Transforming Relations: Essays on Jews and Christians Throughout History in Honor of Michael A. Signer (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Transforming Relations: Essays on Jews and Christians Throughout History in Honor of Michael A. Signer Zev Garber Transforming Relations: Essays on Jews and Christians Throughout History in Honor of Michael A. Signer, edited by Franklin T. Harkins. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 476 pp. $50.00. Transforming Relations is a collection of insightful essays that speak on the interaction between Jews and Christians in antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern era. It honors the important work of Michael A. Signer, the Adams Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture at the University of Notre Dame from 1992 until his death in 2009. The chapters treat various aspects of the Jewish-Christian relationship through the centuries, including the centrality of and departure from scriptural law in antiquity, reflections on Christianity in the Talmud and Midrashim, medieval Christian hermeneutics and Hebraism, and the appreciation of Judaism in modern Christianity. The essays focus on issues that permeate Signer's own scholarly work, namely, that shared scriptural texts and commentary serve simultaneously as a point of convergence and divergence for Jews and Christians, and that meaningful contemporary interfaith Jewish-Christian dialogue recognizes similarity and difference by participants who draw from separate but equal streams of monotheistic traditions. To honor the memory and work of Michael Signer, editor Franklin T. Harkins has assembled a cadre of friends and colleagues, admirers all of the honoree and his contribution to scholarship. The book's front matter contains [End Page 162] a dedicatory poem in memory of Michael by Cyril O'Regan, a foreword by John van Engen, and an introduction by Franklin T. Harkins on Signer's study of historical Jewish-Christian exegesis. The volume is divided in two parts. Essays in Part One ("Ancient and Medieval Perspectives: Exegesis, Polemic, and Cultural Exchange") begin with Arnold Band's personal reminiscence of the professor-student relationship and the seeds of textual methodology planted at UCLA in the early 1960s. David Novak focuses on the centrality of Torah from Sinai and its historical role in the parting of the ways and dialogical healing between Pharasaic Judaism and Pauline Christianity; and Israel Jacob Yuval speaks of the merits of "parallelmania," not polemics and apologetics, when early Christian texts mix with rabbinic literature. The next essays deal with personalities and schools of Jewish and Christian exegetes and teaching in twelfth-century northern France. Grover A. Zinn discusses the multiple ways that Psalms affected the spiritual life and theological education affecting the canons of the Parisian Abbey of St. Peter. By dissecting the theoretical framework of Hugh of St. Victor, Dale Coulter shows interpretive similarities (plain meaning, history connected to narratives affixed to events, word and syntax interpretation) between Victorines and their Jewish counterparts. Likewise, Boyd Taylor Coolman and Franklin T. Harkins engage in similar activity in researching Hugh's students, Richard of St. Victor and Andrew of St. Victor, respectively. All three chapters reflect pivotal texts that exemplify borrowing, polemics, and advancement. Deborah L. Goodwin contrasts the literal and allegorical approaches of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) and Peter Comestor in reading the narrative of Rebekah's children, Esau and Jacob (Gen 25-27) Rashbam's commentaries on Lamentations and the Song of Songs is the focus of Sara Yapet's chapter. E. Ann Matte elaborates on the overlapping eschatological layers of the Wandering Jew in medieval Christianity (killers of the Lord, testifiers to his Second Coming and fulfilled in ecclesiastical conversion). Leslie Smith concludes that the Postilla in totem bibliam (commentary on the whole Bible) is the collaborate scholarship of the Dominican master and administrator Hugh of St. Cher's and Mendicant scholars. Arjo Vanderjagt posits that the mastery of Hebrew by Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489) was not for dialogue but for the conversion of Jews and to enhance piety and devotion by Christians to Jesus. Finally, Jeremy Cohen probes a story narrated by Solomon ibn Verga in his Shevet Yehudah that speaks of the nefarious charge of blood libel in sixteenth-century Spain and Portugal; the price to overcome was separation in body, space, and Jewish-Chritian scholarly encounter. Part Two presents a variety of ways that Jews and Christians encounter and entangle in...