Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews by James Carroll Page B
Authors: James Carroll
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which their fathers walked. So I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem.'" Or Amos 5:21–6:1: "I hate and despise your [ Israel's) feasts, I take no delight in your solemn assemblies ... Woe to those who are at ease in Zion."
29. Matthew 23:37–39.
11. Destroy This Temple
1. Avishai, A New Israel, 3.
2. Tracy, Dialogue with the Other, 4.
3. See, for example, Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 819. The first quest would have been the nineteenth-century effort discussed earlier, and the second would have come after World War II. The distinguishing note of the third quest, in the words of Tom Holmen, "is precisely its laying a clear emphasis and stress on the Jewishness of Jesus." From an unpublished paper, "The Jewishness of Jesus in 'The Third Quest.'"
4. Horsley and Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom; E. Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus; Borg, Jesus, A New Vision; Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth.
5. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 829. Critics of Crossan, and the Jesus Seminar generally, complain of a perpetuation of the "criterion of dissimilarity," as if the "real" teachings of Jesus are only those that are dissimilar from Jewish teachings of his era and from second-century Christian teachings. This criterion leads to the conclusion that almost nothing reported in the Gospels actually originated with Jesus. But a philosophical assumption about human identity underlies this approach—namely, that we have our identity by virtue of the ways in which we differ from those around us. A contrasting view assumes that we have our identity in community, sharing it with others. Thus when Jesus cites the so-called golden rule in Matthew 7:12, the fact that it appears earlier in Ecclesiasticus 31:1; and Tobit 4:15 does not mean, ipso facto, he did not say it. Indeed, as a Jew familiar with Jewish Scriptures, why would he not have?
6. "Many academicians and clergy feel that, when it comes to the study of the New Testament, most laypersons are simply lacking in the skills, training, and interest requisite for their assimilating in depth what for academicians, clergy, and seminarians are, after all, areas of expertise and full-time commitment. The scientific study of the New Testament and the quest for the historical Jesus are held to be properly the domains of experts only ... Many Christian clergy have learned in their own seminaries that those New Testament traditions most responsible for spawning ill-will between Christians and Jews do not genuinely go back to the historical Jesus. Yet they do not see how they can communicate ... the idea that only some of the gospels' teaching go back to Jesus." Michael J. Cook, "Turning the Corner in Dialogue: A Jewish Approach to Early Christian Writings," in Fisher, Interwoven Destinies, 23.
7. Commenting on this painting, Jaroslav Pelikan asks "if there would have been an Auschwitz if every Christian church and every Christian home had focused its devotion ... on icons of Christ not only as Pantocrator, but as Rabbi Jeshua-bar-Joseph, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, in the context of the history of a suffering Israel and a suffering humanity." Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries, 20. Significantly, Fredriksen, whose book Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews is subtitled A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity, used this painting on its cover.
8. Fredriksen points out ( Jesus of Nazareth, 109), in fact, that when a sick person is described in Mark (6:56) as grasping at the "fringe" of the garment of Jesus, the Hebrew that stands behind the Greek original would have referred to the tzitzit that are still worn by devout Jews.
9. An example of how deeply ingrained in Christian thinking this "demonstrate a difference" impulse is can be found even in the Vatican's repentance declaration "Memory and Reconciliation," issued in March 2000. "Love of neighbor, absolutely central in the teaching of Jesus, becomes the 'new
29. Matthew 23:37–39.
11. Destroy This Temple
1. Avishai, A New Israel, 3.
2. Tracy, Dialogue with the Other, 4.
3. See, for example, Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 819. The first quest would have been the nineteenth-century effort discussed earlier, and the second would have come after World War II. The distinguishing note of the third quest, in the words of Tom Holmen, "is precisely its laying a clear emphasis and stress on the Jewishness of Jesus." From an unpublished paper, "The Jewishness of Jesus in 'The Third Quest.'"
4. Horsley and Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom; E. Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus; Borg, Jesus, A New Vision; Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth.
5. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 829. Critics of Crossan, and the Jesus Seminar generally, complain of a perpetuation of the "criterion of dissimilarity," as if the "real" teachings of Jesus are only those that are dissimilar from Jewish teachings of his era and from second-century Christian teachings. This criterion leads to the conclusion that almost nothing reported in the Gospels actually originated with Jesus. But a philosophical assumption about human identity underlies this approach—namely, that we have our identity by virtue of the ways in which we differ from those around us. A contrasting view assumes that we have our identity in community, sharing it with others. Thus when Jesus cites the so-called golden rule in Matthew 7:12, the fact that it appears earlier in Ecclesiasticus 31:1; and Tobit 4:15 does not mean, ipso facto, he did not say it. Indeed, as a Jew familiar with Jewish Scriptures, why would he not have?
6. "Many academicians and clergy feel that, when it comes to the study of the New Testament, most laypersons are simply lacking in the skills, training, and interest requisite for their assimilating in depth what for academicians, clergy, and seminarians are, after all, areas of expertise and full-time commitment. The scientific study of the New Testament and the quest for the historical Jesus are held to be properly the domains of experts only ... Many Christian clergy have learned in their own seminaries that those New Testament traditions most responsible for spawning ill-will between Christians and Jews do not genuinely go back to the historical Jesus. Yet they do not see how they can communicate ... the idea that only some of the gospels' teaching go back to Jesus." Michael J. Cook, "Turning the Corner in Dialogue: A Jewish Approach to Early Christian Writings," in Fisher, Interwoven Destinies, 23.
7. Commenting on this painting, Jaroslav Pelikan asks "if there would have been an Auschwitz if every Christian church and every Christian home had focused its devotion ... on icons of Christ not only as Pantocrator, but as Rabbi Jeshua-bar-Joseph, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, in the context of the history of a suffering Israel and a suffering humanity." Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries, 20. Significantly, Fredriksen, whose book Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews is subtitled A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity, used this painting on its cover.
8. Fredriksen points out ( Jesus of Nazareth, 109), in fact, that when a sick person is described in Mark (6:56) as grasping at the "fringe" of the garment of Jesus, the Hebrew that stands behind the Greek original would have referred to the tzitzit that are still worn by devout Jews.
9. An example of how deeply ingrained in Christian thinking this "demonstrate a difference" impulse is can be found even in the Vatican's repentance declaration "Memory and Reconciliation," issued in March 2000. "Love of neighbor, absolutely central in the teaching of Jesus, becomes the 'new
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