A Smothering Embrace?: Hermeneutical Issues in Catholic Discourse about Jews and Judaism

This article examines how Jews and Judaism are envisioned in the Catholic imagination, through a critical reading of contemporary Catholic discourse on Judaism. It identifies three problematic areas. The first concerns the tendency of Catholic discourse to project a specifically Christian vision of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Polyakov, Emma O'Donnell 1977- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2024
In: Harvard theological review
Year: 2024, Volume: 117, Issue: 1, Pages: 161-180
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Catholic church / Interfaith dialogue / Hermeneutics / Judaism / Jews / History 1962-2024
RelBib Classification:BH Judaism
CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations
KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
KDB Roman Catholic Church
Further subjects:B Jewish-Christian dialogue
B Anti-semitism
B Roman Catholic Church
B Anti-judaism
B Vatican II
B Jew
B Interfaith Dialogue
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Description
Summary:This article examines how Jews and Judaism are envisioned in the Catholic imagination, through a critical reading of contemporary Catholic discourse on Judaism. It identifies three problematic areas. The first concerns the tendency of Catholic discourse to project a specifically Christian vision of salvation history onto the Jewish people, which reflects Christian rather than Jewish self-understanding. Second, this article analyzes patterns in language and imagery in Vatican documents about Judaism, alert to troubling allusions implicit in the texts. The third area concerns a hermeneutical obstacle to deep interreligious understanding, one which may be ultimately insurmountable: namely, the challenges of understanding the religious other according to its own self-understanding. This article reaches an ambivalent conclusion, conceding that the goal of recognizing the self-understanding of another religious tradition may ultimately be impossible.
ISSN:1475-4517
Contains:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0017816023000366