Nazarene Jewish Christianity

No matter what we would make of Jesus, says Schalom Ben-Chorin, he was first a Jewish man in a Jewish land. Brother Jesus leads us through the twists and turns of history to reveal the figure who extends a "brotherly hand" to the author as a fellow Jew. Ben-Chorin's reach is astounding as he moves easily between literature, law, etymology, psychology, and theology to recover "Jesus' picture from the Christian overpainting." A commanding scholar of the historical Jesus who also devoted his life to widening Jewish-Christian dialogue, Ben-Chorin ranges across such events as the wedding at Cana, the Last Supper, and the crucifixion to reveal, in contemporary Christianity, traces of the Jewish codes and customs in which Jesus was immersed. Not only do we see how and why these events also resonate with Jews, but we are brought closer to Christianity in its primitive state: radical, directionless, even pagan. Early in his book, Ben-Chorin writes, "the belief of Jesus unifies us, but the belief in Jesus divides us." It is the kind of paradox from which arise endless questions or, as Ben-Chorin would have it, endless opportunities for Jews and Christians to come together for meaningful, mutual discovery.

After centuries of persecution, oppression, forced migrations, and exclusion in the name of Christ, the development of a Jewish “Quest for the Historical Jesus” might seem unexpected. This book gives an overview and analysis of the various Jewish perspectives on the Nazarene throughout the centuries, emphasizing the variety of German voices in Anglo-American contexts. It explores the reasons for a steady increase in Jewish interest in Jesus since the end of the eighteenth century, arguing that this growth had a strategic goal: the justification of Judaism as a living faith alongside Christianity.

In this evangelistic booklet Daniel C. Juster challenges both Jews and Christians to follow Jesus.

Students of American history know of the law's critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere. Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system's legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination-- a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.

The essays in this book consider issues of tolerance and intolerance faced by Jews and Christians between approximately 200 BCE and 200 CE. Several chapters are concerned with many different aspects of early Jewish-Christian relationships. Five scholars, however, take a difference tack and discuss how Jews and Christians defined themselves against the pagan world. As minority groups, both Jews and Christians had to work out ways of co-existing with their Graeco-Roman neighbours. Relationships with those neighbours were often strained, but even within both Jewish and Christian circles, issues of tolerance and intolerance surfaced regularly. So it is appropriate that some other contributors should consider 'inner-Jewish' relationships, and that some should be concerned with Christian sects.

A landmark study on the original first century Jewish-Christian belief. Must reading for anyone who wants to prove what the true original apostolic faith was, for themselves.