejected the idea of a tradition completely independent of Scripture. On one point at least, the Council mentions an additional contribution made by Tradition, one of great importance: Tradition “enabled the Church to recognise the full canon of the Sacred Books” (DV 8). Here, the extent to which Scripture and Tradition are inseparable can be seen. 3. Relationship between the two perspectives 11. As we have shown, there is a corresponding relationship between Scripture and Tradition in Judaism and Christianity. On one point, there is a greater correspondence, since both religions share a common heritage in the “Sacred Scripture of Israel”.23 From a hermeneutical viewpoint, however, perspectives differ. For all the currents within Judaism during the period corresponding to the formation of the canon, the Law was at the centre. Indeed, in it were to be found the essential institutions revealed by God himself governing the religious, moral, juridical and political life of the Jewish nation after the Exile. The prophetic corpus contains divinely inspired words, transmitted by the prophets and accepted as authentic, but it contained no laws capable of providing an institutional base. From this point of view, the prophetic writings are of second rank. The “Writings” contain neither laws nor prophetic words and consequently occupy third place. This hermeneutical perspective was not taken over by the Christian communities, with the exception, perhaps, of those in Judeo-Christian milieux linked to Pharisaic Judaism by their veneration of the Law. In the New Testament, the general tendency is to give more importance to the prophetic texts, understood as foretelling the mystery of Christ. The apostle Paul and the Letter to the Hebrews do not hesitate to enter into polemics against the Law. Besides, early Christianity shared apocalyptic currents with the Zealots and with the Essenes apocalyptic messianic expectation; from Hellenistic Judaism it adopted a

more extended, sapientially oriented body of Scripture capable of fostering intercultural relations. What distinguishes early Christianity from all these other currents is the conviction that the eschatological prophetic promises are no longer considered simply as an object of future hope, since their fulfilment had already begun in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. It is about him that the Jewish Scriptures speak, in their whole extension, and it is in light of him that they are to be fully comprehended.

D. Jewish Exegetical Methods employed in the New Testament 1. Jewish Methods of Exegesis 12. Judaism derived from the Scriptures its understanding of God and of the world, as well as of God's plans. The clearest expression of how Jesus' contemporaries interpreted the Scriptures are given in the Dead Sea Scrolls, manuscripts copied between the second century B.C. and 60 A.D., and so are therefore close to Jesus' ministry and the formation of the Gospels. However, these documents express only one aspect of the Jewish tradition; they come from within a particular current and do not represent the whole tradition. The earliest rabbinic attestation of exegetical method based on Old Testament texts, is a series of seven “rules” traditionally attributed to Rabbi Hillel (d. 10 A.D.). Irrespective of whether this attribution is well founded or not, these seven middoth certainly represent a codification of contemporary methods of argument from Scripture, in particular for deducing rules of conduct. Another method of using Scripture can be seen in first century historical writings, particularly Josephus, but it had already been employed in the Old Testament itself. It consists of using biblical terms to describe events in order to illuminate their meaning. Thus, the return from the Babylonian Exile is described in terms that evoke the liberation from Egyptian oppression at the time of the Exodus (Is 43:1621). The final restoration of Zion is represented as a new Eden.24 At Qumran, a similar technique was widely used. 2. Exegesis at Qumran and in the New Testament 13. With regard to form and method, the New Testament, especially the Gospels, presents striking resemblances to Qumran in its use of Scripture. The formulae for introducing quotations are often the same, for example: “thus it is written”, “as it is written”, “in conformity with what was said”. The similarity in scriptural usage derives from an outlook common to both the Qumran community and that of the New Testament. Both were eschatological communities that saw biblical prophecies being fulfilled in their own time, in a manner surpassing the expectation and understanding of the Prophets who had originally spoken them. Both were convinced that the full understanding of the prophecies had been revealed to their founder and transmitted by him, “the Teacher of Righteousness” at Qumran, Jesus for Christians. Exactly as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, certain biblical texts are used in the New Testament in their literal and historical sense, while others are applied in a more or less forced manner, to the contemporary situation. Scripture was understood as containing the very words of God. Some interpretations, in both texts, take a word and separate it from its context and original meaning to give it a significance that does not correspond to the principles of modern exegesis. An important difference, however, should be noted. In the Qumran texts, the point of departure is Scripture. Certain texts—for example the pesher of Habakkuk—are an extended commentary on a biblical text, which is then applied, verse by verse, to a contemporary situation; others are collections of texts dealing with the same theme, for example, 11 Q Melchisedeq on the messianic era. In the New Testament, in contrast, the point of departure is the Christ event. It does not apply Scripture to the present, but explains and comments on the Christ event in the light of Scripture. The only points in common are the techniques employed, often with a striking similarity, as in Rm 10:5-13 and in the Letter to the Hebrews.25 3. Rabbinic Methods in the New Testament 14. Traditional Jewish methods of scriptural argumentation for the purpose of establishing rules of

conduct — methods later codified by the rabbis—are frequently used in the words of Jesus transmitted in the Gospels and in the Epistles. Those occurring most often are the first two middoth (“rules”) of Hillel, qal wa-homer and gezerah shawah.26 These correspond more or less to arguments a fortiori and by analogy respectively. A particular trait is that the argument often revolves around the meaning of a single word. This meaning is established by its occurence in a certain context and is then applied, often in a very artificial manner, to another context. This technique has a strong resemblance to rabbinic midrash, with one characteristic difference: in the rabbinic midrash, there is a citation of differing opinions from various authorities in such a way that it becomes a technique of argumentation, while in the New Testament the authority of Jesus is decisive. Paul in particular frequently uses these techniques especially in discussions with well-informed Jewish adversaries, whether Christian or not. Oftentimes he uses them to counter traditional positions in Judaism or to support important points in his own teaching.27 Rabbinic argumentation is also found in the Letters to the Ephesians and Hebrews.28 The Epistle of Jude, for its part, is almost entirely made up of exegetical explications resembling the pesharim (“interpretations”) found in the Qumran Scrolls and in some apocalyptic writings. It uses figures and examples in a verbal chain structure in conformity with Jewish scriptural exegesis. An particular form of Jewish exegesis found in the New Testament is the homily delivered in the synagogue. According to Jn 6:59, the Bread of Life discourse was delivered by Jesus in the synagogue at Capernaum. Its form closely corresponds to synagogal homilies of the first century: an explanation of a Pentateuchal text supported by a prophetic text; each part of the text is explained; slight adjustments to the form of words are made to give a new interpretation. Traces of this model can perhaps also be found in the missionary discourses in the Acts of the Apostles, especially in Paul's homily in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch (Ac 13:17-41). 4. Important Allusions to the Old Testament 15. The New Testament frequently uses allusions to biblical events as a means of bringing out the meaning of the events of Jesus' life. The narratives of Jesus' infancy in the Gospel of Matthew do not disclose their full meaning unless read against the background of biblical and post-biblical narratives concerning Moses. The infancy gospel of Luke is more in the style of biblical allusions found in the first century Psalms of Solomon or in the Qumran Hymns; the Canticles of Mary, Zechariah and Simeon can be compared to Qumran hymns.29 Events in the life of Jesus, like the theophany on the occasion of his baptism, the transfiguration, the multiplication of the loaves and the walking on the water, are similarly narrated with deliberate allusions to Old Testaments events and narratives. The reaction of listeners to Jesus' parables (for example, the parable of the murderous tenants, Mt 21:33-43 and par.) shows that they were accustomed to using biblical imagery as a technique to express a message or give a lesson. Among the Gospels, Matthew shows greatest familiarity with the Jewish techniques in utilising Scripture. After the manner of the Qumran pesharim, he often quotes Scripture; he makes wide use of juridical and symbolic argumentation similar to those which were common in later rabbinic writings. More than the other Gospels, he uses midrashic stories in his narratives (the infancy gospel, the episode of Judas' death, the intervention of Pilate's wife). The rabbinic style of argumentation frequently used, especially in the Pauline Letters and in the Letter to the Hebrews, undoubtedly attests that the New Testament emerged from the matrix of Judaism and that it is infused with the mentality of Jewish biblical commentators.

E. The Extension of the Canon of Scripture 16. The title “canon” (Greek kan(o-)n, “rule”) means the list of books which are accepted as inspired by God and having a regulatory function for faith and morals. We are only concerned here with the formation of the canon of the Old Testament.

1. In Judaism There are differences between the Jewish canon of Scripture30 “Law”, Nebi'im, “Prophets”, and Ketubim, other “Writings”. The number 24 was often reduced to 22, the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. In the Christian canon, to these 2422 books correspond 39 books, called “protocanonical”. The numerical difference is explained by the fact that the Jews regarded as one book several writings that are distinct in the Christian canon, the writings of the Twelve Prophets, for example.] and the Christian canon of the Old Testament.31 To explain these differences, it was generally thought that at the beginning of the Christian era, there existed two canons within Judaism: a Hebrew or Palestinian canon, and an extended Alexandrian canon in Greek—called the Septuagint—which was adopted by Christians. Recent research and discoveries, however, have cast doubt on this opinion. It now seems more probable that at the time of Christianity's birth, closed collections of the Law and the Prophets existed in a textual form substantially identical with the Old Testament. The collection of “Writings”, on the other hand, was not as well defined either in Palestine or in the Jewish diaspora, with regard to the number of books and their textual form. Towards the end of the first century A.D., it seems that 2422 books were generally accepted by Jews as sacred,32 but it is only much later that the list became exclusive.33 When the limits of the Hebrew canon were fixed, the deuterocanonical books were not included. Many of the books belonging to the third group of religious texts, not yet fixed, were regularly read in Jewish communities during the first century A.D. They were translated into Greek and circulated among Hellenistic Jews, both in Palestine and in the diaspora. 2. In the Early Church 17. Since the first Christians were for the most part Palestinian Jews, either “Hebrew” or “Hellenistic” (cf. Ac 6:1), their views on Scripture would have reflected those of their environment, but we are poorly informed on the subject. Nevertheless, the writings of the New Testament suggest that a sacred literature wider than the Hebrew canon circulated in Christian communities. Generally, the authors of the New Testament manifest a knowledge of the deuterocanonical books and other non-canonical ones since the number of books cited in the New Testament exceeds not only the Hebrew canon, but also the socalled Alexandrian canon.34 When Christianity spread into the Greek world, it continued to use sacred books received from Hellenistic Judaism.35 Although Hellenistic Christians received their Scriptures from the Jews in the form of the Septuagint, we do not know the precise form, because the Septuagint has come down to us only in Christian writings. What the Church seems to have received was a body of Sacred Scripture which, within Judaism, was in the process of becoming canonical. When Judaism came to close its own canon, the Christian Church was sufficiently independent from Judaism not to be immediately affected. It was only at a later period that a closed Hebrew canon began to exert influence on how Christians viewed it. 3. Formation of the Christian Canon 18. The Old Testament of the early Church took different shapes in different regions as the diverse lists from Patristic times show. The majority of Christian writings from the second century, as well as manuscripts of the Bible from the fourth century onwards, made use of or contain a great number of Jewish sacred books, including those which were not admitted into the Hebrew canon. It was only after the Jews had defined their canon that the Church thought of closing its own Old Testament canon. But we are lacking information on the procedure adopted and the reasons given for the inclusion of this or that book in the canon. It is possible, nevertheless, to trace in a general way the evolution of the canon in the Church, both in the East and in the West. In the East from Origen's time (c. 185-253) there was an attempt to conform Christian usage to the Hebrew canon of 2422 books using various combinations and stratagems. Origen himself knew of the existence of numerous textual differences, which were often considerable, between the Hebrew and the Greek Bible. To this was added the problem of different listings of books. The attempt to conform to the Hebrew text of the Hebrew canon did not prevent Christian authors in the East from utilising in their writings books that were never admitted into the Hebrew canon, or from following the Septuagint text.

The notion that the Hebrew canon should be preferred by Christians does not seem to have produced in the Eastern Church either a profound or long-lasting impression. In the West, the use of a larger collection of sacred books was common and was defended by Augustine. When it came to selecting books to be included in the canon, Augustine (354-430) based his judgement on the constant practice of the Church. At the beginning of the fifth century, councils adopted his position in drawing up the Old Testament canon. Although these councils were regional, the unanimity expressed in their lists represents Church usage in the West. As regards the textual differences between the Greek and the Hebrew Bible, Jerome based his translation on the Hebrew text. For the deuterocanonical books, he was generally content to correct the Old Latin (translation). From this time on, the Church in the West recognised a twofold biblical tradition: that of the Hebrew text for books of the Hebrew canon, and that of the Greek Bible for the other books, all in a Latin translation. Based on a time-honoured tradition, the Councils of Florence in 1442 and Trent in 1564 resolved for Catholics any doubts and uncertainties. Their list comprises 73 books, which were accepted as sacred and canonical because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, 46 for the Old Testament, 27 for the New. 36 In this way the Catholic Church received its definitive canon. To determine this canon, it based itself on the Church's constant usage. In adopting this canon, which is larger than the Hebrew, it has preserved an authentic memory of Christian origins, since, as we have seen, the more restricted Hebrew canon is later than the formation of the New Testament.

NOTES (1) See the presentation of this phase of Augustine's spiritual journey in the work of Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, A Biography, London, 1967, 40-45. (2) A von Harnack, Marcion, 1920. Reissued Darmstadt 1985, XII and 217. (3) The decisive breakthrough for an appreciation of Origen's exegesis was made by H. de Lubacin his work Histoire et Esprit. L'intelligence de l'Écriture d'après Origène, Paris 1950. Since then, the works of H. Crouzelespecially merit attention (for example, Origene, 1985). A good overview of the state of research is given by H.-J. Siebenin his Einleitung zu Origenes. In Lucam homiliae, Fribourg, 1991, pp. 7-53. A synthesis of the various works of H. de Lubac on the question of the interpretation of Scripture is given in the work edited by J. Voderholzer, H. de Lubac, Typologie, Allegorese, Geistiger Sinn. Studien zur Geschichte der christlichen Schriftauslegung, Johannes Verlag, Fribourg 1999. (4) 5 Translated from the French by Maurice Hogan. (5) For example, angelos, “messenger” or “angel”, gin(o-)skein, “to know” or “to have relations with”, diathk, “testament” or “pact”, “covenant”, nomos, “law” or “revelation”, ethn, “nations” or “pagans”. (6) For example, in the Gospel of Matthew there are 160 implicit quotations and allusions; 60 in the Gospel of Mark; 192 in the Gospel of Luke; 137 in the Gospel of John; 140 in Acts; 72 in the Letter to the Romans, etc. (7) There are 38 quotations in Matthew; 15 in Mark; 15 in Luke; 14 in John; 22 in Acts; 47 in Romans and so on. (8) Rm 10:8; Ga 3:16; Heb 8:8; 10:5. (9) Subjects understood: Scripture (Rm 10:8; cf. 10:11), the Lord (Ga 3:16; cf. Gn 13:14-15; Heb 8:8; cf. 8:8,9), Christ (Heb 10:5). (10) Subjects expressed: “Scripture” (Rm 9:17; Ga 4:30); “the Law” (Rm 3:19; 7:7); “Moses” (Mk 7:10; Ac 3:22; Rm 10:19), “David” (Mt 22:43; Ac 2:25; 4:25; Rm 4:6), “the prophet” (Mt 1:22; 2:15), “Isaiah” (Mt 3:3; 4:14, etc., Jn 1:23; 12:39,41; Rm 10:16,20), “Jeremiah” (Mt 2:17), “the Holy Spirit” (Ac 1:16; Heb 3:7; 10:15), “the Lord” (Heb 8:8,9,10 = Jr 31:31,32, 33). (11) Rm 9:15,17; 1 Tm 5:18. (12) Mt 2:5; 4:10; 26:31, etc. (13) 1 Co 9:8; Rm 6:19; Ga 3:15. (14) Rm 15:4; cf. 1 Co 10:11. (15) Mk 8:31; cf. Mt 16:21; Lk 9:22; 17:25. (16) Mt 1:22; 2:15; 2:23; Mt 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4. (17) Jn 12:38; 13:18; 15:25; 17:12; 19:24,28,36. (18) Mk 14:49; cf. Mt 26:56; Jn 19:28.

(19) Lk 24:27; cf. 24:25,32, 45-46. (20) Passion: Ac 4:25-26; 8:32-35; 13:27-29; Resurrection: 2:25-35; 4:11; 13:32-35; Pentecost: 2:16-21; missionary outreach: 13:47; 15:18. (21) Ga 3:6-14,24-25; 4:4-7; Rm 3:9-26; 6:14; 7:5-6. (22) According to rabbinic understanding, the written Law was duplicated by a complementary oral Law. (23) The origin and extension of the canon of the Jewish Bible will be treated below in I.E., no. 16. (24) Ezk 47:1-12 followed by Jl 2:18,27 and Za 14:8-11. (25) Heb 1:5-13; 2:6-9; 3:7-4:11; 7:1-28; 10:5-9; 12:5-11, 26-29. (26) Qal wa-homer is found in Mt 6:30; 7:11; Jn 7:23; 10:34-36; Rm 5:15,17; 2 Co 3:7-11; gezerah shawah in Mt 12:1-4; Ac 2:25-28; Rm 4:1-12; Ga 3:10-14. (27) Cf. Ga 3:19 (Paul derives from the mediation of angels in the promulgation of the Law an argument to demonstrate the inferiority of the Law); 4:21-31 (the mention of Sarah and Hagar serves to demonstrate that Gentiles who believe in Christ are “children of the promise”); Rm 4:1-10 (it is the faith of Abraham, not circumcision, that justifies him); 10:6-8 (the verse that speaks of ascending the heavens is applied to Christ); 1 Co 10:4 (Christ is identified with the rock that accompanied the people in the desert); 15:45-47 (the two Adams, of whom Christ is the second and more perfect); 2 Co 3:13-16 (a symbolic meaning is attributed to the veil that covered Moses' face). (28) Cf. Ep 4:8-9 (where a text on ascending the heavens, traditionally applied to Moses, is applied to Christ); Heb 7:1-28 (on the superiority of the priesthood according to Melchizedek over that of the levitical priests). (29) 1 QH 2:31-36; 5:12-16; 18:14-16. (30) Jews count 24 books in their Bible, called TaNaK, a word formed from the initials of Tôr 1) The Catholic Church accepts 46 books in its Old Testament canon, 39 protocanonical books and 7 deuterocanonical, so called because the former were accepted with little or no debate, while the latter (Sirach, Baruch, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom 1,2 Maccabees and parts of Esther and Daniel) were accepted only after centuries of hesitation (on the part of certain Eastern Church Fathers as well as Jerome); the Churches of the Reformation call these “Apocrypha”. (32) In Contra Apion(1:8), written between 93 and 95, Josephus comes very close to the idea of a canon of Scripture, but his vague reference to books to which titles had not yet been attached (later called the “Writings”), shows that Judaism had not yet accepted a definitive collection of books. (33) The so-called Council of Jamnia was more in the nature of a school or an academy that sat in Jamnia between the years 75 and 117. There is no evidence of a decision drawing up a list of books. It seems that the canon of the Jewish Scriptures was not definitively fixed before the end of the second century. Scholarly discussion on the status of certain books continued into the third century. (34) If the early Church had received from Alexandria a closed canon or a closed list of books, one would expect that the existing manuscripts of the Septuagint and the Christian lists of Old Testament books would be virtually the same. But this is not the case. The Old Testament lists of books of the Church Fathers and early councils do not have such unanimity. It was not the Alexandrian Jews who fixed the exclusive canon of Scripture, but the Church, beginning from the Septuagint. (35) These books comprised not only writings originally composed in Hebrew and translated into Greek, but also writings composed in Greek. (36) Cf. Denziger-Huenermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 36th edition, Fribourg-im-Breisgau, Basil, Rome, Vienna 1991, nos 1334-1336, 1501-1504.

To read online: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020212_pop olo-ebraico_en.html

ALLIANCE OF BAPTISTS STATEMENT On Jewish-Christian Relations March 4, 1995 Fifty years ago the world stood in shocked disbelief at the evidence of humankind"s inhumanity to its own as the reality of places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbruck, were forever etched into conscience and history. The madness, the hatred, the dehumanizing attitudes which led to the events known collectively as the Holocaust did not occur overnight or within the span of a few years, but were the culmination of centuries of Christian teaching and church-sanctioned action directed against the Jews simply because they were Jews. As Baptist Christians we are the inheritors of and, in our turn, have been the transmitters of a theology which lays the blame for the death of Jesus at the feet of the Jews; a theology which has taken the antiJewish polemic of the Christian Scriptures out of its first century context and has made it normative for Christian-Jewish relations; a theology which has usurped for the Church the biblical promises and prerogatives given by God to the Jews; a theology which ignores nineteen centuries of Jewish development by viewing contemporary Jews as modern versions of their first century co-religionists; a theology which views the Jewish people and Jewish nationhood merely as pieces in an eschatological chess game; a theology which has valued conversion over dialogue, invective over understanding, and prejudice over knowledge; a theology which does not acknowledge the vibrancy, vitality, and efficacy of the Jewish faith. It is in recognition of a past and present among Baptists that is complicit in perpetuating negative stereotypes and myths concerning Jews, that we, the Alliance of Baptists meeting in convocation on March 4, 1995, at Vienna Baptist Church, Vienna, Virginia, Confess our sin of complicity. Confess our sin of silence. Confess our sin of interpreting our sacred writings in such a way that we have created enemies of the Jewish people. Confess our sin of indifference and inaction to the horrors of the Holocaust. Confess our sins against the Jewish people. Offer this confession with humility and with hope for reconciliation between Christians and Jews. We call upon all Baptists to join us in 1. Affirming the teaching of the Christian Scriptures that God has not rejected the community of Israel, God"s covenant people (Romans 11:1-2), since "the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29); 2. Renouncing interpretations of Scripture which foster religious stereotyping and prejudice against the Jewish people and their faith; 3. Seeking genuine dialogue with the broader Jewish community, a dialogue built on mutual respect and the integrity of each other"s faith; 4. Lifting our voices quickly and boldly against all expressions of anti-Semitism; 5. Educating ourselves and others on the history of Jewish-Christian relations from the first century to the present, so as to understand our present by learning from our past.

ON TRANSLATING LEVITICUS [From: The Five Books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy] THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS, ALONG WITH OTHER PARTS OF THE TORAH THAT DEAL WITH cultic and legal matters, presents particular problems for a translator who chooses to work in the BuberRosenzweig mode There are a number of technical terms which, in addition to their constant repetition in the text, inviting overemphasis on strangeness, are difficult to render accurately into English. For their part, Buber and Rosenzweig translated what they understood as the meaning of these terms, even if it meant creating new words in German that made little sense to someone not familiar with the Hebrew concepts. Some examples are found below. My initial inclination was to leave the names of sacrifices, etc., in Hebrew transcription, but I have come to feel that this places an undue burden on the English reader. With some reservations I have therefore opted for a mix of transcription and translation. Buber saw the names of several sacrifices as suggesting movement between the human and the divine. Thus the names of the two most common sacrifices, karban and ala, were rendered "Nearbringing" and "Highbringing" in B-R. I have utilized "near-offering" and "offering-up"; in the case of the former, the intent of the text may simply have been to indicate what the worshiper 'brings-near" to the altar, although the effect was certainly understood to bring humans closer to God. A third type of sacrifice, the minha, which B-R rendered as "leading-gift," always indicates a "grain-gift" in cultic texts. My German predecessors would undoubtedly not have approved of my less radical approach to these terms; I have, however, followed them in retaining 'bringing-near" as a verb, denoting variously "to bring," "to sacrifice," and "to officiate" (in the sanctuary), which I have indicated in the Notes. As for hattat and asham, these two key sacrifices have a number of meanings in the text. I have chosen to retain them in transcription, providing occasional translations on location or explanations in the notes. A most important term in the priestly material is the adjective tamei (along with its noun, tum'a). The word refers to a ritual state, the existence of which was understood in ancient Israel as a grave danger to the "purity" of the sanctuary. It is not, however, "uncleanness" in the physical sense, but a state akin perhaps to radioactivity:in this case, it drives away the divine presence from Israel (d. Greenstein 1984a for another analogy). B-R used "stainedltainted" in their translation; most recent scholars use "polluted" and "pollution" to describe the phenomenon. I have accepted the latter in my discussions below but have chosen to stay with Hebrew transcription in the text itself, allowing for a wider and less overtly negative form of the term. Were I in a flippant mood brought on by political correctness, I might suggest "ritually challenged" for tamei. One more problem in translating Leviticus is worthy of mention. A Buber-Rosenzweig type of rendition is fairly adaptable for narrative and even poetry; but in legal and cultic passages, such as we find in abundance in Leviticus, it imposes huge constraints on the translator. Recent English translations such as JPS and the New Revised Standard Version have conveyed the basic meaning of these passages in reasonably clear language. I, on the other hand, have not found it possible to avoid awkward English in this material. I hope nevertheless that, despite the difficulties involved for the reader, the-rhetoric and structure-and sometimes the obscurity-of the Hebrew; which left the text open to later disagreement and interpretation, will still be visible and instructive. A final note on translation practices. Buber and Rosenzweig did not always hold to the principle of one Hebrew root, one corresponding German root, if this was unimportant or simply an impossibility. I have similarly on occasion deviated from full consistency in translating certain words. So, for instance, I found that the many different uses of Heb. shamor-"guard," "keep," "take-care"-

simply could not be standardized in translation. In the main, when I have found it possible to connect passages via their standardized language in the Hebrew, I have done so in English.

ON THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS AND ITS STRUCTURE FOR MOST LAYREADERS, THE THIRD OF THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES PRESENTS FORMIDABLE obstacles. Many people find it difficult to relate to the description of ritual slaughter of animals and the disposal of their blood and flesh in the opening section of the book, or to the detailed prescriptions regarding bodily functions, skin disease, and mold in Chapters 12-15. Others experience Leviticus as obscure: Why exactly do Aaron's sons die in Chapter 10? How can one explain the ritual of the scapegoat in Chapter 16? A frequently encountered reaction to the book is the desire to get on to the book of Numbers-which at least has some intriguing narratives such as Moses' sin and punishment, the faint-heartedness of the spies, and Balaam's reversed prophecies. Yet Leviticus, as it has been placed in the Torah, signals that something of singular importance is at work. The book, after all, occurs at the center of the overall five-book structure. Unlike the other four, it is set entirely around Mount Sinai, and so it forms, geographically as well as structurally, the heart of the Torah document. In addition, the priestly interests so clearly presented in Leviticus appear throughout the Torah: as genealogical lists (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), descriptions of rituals (Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), and details about the building of the desert "Dwelling" of God (Exodus). Indeed, the opening chapter of it all, Gen. I (the Creation story), has strong links in both its themes and terminology with the priestly law. Leviticus in fact presents a significant strain, conventionally termed the "priestly" view, in biblical thought. Anthropologically considered, it sheds important light on the outlook of some of those who compiled and read the Hebrew Bible. And the process did not stop there. Many of the categories found in Leviticus were continued and expanded by later Judaism: regulations concerning sexuality and diet, concepts of separation and holiness, and how to deal with one's fellow human beings in a variety of economic and social settings. These found expression in different but still recognizable form simultaneously in the development of Christianity. In late antiquity Leviticus was known as Tarat Kahanim, the Priestly Instruction (or simultaneously understood, as Levine suggests, as the Instruction of the Priests). Given both the concerns of the priestly writers and the wording they use to express those concerns, I see Leviticus as the Book of Separations, the book in which are set forth distinctions between a whole range of aspects of ancient Israelite experience and practice: holy and profane; ritual purity and pollution; permitted and forbidden in sexuality and diet; Israelites and others; and priests, Levites, and common folk among the Israelites. This near-obsession with drawing lines (or, as Douglas has presented it, concentric circles) may in some sense reflect the position of Israel in the ancient Near East as a small, beleaguered newcomer in a region of hoary empires, situated on land that was constantly invaded by both great powers and local foes. It may also be an echo of the larger Bronze Age and Iron Age process of change from the former, well-nigh universal worship of the Mother Goddess, to the later patriarchal societies with which the Western world still deals through its three monotheistic religions and their cultural outgrowths. Overarching the theme of separations or distinctions, through much of the book, is the polarity of order / disorder, represented best in Leviticus by the problem of life and death. As many scholars have noted, regulations regarding sacrifice here connect up with symbolically offering up human lifethrough the substitution of an animal-to the deity; blood is avoided at all costs, due to its connoting life. Animals that may be used for food (as well as for sacrifice) are in the main those which do not consume other living creatures. Pollutants which endanger the purity of the sanctuary ("Dwelling")

include bodily emissions which the Israelites connected with death (e.g., menstrual blood and "wasted" semen). Finally, the complex system of purification from some kind of skin disease may well originate in the similarity between disease and death. In sum, then, it is no surprise that, two books later, the Deuteronomic Moses implores the people to "choose life" rather than the "death" engendered by improper behavior by both priests and commoners. Interestingly, the strong urge to make order (ritual laws) out of disorder (the chaotic processes of human life, from killing animals for food to sexual relations) is reflected in other aspects of the Torah-most notably in the narrative portrayal of the descent lines from father Abraham. Here, the discontinuity represented by sibling rivalries and other threats to survival is countered by God's establishing a kind of continuity through the choosing of younger brothers. In this case, the strong hand of ritual control is replaced by the somewhat hazardous element of surprise and close calls. But it does manage to provide for family continuity and, ultimately, the survival of the people. Whether this points to early or later experiences historically is the subject of ongoing and unresolved debate among biblical scholars. A widely accepted possibility is that the Torah as we have it was edited by priestly editors living in or shortly after the Babylonian Exile (6th-5th centuries B.C.E.), and that those editors took earlier material (which itself was already multilayered) and adapted it into an overall scheme expressing promise, disobedience, destruction, and survival/hope (cf. Fox I993). In point of fact, Leviticus is best viewed as only a part, albeit the major one as a bloc, of a major thrust of the Torah. According to most biblical scholars, the "priestly" worldview, and the texts that may be attributed to it, makes its appearance with the very chapter with which the entire Torah begins, Gen. 1. Here distinctions and ordering are at the very heart of the text. God, immediately after his first creation-by-word (light), "separates" between light and darkness, then goes on to perform the same operation between heavenly waters (the storehouses of rain) and earthly ones. His remaining acts of creation involve putting heavenly bodies, vegetation, and animal life in ordereach "according to its kind," on specific days of creation. Animals are distinguished from plants through their receiving vocal divine blessing; humans from animals through the addition to the blessing of the phrase "have dominion over" the rest of living things. At the same time, humans are told that they may eat only what grows from the ground, implying that to do otherwise would be a violation of the order of things. Crowning the whole account is the poem (Gen. 2:1-4a) about God's "finishing" of the "work" of creation, symbolized by his "hallowing" (making holy or separate-forGod) the seventh day. In Gen. 1, then, we are presented with a brief but complete vision of the cosmos as ordered in space, time, and life-forms, under the aegis of a metasexual, nonviolent, and benevolent deity. As Genesis unfolds under priestly influence, humans are presented with basic rules and warned of the consequences if those rules are broken. The paradisical situation of Adam and Eve (no labor, vegetarianism, no danger from animals, and sexual innocence) is disrupted by human disobedience, resulting in banishment from Eden-a shattering of the previous wholeness and order. Cain's murder of his brother leads to the same punishment: uprootedness and hard labor. The mixing of divine and human beings in Gen. 6:1-2 results in a clear distinction being established by God, that humans will henceforth be limited in age. Finally, the account of the universal flood in Chapters 6-9 presents a picture that uses a number of Leviticus motifs. The earth is to be destroyed because human wrongdoing has "ruined" it (or, in Levitical language, "polluted" it). Animal life is rescued by means of taking pairs of animals aboard the ark-with Leviticus's distinctions of "pure" and impure dutifully mentioned. Noah's three sons, who also come onto the ark, later become the forefathers of three great divisions of humanity, as laid out in detail in the genealogical lists of Chapters 10-11. Finally, the new beginning of the cosmos, with Noah as a second Adam (cf. the latter's blessing in 1:z8 with that of the former in 9:1-2), is accompanied by both animal sacrifices and dietary restrictions (the introduction of meat is new, accompanied by the caveat-as in Lev. 17-that blood is not to be consumed). A major part of the priestly scheme emerges with the detailed instructions concerning the construction of the Tabernacle (God's place of "Dwelling" on earth) and the priestly vestments that

are to be worn there, in Ex. 25-31 (with much of this material repeated in narrative form in Chapters 35-40). The details make sense as part of a larger picture, in which the closer one gets to the "Holiest Holy-Shrine" where God takes up dwelling, the more central the measurements of space and the more precious the materials used. This concentric sense of order is reflected also in the layout of the wilderness camp of the Israelites in Num. 2. Thus the Tabernacle functions as a minicosmos, a visible and ritual representation of the creation itself. Through the layout of curtains within and tribal encampments without, space is ordered; through the festivals (enumerated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with some mention in Exodus as well), time is ordered. And, thanks to the provisions laid out in Leviticus, through priest/lay hierarchy, dietary rules, and sacrificial regulations, life-forms are ordered. The result is an almost utopian scheme. It is a world in which everything and everyone are to take their place under the perfect worship of a perfect God, banishing or avoiding death, defect, and disorder. In the priestly view; the world is to be an echo of the divine order that is portrayed in the Creation story. Viewed in the perspective of priestly concerns (only part of which we have just outlined), Leviticus is largely concerned with the potential disruption of this utopia. If Genesis chronicles threats to the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, if Numbers recounts threats to his descendants' survival on their march through the wilderness, then Leviticus concentrates on threats to Israel's life with God. It presents a whole system of rules designed, first, to provide for purification and reconciliation with God through the sacrificial cult; second, to protect sanctuary, priests, land, and people from estrangement from God (via "pollution" of various kinds); and, finally, to establish a code of behavior that will ensure the perpetual enjoyment of God's blessings on the land promised to Israel's ancestors. From this it can readily be seen how Leviticus, far from being of interest to specialists and historians only, is in fact a crucial part of the Torah-perhaps its most crucial part, in that it supplies the ideological center of gravity for the whole. Once Leviticus is added to the narratives, poems, laws, and lists that comprise the rest of the Torah, a picture emerges that is more than literature and more than history. The five books become the multilayered and multifaceted monument that has been studied, puzzled over, and built upon for over two millennia. In sum, the world of the priestly strain in the Torah is a realm of desired order and perfection, a realm in which wholeness is to reign, in which anomaly and undesired mixture are not permitted, and in which boundaries are zealously guarded. The human body becomes symbolic of the cosmos: its life/ death boundary is marked, and troublesome flows from it are carefully regulated. The land of Israel becomes symbolic of the cosmos: too much evildoing pollutes it, to the point where it can do naught else but "vomit out" its settlers (as it vomited out the previous ones). The animal kingdom, from which humans are allowed to take life under carefully prescribed circumstances, becomes symbolic of cosmic values, through heightening awareness of predator and victim, and careful avoidance of blood, the symbol of life. Indeed, in the system of Leviticus, it is no wonder that death is the major pollutant, and that blood of acceptable animal sacrifice is the agent through which human beings find atonement for minor pollutants. The book as it is presently laid out falls into three major sections, with a number of chapters that function either as connectors or appendices to various sections. Linkages and connecting theme words will be spelled out in more detail in the commentary; for the moment, the following outline may suffice: I The Sacrificial Cult 1-7 Sacrificial Offerings: Their Ritual and Disposal 8-9 The Installation of the Priests 10 Systems Failure II Ritual Pollution and Purification 11 Forbidden and Permitted Foods: Transition

12-15 Pollution from Bodily Fluids and Skin Disease 16 Purifying the Sanctuary and the High Priest Appendix: 17 On the Shedding of Animal Blood III Holiness 18 Pollution from Forbidden Unions: Transition 19:3-4 Frame at Beginning 19-20 Holiness in Public/Private Behavior 21-22 Holiness in Priestly Behavior 23 Holiness in the Calendar 24 Miscellaneous 25 Regulations Concerning Land and Slaves 26:1-2 Frame at End 26:3-46 Holiness Confirmed or Denied: The Blessing and the Curse Appendix: 27 Assessments for the Priests Other commentators have of course seen it differently. Most follow the traditional scholarly approach of starting the "Holiness Code" with Chapter 17; Levine rightly parallels it to the beginnings of other law collections in the Torah (Ex. 20:19-23 and Deut. 12; the ending here in Chapter 26 also parallels the endings in the other two codes). Hallo understands the structure as I-II: Rites of Consumption; 12-16: Rites of Purification; and 17-26: Holiness. Overshadowing the clear three-part structure, however one wants to divide it up, is the complex issue of two apparent documents or schools of thought. Biblical scholarship terms these P ("Priestly") and H ("Holiness"), and roughly attributes the first part of the book (through Chap. 16) to P, with the rest to H. There has been detailed, ongoing debate about the approaches and dating of these sources. As of this writing, it is generally accepted that H is later than P,but there seem to be numerous interpolations of one source into the other, and it is difficult to place them historically with certainty. Here, as elsewhere in biblical literature, we have a layering effect rather than a clearcut delineation of "authors." As usual, that appears to have been intentional.. A word should be said about the relationship between law and narrative in the Torah. As Damrosch has noted, the legal and cultic texts in the five books might be seen by modern readers as intrusive. On the surface, they certainly seem to interrupt a good story. Genesis is largely unencumbered by nonaction (except for the genealogical lists-attributed to Pi), but the gripping account of the redemption from Egypt in Exodus, and the drama of revelation on and apostasy beneath Mount Sinai, give way to the sober architectural details of the Tabernacle's construction. Similarly, the narratives of the book of Numbers, which are among the most striking in the literature, are set off against a background of censuses, laws about suspected adultery and the taking of vows, Levitical duties in the Dwelling, and an enumeration of sacrificial gifts brought by the tribes, among other things. The bulk of material in Leviticus, and its placement in the Torah, make it clear that the five books that we have convey their point precisely through the medium of narrative plus cult/law. In the Israelite worldview, these two rather distinct forms, which intermingle past, present, and future (Damrosch), fruitfully enrich and explain one another. It is as if a history of the American Revolution contained all of the debates on and drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as accounts of battles and biographies of key personalities. That such an approach parallels neither Homeric epic nor ritual texts in their purity of form is exactly the point: we have here a new genre of great complexity and richness, in which narratives exemplifY laws and laws follow narratives. The result is truly a torah, a "teaching" or "instruction." Finally, we might mention the issue of priests and laypeople. Scholars have often seen Leviticus as originating as a manual for priests. What is most fascinating, and perhaps most important (for later

history), about this book is the way in which it takes priestly rules and transmutes at least some of them for use in the general populace of ancient Israel. This can be seen most dramatically in the dietary laws, which in other cultures often serve exclusively for priests, and in the area of sexual taboos, which do likewise. In postbiblical Judaism this shift becomes particularly evident: the Jew's dinner table is termed a "sanctuary in miniature" (complete with loaves of bread and the use of salttwo elements found in the ancient sacrificial cult); dietary laws are expanded for the general population to provide for separation of milk and meat; and separation of husband and wife during menstruation, among traditional Jews, leaves the context of Sanctuary pollution and finds a home in the context of a philosophy of marriage. Many other examples could be brought of the widening of priestly laws to an entire people. Perhaps most dramatic-and most significant-is the eventual shift of the learning and interpretation of sacred texts away from the priests, who in most cultures served as the guardians of the text (and often the culture's only literate body; cf. medieval Christian Europe). In Judaism of late antiquity, this monopoly was decisively broken; first the scribe and then the rabbi ("master") took over, with learning extended at last to all those who might make the effort to acquire it. The great exception, at least in antiquity, was women-who, it will be noted, were also excluded from priestly functions in the Bible. Three relatively recent developments make it possible to approach Leviticus as a significant, powerful, and interesting biblical text. The first is the explosion of both full-length and shorter studies of the book and its concerns that have appeared in recent years. The work of Milgram (1991), Levine (1989), Wenham (1979), Eilberg-Schwartz (1990), and Bamberger (1981), to cite just a few of the English-language studies on aspects of Leviticus, now makes it possible to have a serious entry into the book based largely on advances in understanding the cultures of the ancient Near East. It also, admittedly, puts the translator and commentator in a bind: is it possible to add anything new, or will it suffice simply to summarize? My approach in this volume has been largely the latter, along with suggesting to the reader some fruitful directions for further study. The second development helpful for approaching Leviticus, which also informs many of the studies just mentioned, is the using of anthropological insights to understand concepts and rituals found in the book. Such an approach places Leviticus in a broader human context, indicating what it does and does not share with other cultural and religious systems. For Leviticus is concerned with the same issues that plague all human societies: how to deal with the boundaries of life and death, how to comprehend and approach the transcendent in life, how to understand one's (or one's nation's) place in the cosmic order, how to make for a just society. Viewed in this light, the book is a "Small Code" (cf. Northrop Frye's designation of the Bible as "the Great Code"). That is, Leviticus need not remain a total mystery to us, to be unraveled only through detailed analysis and even change (Judaism) or substitution (Christianity), but can be understood on its own terms, if approached with care and in the spirit of seeking the larger picture in the details. Finally,we should mention the aesthetic dimension. Like the other books of the Torah, Leviticus uses its own rhetoric to convey its message. Far from employing flat "priestly" style (whatever that may be), it uses formulas, refrains, and other rhythmical forms to impress its teaching (Heb. tora) upon its hearers. This aspect of the book has been the subject of recent study (d. Paran), but was already echoed in the Buber-Rosenzweig translation. It is my hope that the present volume will contribute to an appreciation of the style of Leviticus.

The Beit Midrash Research Project A project of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, Brandeis University http://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/projeets/beitmidrashresearchlindex.htmI

A THEORY OF HAVRUTA LEARNING Orit Kent ABSTRACT: Modern educational scholarship has not substantially investigated the learning practice of havruta, paired study and focused conversation around classical Jewish texts. In this paper, the author analyzes videotapes and transcripts of real-life havruta interactions and proposes a theory of havruta learning as composed of three pairs of core practices: listening and articulating; wondering and focusing; and supporting and challenging. Through a close analysis of one particular havruta session, the author illustrates and probes the havruta practices and the ways in which they can give rise to generative, textually grounded interpretive discussions of classical Jewish texts. This theory may also be a helpful lens for both studying and elucidating text-based discussions of other kinds of texts in small and large group settings. Excerpt from pp. 7-9: A Theory of Havruta Learning: Overview of Six Practices When I use the term havruta, I am talking about more than a simple strategy for students to brainstorm together for a few minutes, or what is known in language arts classrooms as "pair and share" (Calkins, 2001). I use the term havruta to refer to two people working together for some period of time to together make sense of a text. This requires drawing on skills for how to interpret a text and how to work with someone else independent of a teacher's direct guidance. In this kind of havruta, effort is directed at constructing ideas and also relationships, and the ways in which ideas are constructed affect the working relationship and vice versa. Ideally, the two people involved in the havruta are responsible for their own learning and for each other's learning. Their success is viewed as interdependent. Furthermore, since there are not only two partners but three--the two people and the text--for meaning making to occur, there must be interaction not only between the people but also between each and both of them and the text. During a havruta discussion, participants construct and reconstruct the meaning of the text through their moment-to-moment interactions. While these interactions are highly complex and, in their particularity, may be highly varied, there are key elements to these interactions. Through my analysis of my data (audio and video recordings of havruta sessions) and informed by an understanding of good havruta, I have identified three pairs of core practices in which havruta learners engage: (1) listening and articulating; (2) wondering and focusing; and (3) supporting and challenging. In many ways, listening and articulating are the engine that start the havruta and keep it going. Most basically, listening means paying attention to and articulating means expressing one's ideas out loud. Listening and articulating are the building blocks of both idea and relationship development in havruta. By both listening and articulating, havruta partners create space for each human partner and the text to be heard and be part of the havruta learning process. This back and forth opens up room for new ideas to emerge and for shaping and refining ideas on the table.

The second pair of practices is focusing and wondering: concentrating attention and exploring multiple possibilities. A havruta needs to wonder in order to generate creative ideas. At the same time, a havruta needs to be able to focus in order to deepen an interpretation and come to some conclusion about the meaning of the text. While listening and articulating are the engine, wondering and focusing are part of the steering wheel-they help determine the direction that the conversation will take. And finally, there are the practices of supporting and challenging. Both of these practices can help a havruta further shape their ideas, but each does so in a slightly different way. Supporting consists of providing encouragement for the ideas on the table and helping further shape them by clarifying them, strengthening them with further evidence and/or sometimes extending them. Challenging consists of raising problems with ideas on the table, questioning what's missing from them, and drawing attention to contradictions and opposing ideas. These practices also help steer the conversation and can help the havruta partners sharpen their ideas. In order to have a havruta conversation of any kind that is more than just parallel monologues, these practices must take place in some kind of balance. The exact balance will differ from pair to pair, interaction to interaction and even moment to moment and will help determine the result of the havruta interaction. The practices in each pair are, on the surface, mutually exclusive. For example, to focus on an idea, one must put aside thoughts of other paths not taken. However, one can never fully do so or else one runs the risk of discussing stagnant ideas. A tension inheres within each pair of practices in trying to strike some sort of balance between them-a tension that can make havruta interactions dynamic, undetermined, hard and potentially, engaging. These practices are best supported in a learning environment that fosters collaboration. This does not mean that everyone needs to agree. A collaborative environment is one in which students understand that their success as a havruta is interdependent and that they are therefore responsible to and for one another. Furthermore, such a context places a high value on participants working together to develop the most compelling ideas possible and not simply sticking with one's own original idea at the expense of all else.9

TAKE A MOMENT TO LEARN ABOUT: HEVRUTAH AND THE BET MIDRASH The story is told that when the great Rabbi Yochanan was mourning the loss of his intellectual rival and beloved study partner, Resh Laqish, he cried out to another rabbi: "You are not like Resh Laqish! Resh Laqish, when I said something, would have 24 problems with what I've said, and I would have to find 24 solutions for his questions - and by this process of questioning and answering, the subject became clear. ”* Contemporary rabbinic training has returned to two ancient learning traditions:  

hevrutah, partnered study in which two students have an ongoing learning relationship the Bet Midrash, a central gathering place where a rich assortment of Judaic texts and resources allows students to follow their own lines of inquiry - from Psalms to Medieval codes of Jewish law, and Talmud to 20th century philosophers.

"The discourse in Talmud is all in the form of a conversation among the great scholars," explains Rabbi Vivie Mayer, who joined RRC in the 2006-07 academic year as director of the introductory Mekhinah year and the Bet Midrash. "The process of studying in hevrutah mirrors the conversation on the Talmud page. Your partner is your foil who doesn't let you get away with sloppy thinking." In the process of hevrutah study, "ideas get pushed and thrown against each other so you look at something from every angle." This approach of disputation and exploration becomes particularly exciting in the Bet Midrash (literally "house of study"), where the energy of multiple hevrutah pairs combines to fill the air. Mayer envisions a space where RRC students [and IFRS students as well!] gravitate and engage regularly, "studying for the joy of discovering where the text takes you." The Hebrew root of the word hevrutah is the same root underlying the words friend and bond or joint. A successful study relationship requires interpersonal skills that also contribute to the hevrutah learning experience. Mayer nurtures those relationships in her role as Bet Midrash director. She also strives to help students connect their text study with their personal spiritual journeys and contemporary questions and issues. "I want students to discover how Talmud [and/or Torah] can nourish them, can be a source of inspiration," she says. "I want students to come to the Bet Midrash and really stretch their thinking into another realm. Once they have that, they can pass it onto other Jews [and/or Christians] and our evolving religious civilization will stay fresh, alive and meaningful. " * Note: Translation for story of Resh Laquish by Yair Lipshitz, Paideia Scholar in Residence 2006-2007, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem [bracket additions are IFRS insertions] http://www.ITc.edu/site/c.igLPIWOEKrF/b.2263859/k.84DBffake a Moment to Learn About Hevrutah and the Bet Midrash.htm

“MIDRASH” David Wolpe

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR STUDIES IN JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY JEWISH WRITERS Cohen, Jeremy. Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. 2007 Flusser, David. Jesus [2nd edition]. 1998 ____________. Jewish Sources in Early Christianity. 1987 Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, et al. Christianity in Jewish Terms. 2000 Greenberg, Irving. For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity. 2004 *Isaac, Jules. Jesus and Israel: A Call for the Necessary Correction of Christian Teaching on the Jews. 1971 ____________. The Teaching of Contempt: Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism. 1964 Klenicki, Rabbi Leon. Towards a Theological Encounter: Jewish Understandings of Christianity. 1991 Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. 2006 Levine, Amy-Jill and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2011 Spiegel, Shalom. The Last Trial (Legends on the Sacrifice of Isaac). 1979 Vermes, Geza. Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels. 1973 ____________. The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. 2003 CHRISTIAN WRITERS Boys, Mary C. Has God Only One Blessing?: Judaism as a Source of Christian SelfUnderstanding. 2000 Crossan, J. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Jewish Mediterranean Peasant. 1991 Davies, W.D. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism. 1948 Dunn, James D. The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity. 1991 Fisher, Eugene. The Jewish Roots of Christian Liturgy. 1990 Freyne, Sean. Galilee Jesus and the Gospels: Literary Approaches and Historical Investigations. 1988 Haight, R. Jesus. Symbol of God. 1999 Lenhardt, Pierre. A I 'Ecoute d'Israel, en Eglise. 'Car de Sion Sort la Torah et de Jerusalem la Parole de Dieu'''. 2006 Meier, J. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 1991 Schurer, E. The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus. 1961 Thoma and Wyschogrod. Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation. 1987 Yoder, John Howard I M. Cartwright & P. Ochs, eds., The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited. 2003 48