Attias, Jean-Christophe. The Jews and the Bible. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. xv+235 pp. $22.95 (paper).

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-545
Author(s):  
Barry Dov Walfish
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
The Bible

Useful Foils: Lessons Learned From Jews in John Wyclif's Call for Church Reform

2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-145
Author(s):  
Ian Christopher Levy
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
John Wyclif

AbstractAs an ardent advocate for Church reform in the late fourteenth century, John Wyclif found in Jewish history and practices a wealth of material upon which to draw when chastising the present Christian clerical class. Wyclif likens modern friars and prelates to the Jews of the Bible, and concludes that in their avarice and zeal for unscriptural human traditions they have in fact have proven themselves even greater enemies of Christ than the Jews themselves. Though Jews are consistently used as foils, they are not the recipients of gratuitous epithets. Noteworthy is the fact that Wyclif most often employs the term perfidia when speaking of Christian clerics rather than Jews. When he does speak of avarice, treachery, and murder on the part of the Jews those occasions are largely limited to the clerical class, and then in an effort to admonish the Christian clergy of his own day. As Wyclif read the New Testament accounts of Christ and the apostles, thereby forming his vision of an ideal Church, so he read of their adversaries and accepts them as the model for all who oppose his idealized Church.

Fr. Tadeusz Sroka. Dziennik izraelski czyli religijny wymiar ludzkiego losu (An Israeli diary, or the religious dimension of man's fate). Warsaw: Spokania. 1985.

2004 ◽  
pp. 411-415
Author(s):  
Stanisław Krajewski
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World

This chapter looks at Fr. Tadeusz Sroka's An Israeli Diary, or the Religious Dimension of Man's Fate (1985). An Israeli Diary takes the form of excerpts from a diary written in the years 1970–71. Each entry opens with press news about political events in the Middle East, followed by pondering over the Bible or the fate of the Jewish people. There are hardly any data concerning contemporary Israel, except a few facts showing Arab intransigence and the hopeless situation of Israel ‘in human terms’. The author says very little about Jewish history and nothing about Judaism; the Talmud is not mentioned, even in places where it could have been useful, for example in reflecting on capital punishment. The author's perspective is metaphysical; he assumes that the election of Israel is eternal. This, incidentally, is the official standpoint of the Catholic Church today, confirmed more than once by John Paul II. As a result, Israel is seen as the centre of the world. Next, the fate of the Jews reveals the ultimate perspectives of the human condition: on one pole the Holocaust, on the other the re-creation of the state by visionaries, in defiance of reason. Israel is a sign for the world, and today's secular Israel is an appropriate sign for the contemporary materialistic world.

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