"If this be from Heaven...": Jesus and the New Testament Authors in their Relationship to Judaism. .

"If this be from Heaven...": Jesus and the New Testament Authors in their Relationship to Judaism. By Peter J. Tomson. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001. 455 pages. Paper. $42.95.

This introduction to the New Testament presents a post-Holocaust reading of the texts highlighting its context within Judaism and pointing out manifestations of anti-Judaism. It includes a thorough discussion of first-century Judaism, an analysis of the historical Jesus and his approach to Judaism, and a survey of individual New Testament writers in their attitudes.

There is much to be commended about this study, especially the author's command of Jewish sources (though "Plato" on page 101 should be Philo). Judaism is not monolithic but includes a range of attitudes.

He concludes that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and no anti-Jewish sayings can be detected in him. It will likely be surprising that Tomson finds Paul as totally positive toward Judaism and that Luke among the Gospel writers is closest in retaining the attitude of Jesus.

Admirable is the careful attention to the various layers of certain books. Proto-Mark and the Markan Gospel present favorable attitudes toward Judaism, even in a non-Jewish context. However, later insertions, Tomson concludes, have introduced the anti-Jewish element in Mark 3:6 (Pharisees described as plotting against Jesus) and in Mark 7:19 ("while he made all foods clean").

Individual readers may question whether these sections go back to the historical Jesus, to the author Mark, or to a later redactor. Others may question how a statement declaring all foods clean is necessarily anti-Jewish. It is especially odd since one can find similar comments by Paul and Luke--whom the author treats as positive toward Judaism. The "slaughter and eat" command in Peter's Acts 10 vision, however, according to Tomson, did not mean that Peter proceeded to eat nonkosher food (p. 232). In a book of such magnitude, one does expect to find points of disagreement.

There are also several points of frustration. First, there are no footnotes. Ancient sources are cited within the text, but one must turn to the bibliography for modern studies. One is also confronted in the text with frequent parenthetical references to other sections within the same book. For example, the reader must scan the table of contents (there is also no topical index) to find Jesus' attitude toward divorce on pages 149-51. There in the midst of this discussion the reader is directed back to pages 99-102 for divorce in the context of Judaism and ahead to page 197 for Paul's view of divorce and to pages 286-87 for Matthew's editing of the earlier Gospel material.

This volume, while dealing with an important topic, will lend itself more to seminaries and graduate schools than to parish libraries.