Bernard Green
In the Begining
Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures through the Ages
By Jaroslav Pelikan
Allen Lane 288pp £20 order from our bookshop
At a meeting in Oxford, two distinguished scholars, one a rabbi and the other a Catholic priest, were due to address an audience. The problem was raised of who should speak first. The rabbi, with an enigmatic smile, proposed that the priest speak first: ‘After all, yours is the older religion.’
Neither rabbinic Judaism nor Christianity is identical with the religion of what one calls the Tanakh and the other calls the Old Testament. Each is an interpretation for changed times of the ancient scriptures and traditions. For the Jews, the gap between the Tanakh and the vast, rich and complex
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