The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Description

Traditional scholarship on the history of Jewish/Christian relations has been largely based on the assumption that Judaism and Christianity were shaped by a definitive 'Parting of the Ways'. According to this model, the two religions institutionalized their differences by the second century and, thereafter, developed in relative isolation from one another, interacting mainly through polemical conflict and mutual misperception. This volume grows out of a joint Princeton-Oxford project dedicated to exploring the limits of the traditional model and to charting new directions for future research. Drawing on the expertise of scholars of both Jewish Studies and Patristics, it offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the interaction between Jews and Christians between the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the rise of Islam. The contributors question the conventional wisdom concerning the formation of religious identity, the interpenetration of Jewish and Christian traditions, the fate of 'Jewish-Christianity', and the nature of religious polemics in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. By moving beyond traditional assumptions about the essential differences between Judaism and Christianity, this volume thus attempts to open the way for a more nuanced understanding of the history of these two religions and the constantly changing yet always meaningful relationship between them. Foreword • Martin Goodman, Simon Price, and Peter Schäfer Table of Contents Introduction: Traditional Models and New Directions • Annette Yoshiko Reed and Adam H. Becker What “Parting of the Ways”? Jews, Gentiles, and the Ancient Mediterranean City • Paula Fredriksen Semantic Differences; or, “Judaism”/“Christianity” • Daniel Boyarin The Weighing of the Parts: Pivots and Pitfalls in the Study of Early Judaisms and their Early Christian Offspring • Robert A. Kraft The Lion and the Lamb: Reconsidering Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity • Andrew S. Jacobs Modeling the “Parting of the Ways” • Martin Goodman Beyond “Jewish Christianity”: Continuing Religious Sub-Cultures of the Second and Third Centuries and Their Documents • David Frankfurter The Jews and Christians in the Martyrdom of Polycarp: Entangled or Parted Ways? • E. Leigh Gibson Tractate Avot and Early Christian Succession Lists • Amram Tropper “Jewish Christianity” after the “Parting of the Ways”: Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines • Annette Yoshiko Reed A Convergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scripture by Origen and Jerome • Alison Salvesen Whose Fast Is It? The Ember Day of September and Yom Kippur • Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra Zippora’s Complaint: Moses is Not Conscientious in the Deed! Exegetical Traditions of Moses’ Celibacy • Naomi Koltun-Fromm Rabbi Ishmael's Miraculous Conception: Jewish Redemption History in Anti-Christian Polemic • Ra’anan Abusch Jews and Heretics – A Category Error? • Averil Cameron Did Jewish Christians See the Rise of Islam? • John G. Gager Beyond the Spatial and Temporal Limes: Questioning the “Parting of the Ways” Outside the Roman Empire • Adam H. Becker List of Contributors Modern Author Index Subject Index