This fifty-two-page manual opens with concise blueprints for teaching six adult education lessons and four full courses based on Rabbi Michael J. Cook's volume, Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment.
- The lessons are stand-alone sessions on various topics: questions posed by Christians that Jews find hard to answer; the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity; the Jesus of history; the Last Supper and today's church "seders"; the impact of Passion traditions on the Jews; and whether the New Testament is antisemitic.
- The courses address:
- New Testament Basics Jews Should Know (5 sessions)
- How Christian Holy Days Impact the Jews (5 sessions)
- The Four Gospels: A Concern for Jews from Each (4 sessions)
- How Early Christians Applied "Gospel Dynamics" (8 sessions)
- Accommodating calendar needs, the courses can be shortened (omitting sessions); expanded (extending sessions); even combined (by stringing courses together).
- Assigned for each lesson and course session are materials from the main text which pages to read and which "Figures" to examine. The latter the distinctive diagrams, pictorials, charts not only aid comprehension, supply key biblical passages, and reinforce recall, but they also can stimulate group discussion. This explains why the manual reproduces all eighty-four! The idea? First, participants do assignments from the main book at home. Then they bring Companion Figures alone to class or instructors distribute copies as each session begins.
- With these lessons and courses clearly laid out, time-consuming planning by teachers is already accomplished! And instructors preferring to devise their own courses now have models in the structures which Dr. Cook provides.