ABSTRACT
A driving force in recent biblical scholarship is the desire to interpret the New Testament from a point of view that is fair to Iudaism.! This attitude has made possible new insights, especially into the contingent nature of many of the New Testament's harshest statements concerning Judaism, statements that become especially disturbing in light of the Holocaust. Most scholars now recognize that, for example, when Matthew speaks of the Pharisees and John of the Jews, their statements are less eternal, dominical truth than situational, even personal polemic. Thus, contemporary scholarship has made great strides in exposing our common failure to assess the New Testament's sometimes vitriolic treatment of the Jewsin a way that is honest both to Jewish and to Christian history.
