“Remain in Your Calling”: Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians, by J. Brian Tucker
The primary aim of this in-depth study is to show how Paul negotiates and transforms existing social identities of Messiah-followers in order to extend his mission in Corinth.1 It attempts to accomplish this through a study of 1 Corinthians that builds on the author’s previous doctoral findings in 1 Corinthians 1–4 published in monograph…
Read MorePaul: The Pagans’ Apostle, by Paula Fredriksen
Paul persists as a polarizing and puzzling figure today. Judging by the New Testament, this was no less true in the first century! But are we stumbled by the same things as his contemporaries? Paula Fredriksen, author of Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, insists that we misread Paul if we neglect the thorough Jewishness and…
Read MoreHealing the Schism: Barth, Rosenzweig, and the New Jewish-Christian Encounter, by Jennifer M. Rosner, and Converging Destinies: Jews, Christians, and the Mission of God, by Stuart Dauermann
In 1965, Nostra Aetate, the Roman Catholic statement on relationships with non-Christian faiths, declared that “the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from Holy Scripture.” On the fiftieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted, “Today as a result, Jews and Catholics meet not as enemies…
Read MoreOrigins and Destiny: Israel, Creation and the Messianic Jewish Canonical Narrative
Origins and Destiny: Israel, Creation and the Messianic Jewish Canonical Narrative Paul L. Saal The question of origins is one that affects each of us in a very personal and profound way. A person adopted at infancy may always wonder about the nature, personality and outcome of his/her biological parents, recognizing that deeply programmed within…
Read MoreMaking Israel’s Story Our Own: Toward a Messianic Jewish Canonical Narrative
Making Israel’s Story Our Own: Toward a Messianic Jewish Canonical Narrative Stuart Dauermann, PhD The Importance of Narrative Communal narrative is indispensable and central to community formation, community identity, community survival, and community life. It is an issue that could mean everything to the future of Messianic Judaism. Indeed, I would say that our narrative…
Read MoreBeginning with the End: the Place of Eschatology in the Messianic Jewish Canonical Narrative
A “canonical narrative,” as defined by R. Kendall Soulen, is “an interpretive instrument”—a hermeneutical tool—that orders the Bible’s complex story line so as to present it as “a theological and narrative unity.”1 While the Bible describes people and events set in the distant past, its narrative transcends that past. It includes prophetic and apocalyptic material,…
Read MoreThe Meaning of Salvation in Five Stories
Editor’s note: This sermon illustrates the use of storytelling as described by Dr. Bjoraker. Rabbi Klayman was originally addressing both spiritual seekers and Yeshua-followers looking for a way to present salvation to others. Destruction of the Temple: Story Number One A story in the Babylonian Talmud and in another rabbinical source seeks to explain why…
Read MoreThe Place of Story and Storytelling in Messianic Jewish Ministry: Rediscovering the Lost Treasures of Hebraic Narrative
“God made man because He loves stories.” (Elie Wiesel)1 W hy are story and storytelling so important for Messianic Jewish ministry? A principal reason is that Yeshua the Messiah used stories as his primary teaching method. He used stories to teach both the non-literate or semi-literate am ha aretz (the common folk) in Galilee as…
Read MoreFrom the editor – Issue 32
Everyone loves—and needs—a story. Through story we discover who we are and how we are to live. Men and women are formed by the stories they hear as children; societies and cultures are shaped by the stories they tell and re-tell over the generations. The foundational truths of Judeo-Christian culture are conveyed in stories. Judaism…
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