Word: benedicts
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...choosing Neusner as his muse, Benedict selected a man as formidable and controversial in the field of Jewish studies as the Pope is in Catholicism. An expert on the sprawling literature of the 1st through 6th century rabbis who shaped modern Judaism, Neusner is an empire builder, a central figure in wrestling an examination of Judaism into America's universities. He accomplished this through brilliance (he developed his own secularly comprehensible synthesis of rabbinics), superhuman productivity (he has written more than 950 books, although he will admit to a certain reprocessing of material) and a knack for grooming gifted prot?...
Still, Neusner was "amazed" when he heard that Ratzinger, now Pope, has revisited it in detail--and in print. When a papal confidant told the Catholic News Service that it was "one of the reasons" Benedict had undertaken his entire two-volume Jesus of Nazareth project, the somewhat puzzled but delighted professor called it "an academic love letter...
...fact, a close reading of the Pope's chapter suggests more a marriage of convenience. Benedict is preoccupied with what he sees as the Gospel's overriding message of Jesus' divinity, even in passages that liberal Christians read primarily as straightforward injunctions to help the poor and powerless. Having a rabbi help make that case is novel and convenient. Regarding one verse, Benedict writes that "Neusner shows us that we are dealing not with some kind of moralism, but with a highly theological text, or, to put it more precisely, a Christological one." He acknowledges the rabbi's point that...
...anyone who reads their diocesan paper," says Fisher of the Bishops' conference. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jew who teaches New Testament studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and has her own Jesus book, The Misunderstood Jew, says both undergrads and interfaith experts can profit from the Neusner-Benedict exchange. Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser to the American Jewish Committee, says it is in some ways "the full maturation of the modern Catholic-Jewish encounter." But perhaps it may mature further still. Asked what he would like to write next, Neusner says, "I'd like to do a book with...
...that pontiffs don't make mistakes. They do, and a Holy Father only invokes his own infallibility when he is laying out incontrovertible Church doctrine. Still, the Pope is not expected to err, and the faithful are not accustomed to hearing him publicly correct his own missteps. And certainly Benedict XVI, a man of rock-solid (some might say stubborn) convictions, would be the last person you would expect to waffle or backtrack on his key pronouncements. Which is why perhaps the most troubling pattern of his reign is Benedict's notable tendency to do just that...