Great new website for post-supersessionist NT Studies

David Rudolph, a Messianic Jewish New Testament scholar has just launched a new website aimed at fostering post-supersessionist New Testament scholarship. David did his PhD in Cambridge under Markus Bockmuehl (on 1 Corinthians) and he is an excellent scholar. His thesis has just been published by Mohr Siebeck (link here). It is an outstanding and fascinating piece of work.

The website, entitled MJ Studies, looks to be a fantastic resource for scholars moving beyond the classical supersessionist paradigm of NT interpretation. You can find it here.

Here is a little note from the site on post-supersessionism:

New Testament scholarship is revisiting its understanding of how the writers of the New Testament understood Jews and Judaism. Since the patristic period, supersessionist interpretation of the New Testament has been widely accepted. Layers of scholarship have been constructed around the premise that a "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity took place during the apostolic era, and that the New Testament's authors viewed the Church as having replaced or superseded the Jewish people as the people of God.

Twentieth-century scholars began to question these historical and theological assumptions. Major studies appeared in the last quarter of the century that challenged supersessionism. Nodal points were pressed. Standard canonical narratives were called into question. The result: today we are seeing a new school of thought emerging within the field of New Testament studies which some refer to as post-supersessionist interpretation.

There are various kinds of post-supersessionist interpretation. Messianic Jewish (MJ) post-supersessionist interpretation maintains that the New Testament writers affirmed (1) God’s covenant fidelity to the Jewish people, (2) that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah and participated in the unique identity of the God of Israel, (3) that Jesus-believing Gentiles were full members of God’s people without becoming Jews, and (4) that Jesus-believing Jews should continue to live as Jews in keeping with Israel’s calling to be a distinct and enduring nation.
Rock on!

Comments

Alex Smith said…
I've always been interested in the Messianic Jews, although I hadn't heard of post-supersessionism before. Thanks for introducing me to the issues involved. I think we sometimes take onboard traditional theology without asking enough questions :)

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