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George
M. Smiga
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM Paperback: 180 pages. Paulist Press. 2008. ISBN-10: 0809144573 reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 11/11/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * * review: John the Evangelist and his Christian community had recently gone through very hard times with their Jewish neighbors. Had John and other Christians had their way, they would have at a minimum still been regarded as Jews -- Messianic Jews to be sure, believing that the Messiah of Israel had come and that he was Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son. Other Messianic Jews had continued to be regarded as Jewish. But the other Jews who controlled access to the local synagogue had expelled John and his fellow followers of Jesus. John's people were no longer fellow-worshippers of the followers of Moses. John was emotionally scarred and bitter. In THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM, Roman Catholic theologian George M. Smiga of Ohio explains how elements of that small but contentious, early Christian-Jewish quarrel spilled over into John's Gospel -- with disastrous centuries-long consequences still with us today souring Christian - Jewish interactions. Possibly as a result of the fight that expelled him and his fellow believers from their synagogue, John preached a uniquely unbridgeable gulf between light and darkness, between believers in Jesus and any and all who did not receive him as Messiah of Israel. By the time John wrote, the temple in Jerusalem was long destroyed and its central liturgical and legal role in Jewish religion and culture was a thing of the past. There were no more high priests, temple guards, other staff, merchants selling animals for sacrifice or temple Scribes. The aristocratic, largely perhaps pro-Roman Sadducees, once closely linked to temple worship, had ceased to dominate Jewish practice. The previously somewhat marginalized seven schools of Pharisees (Jesus's personal torah was regarded as close to at least one of those schools) now increasingly dominated a splintered Judaism. John's late first century enemies were Pharisees. But John's enemies were not necessarily Jesus's foes a half century earlier. In Father Smiga's view, John made a bad mistake when he read back into the days of observant Jew Jesus of Nazareth the quarrels that Christian John & Co. had mounted with neighboring Jews. Jesus had been cynically put to death not by non-existent Jewish legal authority but rather by the personal decision of Roman procurator Pontius Pilate -- and on a cross at that, a peculiarly Roman punishment for crimes against the state. Pilate had appointed the Chief Priests of the Jewish religion. They and their staff were therefore beholden to Pilate and were expected as their first duty to keep the peace. After seeing Jesus welcomed with palms on his last entry into Jerusalem, "the authorities" (Greek: hoi archontes), a faction of the Rome-beholden Temple aristocracy, warned Pilate that they needed his help to keep the lid on, to assure that the Jesus people did not disturb the peace during traditionally nationalistic Passover worship in Jerusalem. In writing up his life of Jesus, light of the world and son of God, John rather carelessly misrepresented the main, most lethal opponents of Jesus during Jesus's three year long public ministry. John at times misidentified them as Pharisees (political "outs" in Jeus's day), at other times simply "the Jews" (Greek: hoi Ioudaioi). And John threw those very dubious title about as if all Pharisees or indeed every single Jew in the world was determined to snuff out the one, true light of the world, to injure or kill their true Messiah and thus to deserve severest punishment. Father Smiga's book is conceived as an aid to Roman Catholic preachers. It identifies and clarifies (including by means of Rabbinical interpretations) every passage of John's Gospel in all the major Masses prayed during the currently enforced three year liturgical lectionary cycle. Smiga then examines each passage in each text for signs of possibly misleading anti-Jewish sentiment or argumentation and shows preachers how to mitigate the damage. And damage there has been down the centuries, starting with early Church fathers, and culminating in the writings of early fifth century patriarch of Constantinople and Doctor of the Church, Saint John Chrysostom. Since the 1960s, following the lead of the Second Vatican Council, Catholics have been re-examining their attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. No longer is it permissible to see Catholicism as having "replaced" Judaism as the best and only way to worship God. For Jews of good conscience, the faith of Moses remains an authorized path to God. Preachers must take care not to categorize Jews as Christ Killers. For every sinner of every religion cast a stone at their redeemer. African and Third-World Catholics are in error when they substitute their own ancient traditions for Judaism as the root of their own Christianity. This book, modest in intent, is quite good. It lends itself to illuminating discussion by Jewish-Christian study groups. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/452532126.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 11/12/2011 name of review: John The Evangelist projected his own quarrels with Jews sixty years back into the time of Jesus rating: * * * * review: The Shoah or Holocaust, aka Hitler's "Final Solution" or Nazi effort to exterminate all the Jews of Europe, launched worldwide reactions of horror among those who were neither victims nor victimizers. Many Christians began an examination of conscience, asking "Am
I to blame?" "Did my church or my religion down through its history
contribute towards a 20th Century atmosphere in which wholesale
slaughter of people just because they were Jews came to seem almost
natural?"
In the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, addressed those and related issues head on. In October 1965 Pope Paul VI officially promulgated "Nostra Aetate" ("In Our Age"), the Council's DECLARATION ON THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. Here are some excerpts from Nostra Aetate, Section 4, on the church's relation with Jews: -- "Since the spiritual
patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred
synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and
respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological
studies as well as of fraternal dialogues."
-- "the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone. -- "the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ." (bold type mine). That third selection above provides the setting for Father Geore M. Smiga's 2008 book, THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM. For Christians, perhaps even Nazis, have read certain passages in the New Testament as Divine indictments of all Jews everywhere and at all times as killers of God Himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Intended readers of THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE are Catholic priests and deacons who read to the faithful during a three year liturgical/lectionary cycle of Masses for Sundays and major feasts those passages assigned from John's Gospel. The greatest part of Smiga's text proceeds through the three cycles presenting first the entire text assigned from John, singling out any texts that might be misread as showing universal condemnation of all Jews as enemies of God, interpreting them in their historical context and adding insights from rabbinical commentators on related Jewish practices. Smiga focuses on one Greek phrase that occurs 87 times in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John "Hoi Ioudaioi." The obvious, literal, out of context, English translation of Hoi Ioudaioi is "The Jews" or in a few instances "The Judeans." Do you doubt that Hoi Ioudaioi is important to John the Evangelist? Then notice that of the 87 times that descriptive phrase is used in the four gospels, fully 71 instances occur in John. George Smiga faults the evangelist for projecting back into the lifetime of Jesus, at least 60 years before John's text reached its final form, quarrels with other Jews unique to John and his Jewish Christian community. To grasp John's mistake of projecting onto Jesus problems of later decades, Smiga invites readers to accept "... three stages in
the development of the gospels. Stage one is the life and death of
Jesus ... The resurrection marks the beginning of Stage two. In this
period the apostles began to proclaim Jesus as the risen Lord. ... in
this proclamation the apostles interpreted the words and deeds of Jesus
from stage one in the fuller light that they received after the
resurrection. Moreover, they adapted the message to meet the needs of
the people to whom they spoke. Stage three identifies the process by
which oral preaching of the apostles was written down to become our
present gospels" (Introduction).
The author, stage by stage, then lays out some of the principal players and influences at work and building toward the written gospels: (1) Judaism (before and
after destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem by future Roman Emperor
Titus in 70 A.D.),
George Smiga's argument is complex. Stage one Judaism
was not monolithic. There were, for instance, seven schools of
Pharisees and Jesus's personal torah was close to at least one of them.
Pharisees tolerated Roman rule so long as Jews were free to practice
the Faith of Moses.(2) Roman Imperial rule and (3) Jesus, his supporters and opponents. Collaborating actively with Roman Governor Pontius Pilate were the Chief Priests whom Pilate appointed, the aristocratic Sadducees, Scribes, Elders, rulers and other Jews whose livelihood revolved around the Jerusalem Temple. The historical Pharisees were not notably hostile, to Jesus during Phase one, were most certainly not his central opponents, and, in any event, lacked the concentrated power to advise Romans on life and death issues delegated by Pilate to the rulers (Greek: hoi archontes), chief priests, Scribes, Elders, Sadducees and to the sanhedrin synod. But by the time of Stage three and the writing of John's gospel in the 90s, the Temple and its old-time power sharing with Rome were things of the past. The early churches have been busily proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the Pharisees were the most powerful Jewish brotherhood. To Nero and other Emperors, Christians were just one of many kinds of Jews. John's gospel is noted for its cosmic dualism: Jesus is the Word of God, Light of the world, Savior of all men. Who believes this is saved. Who does not believe is condemned. The three synoptic gospels all earlier than John -- Matthew, Mark and Luke -- describe a far richer array of opponents to Jesus than does John. John, for instance mentions neither Herodians nor Sadducees. Scribes and Elders are mentioned only once by John. Common to John and the synoptic writers are only three opposition gorups: "the chief priests, the authorities, and the Pharisees." John displays a strong tendency to lump all opponents everywhere into two camps, to a lesser extent Pharisees, to an overwhelming degree simply Hoi Ioudaioi. Why? Smiga argues that the Pharisees must have been the leading Jews disputing with Christians about Jesus as Messiah and God. And ultimately the Pharisees succeeded in expelling access by John and his followers from any synagogue. Once John's Christians were expelled from their synagogue, they generalized their opponents from Pharisees to hoi Ioudaioi. No great harm done thereby. But great harm has in fact arisen because the evangelist anachronistically projected back sixty years into Stage one and into the life and death of Jesus the oversimplified view of Jesus's opponents that Pharisees and "the Jews" of John's (but not Jesus's) experience with Jews. All of these ideas are presented in Smiga's "Introduction to the Gospel of John" (pp. 1 - 23). The remaining 160 pages are absorbing but merely unroll in minute detail Smiga's view of John's Gospel as read aloud in church verse by verse throughout three liturgical years. THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE also updates the flux and state of play among scholars both Jewish and Christian on anti-Judaism in the Christian gospels, in the works of early Church Fathers such as Agustine and Chrysostom and suggests ways that Christians and Jews can draw closer one to another. A very good read! -OOO- http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/d/UserReview-George_M_Smiga_THE_GOSPEL_OF_JOHN _SET_FREE_PREACHING_WITHOUT_ANTI_JUDAISM-74-1781670-215316-John_The_Evangelist_projected_his_own_later.html or http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/George_M_Smiga_ THE_GOSPEL_OF_JOHN_SET_FREE_ PREACHING_WITHOUT_ANTI_JUDAISM-1781670.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 11/13/2011 title of review: In John's Gospel who are "the Jews," mentioned 71 times? rating: * * * * review: At times in the First Century Christians were widely regarded (even by some Jews) as just another Jewish sect, Messianic Jews. Their Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth had been born, grew up a carpenter's son, taught for three years as a wandering rabbi and was sentenced to death on a cross by a Roman governor. End of story. Not quite! To George M. Smiga, author of THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM, the death of the Messiah ended Phase one of a three phase movement leading to creation of the four canonical gospels, epistles and the entire corpus of the New Testament. In Phase two, the apostles and other leaders preached about their Messiah, his wonders, his teachings and his commission from God his Father to save all men from sin. In this oral phase, apostles re-interpreted the life and Message of Jesus in the light of insights received after his resurrection from death Phase Three began when Paul, Matthew, Luke and John began to write up their recollections and interpretations of their Master. Phase three ended with John's gospel. John preached Jesus as the Light of the World. People who learned of Jesus had two stark choices: believe in Jesus and be saved or disbelieve in him and lose everything worth having. According to Father Smiga, John projected back sixty years in time unpleasant dealings with Jews in John's environment untypical of what Jesus experienced in the way of general opposition. For John and his community had recently been expelled from their synagogue, and probably all synagogues everywhere were denying that people who identified Jesus with God Himself could possibly remain Jews. Believing that to oppose Jesus any way, any time, even in good conscience, was a terrible sin, John attributed to Jesus forms and degrees of Jewish opposition not evident in the three Synoptic gospels and inherently implausible. Synoptics, for instance, identify more classes of opponents to Jesus than does John. John, for instance, never once mentions Herodians or Sadducees. And only once each does he speak of Scribes or Elders. Smiga argues that John tends powerfully to reduce Jesus's principal enemies to two: Pharisees and "hoi Ioudaioi," a term routinely but rarely accurately translated into English as "the Jews." Hoi Ioudaioi appears a total of 87 times in the four gospels, fully 71 times in John alone. Thus, down the centuries, churchmen, including Augustine, John Chrysostom and Luther could invoke passages in John plausibly interpreting "the Jews," all Jews, as primarily and uniquely responsible for killing the Son of God and calling down terrible punishment upon themselves. Since the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council, as George M. Smiga demonstrates at length, such interpretations are not permissible. Indeed Smiga's entire THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE is a manual designed for Catholic priests and deacons to preach accurately about all passages in Saint John's gospel that are read at masses during a three year liturgical cycle. The sacred texts, of course, may not be falsified but each time "hoi Ioudaioi" appears, its context must be noticed. In addition, editors of the series in which this book appears add rabbinical commentary on the Jewish context of incidents in John. *** THE GOSPEL OF JOHN UNLEASHED is not drenched in ultra-refined scholarly minutiae, though the author is familiar with trends in Johannine scholarship. A very good read. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Saint Ignatius Loyola - THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-gospel -of-john-set-free-george-m-smiga/1012225244?ean =9780809144570&itm=1&usri=george% 252bm%252bsmiga%252b-%252bthe% 252bgospel%252bof%252bjohn%252bset%252bfree =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 11/14/2011 title of review: Jews, Christians and the Gospel of John rating: * * * * review: My book review's title "Jews, Christians and the Gospel of John" pretty well covers the bases of Father George M. Smiga's 2008 THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM. The Holocaust, Shoah, Hitler's Final Solution of killing as many Jews as his Nazi armies and Gestapo could lay hands on -- that unspeakable 20th Century murder frenzy -- seared the consciences of millions of Christians. In the 1960s he Catholic Church in various documents and initiatives of or associated with its Second Vatican Council with shock and sorrow recognized that a long theological tradition of anti-Judaism had made it very hard for Catholics effectively to oppose Hitler's non-theological, racial anti-Semitism. So the Church examined its own conscience, according to George Smiga, and did not like what it found. Smiga's GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE purports to be a mere, popular "how-to" hand book for Catholics -- preachers, laity in the pews, people wanting to make amends for past wrongs to Jews -- on how to defang the Gospel of John. The church's new thesis is that if we know John's Jewish context, then we can handle the personal anger and anachronistic projections of his community's quarrels of the 90s A.D. back into the 30s A.D. when Jesus lived, taught and was executed upon a Roman cross as a disturber of the Roman peace. And this pragmatic task George Smiga performs very well. He examines every text of the Gospel of John that appears in a three-year cycle of lectionary readings at Catholic Masses, especially the Passion Narrative -- so much less nuanced than the accounts of the three Synoptic gospels when it comes to identifying the principal Jewish opponents of Jesus the Messiah of Israel. Not all Pharisees and not all Jews hated Jesus. Equally valuable, in my opinion, is the broader context in which George Smiga locates his concrete reflections and commentaries on the Gospel of John and its prima facie anti-Jewish polemics. For Smiga portrays a late First Century world in which not only John's Messianic Jewish Christian community is expelled from its local synagogue, but the same thing apparently happens to Jewish Christians everywhere. The presumably very bitter controversies preceding this monumental expulsion of Messianic Christians call to mind Malay-majority Malaysia expelling Chinese-majority Singapore in 1965. Down the centuries not only did Jews and Christians stop caring for one another, they also stopped talking to one another, learning from one another. Or if there was any talk, it was monolog, not dialog. The Septuagint (aka LXX), an inferentially Divinely inspired 3rd Century B.C. Jewish-approved translation into Greek of the Jewish Scriptures, eventually spared Greek Christians the need to read the Torah in its original language. Christians were, however, happy to tell Jews, condescendingly to dictate to them, what was right and wrong in Judaism. And some Church fathers, notably Cyprian, Melito of Sardis and John Chrysostom created a mini-theology of anti-Judaism: gentiles had accepted Jesus in huge numbers, most Jews rejected him. Moreover (you) Jews "killed your Lord in the middle of Jerusalem" (Melito). Theological anti-Judaism sowed, according to George Smiga, within Christian civilization, including even the stained glass windows of cathedrals, an unintended evil seed: race-based anti-Semitism. And a literal reading of several passages in John's gospel involving "the Jews" provided one basis for Christian theological anti-Judaism. The answer today to history's evil is to reconceive Jesus as he truly was: an observant Jew, faithful to the Law, an admirer of Moses, a man who accepted the title Rabbi. He lived and died a Jew. It was the sins of all mankind at all times that lifted Jesus up on that Roman cross. Do not, therefore, blame Jesus for Jews and Christians stopping talking and developing unhelpful, even hateful stereotypes for cross-community (mis)understandings. Whether to blame John's gospel is the topic of George Smiga's book. It is high time, said the Second Vatican Council, to right past wrongs. The Church must rediscover with great respect its Jewish roots. Christians must invite Jews to state "by what essential traits the Jews define themselves." Dialog must replace monolog, but will never do so unless "each side wishes to know the other, and wishes to increase and deepen its knowledge of the other" (Appendix I). Both Catholicism and Judaism are mystery religions. Each must therefore respect the other's mysteries in addition to its own. Ignorance is a sin. Ignorant religious confrontation is a greater sin. Hence now is the acceptable hour for Jews and Christians to become friends. After so much hate this is, alas, no easy undertaking. And yet good starts have been made here and there. The Jewish and Christian editors of the Paulist Press Stimulus series for which Smiga writes cite the Catholic Diocese of Albany as an early experiment in cordial, fruitful Catholic-Jewish interaction. George Smiga's THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE is meant, among other things, to be useful to Jewish-Christian inter-faith discussion groups. But is it really possible to purge certain passages in John from anti-Jewish connotation? The Catholic Church now thinks so and commands Catholics to do so. But Jewish discussion partners also have a powerful say in whether this can work. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-John-Set-Free- Anti-Judaism/dp/0809144573/ref=sr_1_3?s= books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319796667&sr=1-3 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 11/16/2011 Review title: Is there really so much anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John? Product Rating: * * * * Pros: How Evangelist John projected back 60 years onto Jesus John's personal problems with Jews. Cons: A certain "je ne sais quoi" opaqueness, heaviness in presenting facts and speculation. The Bottom Line: The writing trap that John fell into in writing his Gospel. How his expulsion from synagogue in the 90s was projected back onto the life of Jesus in the 30s. aohcapablanca's Full Review: Remember the 90s? (Either AD or CE, that is, take your pick.) The 90s were not a happy time for John the evangelist and his community of Messianic Jews. They had finally been decisively expelled from the local synagogue. Probably this had also happened throughout the Roman Empire to most Jewish Christians after a few decades when they seemed "just another sub-set among Jews." Christians may have been the first Messianics ever so expelled anywhere. But the claims that they had been making for their Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, finally grew to be too much over the top, too incredible, too sacriligious. "What, you want me to believe that the lowly carpenter's son was the Son of God? Or even more: God made man? No way!" And it wasn't as if John & Co. were content with peaceful coexistence with orthodox non-Messianics in the synagogue. No! The John people insisted that everyone in the congregation accept Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, Savior of the World, the only currently valid Way to God. How this expulsion impacted the Gospel of John and with what horrible unintended consequences down the centuries is the subject of THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM. George M. Smiga, an Ohio Catholic priest and theologian, is the author of THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM (2008), one of more than fifty titles in the Stimulus Book series issued by the Paulist Press. As the book's forward says: the late Helga Cromer (a much published author on Jews and Christians) created The Stimulus Foundation in 1977 "for the purpose
of producing publications aimed at
increasing mutual understanding between Christians and Jews."
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE is the first in a proposed sub-set of Stimulus books to study "the presentation of
Judaism in the books of the New Testament."
Contributions are by scholars who know how to write "at a very popular level." The series thesis is that early Christian communities said things both nice and not so nice about Jews and Judaism, and that the disparaging interpretations "set the stage for so much of the anti-Semitism in the centuries that followed." The subsequent Editor's Preface at some length begins to tell the story of how some of the earliest Church fathers read passages in John and the three Synoptic gospelers without grasping their Jewish context and thus laid the basis for a negative mini-theology of Judaism that has led millions of Christians falsely to regard all Jews everywhere as uniquely responsible for the Roman execution of the Messiah on that characteristically Roman instrument of punishment for insurrection or public disorder -- the cross. Father Smiga does a good job of speculating on what drove John to use the Greek description "hoi Ioudaioi" 71 of the 87 times that that expression occurs in the four Gospels. The obvious literal translation is "the Jews." And far too often "the Jews" and "the Pharisees" are used by John imprecisely when he means "some of the opponents of Jesus." The three synoptic evangelists might have called them rulers, chief priests, Sadducees, scribes, Herodians or something more precise. John anachronistically and far too broadly over-generalizes even as he projects his personal hurts back upon Jesus. (NOTE: George Smiga argues that after the destruction in 70 by future Emperor Titus of the Temple at Jerusalem, Pharisees quickly replaced chief priests, scribes, Sadducees, etc. as paramount leaders in Jewish worship and education. Hence it was probably Pharisees that John blamed for his expulsion from synagogue.) Smiga also argues that John and other evangelists committed the common error of projecting things about Jews and Judaism in their own contentious days that made John and his congregation feel angry and hurt back 60 years in time to the days when Rabbi Jesus lived, healed, taught, performed wonders, was obedient to Torah and was executed by Romans. Absent from the vetted sayings of Jesus are the potentially explosive anti-Jewish remarks of John. Readers primarily intended by Father Smiga are Catholics in the pews and the priests and deacons who preach to them over the three year liturgical/lectionary cycle. After a long, helpful "Introduction to the Gospel of John," Smiga goes through the three year cycle chronologically citing every text of John read in Masses of Sundays and major feasts. Smiga then adds his comments. Next, the Jewish and Christian editors add for each text such addenda as "Rabbinic Notes on the Account of the Death of Jesus: John 18:1 - 19:42." For example, one Rabbinic note is on the role of Jewish Temple policemen in the context of when one of them struck the bound Jesus on the face. This is presented not as an anti-Jewish passage but simply "typical police behavior against alleged dissidents ... merely a strict control of speech and acts in the presence of officials." THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE ends with --"Chart of Readings
from the Gospel of John in This Volume" (18 of them);
-- "Suggested Readings" in Ecclesiastical Documents and Books and Articles; -- "Appendices I and II: "Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews": -- selected Commission texts that apply to the real world the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1965) regarding Catholics and Jews; -- "Other Volumes in This (Stimulus Foundation) Series." This is not a book that you can race through once lightly and feel that you have "torn the heart out of" how the Gospel of John unwittingly lent itself to possibly provoked but certainly unjust Christian theological anti-Judaism and how theological anti-Judaism morphed later into race-based murderous anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler and others. There is simply too much to absorb in one sitting: facts, hypotheses, interpretations, the Second Vatican Council and more. The official documents of the Catholic Church since 1965 selected by George Smiga indicate a Church finally admitting or at least hinting at the existence of blameworthy interpretive spins on the Gospel of John by many earlier leaders, including eminent Fathers of the Church such as Cyprian, Melito of Sardis and John Chrysostom. Sooner rather than later, angry, hurt Jews and Christians stopped talking with and learning open-mindedly from one another, and also stopped reading one another's classics and scholarly productions. Christians killed Jews, persecuted Jews, marginalized Jews and devalued them, in many cases after invoking passages in John's Gospel. The Catholic Church has now ordered that all anti-Judaic interpretations of Sacred Scripture cease. All Catholics are obligated to notice, acknowledge and to be grateful to God for the Jewish components embedded in Catholic faith and practice. Catholics are to seek out Jews, listen to their self-definitions and complaints against Christians, ask for forgiveness and try to work with any local Jews who are willing -- and also with larger Jewish bodies -- to understand and value Jews today as they understand themselves. When two religions consider themselves mysteries at their core, Catholics must leave to God why He in fact chose not to terminate but to continue in existence his eternal Covenant with Abraham and Moses as a valid path to human salvation for Jews of good will and clear conscience. I am tempted to rate THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE as Five Stars, but a certain opaqueness of expression now and then and occasional repetitive overexplanations of knotty points reduce my rating to 4.4 Stars rounded down to Four. Recommended: Yes -OOO- p.s. Thank you DramaStef for making this book reviewable by epinions members. http://www.epinions.com/review/George_M_Smiga_ The_Gospel_of_John_Set_Free_Preaching_without _Anti_Judaism_epi/content_57031311731 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/smiga_john.html |