Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 151 of current research on the subject. While the original text facilitates the reader's own interpretation, they are integrated into Evans' interpretation, which is judicious and somewhat cautious without being reactionary. Both the texts and Evans' interpretation give substance to the author's claim that much hyped "Jesus research" in North America has not attended to the Jewish-Palestinian context of Jesus' life. Likewise the essay "Messianic Claimants of the First and Second Centuries" discusses nine "messianic kings" from Judas to Simon, complete with citations of primary sources and English translations. Since John Meier, whose work is generally appreciated by Evans, argues there is no clear evidence for messianic claims by or about any Jew in the Greco-Roman period except Jesus of Nazareth and Simon ben Kosiba (A Marginal Jew, 2:611), Evans' essay shows that the discussion offirst-centuryJewish messianism is still a matter of interpreting evidence, not merely collecting it, and that the two elements cannot be neatly separated. As Evans is aware, definition plays a key role here. The main contribution of this book is to provide readers with resources and reasons to see the Jesus of the Gospels as fitting into the context of first-century Judaism. While Evans acknowledges that the pictures of Jesus in the canonical Gospels are the products of Christian interpretation, he believes that a strictly historical approach will reveal a Jesus not fundamentally distorted by the church's creativity, which he tends to minimize. The book is thus not without its own apologetic theological agenda, though this is not made explicit as in the "Old" and "New" Quests. It is nonetheless somewhat strange to find Evans accepting the neutral, atheological view claimed by the Third Quest (e.g., pp. 46, 458). The "just a historian" claim can be made to serve many different perspectives. M. Eugene Boring Brite Divinity School Texas Christian University Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination, by Stephen R. Haynes. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995. 221 pp. $18.99 (p). We must begin with full disclosure:· In this book I am among the Christian Holocaust scholars· (along with Paul van Buren, Franklin Littell, Alice and Roy Eckardt, and others) who are criticized for continuing what 152 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 the author calls the Christian "witness-people" myth about Jews. It is pernicious theology, Haynes claims, and is promulgated by such unexpected writers as Walker Percy, Karl Barth, and Hal lindsey. Before I give my analysis of this work, it should be said that Richard L. Rubenstein, one of the most respected thinkers on the topic of the Holocaust, writes, "Especially important is Haynes' analysis of Christian Holocaust theology as a well-intentioned but dangerous continuation of the 'witness-people' tradition." After pointing out that "there are no Jews in Dante's purgatory," Haynes tells readers that a thesis of his book is that "Jews must always be special cases in products of the Christian imagination, because of the uniquely ambivalent place which the Jewish people inhabit there." So Professor Haynes (of Rhodes College in Memphis) presents his theory of the "witness-people myth" which he attempts to prove is "more subtle in its pernicious influence than pure Jew-hatred." Since I am listed among the offenders, the reader may understand that I disagree with Haynes. Those, like me, of whom Haynes warns his readers, "remain quite unaware of the myth'S presence in their own discourse"; in our attempts to deny what historic Christian anti-Judaism has posited, we "inadvertently reaffirm the most fundamental Christian ideology about Jews-the conviction that the existence, fate, and redemption of the Jews are signs for God's church." I would be less than candid if I did not say here that I think the author is in error regarding my work, Franklin Littell's, and others'. Haynes has points to make about Karl Barth, the early Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Niemoeller without suggesting what was revised in their subsequent thinking. This seems particularly unappreciative of Bonhoeffer, who through his martyrdom and prison writings has become one of the most influential theologians of this century. While Rubenstein finds this book comprehensive...