Holy Envy

Frank Oveis April 9, 2012 - 10:21am

The Jewish Annotated New Testament
Edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler
Oxford University Press, $35, 700 pp.

The intrepid Harold Bloom once called the New Testament the greatest act of plagiarism in the history of literature. That might sound hyperbolic; but if you include, along with the Hebrew Scriptures (the Tanakh, in Jewish usage), the vast Jewish inter-testamental literature not included in the Jewish canon of the Bible (“outside books,” as the rabbis called them), it’s a reasonable assessment. Indeed, almost every verse in the New Testament finds some sort of echo or...

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Topics: 
Jewish-Christian Relations
Books
Jewish-Christian Relations

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