Barth (Markus). The People of God. Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1983; 1 vol. 13,5 x 21,5 cm, 102 p. (Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Suppl. Ser. 5). Prix: $ 21.95. — At the beginning all Christians were Jewish Christians, Jewish influence on early Christianity, therefore is undoubted. Defining the exact extent ofthat influence is not so easy; even the concept "Jewish Christianity" is subject to various definitions. As Christians became predominantly gentile, Jewish Christianity came to be regarded as heretical and isolation moved into extremes, further away from the mainstream of the synagogue and church. Judaism itself nevertheless remained attractive to potential gentile converts and to Christians themselves for a much longer period than had often been thought.

Throughout antiquity Christians remaind in contact and heavy competition with Jews who did not believe in the Nazarene. The extent to which those contacts were personal and informed is often difficult to determine. Some of the more extreme anti-judaic statements to be found in basic and fundamental Christian literature arise from a polemical context; some of the statements belong to the theological context of Christian self-definition and do not at all reflect personal prejudice.

In this context the question concerning Paul's guilt for the anti-judaism in the church and theology has already been repeatedly answered in the affirmative. The apostle indeed appears, especially with his teaching concerning the law and justification to have prepared the theological ground for Christian anti-Judaism. If the human being is justified only by grace and faith in the Christ before God, an iron consequence of this appears to be that Judaism is forever and finally done away with, at least theologically; alongside of the Church it leads only a sad shadow existence, despite all its accomplishments and contributions to the knowledge and culture of humanity. Even if the Church today partly embraces the Jews with love (which it did not do for centuries), this by no means indicates that the Church attributes to the Jews a "theological existence". Paul is supposed to have made this impossible once and for all. If one, nevertheless attempts to do this, it should only be possible because Christianity was built up upon Jesus alone — if one allows the Pauline interpretation of the "Jesus phenomenon" to fall or at least to conduct a substantive critique of Paul and his theology. To say more about this, the theme Paul and Israel must be fundamentally thought through. This is exactly what we find in the booklet under review (100 p.), already published in 1983 and derived from a series of lectures delivered by the author and containing in a first part a number of interrogations concerning the apostle Paul's utterances (pp. 29-49) on the people of God (pp. 1 1-27). The second chapter deals with the arguments used by the man from Tarsus to establish the oneness and unity of this people, while the third and last part (pp. 51-72) considers some consequences of his teaching for the common life of Jews and Christians at the present time.