Pope to Neusner: Go Girl!

Haaretz :

In his new book, 'Jesus of Nazareth,' the pope devotes no fewer than 18 pages to a deep theological discussion that he has carried on with Neusner. The headline of an article about the book in the Catholic News Service says it all: 'After saints, most-quoted author in pope?s new book is a U.S. rabbi.'

This is no small thing. Judeo-Christian dialogues in which the head of the Catholic Church takes part personally are rare indeed. In fact, since the Middle Ages, when the Church, for its own reasons, organized theological debates - known as disputations - between Christian and Jewish clergy (the identity of the winning side was, of course, known in advance), no such public, theological exchange has taken place between Judaism and Christianity. ...

The roots of the theological dialogue between the American rabbi-professor and the German cardinal lie in a provocative book Neusner published in 1993, bearing the presumptuous title "A Rabbi Talks with Jesus." In that book, Neusner imagines himself present among the crowd that gathered at Capernaum, above the Sea of Galilee, to listen to the charismatic Nazarene. He then proceeds to pick apart Jesus? teachings there, and find holes in them from the viewpoint of a practicing Jew.

Neusner says that his goal in that book was to explain why, if he had been present at the Sermon on the Mount, "I would not have become a follower of Jesus." The reason is that the criterion Jesus himself lays down - "Think not that I have come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I have come not to destroy but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17) - according to which the sermon he delivers on the mount gives him a status equal to that of Moses, is in contradiction to the Torah, Neusner explains.

He argues that Jesus contradicts his own declaration, and of course the Torah, by forgoing the sanctity of the Sabbath and placing himself above the commandment to honor one's parents. Beyond this, Neusner views Jesus? formulation (invoked insistently in the Sermon on the Mount), "You have heard that it was said [in the Torah] ... But I say unto you ..." as the most grievous sin of all: Jesus puts himself above the Torah and, it follows, above God. ...

Newsner says that if he had succeeded in the mission of that book, Christians would have adopted Judaism. "That won't happen overnight, but it will happen at the End of Days," Neusner says, with a faint smile in the corner of his mouth. "The Torah says that if one treats it as a criterion for truth - as Christianity and Islam do - Judaism is bound to triumph."...

Ratzinger, it turns out, was deeply impressed by what Neusner had to say, and not in the least offended by the frontal attack on the founder of Christianity. On the contrary: After reading the manuscript of "A Rabbi Talks with Jesus," he sent Neusner his compliments, which were used to publicize the book. "He wrote that it was the best book written within the framework of the Judeo-Christian dialogue in the past 10 years and he recommended it to his students when he taught at the Vatican. That was very generous of him," Neusner notes. At the same time, he adds, the impact at the time of his book - which was translated into Russian, German, Swedish, Italian and Polish - is nothing like what it is now, after it has been so extensively quoted by the pope in his new work.

Like Neusner, Pope Benedict XVI also has no fear of confrontation.... In his new book, the pope terms Neusner "a great Jewish scholar" and adds that the rabbi's arguments aided him in his personal search for the answers embedded in the Scriptures. Neusner, according to the pope, is conducting the theological dialogue "with profound respect for the Christian faith."