This book brings together Jewish and Christian scholars engaged in fresh thinking about the relation of their respective covenant communities. Speaking theologically and ecumenically, the contributors introduce readers to current attempts to construct a Jewish theology of Christianity and a Christian theology of Judaism.
While Christians and Jews have always been aware of their religious connections - historical community, overlapping theology, shared scriptures - that awareness has traditionally been infected by centuries of mutual suspicion and hostility. As this important volume shows, however, theologians and scholars of Judaism and Christianity alike are now radically rethinking the relation between their two covenant communities.
Jews and Christians presents the best of this work, introducing readers to a coherent Jewish theology of Christianity and a Christian theology of Judaism. Here are leading Christian and Jewish thinkers who have engaged in extensive conversation, who take each other's work seriously, and who avoid the pitfall common to Jewish-Christian dialogue - watering down distinctive beliefs to accommodate both partners. Indeed, these pages show how the new theological exchange goes to the roots of that "olive tree" of which both Judaism and Christianity are branches, and the book as a whole represents post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian dialogue at the highest theological level.