ABSTRACT
Many Christians and Jews today are genuinely interested in promoting positive relations between the two faith communities.' Often an explicit awareness of living in a post-Shoah world is articulated by the various organizations devoted to Jewish-Christian relations. But even when such awareness is not explicitly articulated, most of these individuals and organizations have been at least implicitly motivated by the Shoah and the long history of Christian brutality toward Iews.s This desire for better relations between Christians and Jews often inspires statements stressing our common heritage. The place where this common heritage is most plainly evident is in the sharing of some scriptures, what Christians commonly call the Old Testament and Jews call the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible." The sharing of scriptures thus constitutes the starting point for Christians and Jews as they enter into dialogue with one another; this seems especially true for Christians.s
Although the sharing of scriptures evokes the sentiment that we have a common heritage, it also disguises the profound differences in the meaning of the Bible for Jews and Christians. When American Jews are speaking in their own circles (that is, not in interfaith gatherings), they commonly use the term "Bible" to refer to their scripture. But "Bible" means something different for Christians. Not only are the contents different (a Christian Bible contains a New Testament as well as the Old Testament), but, by the fourth century C.E., the two Testaments together were thought of holistically as Christian scripture. The earliest extant Christian Bibles contain both the Old and New Testament, with all of the texts
written in Greek.> The Greek Old Testament was based on the Septuagint, a translation made by Jews during the third and second centuries B.C.E. The process of canonization therefore caused a vast rereading of the scriptures of ancient Israel, a Christianizing of those scriptures that differed tremendously from the way the rabbis came to understand those same texts."
