Christianity
Blood LibelsMonday, January 31, 2011 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Among the unexpected consequences of the January 9 shooting tragedy in Tucson has been the introduction into American public discourse of a term seldom used and poorly understood.
Mainline Protestants and IsraelThursday, July 29, 2010 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
So enamored are today's mainline Protestant churches with the Palestinian Arab "narrative" that they seem to have altogether forgotten, or denied, their own prior history of support for Israel and Zionism. Indeed, some of them appear to be trying to derail the Zionist enterprise altogether.
Editors' Picks
The Original Jews for Jesus Mark Edwards, Marginalia. It wasn’t unusual in Jesus’ time to find Jews claiming that they could heal long-distance and raise the dead. Why was it only Jesus who attained the status of a god?
A Tale of Two Pamphlets Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. As England debated readmitting Jews, an anonymous pamphlet blamed Jews for the deaths of Christian children. An answering pamphlet absolved the Jews—but blamed Catholic priests.
Is God Perfect? David Baggett, Tom Morris, First Things. Yoram Hazony finds the changeable, limited God of the Torah more compelling than the perfect God of classical theism. Critics say Hazony has an "unrefined conception of omnipotence."
Ascending to Heaven James Tabor, Bible History Daily. Though Paul of Tarsus decisively broke with Judaism, his vision of heaven in the Book of Corinthians was not so different from contemporaneous Jewish ideas.
Original Dialectic Alan Brill, Kavvanah. Unlike most Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik acknowledged the doctrine of Original Sin—but argued that it did not corrupt man, but split him in two.
Anti-Jewish Music David Nirenberg, New Republic. In The Music Libel Against the Jews, Ruth HaCohen argues that contempt for "Jewish" musical forms has defined Western music. That same sentiment pervades the Arab world today.
How December 25 Became Christmas Andrew McGowan, Bible History Daily. It's no coincidence that Christmas is nine months to the day from the Feast of the Annunciation—which marks the day Jesus was conceived.
Caught in the Crossfire Matthias Schulz, Spiegel. Was pre-Islamic Yemen a multicultural paradise, where Jews, Christians, and pagans lived in perfect harmony until the Byzantines ruined everything?
Frankincense Resurrected Matthew Kalman, Times of Israel. 1,500 years after the last frankincense tree disappeared from the Holy Land, Dr. Elaine Solowey has grown the first shoots of the tree whose sap was worth more than gold.
Variations on a Theme Geza Vermes, Standpoint. Discrepancies among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and the Masoretic biblical text point to interpretative ferment in the time of Jesus.