By Walter Riggans
MARC and Olive Press
428 pages. £10.99
ISBN 1 85424 287 3
This book by Walter Riggans, the General Director of Christian Ministry to Jews (CMJ) will soon stand on the shelves of every Christian worker among Jewish people. It looks in considerable detail at the whole issue of Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah.
In the first part, the author describes the hermeneutical, historical and theological foundations for the Jews' rejection of Jesus in general, and for the work of Jewish refutationists in particular.
In the second part, the book examines carefully the Jewish and Christian understandings of some key biblical texts which Christians view as messianic - namely, Genesis 3.15, 49.10, Isaiah 7.14, 9.5 and Psalm 22.17. Readers of this book may wonder why Isaiah 53 is not also selected for such careful scrutiny, although it is mentioned.
Pluralism and the Christian attitude to other faiths has become the key battle for evangelicals today. Walter Riggans, rightly, therefore, points out that Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah raises fundamental questions for the Christian. The issue of evangelicalism among Jews and our Christian understanding of Judaism has become the crunch question in the whole pluralism debate. This book will help Christians to gain a deeper empathy with Jewish people and a greater appreciation of how to relate as Christians to Jews. The author, in this book, not only displays his wide reading and research, but also his obvious love and understanding of Jews. Therefore, the attitude as well as the actual contents of the book will prove helpful. For the ordinary church member, it may be too long and detailed, but for the worker among Jews this book is compulsory reading.
