An introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations by Edward Kessler. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 0521705622. £17.99.

That the seeds of the Holocaust are to be found in the pages of the New Testament is perhaps the starkest and harshest summary of the troubled historical relationship between Jews and Christians. Yet even to put it this way raises many questions. For Jews, there is no New Testament. God has not made a new will abrogating past promises and bequeathing everything to the wayward daughter, or fugitive younger sister (the metaphor itself depending on how you see the emergence of the new Jewish sect which formed around the claims of the followers of this rabbi/miracle worker/Messiah, son of God). A holocaust is a burnt sacrifice, but to expiate what sin? Deicide? For many Jews it is the shoah, the total destruction (paralleling the use of the Arabic ‘naqba’, used by Palestinians to describe their catastrophe at the hands of the Israelis). What separates many Jews and Christians are the very texts that they hold in common. The very terms Messiah, sacrifice, and law have different connotations that make dialogue fraught at times.

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