Abstract
One of the problems that has wracked the Church throughout its existence has been the Jews. They were the ones who heard the teachings of Jesus first-hand and witnessed his miracles in person, yet they did not follow him en masse. Nor did they convert, like so many others did, when missionaries reached out to them. Why?
The answer, the Church decided, was their stubbornness, which then developed into them being in league with the devil. This led to centuries of hostility, which became ever more violent the longer the Jews failed to recognize Jesus. The Enlightenment diminished the power of the Church, but two millennia of anti-Jewish preaching had seeped into the European psyche and culminated in the Holocaust.
This is the backdrop that Tyler Mayfield, Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, accepts and tries to rectify in a way that both asserts the validity of Judaism today and promotes Christianity’s vibrant message. He tackles head-on the uncomfortable reality that, in the words of Elizabeth Berkovitz, whom he quotes: ‘Without Christianity’s New Testament, Hitler’s Mein Kampf could never have been written’ (p. 41). But rather than engaging in apologetics for the past, he seeks to see how one of the most spiritually enriching times in the calendar, Advent, can be used to restore relationships between the two faiths.
Mayfield uses the fact that Isaiah features prominently in the readings on the Sundays preceding Advent to undo the supersessionist approach to Judaism by insisting that the Hebrew Bible be seen as a text of religious integrity in its own right, not just a precursor to Christianity. Isaiah still has enormous significance for Christians, but that does not detract from its independence of Christian teaching. This is a fine balancing act and one he describes as ‘a bifocal approach’ to Isaiah as he meticulously goes through the Advent lectionary and analyses the passages. Crucial to his approach is his view – long shared by Jewish scholars – that prophecy is not prediction. Isaiah and others were addressing the people of their own time, not looking centuries ahead: forthtelling rather than foretelling.
Thus Mayfield ridicules the idea that Isaiah has any inkling of a swaddled infant in a manger when uttering the Immanuel passage (7.10–16) and assumes that he is speaking about a there-and-then event, possibly the birth of Hezekiah to the wife of King Ahaz. Yet he also has no doubt that the passage carries wonderful resonances for Christians today and deepens their joyful worship. His key thesis is that Isaiah can be read differently by each faith without diminishing the other’s interpretation. For Christians to see Isaiah as only having relevance in terms of Christian theology, and for it to be incomplete without it, is a form of religious appropriation, which is not in accord with the new spirit of interfaith rapprochement. His book maps a liturgical route to Advent that celebrates both faiths without doing so at the expense of either one.