Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES The Bridge, A Yearbook of Judaeo-Christian Studies. Ed. by John M. Oesterreicher. New York: Pantheon, 1955. Pp. 349. $3.95. It is a sublime fact that we cannot ignore: God once spoke to His people and gave them a Law. He had chosen them for a great purpose: to prepare the way for His Son. This choosing placed them above all the peoples of antiquity. It not only made them our spiritual ancestors, but it placed us under an eternal obligation to these precursors of the Word. When He came among them, He uttered the divine verdict on their status: not a jot or tittle of that Law was to be destroyed, but all was to be fulfilled in the New Covenant. This is the imperishable glory of the Jewish people. Their tragedy was that historical circumstances and temporal considerations made it difficult for them to accept Him when He appeared among them. Hence the ambivalence of the Christian toward the Jew: with respect for their historic role goes sorrow for the rejection by the majority of the Savior for whom all their history had prepared. The Epistles of Saint Paul are weighted with his mingling of admiration and regret which leads to a sense of tremendous responsibility that the Gospel be first preached to the Jews, and to the prophecy of the final conversion of the first-chosen people. The same spirit animates this volume, which is the first of what will be a yearbook of Judaeo-Christian studies. It is titled The Bridge to indicate its purpose. It makes no attempt to find a least common denominator, nor does it attempt to conceal the essential fact which separates the Christian from the Jew-the divinity of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, it sees Him as the Bridge which now links us to them and which one day they shall cross into His Body, the Church. As an ancillary objective, it hopes to lessen anti-Semitism among us, which it sees as a derivative of scriptural and historical ignorance and an obstacle to the appeal of Christ. It is over the chasm of misunderstanding that the Bridge must be built. The volume is a series of studies of varying length on subjects of interest to Christian and Jew. In addition to these essays by specialists in their respective fields, there are five reviews of serious books. The authors have been carefully selected, and write with solid scholarship and usually with literary grace. As a group, they fulfill the promise of Monsignor John L. McNulty, president of Seton Hall University, in the introduction: "These volumes will explore the basic unity of Old and New Testaments, confront the rabbinical tradition with the teaching of the Church, examine the relationship between Christians and Jews on the temporal plane, review 110 BRIEF NOTICES 111 Jewish thought and life down the ages, weigh recent attempts by Jewish thinkers and artists to interpret the Christian revelation, sift modern views of Jewish existence by Jews, Christians, and writers who are neither, and discuss many other apposite topics. Thus the work of The Bridge will extend from theology, philosophy, and history, to literature, art, and sociology." The essay of Raissa Maritain, " Abraham and the Ascent of Conscience," explores a mystery which is familiar to any reader of the Old Testament. Abraham, the father of his people and the special friend of God, was unquestionably a man of sanctity who accepted the divine will even at great personal loss. Generations of Christian preachers and artists have been inspired by his response to the call of God at Ur and his obedience to the demand that his son be sacrificed. Yet he married his half-sister, took a second wife, and deliberately lied to Pharoah. These acts would have been sinful under the law of Nloses and certainly seem shocking to one brought up under the New Law. But Abraham was conscious of no fault and was called to no repentance. His conscience was certainly operative, but it was not sufficiently informed to reach positions that later were to be engraved on tablets of stone and in the hearts of men. In a word, Abraham lived...