Author: Jason F. MoraffPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Acts has long sat atop or near the top of lists of “anti-Jewish” or “supersessionist” NT texts due to its rhetoric and portrait of “the Jews.” This study seeks to read Acts’ images of Jews within Judaism. It argues that, rather than using the Jews as a negative “other” to construct Christian identity, Acts intertwines the Way, Paul especially, with “the Jews” into a shared identity as Israel, God’s covenant people, on a common repentance-journey. Although Acts, through its characters, calls all Israel to turn to Jesus, it does so within the house of Israel and for the sake of the Jewish people. Even by the end of the book, Acts retains the confident hope that Israel can be reoriented toward and restored by Jesus. The perspective that arises from this portrait of Israel is that Acts, like its main character Paul, finds its home “among my own nation,” that is, among “the Jews.”