Elliott Wolfson’s Open Secret offers valuable insights for those able to penetrate the book’s abstruse style. In the final chapter (coined “Postface”), Wolfson finally reveals his method and hypothesis. (Incidentally, he also reveals that this was the first part he wrote, which was supposed to be the introduction, but in the middle of writing he…

In Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law, Rabbis Ethan Tucker and Micha’el Rosenberg explore the complex history of the discourses of gender and halakha in Jewish prayer. They provide enough data to challenge what is often the dominant narrative in traditionalist halakhic settings and they offer new ways of framing the discussion of gender…

Though geared for a Christian audience, the question motivating the author is a deeply Messianic Jewish one. The challenge of the Gospel of John for a Jewish follower of Yeshua is this: if the Fourth Gospel is anti-Semitic, how can any Jew embrace its message? The author reveals to us the existential problem which motivated…

Several years ago, a number of my friends confessed to me that they no longer identified with the Messianic Jewish movement. Each of them highlighted their encounter with modern biblical criticism as a significant factor in their decision. The pre-scientific features of the Bible’s origins stories, the presence of human agendas in biblical histories are…

James Brownson’s Bible, Gender, Sexuality has gained a prominent place in church debates about homoerotic behavior. Brownson asserts that a revisionist view affirming same-sex unions can be just as biblical as the traditional view. However, his major premise is suspect. As Andrew Goddard puts it: Brownson has a commitment ‘to establish a wider, transcultural vision…

A Review by Jason Moraff In this collection of essays, Markus Bockmuehl seeks to illuminate how Jewish halakhah undergirds the foundation of what became Christian public ethical discourse. The book is divided into three major sections ordered mostly chronologically, beginning with Yeshua1 himself, then the apostles and early Jesus movement, and then the early patristic…

A review by Rabbi Russell Resnik When I first learned that Walter Brueggemann had written a book opposing Zionism and questioning modern Israel’s claim to the land of Israel, I was troubled. Brueggemann is an outstanding Christian scholar of the Old Testament and a highly credible voice. After I read the book, though, I was…