How Judaism and Christianity Can Talk to Each Other - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > December 1990

How Judaism and Christianity Can Talk to Each Other

The basis for an interreligious dialogue

By Jacob Neusner

Recently I wrote a book with Father Andrew Greeley entitled The Bible and Us: A Priest and a Rabbi Read Scripture Together (Warner Books, 1990) that required me to focus on the nature of Jewish-Christian dialogue. The experience led me to conclude that much of the dialogue today is based on the faulty premise that Judaism and Christianity are fundamentally similar. While it is true that on initial exploration Christianity looks somewhat like Judaism to a believing Jew, on closer inspection Christianity is soon seen to differ radically. In the end, for a believing Jew, the Christian family of […]

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Footnotes

1.

Mishnah is the code of Jewish law prepared by Rabbi Judah haNasi (“The Prince”) in about 200 A.D.

2.

The Talmud is the rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah. The Palestinian, or Jerusalem, Talmud was completed in the fifth century A.D., and the Babylonian Talmud was completed in the sixth century A.D. The latter is longer and considered the more authoritative.

3.

A genre of rabbinic literature, Midrash refers to a nonliteral elaboration of biblical texts.

4.

See also, Marcus Borg, “What Did Jesus Really Say?” BR 05:05.

5.

An apologetic, in the theological or philosophical sense, means a defense or justification for a cause and not an excuse or acknowledgement of a fault.

6.

By reach closure, I mean the materials were given their final order and form.

7.

(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).

8.

See Samuel Dresner, “Rachel and Leah: Sibling Tragedy or the Triumph of Piety and Compassion?” BR 06:02.