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Old February 14th, 2012 #19
Mike Parker
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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[Not watched.]


Quote:
Thomson Rutherford says:
February 8, 2012 at 12:09 am

Amy-Jill Levine, who describes herself as an observant Conservative Jew, is a Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University. Here is the link to a 60-minute lecture she delivered recently to a mostly Christian audience at UCSD, entitled “Reassessment of Jewish-Christian Relations.”

In the lecture, she literally glowers at her audience – with resentment, belligerence, and condescension – as she describes how intrinsically anti-Jewish the New Testament “document” is. It is, she suggests, only an inferior re-making of the books of the Old Testament (a name she doesn’t like and wants to replace with some Hebrew term I didn’t catch). She relates a number of ‘humorous’ anecdotes illustrating how ignorant Christians are.

As a teacher of the New Testament to mostly Christian students, she has several clear messages:

1. Christianity is inferior to Judaism and was a weak substitute for it. For this and other reasons, the two need to remain completely separate religious traditions and Christians need to leave the Jews alone and stop trying to observe Passover and Hanukkah.

2. She has contempt for New Testament writers, including Paul (Saul of Tarsus), and regards them as evilly anti-Jewish. She wants more Jews to study the New Testament critically so that they will understand just how anti-Semitic a “document” it is.

3. Christians need to continue to do penance (ask forgiveness of Jews) till the end of time for their treatment of Jews and their disrespect for Judaism. But nevertheless, like the parallel rails of a railroad track, the two religions will eventually converge in the distance. (Somehow, I get the impression that she thinks that the inferior Christianity will throw off its silly ideas about salvation and divine grace and will merge into the superior Judaism.)

4. Zionism and aliya are essential aspects of modern Judaism. Accept it.

It does seem that Nos. 1 and 3 above are contradictory, doesn’t it?

I wonder how well Prof. Levine’s predominately Christian students accept her patently obvious attempts to weaken and Judaize the tenets of their religion. I also wonder how fully they buy into her proselytizing about Zionism. [Rhetorical questions?]
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/02/jewish...hite-gaze.html