Dr. Murray Watson has delivered many lectures about the Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate as an adult faith educator, university professor and interreligious activist. 

Very often attendees of his presentations approach him afterward to confess their previous unawareness of this document, also known as the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, a formalized disposition of friendly dialogue towards with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism,

On Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, Watson is helming the Inter-Religious Dialogue on the 60th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate event at St. Paul’s College in Winnipeg. 

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The adjunct professor of religious studies at Huron University College in London, Ont., said the first of his three conference sessions will spotlight the positive developments made in relations between Christians and Jews since Nostra Aetate was promulgated on Oct. 28, 1965, by Pope Paul VI.

“My first goal would be to get more people aware of what a revolutionary positive document it was and how it has opened all kinds of doors to inter-religious dialogue and provided theological foundations for us to think about inter-religious dialogue,” said Watson. 

The adult faith formation animator for the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board in Barrie, Ont., is also keen to outline Catholics’ dynamic leadership in fostering stronger ecumenical ties. 

“When I have told people that the Catholic Church has been on the cutting edge of this since the beginning, they’ve stopped and said, ‘we’re proud of our Church for being a leader in that area,’ ” said Watson.

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The late St. Pope John Paul II’s famous 1986 interfaith peace gathering in Assisi, Italy, and similar prayerful summits that followed since is a Nostra Aetate fruit Watson will explore during this conference organized by The Winnipeg Tri-Diocesan Bat Kol Committee. This collaborative body, with membership from the Archdioceses of Winnipeg and St. Boniface, the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Winnipeg and the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, strives to deepen the faith by studying the Word of God in its Jewish milieu.

One of the seminal sources used by Christians seeking to study the Jewishness inherent in both the Old and New Testament is André Chouraqui’s 1974 translation of the Bible. Chouraqui, a French-Algerian-Israeli lawyer, writer and scholar who also served eight years as deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1965-73, was deemed a revolutionary by his contemporary peers and in the annals of history for tackling the New Testament considering his Jewish background. Session two of the conference delves into the biographical history of Chouraqui, who was at the Vatican when Nostra Aetate was passed. He was a prominent figure in the interfaith movement as he sat on the executive committee of the World Congress of Religions for Peace from 1974 to 1983. He is also celebrated for being a key behind-the-scenes player in the 1979 peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel.

The third and final session explores the Jewishness of Jesus and the New Testament accentuated in the Chouraqui Bible.

Watson said there “are lots” of striking elements to Chouraqui’s adaptation, which became a bestseller. One standout component is that Chouraqui translates all Biblical names according to their first-century Middle Eastern equivalents. 

“There is no ‘Jesus’ in his translation,” said Watson. “There is, however, a ‘Yeshua,’ which would have been the Hebrew form of Jesus’ name — the name He would have been called during His lifetime.”

The 67-year-old scholar said it is important to note that our name for Christ is “at least two or three steps removed from the name Jesus was called.” Consider that His original name of Yeshua is translated into Greek as “Ἰησοῦς (Iésous),” and into Latin as “Iesus.”

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“Going back to something as simple as those names is a reminder to people this was a very different time,” said Watson. “This was a very different world, and the Gospels are fundamentally a Jewish story told about Jewish people, involving Jewish people, drawing on the scriptures of the Old Testament.”

Chouraqui’s translation, added Watson, underscores that “approaching the Bible and especially the Gospels from the lens of their Jewish context in the first century” can ultimately be “life-giving” by helping us to read the text “more accurately and more charitably.”