Jews and the Christian Imagination: Reluctant Witnesses [Paperback]

Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination is an analysis of the ancient Christian myth that casts Jews as a 'witness-people', and this myth's presence in contemporary religious discourse. It treats diverse products of the Christian imagination, including systematic theology, works of fiction, and popular writings on biblical prophecy. The book demonstrates that the witness-people myth, which was first articulated by Augustine and which determined official attitudes towards Jews in medieval Christendom, remains a powerful force in the Christian imagination.Dedication - Editor's Preface - Acknowledgements - Table of Contents - Introduction - The Witness-People Myth and Its Alternatives - The Witness-People Myth in History - Karl Barth, the German Church Struggle and the Witness-People Myth - Walker Percy and the Witness-People: Signposts in A Strange Land - Christian Holocaust Theology and the Witness-People Myth: The Jews' Fate as Sign, The Holocaust as Revelation, Israel as Message - Dispensational Premillennialism: The Jew as Key to the Kingdom - Conclusions - Notes - Bibliography - IndexSTEPHEN R. HAYNES