The relationship between Christianity and other religions is a vital issue in the world today. This book provides a fresh perspective by exploring how Christian theology has been shaped over two millennia by interaction with its original religious “other”, continuing Judaism. It begins by describing the origins of the “classic framework” in Christianity that correlates claims about the gospel with judgments about Judaism as resistance to the new thing God has done in Jesus Christ. This framework binds Christianity to the task of interpreting Jewish presence, which then renders engaging with Judaism as well as rehearsing judgments about it integral to Christian theology’s development. The central chapters of the book demonstrate this in relation to three pivotal periods of Western history: 1050-1300 CE, early modernity and the first half of the twentieth century. They reveal the classic framework to have been remarkably resilient, despite sometimes radical adaptation, before, in and after modernity. The insights of Franz Rosenzweig about Judaism as Christianity’s “internal foe” resonate deeply with the book’s historical analysis. Does this mean that non-relativistic Christian theology must remain intrinsically anti-Jewish? The book concludes that it need not, if it can renounce its historic stance of hermeneutical comprehension.

Exploring the link between German biblical interpretation and anti-Semitism, this book is a fresh, comprehensive study of leading German exegetes, concluding that although Nazism brought anti-Semitic exegesis to a head, age-old thought structures provided powerful legitimation for oppression.

The point of this book is simple: to make Christians aware of a story that they have not been told--the story of relations between Christians and Jews. This involves tracing the church's anti-Judaism to its source in the gospels and the Book of Acts and describing the development of the church's displacement-replacement theology according to which we new Gentiles, spiritual, universal, inclusive Christians replace the old, carnal, ethnocentric legalist and works-righteous Jews in the favor of God. The story also details the actions of the churches, specifically a long chain of canons (laws) governing relations between Jews and Christians, all the way from banning Christians for socializing or dining with Jews, marrying Jews, and asking rabbis for blessings, to requiring all Jews to live in ghettos. This history of actions comes down to the present and its consequences in the Holocaust in which all the killers were Christians and in the Nazi laws governing Jewish behavior. Each such law took its precedent from a canon law passed by a council of the church. The recent rash of bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers and synagogues reminds us of how deeply this bigotry is embedded in people. The point of making people aware of anti-Judaism is to prompt them not to shrug if off when scripture readings regularly teach contempt for Jews with the rhetoric of vilification. Words are important. Teaching contempt should be called out and rejected. This can be done pastorally and gently, but it should be done. Otherwise the church's language reinforces a deeply embedded bigotry. Most Christian pastors are unaware of this reality and prone to thinking that anti-Judaism is not a serious problem for the church. Hence most anti-Judaism in Christian preaching is unintentional. Awareness of the story of Christian anti-Judaism prods us to move from unintentional anti-Judaism to intentional teaching of respect for Jews and Judaism.

Since the Nazi holocaust took the lives of a third of the Jewish people of the world, the Christian Church has been engaged in a self-examination of its own historical role in the creation of anti-semitism. In this major contribution to that search, theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explores the roots of anti-semitism from new perspectives.

Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged is volume three in the NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY STUDIES IN BIBLE & THEOLOGY (NACSBT) series for pastors, advanced Bible students, and other deeply committed laypersons. Author Barry E. Horner writes to persuade readers concerning the divine validity of the Jew today (based on Romans 11:28), as well as the nation of Israel and the land of Palestine, in the midst of this much debated issue within Christendom at various levels. He examines the Bible's consistent pro-Judaic direction, namely a Judeo-centric eschatology that is a unifying feature throughout Scripture. Not sensationalist like many other writings on this constantly debated topic, Future Israel is instead notably exegetical and theological in its argumentation. Users will find this an excellent extension of the long-respected NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY.

In Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate, Professor William Nicholls, a former minister in the Anglican Church and the founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, presents his stunning research, stating that Christian teaching is primarily responsible for antisemitism.

"No one would disagree with the assessment that Christians, over the centuries, have been guilty of antisemitism, sometimes with barbarous results. The real question is not whether individual Christians have been antisemites, but whether antisemitism is somehow ingrained in the very roots of Christianity, in its very essence. Rosemary Ruether has declared that antisemitism is the "other side of Christology," the inevitable fallout of placing Jesus at the right hand of the Father. The contributors to this volume consider that larger question from several vantage points. their findings are vitally important for Christians and Jews alike. Not only do they explore the beginnings of Christian antisemitism, they help us understand the dynamics of the religious impulse for all peoples and all times."-Publisher.

Series: Jewish and Christian Heritage, 1 Is the Gospel of John anti-Jewish? What would this mean in the context of the original writer, of his community, the final text and its first readers? Who, precisely, are the Ioudaioi who are so scathingly criticized in the Gospel - “Judeans”, perhaps, or some other more specific group than the Jewish nation as a whole? What are the implications for New Testament study and for Christian theology in the light of the troubled history of relations between Judaism and Christianity? The papers in this volume were presented at the special international colloquium held in January 2000 in Leuven, Belgium, which was convened to assemble the world’s leading experts on John’s Gospel and issues of anti-Judaism for a thorough assessment of the state of the question. The result is a fascinating panorama of the issues and of current approaches to them, and an extremely valuable resource for further work on anti-Judaism in the Christian tradition. Contents: 1. Wrestling with Johannine Anti-Judaism: A Hermeneutical Frame-work for the Analysis of the Current Debate - Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville 2. The Embarrassment of History: Reflections on the Problem of ‘Anti-Judaism’ in the Fourth Gospel - James D.G. Dunn 3. Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Theological Problem for Christian Interpreters R. Alan Culpepper 4. The Fourth Gospel and the Salvation of Israel: An Appeal for a New Start Stephen Motyer 5. Anti-Judaism in Revelation? A Response to Peter Tomson - Jan Willem van Henten 6. Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel - Judith M. Lieu 7. Escape Routes as Dead Ends: On Hatred towards Jews and the New Testament, Especially in the Gospel of John - Simon Schoon 8. The Coming Son of Man Became Flesh. High Christology and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John - Bertold Klappert 9. “Abraham is our Father” (John 8:39)The Gospel of John and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Hendrik Hoet 10. Biblical Thinking as the Wisdom of Love - Roger Burggraeve 11. The Identity of the ‘Jews’ for the Readers of John - Johannes Beutler 12. The ‘Jews’ in the Gospel of John - Henk Jan de Jonge 13. The Depiction of ‘the Jews’ in John’s Gospel. Matters of Behavior and Identity - M.C. de Boer 14. Speaking of the Jews .‘Jews’ in the Discourse Material of the Fourth Gospel - Raymond F. Collins 15. ‘Jews’ in the Gospel of John as Compared with the Palestinian Talmud, the Synoptics and Some New Testament Apocrypha - Peter J. Tomson 16. ‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel - Adele Reinhartz 17. The Nicodemus Enigma: The Characterization and Function of an Ambiguous Actor of the Fourth Gospel - Jean Marie Sevrin - 18. “Salvation is from the Jews.” The Parenthesis in John 4:22b - Gilbert van Belle 19. John and Judaism - C. Kingsley Barrett 20. “You Are of Your Father the Devil” in Its Context: Stereotyped Apocalyptic Polemic in John 8:38-47 - U.C. von Wahlde 21. Scriptural Dispute between Jews and Christians in John: Literary Fiction or Historical Reality? John 9:13-17, 24-34 as a Test Case - Maarten J.J. Menken 22. The Farewell Discourses (John 13:31–16:33) and the Problem of Anti-Judaism - Jean Zumstein 23. The Gospel of John: Exclusivism Caused by a Social Setting Different from That of Jesus (John 11:54 and 14:6) - James H. Charlesworth 24. Anti-Judaism in the Book of Revelation - Jan Lambrecht 25. The Canon – Understanding of Revelation – History of Reception and Effects. Problems of a Biblically Oriented Theo...

The articles brought together here use anti-Jewish disputational literature to shed light on the rise of anti-Judaism in the West. Christian theologians at this time were particularly interested to work out the relationship between Christianity and Judaism because they were in the process of clarifying their own doctrines under the influence of classical material which had not been fully utilised since late Antiquity. In this context a response to the continued and vociferous Jewish rejection of Christianity seemed all the more urgent. It is not for nothing that the output of anti-Jewish polemics rose sharply towards the end of the 11th century and simultaneously became more and more sophisticated. Many of the anti-Jewish ideas of later centuries go back to what was formulated in the 11th and 12th centuries.