Submitted to Archbishop of Canterbury by 'Love Never Fails', 27 Jan, 2021
The Church of England’s recent study on Christian–Jewish relations, "God’s Unfailing Word" (Dec 2... more The Church of England’s recent study on Christian–Jewish relations, "God’s Unfailing Word" (Dec 2019), calls for Christian repentance about historic antisemitism, turning away from past offences to reshape our future together. One prime opportunity for the Church to put these noble ideas into practice relates to the upcoming eight-hundredth anniversary of the Synod of Oxford, which is to canon law what Magna Carta is to civil law. The Synod in April 1222 was responsible for instituting the notorious badge of shame upon English Jews, the forerunner of the yellow star. It inflicted church tithes upon Jews, despite preventing them from turning to churches for safekeeping of property, and forbade the building new synagogues. It curtailed all social interaction between Jews and Christians as much as possible, not only denying Jews the freedom to enter churches or employ Christian servants, but also threatening with excommunication any Christians who developed friendships with Jews or sold them provisions. As a shocking visual warning against the danger of friendship, its ‘opening ceremony’, so to speak, featured the degrading and burning at the stake of a deacon who had converted and married into Judaism; this became the common-law precedent for the death penalty for heresy thereafter. The attached research paper sets out what is known through publicly available documents, and invites the Church of England to conduct further archival investigations and then take an active lead in preparing for a national service of repentance and reconciliation on the 800th anniversary of the Synod in spring 2022.
I propose that we should no longer view the Wisdom psalms as a ‘late’ convergence of two independ... more I propose that we should no longer view the Wisdom psalms as a ‘late’ convergence of two independent understandings of the phrase ‘the fear of the LORD’, represented by the books of Proverbs and Deuteronomy. Instead, I believe Proverbs implicitly presupposes a familiarity with the Deuteronomic revelation of the LORD in the Exodus and at Mount Horeb. This is argued here on the basis of three different lines of reasoning, all centred on the use of the key phrase: (1) the book’s structural composition, (2) the interpretation of the literary figures of Wisdom and Folly, representing two conflicting approaches to the ‘wisdom’ enterprise, and (3) the significance of foundational stories as interpretative frameworks for the term ‘fear’.
Submitted to Archbishop of Canterbury by 'Love Never Fails', 27 Jan, 2021
The Church of England’s recent study on Christian–Jewish relations, "God’s Unfailing Word" (Dec 2... more The Church of England’s recent study on Christian–Jewish relations, "God’s Unfailing Word" (Dec 2019), calls for Christian repentance about historic antisemitism, turning away from past offences to reshape our future together. One prime opportunity for the Church to put these noble ideas into practice relates to the upcoming eight-hundredth anniversary of the Synod of Oxford, which is to canon law what Magna Carta is to civil law. The Synod in April 1222 was responsible for instituting the notorious badge of shame upon English Jews, the forerunner of the yellow star. It inflicted church tithes upon Jews, despite preventing them from turning to churches for safekeeping of property, and forbade the building new synagogues. It curtailed all social interaction between Jews and Christians as much as possible, not only denying Jews the freedom to enter churches or employ Christian servants, but also threatening with excommunication any Christians who developed friendships with Jews or sold them provisions. As a shocking visual warning against the danger of friendship, its ‘opening ceremony’, so to speak, featured the degrading and burning at the stake of a deacon who had converted and married into Judaism; this became the common-law precedent for the death penalty for heresy thereafter. The attached research paper sets out what is known through publicly available documents, and invites the Church of England to conduct further archival investigations and then take an active lead in preparing for a national service of repentance and reconciliation on the 800th anniversary of the Synod in spring 2022.
I propose that we should no longer view the Wisdom psalms as a ‘late’ convergence of two independ... more I propose that we should no longer view the Wisdom psalms as a ‘late’ convergence of two independent understandings of the phrase ‘the fear of the LORD’, represented by the books of Proverbs and Deuteronomy. Instead, I believe Proverbs implicitly presupposes a familiarity with the Deuteronomic revelation of the LORD in the Exodus and at Mount Horeb. This is argued here on the basis of three different lines of reasoning, all centred on the use of the key phrase: (1) the book’s structural composition, (2) the interpretation of the literary figures of Wisdom and Folly, representing two conflicting approaches to the ‘wisdom’ enterprise, and (3) the significance of foundational stories as interpretative frameworks for the term ‘fear’.
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