The Jewish Annotated New Testament
by Martin Krieger
The Jewish Annotated New Testament (the NRSV translation), eds. Levine and Brettler, Oxford University Press, 2011.
For example, if you want to understand Paul, you have to see him as a particular kind of Jew of his time. The same for Jesus, as a prophet of his time. The Letters are written much in the same vein that we have serious evangelical endeavors today. As far as I can tell, no Christian would change their religious commitments in using this commentary. But it might change some of the claims they make about what the Bible says. I would imagine that originalist interpreters of the US Constitutions would be quite interested in this commentary, and it would be terrific to have such a commentary on the US Constitution–although that surely exists among the legal texts.
Why now, at last? I suspect the rise of modern Jewish scholarship in the university, outside the rabbinic world, allows for such an effort.
MK