All of this is interesting, of course, but the real effect of this second part of Jesus of Nazareth lies in the technique the pope employs. The pious readers seem to have a little trouble with the scholarly tone of the book, and the scholarly readers have loudly proclaimed their distaste for the pious tone of the book. In the Guardian, for instance, Geza Vermes, professor emeritus of Jewish studies at Oxford, sniffs, "The pope's treatment of ‘the figure and the words of the Lord' consists of mountains of pious and largely familiar musings. He provides unquestioning Christians with plenty of solace." And as for the former Professor Ratzinger's scholarship, well: "Gospel experts [. . .] may note with pleasure that 200 years of labour has not been in vain and that small fragments of New Testament criticism seem to have penetrated the mighty stronghold of traditional Christianity."

All that comes to, in the end, is proof that Vermes is still mired in the 1970s. It's the pope who has successfully managed to move on. It's Benedict XVI who has succeeded in marrying what the 1970s thought impossible: biblical faith and biblical scholarship. He has mastered and now presents to the world the technique of reading with the tradition of the Church. It's the historical-critical method, without the pseudo-scientific suspicion that was once thought to be the vital core of the discipline. In fact, such suspicion proved a dead end for much theological work — a false light that led to nowhere. 

Benedict will win no prizes for his prose, but he carries the brighter lantern, and he's leading the reader toward a place where the work of scholarship and the truth of faith are not defined as oppositional. Watch, for instance, how he turns around the discussion of the Jews that has received so many news reports. "When in Matthew's account the ‘whole people' say: "his blood be on us and on our children' (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus's blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb. 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment, it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone, it is poured out for many, for all."

When read in the light of faith, Matthew means that "we all stand in the need of the purifying power of love which is his blood. These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation. Only when understood in terms of the theology of the Last Supper and the Cross, drawn from the whole of the New Testament, does this verse from Matthew's Gospel take on its correct meaning."