All tagged Judaism

The Epistle of Jude, a Christian Midrash

The Epistle of Jude, a Christian Midrash

Risto Saarinen

The Letter of Jude has been called “the most neglected book of the New Testament.” Some classical theologians, among them Martin Luther, have held that Jude is not only dependent on but even contained in II Peter. Exegetes still wrestle today with the proper classification of Jude. Is it a “catholic letter,” meaning that it belongs together with I and II Peter and, maybe, the Pastoral Epistles? Or does it rather indicate a proximity to Jewish Christianity, belonging therefore with Matthew and Mark? Is it a “genuine letter,” composed for the purpose of solving a real controversy, or a treatise against heresy in general?…

Review of "Luther's Jews" by Thomas Kaufmann

Review of "Luther's Jews" by Thomas Kaufmann

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

This book is very painful to read. It is also absolutely necessary. “Luther’s attitude to the Jews, though it makes him incomprehensible, indeed unbearable, to people of our time, is very much of his time” (153). This in brief is Kaufmann’s thesis: that Luther’s anti-Judaism and premodern anti-Semitism is representative, not unique, of the sixteenth-century church—small consolation for Lutherans and Christians. At yet, at the same time, we see in Luther two polarities of thought that are so mutually opposed as to be fundamentally bewildering...