If I may say so, a volume eminently usable as an introduction whether for general reading, in dialogue groups, or as a classroom text, is my own Interwoven Destinies: Jews and Christians through the Ages (Mahwah: Paulist/Stimulus, 1993). The papers are taken from the plenary sessions of the Ninth National Workshop on Christian-Jewish Relations in Baltimore. The idea was to provide a Jewish and Christian reflection on each major historical period from the first century beginnings to the present. These are: Daniel Harrington and Michael Cook on the New Testament; Martha Himmelfarb and John Gager on "the Parting of the Ways" (the Patristic/Talmudic period); Jeremy Cohen and Edward Synan, FRSC, on the Medieval developments; and Alice Eckardt and Arthur Hertzberg, respectively, on the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. The dual perspectives on our shared history, I believe, will provide enriching surprises for both Jewish and Christian readers, as well as a reliable guide.

With regard to the early period of the relationship, previously mentioned Alan F. Segal of Barnard College, Columbia University, has put out a useful study in Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), concluding with reflections on "twin sons with different missions." As in Perelmuter, the "siblings" analogy for the relationship between the Christian Church and Rabbinic Judaism is more satisfying both as a matter of historical chronology and as a theoretical paradigm for organizing the historical data. Jeffrey Siker's Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in Early Christian Controversy (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991) traces how Abraham, originally viewed by St. Paul as the "father of Jews and Gentiles alike," came in the second century, for example in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, to be seen as the "father of Christians alone," thus marking the shift from Paul's arguments in favor of "Gentile inclusion" to the patristic Church's move to "Jewish exclusion."

In "Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It": The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca and London: Cornell University, 1989), Jeremy Cohen, professor of history at Ohio State and Tel Aviv universities, undertakes a systematic survey of biblical and later Jewish and Christian usages and interpretations of Genesis 1:28. The result is a masterful piece of scholarship that will debunk many stereotypes Jews and Christians have of each other (e.g., what Jews think Christians believe about "original sin," and what Christians think the text conveys about ecological concenin). Particularly striking are the commonalities and parallels of understanding the text despite the polemical stance between the two communities over the centuries.

Two volumes of the American Interfaith Institute series may also be placed in this category, although as collections they are somewhat eclectic. Both edited by James H. Charlesworth of Princeton University, they are Jews and Christians Exploring the Past, Present and Future (New York: Crossroad, 1990) and Overcoming Fear Between Jews and Christians (New York: Crossroad, 1992). Together, the two volumes comprise 24 articles by Jewish and Christian scholars in several fields. There are, for example, articles by major biblical scholars such as Charlesworth, J. Christian Beker, Roland Murphy, D. Moody Smith, R. Alan Culpeper and Martin Hengel. There are specific historical articles, such as Hans Hillerbrand on Martin Luther, Grover Zinn on "The Victorine Exegetical Tradition," W. Barnes Tatum on Clement of Alexandria's "Philo-Semitism," and Roger Fenn on the Holocaust. And there are more contemporary reflections, such as those by A. Roy Eckardt, Hugh Anderson and Christopher Leighton, to mention just a few.

A scholarly article worthy of note is Matthias Neuman, osb, "Carolingian Monastic Writers and the Ninth-Century Jewish Question," The American Benedictine Review (Vol. 42:3, Sept. 1991) 251-281, which turns out to be of more general interest with regard to the larger trends of Jewish-Christian history than one might imagine from the title.

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