The authors seek to identify the recurrent tensions, the blatant points of emphasis, the recurring indications of conflict and polemic. Framing the issue of the disposition of the Scriptural heritage in broad terms, they describe what characterizes the Gospels and the Mishnah, the letters of Paul and the Tosefta. In other words, if they take whole and complete the writings of first and second century people claiming to form the contemporary embodiment of Scripture's Israel and ask what they all stress as a single point of insistence, the answer is self-evident. Nearly every Christianity and nearly all known Judaisms appeal for validation to the Scriptures of ancient Israel, their laws and narratives, their prophecies and visions. To Scripture all parties appeal GCo but not to the same verses of Scripture. In Scripture, all participants to the common Israelite culture propose to find validation GCo but not to a common theological program subject to diverse interpretation. From Scripture, every community of Judaism and Christianity takes away what it will, but not with the assent of all the others.

Author Biography

Bruce Chilton, New Testament and Judaic scholar, is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. He is a co-author of The Body of Faith (Trinity), God in the World (Trinity), and Comparing Spiritualities (Trinity).Baruch Levine is the Skirball Professor Emeritus of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University . He has written extensively in the field of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies. Among his publications are commentaries on Numbers 1-20 and Numbers 21-36 in The Anchor Bible Commentary, the commentary on Leviticus in Torah Commentary (1999), and In the Presence of the Lord (1974). He is past president of the American Oriental Society, the Association for Jewish Studies, and the Biblical Colloquium, and is a former board member of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. He holds a Ph.D. in Mediterranean Studies from Brandeis University and earned a B.A. in comparative literature from Case Western Reserve University.Jacob Neusner is the author or editor of over 700 books including The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism.