Word: christiane
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is no real precedent for this. The last time Christianity and Judaism had knockdown debates was during medieval "disputations" convened by Christian authorities and decisively rigged against the Jews. Although the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 renounced the Roman Catholic teaching that Jews were Christ killers and John Paul II acknowledged Jews' ongoing presence by visiting a synagogue, postwar papal discourse has focused on Christianity's view of Judaism, not the reverse, and steered serenely around fundamental controversies. Jesus of Nazareth takes the next huge step: "a Pope taking seriously what a Jew says--and says critically--about...
...Ratzinger, then head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had struck up a professional correspondence after the rabbi wrote the Cardinal an admiring note about something he had published. Ratzinger blurbed A Rabbi Talks as "by far the most important book for the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last decade...
...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...
Neusner, in his Rhinebeck, N.Y., home, is equally unfazed by the Pope's repurposing of his argument. "You can't expect him to get circumcised," he says. "He's still a Christian, and I'm still a practitioner of Judaism. But the two positions can consider the same text and identify where they converge and where they part company. I think it's terrific...
...other players in the Jewish-Christian conversation. "'Pope Takes Seriously What Rabbi Has to Say' is a message that will be picked up by 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...