225 - Interpreting Difficult Texts: Anti-Judaism and Christian Preaching

Interpreting Difficult Texts:
Anti-Judaism and Christian Preaching
By Clark M. Williamson and Ronald J. Allen
Philadelphia, Trinity Press International, 1989. 144 pp. $10.95.

Anti-Judaism is a scandal -Auschwitz its harrowing mernory-often camouflaged in Christian preaching. Williamson and Allen, professors at Christian Theological Seminary, unravel the disgrace by canons of honesty, history, and theology. The theology is God's love for all. The history is Jewish commitment to a loving, forgiving God who graciously gives Torah. The answer is three correctives for Christian preaching: projecting positive images of Judaism, affirming the oneness of God for Jews and Christians, and correcting antiJudaism in biblical texts.

A provocative work to stir discussion, this book leaves behind crucial problems. Paradoxically, many "difficult" New Testament texts are likely inner-Jewish critiques from within the Jewish family. The book fails to recognize that both Jewish (Talmud) and Christian (New Testament) sequels to the Old Testament produce new "canons" for understanding it as a part of new wholes. And the radical difficulty about difficult texts

226 - Interpreting Difficult Texts: Anti-Judaism and Christian Preaching

remains in the differences between Jews and Christians about God's messianic visitation to Israel and the resurrection of Jesus-honestly, historically, and theologically.

Robert L. Brawley
Memphis Theological Seminary
Memphis, Tenn.