Journal of Ecumenical Studies

The time is long overdue for American evangelical educators, clergy, and laity to penetrate responsibility into Christian scriptures in order to discover and appraise the historical Jesus, which can help to illuminate and correct the misgivings and misdirection about the Jews found in Christianity. Admonitions attributed to Jesus, such as “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they teach you” (Mt. 23:2a) and “salvation is from the Jews” (Jn. 4:22b), mandate the Ecclesia to engage the Synagoga on matters of Heaven and Earth. Seeking and participating in Jewish-Christian dialogue is an exciting and exacting learning experience for the enrichment and betterment of two sibling religions committed to biblical narrative and teaching.

Incarnation theology brought a radical departure from traditional Israelite religion. Christological views are a non sequitur in Jewish thought and offer an ideological justification of compromising the authority of Jewish tradition, namely, the organic relationship of God-Torah-Israel (religion, culture, people-hood). By bestowing equality, identity, and salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (see 1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 4:26–29; Eph. 2:11–22; and Col. 3:11), the process of redefinition and replacement of Second Temple Judaism began in earnest. This is transmitted in a number of core events (birth and infancy narrative, last meal, trial and execution of Jesus, resurrection) and in vilified proclamations associated with the Jews’ desire to kill Jesus (e.g., Mt. 27:25; Jn. 8:31–47; 1 Thess. 2:14–15) dispersed in the four Gospels and in the Pauline Letters. Nonetheless, this reviewer concurs that the historical Jesus is a charismatic first-century [End Page 161] proto-rabbi whose torah is exclusive of the evolving changes toward Judaism in the apostolic age and beyond. Concise textual exegesis and criticism can forge an indisputable link between Jesus and the Jews, a lesson that Christians ought to know and that Jews need to discover.

Phelan—senior pastor of two churches, professor for twenty-five years at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago (the sole graduate school of the Swedish-based Evangelical Covenant Church in the USA), and veteran participant in serious Evangelical-Jewish dialogue—tackles issues of composition, interpretation, and scriptural message of Second Temple Judaism, including Second Testament references, for contemporary Christian understanding of classical Jewish beliefs regarding salvation, eschatology, and related theology. His methodology for helping the reader access teachings and meanings of scriptural and rabbinic teachings follows more or less the standard Hebrew scriptures approach: An introduction discusses standard questions of source, structure, and composition; analysis, suggested by chapter headings and subtitles within chapters; and commentary, which draws out its main themes and also comments on individual verses and problems of interpretation. Phelan engages Hebrew scriptures in God talk (God of Abraham, Moses, Commandments, Prayer, Righteousness, and more), which reads as philosophical conduits to reason about humanity and God’s presence therein, by positing, identifying, and defending a Hebrew style of philosophy and forms of interpretation (e.g., sinner and sinful acts, and levels of response from “the soul that sins it shall die” [Ezek. 18:4] to “Let him repent and he will find atonement” [the Holy One, Blessed be He, rabbinic theology]). At chapter’s end, the author compares and contrasts Hebrew Jewish Weltanschauung with Christian reflections, acknowledging near total and total agreement and, if called for, respectful disagreement.

Two-thirds of the book covers the biblical, rabbinical, and medieval epochs of Jewish civilization. The last third reflects on Jews in early modernity (Spanish expulsion and inquisition, negative fallout from Martin Luther and the Reformation, etc.), Emancipation (Scientific Study of Judaism, Jewish Enlightenment, Reform Judaism and opposition, the rise of modern Antisemitism), Modern Zionism to the establishment of the Third Jewish Commonwealth in 1948 (origins of Christian Zionism, Shoah to the State of Israel), and Dialogue and Hope, before, during, and after the Shoah (selected Shoah theologians, Jewish responses, four dangerous...