April 30, 2026
The CCJR's online academic journal, Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, has begun publishing a special volume with an initial group of a dozen articles from an international research project, "Jesus the Jew / Jesus the Christ." The project was funded by the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, the Center for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religions at the Universität Salzburg, and the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
The driving question studied by about twenty scholars from ten nations beginning in 2022 was: What is the religious meaning of the Jewish identity of Jesus for Christians and for Jews today and for their contemporary interrelationship? Their in-person conversations created an invaluable atmosphere of mutual learning and reflection. Members found their initial drafts enriched, critiqued, and, in a few cases, entirely reworked because of these group exchanges.
The special SCJR volume presents their work in four categories. It includes essays on the New Testament genealogies of Jesus and the titles it gives to him; on Jesus in his first-century world; and on important pastoral, educational, and liturgical matters. It also addresses Jewish traditions of reflection on Jesus, the implications of Jesus’s Jewishness for antisemitism, claims about Jesus’s uniqueness, proposals for various christological approaches, Jesus’s Jewishness amid today’s conflicts and wars, and more. Additional essays from the project will be published throughout 2026.