Robinson, Thomas A. 2009. Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early Jewish-Christian Relations. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

"My effort here is not to provide as complete a study of Ignatius as is possible.

Many questions I leave untouched. But I do wish to stir the pot a little, largely by challenging some widely held views of Ignatius and his world and by asking a few new questions or by answering old questions in a slightly different way. In doing so, a few larger issues come into focus: in particular, the make-up of early Christian assemblies and the coming to distinctive identity of the Christian movement, or what has come to be called the parting of the ways.

Ignatius’s language against Judaism is sharp, sweeping, uncompromisingly dismissive, and perhaps even shameful. Scholars sometimes attempt to redirect this language so that it is solely against Christian Judaizing elements in Ignatius’s church and not against Judaism as a whole, but such efforts obscure the historical grit and grime inherent in the turbulent conflicts out of which new religious movements come into being. Ignatius’s language and attitudes reflect the intensity of a powerful change in religious perception, and it is within that world that Ignatius lived and acted and makes sense. Present efforts to build bridges between Judaism and Christianity are not helped by attempts to sanitize the past. We are not responsible for what Ignatius said nor is he responsible for how we use what he said." (Preface, p. IX)
Rosik, Mariusz. 2018. Church and Synagogue (30–313 AD): Parting of the Ways. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Summary: "The separation of Church from Synagogue was not a one-time act, but a long-lasting, multilayered, and diversified process. The attempt to explain this process, namely the process of parting of the ways between Judaism andChristianity in the years 30-313 AD, constitutes the main research subject of this publication. The aim of this study is the presentation of the dynamism of Christian-Jewish relations in the first three centuries of the existence of the Church, taking into account mainly historical and theological (but not the only) factors which influenced these relations and finally led to the creation of two separate religions. The two religions existing side by side were in many aspects connected with each other mostly because both originated from biblical Judaism."

"The parting of the ways between Church and Synagogue is based on two unquestionable facts: its evolutionary character and the role of Christians descended from Judaism. These two issues are the backbone of first the tension, then the conflict and finally even mutual disfavour and hostility which to a great extent was characteristic of the history of Church and Synagogue in the first three centuries. Tension, conflict and disfavour arose around the person of Christ and interpretation of his role in the history of salvation and around consequences (theological, liturgical and social) resulting from this reading.(18) Finally, the attempt to look at the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity must lead to a thoroughly fundamental question about the One who in the eyes of Saul of Tarsus is “to the Jews an obstacle they cannot get over, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is both the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Co 1:23-24)." (Introduction, pp. 17-18)

(18) M.C. Boys, Doing Justice to Judaism: The Challenge to Christianity, JES [Journal of ecumenical studies] 49 (2014) 1, 107
———. 2023. "The Christian Question in Jamnia Academy at the End of the 1st Century AD? An Attempt to Re- and De-construct the “Myth”." Verbum Vitae no. 41:293–308.

Abstract: "The author of this article asks whether the Christian question was discussed in Jamnia Academy at the end of the first century. In order to find the answer, an attempt is made to determine, based on the sources, what happened in the Jamnia Academy at that time (1). The literature on this issue indicates that a synod was held at Jamnia, which established the canon of Jewish sacred books, rejected the Septuagint as an inspired book and excluded Christians from the Synagogue. The second part of the article seeks to re- and de-construct the “myth of Jamnia” (2) while its third part provides the answer to the central question asked in the title (3). The conclusion proves that only the thesis that Christians were excluded from the Synagogue is supported by the sources."
Rowland, Christopher. 1992. "The Parting of the Ways: The Evidence of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and Mystical Material." In Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70 to 135, edited by Dunn, James D., 213–237. Grand Rapids (MI): Eerdmans.

"The concerns of this essay are as follows:

(i) What form were Christians and Jews giving to their apocalyptic tradition at the end of the first century?

(ii) Was apocalyptic material marginal or central in the parting of the ways between Church and Synagogue(5)?

(iii) What developments in form and content can one note in comparison with earlier examples of the apocalyptic tradition (e. g. 1. Enoch)?

iv) Apocalyptic was a vehicle of hope and offers an important witness to the shape of that hope in the non-rabbinic writings of Judaism. That being the case, where does the apocalyptic enthisiasm (in the form of visions, prophecy) fit into the process of routinisation and in emerging rabbinic Judaism with its tighter boundaries? Did apocalyptic offer a means of challenging or supporting established conventions? Did it offer a vehicle to indulge in speculative interest or was its concern for the future in the main determinative of present responsibilities?

This paper starts with an examination of Revelation and contemporary apocalypses, 4. Ezra, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and the Apocalypse of Abraham and then moves on to a consideration of evidence for mystical ideas within late first century tannaitic Judaism, the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalyptic and Mystical Tradition; a comparative study of the synoptic eschatological discourses; and apocalyptic as a recource for dealing with the lack of eschatological fulfilment." (p. 214)

(5) See P. R. Davies, The social world of the apocalyptic writings' in R. E. Clements The World of Ancient Israel, Cambridge 1989 [pp. 251-271].
Rubenstein, Richard L. 2010. "What Was At Stake in the Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity?" Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies no. 28:78–102.

Abstract: "Sacrificial religion, especially the sacrifice of the first born, is crucial for understanding the continuities and discontinuities between Judaism and Christianity.

Human sacrifice was prevalent in the ancient Middle East, even among the Hebrews as late as 500 B.C.E. In the Aqedah (Gen. 22: 1–19), God’s command that Abraham sacrifice Isaac is only averted when Abraham demonstrates unquestioning obedience. Because of that obedience, God accepts an animal surrogate and bestows His election on Abraham and his progeny.

The sequence is reversed in Christianity. Jesus is first identified with the surrogate, the Passover lamb that redeems Israel’s first born, and later becomes himself the sacrifice. By his unquestioning obedience on the cross, Jesus becomes the perfect Isaac. Early Christianity regarded Jesus as the only perfectly obedient human being and also the perfect human sacrifice. As such, Christ brings to manifest expression much that remained latent in Judaism. The author believes that this spells out the difference between the two traditions."
Rukuni, Rugare, and Oliver, Erna. 2019. "Schism, syncretism and politics: Derived and implied social model in the self-definition of early Christian orthodoxy." HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies no. 75:1–9.

Abstract: "The first 400 years of Christianity posed an intricate scenario of social dynamics. The interplay of these social dynamics or catalysts analogous to time perceivably conceived the political religious establishment that then forged orthodoxy. The resultant continuum that was consequent of the imperial religious-political merger upon the following eras further established a formative impact of these catalysts. As a revisionist analysis of the era leading up to the Constantinian turn, and a parallel comparison between preceding and following eras, this research proposes an alternate construction to the narrative of Early Christianity orthodoxy.

The preceding position derives from the attempt at the development of a modular theory through which Christianity can be analysed. Through document analysis, a literature review was accomplished. The development of early Christianity from inception to 400 CE when deduced against enculturating influences implies a sociological study. From the three perceived phases that Christianity went through, Jewish-Christian schism, Hellenism and then imperial interventional politics, implications can be made upon latter eras and derivations can be deduced from earlier eras. Significantly, there seems to have been a resurgent theme in the person of religious-political institutions that consolidated their positions. The synergy and inevitability of the process that preceded the first ecumenical council are confirmed in both a positive and negative substantiation of the proposed model. The emergent episcopal leadership in Christianity and its consolidation averse to the political dynamics of imperial Rome implied a composite significance of all factors. Similarly, the intransigent nature of certain African Christian elements argues for the inevitability of cultural enculturation as precedent to political definition in the formation of a universal orthodoxy."
Runesson, Anders. 1999. "Particularistic Judaism and Universalistic Christianity? Some Critical Remarks on Terminology and Theology." Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology no. 53:55–75.

"Concerning the ethnic aspect, Judaism is today, like the majority of ancient Jewish groups, open-ethnic. Christianity is today a non-ethnic religion. It is interesting to note that this is so despite the fact that very few texts in the New Testament, if any, can be argued to make this stance. It is tempting to see here one of the main reasons for the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity; Christianity left a closed ethnic or open-ethnic stance, proceeding via Paul's complicated variant of closed ethnic/open-ethnic thinking (see above) which was influenced by what originally was salvation-inclusivism (Gentiles should remain Gentiles), to a final position that lacked ethnic ties altogether. This is, however, not the place to elaborate these thoughts.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that the simple distinction between universalism and particularism should be rejected. Instead, I have tried to create a new set of terms which are adapted to the demands of current scholarship. These terms concern three main aspects of a theology of religions, and may be outlined as follows:

1. The ethnic aspect. In this group there are three possible variants: (a) Closed-ethnic religion, (b) Open-ethnic religion, (c) Non-ethnic religion.

2. The second aspect is the aspect of salvation, and here we find two alternatives: (a) Salvation-inclusive religion, (b) Salvation-exclusive religion.

3. Finally, we have the aspect of mission. It is possible to define mission in more detail, but in this article we have chosen only three main types: (a) Proselytizing mission, (b) Ethical-religious mission, (c) Inward mission.

These three aspects may relate to each other in different more or less complex ways in different religious traditions, i.e. no automatic connections exists between them, entailing that the adoption of one stance in one aspect results in a certain stance in another aspect even if some connections may be discernible." (pp. 69-70)
———. 2021. "What Never Belonged Together Cannot Part: Rethinking the So-Called Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity." In Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model, edited by Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A. and Verheyden, Joseph, 33–56. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "For a long time, both within the Church and in scholarship, the view was held that Judaism and Christianity separated very early on, with the work of Paul or even Jesus usually being considered the origin of this schism. More recently, however, this view has shifted significantly among the majority of researchers. Many scholars now assume a very late point in time for this process, which is also described as complex and protracted. Some researchers, who point to ongoing interaction between Christians and Jews over the centuries, go even further and maintain that the paths of Judaism and Christianity never diverged at all. In this essay, I would like to advance the discussion by basing my analysis on the interactions within ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman institutions. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate that the metaphor of 'separation' is fundamentally misleading and inaccurately reflects the historical record from the outset."
———. 2021. "Paul and the Joining of the Ways: Ordering the Eschaton, Preparing for Judgment." In Israel and the Nations: Paul's Gospel in the Context of Jewish Expectation, edited by Abel, Frantisek, 25–48. Lanham: Lexington Books.

"Paul and the Parting of the Ways" has a nice ring to it, the beauty of alliteration merging with layers of historical claims and so, rhetorically, reinforcing the legitimacy, as it were, of the quest itself. But at the core of the metaphor, deep inside that very quest which it ostensibly describes but in truth controls, lies hidden assumptions undermining the project as such, leaving us trapped in the contemporary rather than illuminated by the historical."

(...)

"Paul was, indeed, not a "Christian," and for some "Christianity" he could not have left Judaism. This has been shown in study after study, from angles in ample number, forming a foundation from which we may now proceed to deepen our understanding of the apostle to the gentiles. For the quest for the historical Paul, as the quest for the historical Jesus, does not end, but begins with the insight that he was a Jew, practicing Judaism, indeed proclaiming Judaism. The task still pending is thus not if, but what kind, how, and why? This chapter is mostly concerned with the how, as it relates to the gentile Other, touching also on the why. Some preliminaries will, in the following, set the scene. I will then present a threefold entry point for understanding Pauline difference, before adding, at the very end, a word on how Paul tends to be approached today by most churches, and how this differs from the Paul of history." (pp. 25-26, notes omitted)
———. 2022. "The puzzle and politics of historical reconstruction: The case of the rise and development of Christianity and Judaism." Approaching Religion no. 12:4–17.

Abstract: "This essay focuses on the topic of the emergence of Christianity and Judaism as related but distinct religious traditions, as an example of a process of religious and cultural change, which has had an enormous impact on Western and other societies around the world.

At the heart of this question lies what appear to be contradictions between normative practices in antiquity and those we know of today, leading us to consider the historical and hermeneutical issue of continuity and change over time; its how, when and why. Rejecting the idea that theological differences between Judaism and Christianity necessitated a ‘parting of ways’ between them, it is argued that social, political and colonial decision-making was essential to this process, and that, furthermore, a historical focus on institutional realities in the ancient Mediterranean world, including in Jewish society, will challenge many long-held assumptions about the origins not only of Christianity but also of Judaism. The general historical reconstruction offered is then applied to a specific archaeological site, Capernaum, showing how traces of the larger pattern of development from the first to the fifth century CE may be seen in the histories of two buildings in this town."
———. 2022. "Beyond the Parting of the Ways: Institutional Contexts as Matrices for the Formation of Judaism and Christianity." In Negotiating Identities: Conflict, Conversion, and Consolidation in Early Judaism and Christianity (200 BCE-600 CE), edited by Zetterholm, Karin Hedner, Runesson, Anders, Wassén, Cecilia and Zetterholm, Magnus, 351–379. Lanham: Lexington Books / Fortress Academic.

"The approach in this chapter has been to understand the historical processes involved from a macro perspective. One way forward would be to investigate further whether and, if so, how micro-perspective approaches could shed further light on, or modify the reconstructed historical developments suggested here. Local-specific analyses taking into account all available source material, including inscriptions, papyri, art and architecture, and literary evidence, are necessary, paying close attention especially to theories of ethnicity. It would also be important to increase efforts, already begun by some scholars, to understand the dynamics involved in the rise of Samaritanism and Islam. There is a lot of work remaining to be done before we understand more fully the variously interrelated origins and developments of the four so-called Abrahamic religions that have survived until today.

One conclusion, fixed and stable, that is possible to draw already at this point, however, is that “Christian triumphalist theology was not inevitable.”(78)

This was one of the fundamental insights that triggered the planning of the project of which the conference behind this volume and the volume itself are the culmination, and it is one that has for us been reinforced in different ways during the last several years. Ironically, perhaps, the approach taken in our project, captured in its title, “Beyond Theology,”(79) foregrounding historical investigations beyond normative discourses, has led to conclusions that may prove useful precisely in theological and interreligious discourses, as far as such operations allow themselves to be transformed in light of new historical input.(80) At the very least, to the degree recourse to history is taken in theological discourse in the search for places to anchor specific normative claims, it would seem that historical-critical work has a role to fill, both ethically and in terms of our longing for accuracy in understanding, whichever way either of those desiderata is defined. From such a horizon, “Beyond Theology” describes more a path than a goal." (p. 373)

(78). Baron, Hicks-Keaton, Thiessen, “Introduction,” 1.

(79) The full title of the project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, is Beyond Theology: Ancient Polemics, Identity formation, and Modern Scholarship.

80. As Burns, Christian Schism, 15, points out, there is more than history at stake in investigations of these complex processes. He himself writes “as a Jew committed to [his] religion and to the collective welfare of [his] people."

References

Baron, Lori, Jill Hicks-Keeton, and Matthew Thiessen, eds. The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus. ECL 24. Atlanta: SBL, 2018.

Burns, Joshua Ezra. The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016 .
———. 2022. Judaism for Gentiles: Reading Paul Beyond the Parting of the Ways Paradigm. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

In collaboration with Rebecca Runesson.

"The book has four parts, which describe a narrative trajectory combining foci on the present context in which research takes place, including issues relating to bias, theology, and terminology (Part I), the past that the historian reconstructs and in which we place Paul and those who came after him, from the first to the fifth centuries (Parts II and III), and, finally, a suggested reading of the first-century apostle for a twenty-first century theology, applying insights from the previous chapters (Part IV)." (Prologue, pp. 3-4)

(,,,)

"Since current discussions of the Pauline correspondence and its situatedness relative to Judaism have generated further conversation of these issues, as well as on bias as related to especially the historical when considered in terms of its usefulness, and even its possibility, I will address some aspects of these questions in what follows, arguing that the historical is both theoretically legitimate as distinct from the contemporary, and deeply meaningful for precisely this reason. I will then suggest a way forward, which highlights the importance for our understanding of the historical Paul the much larger question of the so-called parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity, taking us centuries beyond the apostle, towards the medieval period." (p. 24)
———. 2023. "What Does It Mean to Read New Testament Texts ‘within Judaism’?" New Testament Studies no. 69:299–312.

Abstract: "For centuries, Christians have understood some of the texts included in the New Testament as ‘Jewish,’ in the sense of them being written by (converted) Jews for other Jews. From a historical perspective, a new development in the academy suggests that such approaches do not do justice to the nature of these texts. Indeed, even more recent attempts at understanding the New Testament against the background of Judaism are also found wanting. Instead, placing these texts within the broader context of the diverse ways of embodying Jewish ancestral customs in the pre-rabbinic Second Temple period, this interpretive trajectory, involving scholars from a wide array of backgrounds, insists that Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Revelation etc., should be understood as expressions of Judaism. This article highlights key issues involved in such re-readings of New Testament texts, including ways in which they may or may not relate to normative-theological positions among Christians and Jews today.

First, the study looks at how the question is asked in our contemporary setting. Then, moving down historical layers, issues related to history and categorisation are addressed before we, finally, return to the present to consider possible implications of our findings."
Ruzer, Serge, and Zakovitch, Yair. 2019. "New covenant in the Epistle to the Hebrews and the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity." Rivista Biblica no. 67:337–356.
Salvesen, Alison. 2007. "A Convergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scripture by Origen and Jerome." In The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Becker, Adam H. and Reed, Annette Yoshiko, 233–257. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

"The present essay argues that, at a period when distinctively Christian theology was being developed out of and even away from the originally Jewish Scriptures, thus taking Christianity away from its Jewish roots, important links were periodically reestablished with the Bible of Judaism.

This meant that in this era of Christian and Jewish self-definition, and almost in spite of itself, Christianity never completely lost its grounding in Judaism. Similar movements occurred in later periods, but the precedent was established early on, principally by two great Christian scholars based in Palestine who were in contact with rabbinic Jews. This essay will first demonstrate that such rapprochements did take place and then look at what caused them." (p. 233)

(...)

"This paper has tended to imply that Christianity was a monolithic entity, but of course it was not, as the dissension and schisms of the fourth and fifth centuries prove.

Individual great scholars were reasonably free to develop ideas, some of which were later discarded or anathematized, as happened in the case of Origen, who was later regarded as a heretic because of his doctrines concerning the soul and the Trinity. The biblical scholarship of Origen and Jerome, and the preservation of Jewish traditions and writings by Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria, and others, did remain. Again, this might not have been the case. Christianity could have opted for myths and philosophies to interpret, denigrate, or replace the Old Testament, especially given the church's hostility towards Jews and Judaism. But deep down there must have been a strong pull towards its own origins in first-century Judaism and the Jewish Scriptures, perhaps with some reluctance because of the many ordinary Christians who were tempted to Judaize (Aphrahat, Ephrem, and John Chrysostom bear witness to this phenomenon). Additionally, polemic against pagans demanded that Christians acknowledge their Jewish roots in order to establish their legitimacy and antiquity." (p. 255)
Samson Ferda, Tucker. 2023. "The Messiah of That Most Mischievous Superstition. Jesus and the Parting of the Ways in the Study of Christian Origins." Early Christianity no. 14:9–34.

Abstract: "The suitability of the image of “the parting of the ways” has been challenged in recent years for understandable reasons. And yet the question about how the historical Jesus relates to the development of a distinguishable social movement in his name remains a crucial one in the study of Christian origins. This essay provides an overview of those aspects of Jesus’s career that are most relevant for this topic by charting some of the argumentative subcurrents in Jesus research. Attention then turns to the defense of three historical arguments: that Jesus was a controversial and divisive figure already in his own time, that his eschatological message about the kingdom was of such a nature that it left the spectrum of acceptable responses to it relatively narrow, and he was critical of the practices and beliefs of others in ways that made possible further group differentiation. Thus, we should stand by the conclusion of Joseph Klausner – ex nihilo nihil fit – if perhaps for reasons that differ from his."
Sargent, Benjamin. 2023. "Neither Jew nor Greek: Ignatius of Antioch’s Use of Scripture and the “Parting(s) of the Ways”." Novum Testamentum no. 65 (240-255).

Abstract: "Ignatius of Antioch makes very little reference to specific texts from the Scriptures of Israel. This has been interpreted as evidence of little interest in Scripture, which, in turn has been used to plot Ignatius on a parting of the ways trajectory. The evidence for this interpretation is weak. Ignatius refers to Scripture in a way that is comparable to some Pauline letters. Furthermore, his statements about Scripture and his use of texts suggest that he differs little from the hermeneutical assumptions of apostolic Christianity."
Schenck, Kenneth. 2019. A New Perspective on Hebrews: Rethinking the Parting of the Ways. Lanham: Fortress Academic.

"A significant amount of literature arose in the 1980s and 1990s reexamining Paul’s letters and Judaism from this new perspective, which claimed to be the original perspective itself, or truly a new perspective at all. Then it is no surprise that this reexamination of the relationship between Paul and Judaism soon led to another look at Jesus in relation to Judaism, a movement sometimes called the “third quest for the historical Jesus.” Finally, again predictably, the question shifted to exactly when Christianity and Judaism actually parted ways."

(...)

“Forty years after the tipping point, it is not clear to me that scholarship on the book of Hebrews has fully taken on board the insights of the new perspective. Might some interpreters of Hebrews still find it difficult to move beyond the glasses of the Protestant Reformation and Nicaea in order to hear this sermon in its original Jewish and Gentile Christian context? The pages that follow are one attempt to look at Hebrews in this light. As with any scholarly construct, it is a probing of the possibilities. It is an attempt to play out one possible scenario in the light of the evidence we have and the conversation of interpreters as it stands. Time will tell whether it manages to convince others or if it stands alone as just one possibility to check off the list. I offer it to the great, never-ending conversation that is biblical scholarship.” (Preface, pp. VII-IX)
Schiffman, Lawrence H. 1985. Who was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House.

"The ultimate parting of the ways for Judaism and Christianity took place when the adherents to Christianity no longer conformed to the halakhic definitions of a Jew. As these Gentile Christians, never converted to Judaism through the legal requirements we have discussed, became the dominant stream in the Christian communities which the Rabbis confronted, even in Palestine, the Rabbis ceased to regard the Christians as a group of Jews with heretical views and Christianity as a Jewish sect. Rather, the Rabbis began to regard the Christians as members of a separate religious community, and their teachings a perversion of the biblical tradition. From then on, Christians and jews began a long history of interreligious strife which played so tragic a part in medieval and modem history." (pp. 77-78)
———. 1991. From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Hoboken (NJ): Ktav Publishing House.

Chapter 8: The Jewish-Christian Schism, pp. 139-156.

"From the perspective of the later history of Western Civilization, no aspect of Jewish history in this period is more important than the series of events and developments which led to the rise of Christianity. The new religious faith was rooted in the Judaism of the Second Temple period. Yet it was ultimately to diverge radically from its mother religion. It is therefore especially important to understand both the historical background of this period and the exact process by which the Jewish and Christian communities separated." (p. 139)

"Summary

The difficult circumstances of the Herodian period and the years of Roman procuratorial rule, combined with the apocalyptic messianic tendencies of some Second Temple manifestations of Judaism, created a background against which Jesus’s followers could consider him to be the messiah. They constituted themselves as a messianic community which soon was identified as a separate religion by its own members, the Jewish community, and the Roman government. Relations between Jews and Christians steadily deteriorated as Christianity marched steadily toward control of the Roman Empire. It is no wonder, then, that with the final ascendancy of Christianity, anti-Semitic legislation was enacted which would set the stage for the tragic history of Jewish-Christian relations in medieval and modern times." (p. 156)
———. 2025. "The Halakhic Response of the Rabbis to the Rise of Christianity." In Sources and Interpretations: Studies in Ancient Jewish History, Literature, and Religion, 610–629. Leiden: Brill.

"The Jewish-Christian schism in Late Antiquity has been studied from numerous points of view, especially from the point of view of the Christians. This study will approach these events by investigating the manner in which halakhic issues motivated the approach of the early rabbis to the rise of the new faith, and the way in which rabbinic legal enactments expressed that approach as well. The eventual conclusion of the rabbis and the Jewish community that Christianity was a separate religion and that Christians were not Jews was intimately bound up with the Jewish laws and traditions governing personal status in the Jewish community, both for Jews by birth and proselytes. These laws, as known today, were already in full effect by the rise of Christianity. In the eyes of the rabbis, the evolution of Christianity from a group of Jews holding heretical beliefs into a group whose members lacked the legal status of Jewish identity and, hence, constituted a separate religious community, brought about further legal rulings which were intended to separate the Christians from the Jewish community" (p. 610)
Schröter, Jens. 2021. "Was Paul a Jew Within Judaism? The Apostle to the Gentiles and His Communities in Their Historical Context." In Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model, edited by Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A. and Verheyden, Joseph, 89–119. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstravct: "Against the backdrop of the “Paul within Judaism” perspective developed in recent Pauline scholarship and in critical consideration of the “Parting(s) of the Ways” model, this article asks how Paul’s place in the Judaism of his time can be determined. It becomes clear that the social reality presupposed and propagated by Paul in the communities of Christian believers was considerably more complex than a mere coexistence or even antagonism between ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians,’ whose “ways had diverged,” suggests. Paul demands that Gentiles refrain from behaviors incompatible with faith in the God of Israel; Jews, on the other hand, should not impose their customs on Gentiles.

At the same time, it becomes clear that Paul develops a distinct self-understanding of believers in Jesus Christ in relation to both Jews and Gentiles (1 Corinthians 9:20–21). The place of Paul in Judaism can therefore be described differently depending on the perspective."
Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A., and Verheyden, Joseph, eds. 2021. Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Contents: Jens Schröter, Benjamin A. Edsall, and Joseph Verheyden: Introduction 1; Christoph Markschies: From “Wide and Narrow Way” to “The Ways that Never Parted”? Road Metaphors in Models of Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity 11; Anders Runesson: What Never Belonged Together Cannot Part: Rethinking the So-Called Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity 33; Jan N. Bremmer: Ioudaismos, Christianismos and the Parting of the Ways 57; Jens Schröter: Was Paul a Jew Within Judaism? The Apostle to the Gentiles and His Communities in Their Historical Context 89; Matthias Konradt: Matthew within or outside of Judaism? From the ‘Parting of the Ways’ Model to a Multifaceted Approach 121; Kylie Crabbe: Character and Conflict: Who Parts Company in Acts? 151; Jörg Frey: “John within Judaism?” Textual, Historical, and Hermeneutical Considerations 185; James Carleton Paget: The Epistle of Barnabas, Jews and Christians 217; Benjamin A. Edsall: Justin Martyr without the “Parting” or the “Ways” 249 Paul R. Trebilco: Beyond “The Parting of the Ways” between Jews and Christians in Asia Minor to a Model of Variegated Interaction 273; Joseph Verheyden: Living Apart Together: Jews and Christians in Second-Century Rome – Re-visiting Some of the Actors Involved 307; Tobias Nicklas: Jews and Christians? Sketches from Second Century Alexandria 347; List of Contributors 381; Index of Ancient Sources 383; Index of Modern Authors 399; Index of Subjects 407-409.
Schwatrz, Joshua. 2024. "Mapping the Ancient Evidence: Pots, Pans and the Religious (?) Material Culture of Jews and Christians in the Second Century CE." In Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: Mapping the Second Century, edited by den Dulk, Matthijs, Schwatrz, Joshua, Tomson, Peter J. and Verheyden, Joseph, 76–95. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "This article presents Jewish and Christian household material culture of the second century CE and compares them within the parameters of the ‘parting of the ways’.

Not only were the material ways of Household Judaism and Christianity parted, but they were never even entwined. Jewish householders and Christian householders might have used the same objects, but those objects were neither Christian nor Jewish.

However, in the Jewish home, household objects could become Jewish things. In the Christian household, objects remained objects. While it might be possible to map aspects of Jewish or Christian material culture, often it was not a question of shared territory or overlapping boundaries, but of different maps entirely."
Shanks, Hershel, ed. 2013. Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.

Contents: Illustrations VI; Color Plates VII; Maps VII; The Authors VII; Abbreviations XIII; Acknowledgments XVII; Hershel Shanks: I. Geza Vermes: The Jewish Jesus Movement 1; II. James D.G. Dunn: From the Crucifixion to the End of the First Century ce; III. Bruce Chilton: The Godfearers: From the Gospels to Aphrodisias 55; IV. Pamela Watson: The Christian Flight to Pella? The Archaeological Picture 73; V. Joan Taylor: Parting in Palestine 87; VI. Annette Yoshiko Reed and Lily Vuong: Christianity in Antioch: Partings in Roman Syria 105; VII. Eric M. Meyers: Living Side by Side in Galilee 133; VIII. Margaret H. Williams: Jews and Christians at Rome: An Early Parting of the Ways 151; IX. Robert A. Kraft and AnneMarie Luijendijk: Christianity’s Rise After Judaism's Demise in Early Egypt 179; X. Matt A. Jackson-McCabe: Ebionites and Nazoraeans: Christians or Jews? 187; XI. Shaye J.D. Cohen: In Between: Jewish-Christians and the Curse of the Heretics 207; XII. Steven Fine: The Complexities of Rejection and Attraction, Herein of Love and Hate 237; XIII. Lawrence T: Geraty: From Sabbath to Sunday: Why, How and When? 255; XIV. Arye Edrei and Doron Mendels: Social Organization and Parting in East and West 269; XV. James H. Charlesworth: Did They Ever Part? 281; Notes 301; Index 369-390.
Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher, and Yovel, Yossi. 2023. "Network analysis reveals insights about the interconnections of Judaism and Christianity in the first centuries CE." Humanities and Social Sciences Communication no. 10:1–9.

Abstract: "The development of the two religions: Christianity and Judaism, is a topic of much debate.

Whereas Judaism and Christianity are known as separate religions, in fact, these two religions developed side by side. While earlier researchers conceptualized a “parting-of-the-ways,” after which the two religions evolved independently, new studies reveal a multi-layered set of interactions throughout the first several centuries CE. Until recently, this question was explored with the limited source material and limited tools to analyze it. While working on a limited set of data, from a specific corpus, this project offers a new set of methodological tools, borrowed from computer sciences, that could ultimately serve for understanding the connections between Jews and Christians in late antiquity. We generated models of interreligious Christian–Jewish networks that demonstrate the scope, nature, and advantages of network analysis for revealing the complex intertwined evolution of the two religions. The Jewish corpora chosen for this research are rabbinic writings from late antique Babylonia and Palestine. Christian texts range from the first through sixth centuries CE. Instead of representing interactions between people or places, as is typically done with social networks, we model literary interactions that, in our view, indicate historical connections between religious communities. This novel approach allows us to visually represent sets of temporal–spatial–contextual relationships, which evolved over hundreds of years, in single snapshots. It also reveals new insights about the relationships between the two communities.

For example, we find that rabbinic sources exhibit a largely polemical approach towards earlier Christian traditions but a non-polemical attitude towards later ones. Moreover, network analysis suggests a temporal–spatial familiarity correlation. Namely, Jewish sources are familiar with early, eastern Christian sources and with both Eastern and Western Christian sources in later periods. The application of network analysis makes it possible to identify the most influential texts—that is, the key “nodes”—testifying to the importance of certain traditions for both religious communities. Finally, the network approach is a tool for pointing scholarly research in new directions, which only reveals itself as a result of this type of mapping. In other words, the network not only describes the known data, but it is itself a way to enlarge the network and lead us down new and exciting paths that are currently unknown."
Siquans, Agnethe. 2024. "Jewish Scriptural Interpretation and Ritual Practice in Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus." In Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians, edited by Tiwald, Markus and Öhler, Markus, 287–304. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Abstract: "Origen (185‒ca. 253) was one of the earliest and most prolific interpreters of the Bible in early Christianity. He adapted Hellenistic and Jewish methods of text interpretation to the needs of the Christian community. In his Homilies on Leviticus, he explains the cultic prescription of the biblical book to his Christian audience in Caesarea. His spiritual interpretation aims at the edification of his hearers and their progress in their spiritual lives. He develops his interpretation in explicit contrast to a Jewish interpretation which he defines as literal and non-spiritual. With this demarcation he primarily addresses Christians who criticise his spiritual hermeneutics. Thus he tries to construct a clear borderline between Christian and Jewish biblical interpretation. Whereas he rejects a literal understanding of the ritual laws in Leviticus as “Jewish,” he nevertheless aims at the concrete social and religious practice of his Christian audience."
Smith, David Andrew. 2021. "The Jewishness of Luke–Acts: Locating Lukan Christianity Amidst the Parting of The Ways." The Journal of Theological Studies no. 72:738–768.

Abstract: "This article surveys historic and recent contributions to the study of the situation of Luke–Acts and the so-called ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity to advance the thesis that these two avenues of inquiry, which have generally been pursued independently, need to be studied in tandem. The article considers stylistic and theological features of Luke–Acts to argue that this corpus was written either by a Hellenistic Jewish Christian or else a Gentile Godfearer whose entrance into the Christian community was mediated heavily by an attachment to synagogue life. The article further argues that the Luke’s portrayal of Jews suggests that the author writes from a context in which the mission to the Jews is ongoing and with a rhetorical aim to persuade non-Christian Jews, either directly among a Jewish readership or indirectly by inculcating a posture of missionary appeal among Christian readers. Finally, the article argues that the Gentile mission in Acts is narrated with a view toward assuaging Jewish-Christian concerns. Taken together, these arguments propose a complex setting for Luke–Acts within a Jewish and Christian cultural milieu and suggest that the Lukan corpus remains an important textual field for research into early Jewish–Christian relations."
———. 2024. Luke and the Jewish Other: Politics of Identity in the Third Gospel. New York: Routledge.

"The situation in which Luke wrote is important for the present study. As has already been discussed, the assessment of Luke’s social location is closely intertwined with the social purposes one identifies in his writing. In what follows I will seek to show, following Philip Esler, that Luke’s Gospel is intelligible as a text written for a mixed audience of gentile and Jewish Christians. Yet I want to suggest more. If Luke wrote at a time and in a place in which the so-called “parting of the ways” had not yet fully occurred, and if, as I am convinced, he did not himself seek to force such a parting, then it is entirely likely that Jewish Christians (if not their gentile counterparts, though that cannot be excluded) lived in close contact with non-Christian Jews. Indeed, the statement that Jesus came to divide members of households against one another suggests an intimate location for the divisions that obtained between those who argued over his identity (Luke 12:52–53). If this was so at the time Luke wrote—a possibility I cannot prove but wish to keep open—then Luke, who wrote to Jewish Christians, may have envisioned non-Christian Jews within the purview of his readership.(82) The proof of this suggestion, of course, will be in the exegesis." (Introduction, p. 18)

(82) On this possibility, see Smith, “Jewishness of Luke-Acts,” 754–67.

References

Smith, David Andrew. “The Jewishness of Luke-Acts: Locating Lukan Christianity Amidst the Parting of the Ways.” The Journal of Theological Studies 72, no. 2 (2021): 738–768.
Smith, Eric C. 2018. Jewish Glass and Christian Stone: A Materialist Mapping of the “Parting of the Ways”. New York: Routledge.

"This book is really best read in two parts. The first part, comprised of this preface and the first three chapters, is an overview of how Jewish and Christian identity has been understood in the past, and a proposal for how to think about the “parting of the ways” in materialist terms. Chapters 4 through 9, then, each take particular objects and use them as case studies, bringing to bear different theoretical lenses in each case and trying to wrestle with different questions raised by a materialist approach to identity." (p. 6)

(...)

"But this book has not been about the view from the mountaintops. It has been concerned with the whole landscape, and the view of those mountains from the valley below and between them. The valley floor is the site of makeshifting, of the quotidian tactics of those without a mountain to stand on.

It is where the negotiation of everyday life and identity take place, where embodied and practiced religion happens, and where the bricolage footpaths are laid down.

In these pages, I have tried to map these footpaths, and trace the routes of these makeshift passages through the valley. This has been a materialist mapping, privileging the lived lives of the people who made the valley their home, even as the mountain- makers and mountain- mappers described them into the margins. This materialist mapping has shown that this “parting of the ways” took longer than we have imagined, and that when it happened, the parting was a parting of ways that were sometimes very much still a warren of paths meandering through the valley between them. And it has shown that even as the ways were parting, the makeshifters in the valley often took little notice or paid little heed to the goings- on on the mountains up above." (p. 162)
Soards, Marion L. 2019. "Following Paul along the way of the parting of Judaism and Christianity." Biblica no. 100:249–271.

Abstract: "The present essay takes its point of departure from the writings and thought of Paul of Tarsus. In his theological reflection Paul remembered particular historical events that he recalled and reported in his letters, emphasizing kairotic incidents that had occurred openly in the life of the early church. These episodes were explicit developments in an elusive process of theological disengagement or religious disentanglement — first, of specific groups of Christians of differing sensibilities and, in turn, along similar lines of differentiation, of certain Christians and certain Jews. When considered together with (1) other selected New Testament materials and (2) seemingly pertinent later Christian writings, these accounts of occasions that Paul remembered may help one see — or may even themselves reveal — the roots of divisions of Christians and Jews that became obvious only later and that subsequently were thought of and referred to as a parting of the ways."
Spence, Stephen. 2004. The Parting of the Ways: The Roman Church as a Case Study. Leuven: Peeters.

"It is the intent of this study to consider the social development of one particular Christian community: the church in Rome. This community was not chosen because it is representative of all the ‘developing churches of this period; no church could function in this role. The historical and social accidents of each individual church are too great to generalise from one to another. Neither was this community chosen because the evidence available is complete; it is barely adequate, even though it is as plentiful as that of any first-century church. The church in Rome was chosen because the evidence associated with it provides us with an opportunity to see the changes that time brought. Snapshots of the church in 49 C.E., in 57 C.E., in 64 C.E., and then around the end of the century, when juxtaposed, provide us with some sense of this community's development. Of course, juxtaposing does not tell the tale by itself.

The connections that are made and the implications that are drawn from these connections owe themselves to the interpreter’s understanding of how such a new religious movement might be expected to develop." (pp. 1-2, a note omitted)
Stenström, Hanna. 2005. "New Voices in Biblical Exegesis - New Views on the Formation of the Church." In The Formation of the Early Church, edited by Ẫdna, Jostein, 73–90. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"The Outline of this Article

In the paper I read in Stavanger, I began with reading a story. I will begin this article in the same way. The story serves as a point of departure for formulating the basic elements of feminist critique. I will then, with some connections made to the story, discuss what the constructive task of feminist biblical scholars is. A concrete example follows of how feminist scholarship contributes to the work with some specific issues concerning "the Formation of the Church", namely the construction of a Christian identity in some early Christian texts.

Finally, in a brief reflection, I will return to the challenge of feminist exegesis to biblical scholarship." (p. 74)
Stewart Lester, Olivia 2026. "Process, Not Parting: Sibylline Oracles and the “Parting of the Ways”." In ‘Listen to the Sibyl’: The History, Poetics, and Reception of the Sibylline Oracles, edited by Stewart Lester, Olivia, Leventhal, Max, Najman, Hindy, Scott, Joshua and Stell, Elizabeth, 179–196. Leiden: Brill.

"On the landscape of reassessing the so-called “parting of the ways,” I suggest that the Sibylline Oracles are a productive site for rethinking the relationships between the movements that are often treated separately as Judaism and Christianity. A close examination of these texts offers a model of multiple iterative transformations rather than parting: that is, repeated and incremental changes over time. Some of these transformations happen in deep continuity with that which has gone before, but in other moments, the transformations are more violent, effecting erasure, distance, or the assertion of something new. In the Sibylline Oracles, prophecy is a process—in this case a series of processes, actually, spanning centuries and communities." (pp. 179-180)

(...)

"This chapter, however, focuses on another aspect of the ways in process. It illustrates literary resemblances, by examining two shared literary strategies—pseudepigraphy and scriptural interpretation—among writers who were followers of Jesus and ancient Jewish writers who demonstrated no interest in Jesus whatsoever. The analysis of this chapter centers on Sib. Or. 6, in comparison with selections from other books. The sixth book, one of the most distinctively “Christian” books in the collection that also demonstrates marked anti-Judaism, nonetheless illustrates the literary entanglements between Jewish writers and followers of Jesus that defy any easy “parting of the ways".” (p. 185)
Stökl Ben Ezra, Daniel. 2009. "Weighing the Parts: A Papyrological Perspective on the Parting of the Ways." Novum Testamentum no. 51:168–186.

Abstract: "A comparison of the ideological composition of the Qumran library and Christian libraries from ancient Egypt, reconstructed from pre-Constantinian papyri, reveals a profound difference in the amount of group-specific material: ca. 28% Qumran “sectarian” at Qumran vs. ca. 60% “Christian” books in ancient Egyptian Christian libraries. Even for the second century, where we have much less data, the divide is quite great. If we take Qumran as example for a Jewish sectarian library, still focused largely on the Hebrew Bible and writings shared with other Jews, Christian libraries portray an independent group-specific identity, quite early on."
Taylor, Joan. 2013. "Parting in Palestine." In Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Shanks, Hershel, 87–104. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.

"Conclusions

Overall we see in Judea-Palestine an evolving and patchy picture, with many holes due to lack of historical and archaeological evidence. Jews and Jewish-Christians (who were undoubtedly the most common type of Christians in Judea-Palestine initially) suffered severe blows together in both the first and second revolts, with the latter being completely devastating for all Jews in Judea. Persecution of Jewish-Christians by Jews in Judea is mentioned in relation to the second revolt, and then only in relation to Bar-Kokhba himself, whose severity against opposition is testified in the papyri found in the Judean desert caves. From 160 C.E. onward there is mention of curses against Christ or Christians made in synagogue contexts, which may reflect the development of the Birkat ha-Minim, which at some point before the fourth century and in some quarters was a dual curse against minim and Notsrim.

Archaeological evidence indicates that Jews and Jewish-Christians lived together in villages of the Golan in the fourth to sixth centuries, with different synagogues. Perhaps here and elsewhere this was also true at an earlier time, though there is currently no archaeological evidence for Jewish-Christianity in Galilee.

After the Second Jewish Revolt, Christianity became predominantly gentile in Palestine. The population as a whole was mainly Syro-Phoenician.

The Syro-Phoenicians, with a Hellenistic culture, had for a long time lived as majorities in most of the coastal cities from Gaza in the southwest to Ptolemais (Akko) in the northwest and in the Decapolis from the territory of Hippos-Sussita in the northeast to Abila in the southeast.

Hellenistic law codes operated in these cities and the Syro-Phoenicians worshiped within syncretistic cults. Samaritans lived in the city of Sebaste and in the area around Mount Gerizim and Shechem,”* which became the city of Neapolis Flavia in 72/3 C.E. After the second revolt, both the Syro-Phoenicians and the Samaritans spread out into former Jewish areas in the heartland, around Jerusalem and traditional Judea.

Aelia Capitolina, formerly Jerusalem, was now a Roman colony. Only gentile Christians could live in the city; Jews were forbidden not only here but elsewhere in a wide area of their old homeland ofc entral Judea.

This Roman initiative to differentiate between Jews and non-Jews would have entailed an insistence on definition; thus a radical break with Judaism was forced on Christians here and elsewhere in the exclusion zone, with wide symbolic and practical ramifications." (pp. 103-104)
Tellbe, Mikael. 2005. "The Temple Tax as a Pre-70 CE Identity Marker." In The Formation of the Early Church, edited by Ẫdna, Jostein, 19–44. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"Responding to the recent appeal of J. Lieu to look for other defining boundaries than those we typically find in the Pauline literature,(3) this paper will draw attention to yet another significant Jewish identity marker, viz., the payment of Temple tax - labeled by S. J. D. Cohen as "perhaps the best statement of Jewishness for a diaspora Jew in the pre-70 CE period."(4) This identity marker is however surprisingly seldom given much attention in analyses relating to the "new perspective."

In discussions that relate to the so-called "partings of the ways" - the emergence of Christian distinctiveness and the pulling apart of Christianity and Judaism - the Temple tax is commonly referred to in connection to the post-70 CE period and the collection of the fiscus Iudaicus during the reign of Domitian.(5) However, this paper will pay notice (i) to the Temple tax as a significant Jewish boundary marker defining Jewish identity in the Diaspora prior to 70 CE, and (ii) to a couple of New Testament texts [*] that are frequently overlooked when it comes to Jewish tax matters. The suggested interpretation of these texts may in turn have some implications for the complex process of the "partings of the ways"," (pp. 19-20)

(3) J. Lieu, '"Impregnable Ramparts and Walls of Iron': Boundary and Identity in Early 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'," NTS [New Testament Studies] 48 (2002) 297-313 (312-13).

(4) Cohen, '"Those Who Say'," 35 n. 141

(5) E.g., J.T. Sanders, Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants: The First One Hundred Years of Jewish-Christian Relations (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1993) 166-69, 176-78; S.G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70-170 CE (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 13, 163.ù

[*] Matthew 17:24-27 and Romans 13:1-10.
Teppler, Yaakov Y. 2021. "The Trial of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and the Parting of the Ways." In Reflections on Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity, edited by Jaffé, Dan, Nir, Rivka and Teppler, Yaakov Y., 243–288. Bern: Peter Lang.

"In this latter regard, Heemstra gives us a direction that is both powerful and persuasive: [1] he suggests the strong influence of a powerful third party hovering between Judaism and (Jewish) Christianity, i.e. Rome and its policy of the Fiscus Judaicus(4) and the implications thereof, and [2] that as a result of this policy, Heemstra pinpoints the break between Judaism and (Jewish) Christianity at the closing decade of the first century CE.(5)

Heemstra’s conclusions are for this paper a kind of ‘portal’ through which l intend pursuing my arguments, and to endeavor to place them in this arena of fascinating possibilities.(6) In the discussion below, I will suggest yet another direction which l consider to be an additional and important outcome of Heemstra’s conclusions. My proposal is that, that the ‘parting of the ways’ was the result of efforts that were made by the leadership of mainstream Judaism, from the last decade of the first century CE, to comply with the Roman post-revolt policy; that is to vigilantly avoid any act or to oppose any idea that could be interpreted by the watchful Roman authorities as a political and/or religious disturbance.

I will further show difference between Heemstra’s conclusions and my own proposal, and in order to give added credence to my claim, l will use the enigmatic figure of the great Jewish tanna – Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, as an example of this policy of the mainstream Judaism leadership in occupied Judaea against any potential disturbances. While Jewish Christianity could be cited as a ‘potential disturbance’ so could politically motivated ‘disturbances’ involving also religious elements as is clearly evidenced in the case of Rabbi Eliezer. As these ‘disturbances’ play a key element in this paper, it will be necessary to identify and clarify what kind of ‘disturbances’ are meant in this context, whether they required silent or active measures to be taken by the Jewish leadership in that period of time, and what effect they had on the ‘parting of the ways’ between Rabbinical and Christian Judaism." (pp- 244-245)

(4) The ‘Jewish Tax’ (also the definition of the administration) which was levied by the Emperor Vespasian on the Jews in the Roman Empire, after the suppression of the ‘Great Revolt’ (66–70 CE), and that was relentlessly imposed by his successor Domitian. See Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Domitianus 12.1– 2.

(5) By 96 CE, the year when Nerva replaced Domitian as Emperor, this policy had reached its zenith.

(6) It seems to me that Heemstra was the first to demonstrate unambiguously that the Fiscus Judaicus and its implications should be considered as the essential key for the understanding of the ‘parting of the ways’ – which l regard as the third party theory.

References

Marius Heemstra, The Fiscus Judaicus and the Parting of the Ways (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2010),
Tiwald, Markus. 2024. "The “Works of the Law”: The Transformation of Jewish Identity Markers and the Parting of the Ways." In Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians, edited by Tiwald, Markus and Öhler, Markus, 67–85. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Abstract: "The expression identity marker(s) of Judaism was coined by J. D. G. Dunn [*], albeit in a way seen as outdated today. Latest research has shown that neither a “normative Judaism” nor a “common Judaism” and not even a “mainstream Judaism” existed in the first century CE. The period of early Judaism was characterized by fierce debates as to how the will of God should be interpreted. Rivalling groups – like Sadducees, Pharisees, or Qumranites – campaigned for diverging identity markers. The author suggests that the phrase “works of the law” in Rom 3:20–22 focusses on ritual, cultic, and purity-based matters of the Jewish Torah. Such aspects could be interpreted in diverging ways – as the halachic letter 4QMMT (Qumran) demonstrates. Paul’s attitude towards the law during his time as a disciple of Jesus represents a possible – albeit quite liberal – interpretation of of the Jewish Torah within the broad range of diverse Torah interpretations in multifaceted early Judaism."

[*] In his article “The New Perspective on Paul” (originally 1982), in Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul: Collected Essays (WUNT 185), Tübingen 2005, 89‒110.
———. 2026. Early Judaism and the Beginnings of Christianity: Common Roots and the Parting of the Ways. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.

Translated from Frühjudentum und beginnendes Christentum: Gemeinsame Wurzeln und das Parting of the Ways, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2022. by Jason Valdez.

"It will be helpful at the start of this volume to give an overview of its structure and organization. The division of the book into five parts results in a certain amount of redundancy. However, rather than something grudgingly to be accepted, this redundancy is deliberate and intentional. It allows individual events to be discussed and understood from five different angles of vision.

Part I: “Early Judaism” and “Early Christianity” is a basic overview chapter that gives a broad outline of the key issue of the “parting of the ways.” It begins with the question of what is meant by “early Judaism” and “early Christianity”. Both terms have rightly been found to be problematic – not only with reference to terminological vagueness, but also with regard to the historical parameters that have been assigned to them.

Next, the “parting of the ways” is traced in broad strokes.

Part II: History of Early Judaism then supplies the historical preconditions for the “parting of the ways ”, which can only be understood on the basis of the history of early Judaism. The aim of this section is not to “re-narrate” the historical data but to foster awareness of the complex interactions of political, sociological, economic, and religious factors, and of what that complexity means for the “parting of the ways.”

Part III: Groups within Early Judaism goes a step further. Now that Part II has provided a broad historical overview, the individual groups within early Judaism can be delineated within that framework: first in Palestine, then in the Diaspora, and finally the beginnings of Christianity are also understood as a phenomenon of early Judaism.

(...)

Part IV: Socio-Political and Socio-Religious Linkages in Early Palestinian Judaism is an excursus on the interlocking social and religious facets of Palestinian Judaism. It attempts to comprehend, along theological as well as sociological lines, the dynamics at work in the emergence of early Christianity.

(...)

Part V: “Torah” and “Temple” as Identity Markers in Early Judaism and the Beginnings of Christianity is the most “theologically” oriented section of the book. With the backdrop of historical milestones (Part II), religious groups (Part III), and sociological realities (Part IV) in place, we are in a position to examine the resulting theology. A particular focus of that examination is on the marked pluriformity in the Judaism of the time – especially regarding the interpretation of the Jewish law and in relation to temple piety." (pp. 15-16)
Tiwald, Markus, and Öhler, Markus, eds. 2024. Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Contents: Markus Tiwald, Markus Öhler: Acknowledgements IX; Markus Tiwald, Markus Öhler: “Parting of the Ways” – A Problematic Metaphor: Introduction to the Volume XI-XXV;

Part I: Jewish Identity and the Parting of the Ways

1. Marianne Grohmann: Group Identities in Ezra-Nehemia 3; 2. Karin Hedner Zetterholm: Jesus-Oriented Groups and the Emergence of a Rabbinic Jewish Identity 17; 3. Günter Stemberger: Continued Contacts between Jews and Christians: Knowledge of Rabbinic Traditions in Christian Texts and Vice Versa 37; 4. Jodi Magness: The Late Antique Synagogue at Capernaum: Was It Really a Congregation of Minim? 51;

Part II: The Apostle Paul and the Parting of the Ways

5. Markus Tiwald: The “Works of the Law”: The Transformation of Jewish Identity Markers and the Parting of the Ways 67; 6. Kathy Ehrensperger: Identity Transformation in Christ: Struggling with ‘Ἔργα νόμου’ in Paul 87; 7. Christina Eschner: Paul and the Galatians as “Children” of Abraham: The Continuity of Faith in Salvation History in Judaism and Christianity 111;

Part III: The Gospels and the Parting of the Ways

8. Christoph Heil: The Sayings Gospel Q and the Parting of the Ways 139; 9. Matthias Konradt: Matthew’s Ethics and the Complex Processes of Differentiation and Separation of the Matthean Communities from Judaism 163; 10. Stefan Schreiber: Finding Their Own Way in a Jewish Environment: The Letters (and Gospel) of John and the Parting of the Ways 183; 11. Hildegard Scherer: Not Χριστιανοί: Group Designations by Christ Believers in the New Testament 203;

Part IV: The Parting of the Ways in Non-Canonical and Patristic Texts

12. Hildegard Scherer: The Didache and the Parting of the Way 219; 13. Paul Foster: Ignatius of Antioch: Redefining Identities and Creating Irreversible Separation 241; 14. Markus Öhler: Judaism and Christianity in the Epistles of Ignatius: Reflections on Contextualisation in the 2nd Century CE 269; 15. Agnethe Siquans: Jewish Scriptural Interpretation and Ritual Practice in Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus 287; 16. Hans Förster: Parted by Nature or by Translation? Translation Choices in the Vulgate New Testament as a Factor in Perceptions of the “Parting of the Ways” 305;

Part V: Systematical-Theological Considerations Concerning the Parting of the Ways

17. Jan-Heiner Tück: “Consubstantial with the Father”: Did the Council of Nicaea Neglect the Jewish Roots of Christianity? 325; 18. Christian Danz: Jesus the Judean and Jesus the Christ. Systematical-Theological Considerations on the Relationship between Judaism and Christianity 341; List of Contributors 351; Index 361-379.
———. 2024. "“Parting of the Ways” – A Problematic Metaphor: Introduction to the Volume." In Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians, edited by Tiwald, Markus and Öhler, Markus, XI–XXV. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Abstract: "In the last decade, the question of the so-called “parting of the ways” between “Jews” and “Christians” has become one of the most crucial topics of New Testament exegesis.

Today, most scholars would agree that the “parting of the ways” did not occur in one place at a specific time but was a long process that took place in different locations at different times and for different reasons, not concluding before the fourth century.

This book represents a collection of papers presented at a conference convened in Vienna (Austria) in 2022 and consists of five main chapters: Jewish Identity and the Parting of the Ways, The Apostle Paul, The Gospels, Non-Canonical and Patristic Texts, Systematic-Theological Considerations Concerning the Parting of the Ways."
Tomson, Peter J. 2019. "The Gospel of John and the ‘Parting of the Ways’." In Studies on Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries, 621–661. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"The following essay, published here for the first time, takes its departure from the discussion about the Gospel of John and its significance for the so-called ‘parting of the ways’ of Jews and Christians around the turn of the first century CE. It will be emphasised that we must always try to understand theological developments as they are embedded in historical events. From there, the essay fans out to an investigation of the sources relevant to the ostracism of Christians in Jewish society and in the Roman Empire in the early second century CE. John will appear to be decisive in confirming the suggestion of a rabbinic expulsion decree that arises from an important rabbinic passage. The same passage will then figure prominently in a survey of the means of excommunication available to the early rabbis that follows. Finally, a summary of our results will lead to a consideration of the circumstances under which such a rabbinic decree could have materialised. In so doing, we shall address aspects of the theories of ‘postcolonial’ rhetoric and of the ‘Romanisation’ of Judaism." (p. 621)
Tong, M Adryael. 2020. "Protecting Difference: Protectionist Strategies and the Parting of the Ways." Method and Theory in the Study of Religion no. 32:364–372.

Abstract: "This article takes an interdisciplinary look at protectionist doxa at the intersection of two distinct fields: early Christian studies and rabbinics. I argue that both fields maintain a protectionist doxa of difference; that is, a doxa that early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism are fundamentally different from each other. This difference, which supports the constitution of each field as separate from the other, nevertheless has a secondary effect of shaping our approach to our objects of study—early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. Specifically, this doxa of difference occludes the ways in which early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism can be similar. I focus specifically on the current “polysemy” debate within rabbinics and show how this doxa has functioned to obstruct comparative approaches across disciplines rather than facilitate them."
Treblico, Paul R. 2021. "Beyond “The Parting of the Ways” between Jews and Christians in Asia Minor to a Model of Variegated Interaction." In Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model, edited by Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A. and Verheyden, Joseph, 273–306. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "In the first and second centuries CE, the Jewish and Christian communities flourished in Asia Minor. What forms of encounter and interaction between these communities can be observed?

There is evidence of negative interactions that either led to a, probably local, “parting of the ways” or possibly reflect that a separation had occurred and that hostility now existed between these communities. However, there is also other evidence pointing to more positive interactions, indicating either a certain degree of intermingling between the communities, or the influence of one group on the other, or that the communities did not view each other as antagonistic. This suggests that the “parting of the ways” model is inadequate for describing the situation in the first two centuries. A more nuanced approach to considering the remarkable diversity of interaction forms between Jewish and Christian communities in Asia Minor is the model of “multifaceted interactions.”

This model is also consistent with the evidence for diversity within both the Jewish and Christian communities in Asia Minor."
Tück, Jan-Heiner. 2024. "“Consubstantial with the Father”. Did the Council of Nicaea Neglect the Jewish Roots of Christianity?" In Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians, edited by Tiwald, Markus and Öhler, Markus, 325–340. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Abstract: "Through the dogmatic definition that the Son is “consubstantial with the Father”, the Council of Nicaea made a hermeneutical point that brought the parting of the ways to conclusion with respect to the doctrine of God and Christology. As a liturgical confession, the dogma continues to shape the memorial culture of Christian communities of faith. To this day, the Incarnation and the Trinity are regarded as markers of difference in the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity. Dealing with the theology of Arius and the answer of the Council of Nicaea, the article reflects on Jewish roots of Christianity and the concept of Homoousia. It points out that pre-existent mediators and ideas of incarnation are not a Christian theological invention, but a Jewish heritage.

Moreover, the expectation that the Messiah/Christ would be a god-man, was part of Jewish tradition. The article concludes that in the concept of homoousia Jewishs roots are brought to the fore in a distinct manner."
Tyson, Joseph B. 2016. "Acts, the “Parting of the Ways” and the Use of the Term ‘Christians’." In Bridging between Sister Religions: Studies of Jewish and Christian Scriptures Offered in Honor of Prof. John T. Townsend, edited by Kalimi, Isaac, 128–140. Leiden: Brill.

"Conclusion

This study suggests that the evidence from Acts should not be ignored in discussions of the “parting of the ways,” as it is by proponents of a first-century date for the composition of Acts. The references in Acts to “Christians” are not just puzzling anomalies. Rather, together with other such references from the early second century, they support the probability that at least some Jesus believers were by then becoming recognized as forming a distinct movement and that they so recognized themselves. As a second-century text, Acts should be read as providing meaningful evidence for the emergence of Christianity as a movement related to but distinct from Judaism. Although the author of Acts frequently stresses the opposition of Jews to the Christian movement, his narrative does not provide sufficient evidence to indicate the degree of distinction that the “Christians” may have achieved or sought. Nevertheless, Acts displays a sense of identity for the Jesus movement that seems to fit better in the second century than in the first." (p. 140, a note omtted)
van Aarde, A. G. 1989. "Ήγέρθη ἀπὸ τω͡ν νεκρω͡ν (Mt 28:7): A textual evidence on the separation of Judaism and Christianity." Neotestamentica no. 23:219–233.

Abstract: "Two problems of historical nature concerning Matthew's narrative of the resurrection are investigated.

On the assumption that it is a transparent "history" it is argued that the historiography inferred from it depends on the identification of the conditions which are more authentically portrayed by individual features than the order of episodes or even logia. Secondly, it is shown that the words of the women, "He has risen from the dead", identified as an individual feature, underline the presumption that the Matthean resurrection narrative portrays a situation in which the separation of Judaism and Christianity had not finally been accomplished at that point in time."
Visotzky, Burton L. 2024. "The Church Fathers on Jews and Judaism." In The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited by Hezser, Catherine, 139–153. New York: Routledge.

"In this chapter, we survey Jews and Judaism in the works of the church fathers (cf. Krauss 1892, for the earliest of these surveys). We cover a period during which Christianity developed out of and then alongside Judaism, sharing a biblical foundation and reinterpreting it in variant ways. In late antique and early Byzantine times, Judaism and Christianity were seen by the church to be competitors with one another. Christianity envisioned itself in relationship to Judaism, as the well-rooted tree to which its Christian stock was successfully grafted (Rom 11:17– 8). Judaism, in turn, found itself unconsciously influenced in positive ways by the church, and more consciously in reaction to what it perceived to be the predations of the Christian Empire, post- 325 C.E., with Constantine’s ascent at the Council of Nicaea and the advent of muscular Christianity.

From the earliest years of the Christian movement(s), Judaism, and in particular rabbinic Judaism, tended to look away from Christianity (but see Niehoff in this volume). While it can never be clear whether this was a case of willfully ignoring Christianity – perhaps in the hopes that it was an inconsequential heresy and if ignored would just go away – the earliest rabbinic literature fundamentally avoids discussion of Christianity or includes it among Graeco- Roman religious practices that were considered idolatrous. Only a minuscule portion of rabbinic literature treats Christianity explicitly (Burns 2016; Visotzky 2017, but see Schäfer 2012). This created a disparity of gaze. Judaism essentially looked away, while the New Testament and the church fathers looked always upon Judaism with an Oedipal eye. It is against this background that we turn to examine Jews and Judaism in the works of the church fathers." (p 139)

References

Burns. J.E. (2016). The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Krauss, S. (1892). “The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” Jewish Quarterly Review 5: 122– 57.

Schäfer, P. (2012). The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Visotzky, B.L. (2017). “Jesus in Rabbinic Tradition,” in A.- J. Levine and M.Z. Brettler (eds.), Jewish Annotated New Testament. 2nd ed. Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 580– 81.
Wardle, Timothy. 2018. "Samaritans, Jews, and Christians: Multiple Partings and Multiple Ways." In The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus, edited by Baron, Lori, Hicks-Keeton, Jill and Thiessen, Matthew, 15–39. Atlanta: SBL Press.

"In this essay I have chosen to retain the terminology of the parting of the ways, not because it is the best term, but because it is a convenient and well-known shorthand for the process by which Christianity emerged out of Judaism. I have also chosen, though, to describe the division between Jews and Samaritans as an earlier parting of the ways, and to see what fruitful avenues of exploration might be found in placing the parting between Samaritans and Jews alongside a discussion of the parting between Jews and Christians. My aim is not to produce an exhaustive study on the subject but rather to highlight a few suggestive points of contact common to these two partings. In what follows I explore several issues germane to current discussions of the fraying of relationships between Jews and Samaritans: terminology, temple, texts, and polemical rhetoric. Following this discussion, I will reflect on the significance of the overlaps that emerge between these two partings." (p. 16)
Watson, Pamela. 2013. "The Christian Flight to Pella? The Archaeological Picture." In Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Shanks, Hershel, 73–86. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.

"There has been much debate over the historicity of the reported migration of the members of the church of Jerusalem to the Transjordanian city of Pella before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Confirmation of this episode, often referred to as the “flight to Pella," has been of particular interest to those investigating the nature and chronology of the divergence of Christianity from Judaism.(1) If it occurred, the migration to Pella could be seen as an early signal of distinction of one entity from the other, whether evidence of a sharp break or part of a process of separation that began in the first century." (p. 73)

"The archaeology of Pella and its environs has revealed a functioning Hellenized settlement in the mid-first century C.E. capable of receiving refugees, whether within the existing urban fabric or more covertly in the immediate landscape. However, an earnest desire to establish a direct link with a potentially historical episode such as the flight of the early Christians can lead to assumptions and embellishments that are not warranted by the physical evidence when scrutinized. Archaeological investigations have yet to find anything that would confirm the presence of a specific population whose identity at this stage is more defined by their non-material belief systems than their material accoutrements. In fact, although their presence is not precluded,(*) neither Jews nor Christians have left any revelatory signature in the first-century C.E. cultural remains recovered to date at Pella." (p. 86)

(1) The debate has recently been summarized by Jonathan Bourgel, “The Jewish Christians’ Move from Jerusalem as a Pragmatic Choice?" in Studies in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Dan Jaffé (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 107-138, especially references pp. 107-108; see also Vicky Balabanski, Eschatology in the Making: Mark, Matthew, and the Didache (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 101-102.

(*) See Steven Bourke, “The Christian Flight to Pella: True or Tale?” BAR, May/June 2013.
Wedderburn, Alexander J. M. 2002. "Paul and Barnabas: The Anatomy and Chronology of a Parting of the Ways." In Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity. Essays in Honour of Heikki Raisanen, edited by Dunderberg, Ismo, Tuckett, Christopher and Syreeni, Kari, 291–310. Leiden: Brill.

"Both the Letter of Paul to the Galatians (2: 11-14) and the Book of Acts (15:36-41) refer to a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas.

In the former, although Barnabas is not the main protagonist, he is mentioned as siding with Peter and the other Jewish Christians in the church in Antioch-on-the-Orontes who are persuaded by "those from James" to withdraw from table-fellowship with the Gentile Christians in that church. He is, however, singled out from amongst all the other Jewish Christians there and mentioned by name; this may simply be because Paul has already mentioned him as also present as a delegate of the Antioch church at the meeting described in Gal 2: 1-10. It would, however, have an added point if the Galatian churches to whom Paul writes are in fact those in the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia, which, according to Acts 13 and 14, Barnabas and Paul founded on the so-called first missionary journey." (p. 291)
Wendt, Heidi. 2025. "Partings Never and Pretend: Considerations from the First Two Centuries." Studies in Late Antiquity no. 9:411–429.

Abstract: "The editors of The Ways That Never Parted made an understandable choice to omit the problem of Christian origins from its reassessment of Jewish-Christian relations.

This essay aims to demonstrate how subsequent developments in the fields of New Testament and ancient Mediterranean religion have rendered the first two centuries more amenable to the sort of approaches and insights the volume encouraged. It first makes a case for localizing the discursive dynamics of interest to several The Ways That Never Parted contributors to a specific social context: competition among self-authorized religious experts, including Paul and his "Judean" rivals but equally later self-identifying Christians. It then takes the profound reconfiguration of Paul's relationship to Judaism in the last three decades as an impetus to reexamine the vilification of loudaioi in other New Testament sources seemingly written with knowledge of his letters. Because parting of the ways scholarship tended to attribute Christianity's divergence from Judaism to some inflection point (e.g., the Judean War), it has fallen out of fashion with the paradigm to connect these elements to a specific event or historical climate. And yet, whatever the character and diversity of Jewish-Christian relations prior to the fourth century, depictions of loudaioi as persecutors in the Gospels and Acts remain an explanandum.

Evaluating these images not as evidence of a fissure between two religious groups but as strategic acts of differentiation among individuals claiming a common form of expertise changes entirely their scope and consequence. It also invites reconsideration of what sociohistorical pressures might have made this strategy expedient."
Williams, Margaret H. 2013. "Jews and Christians at Rome: An Early Parting of the Ways." In Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Shanks, Hershel, 151–178. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.

"To dispel the gossip [that he had ordered the burning down of Rome] Nero therefore found culprits on whom he inflicted the most exotic punishments. These were people hated [invisos] for their shameful offences [flagitia] whom the common people [vulgus] called Christians [Christianos]. The man who gave them their name, Christus, had been executed during the rule of [Emperor] Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilatus.

The pernicious superstition [exitiabilis superstitio] had been temporarily suppressed, but it was starting to break out again, not just in Judea, the starting point of that curse, but in Rome, as well, where all that is abominable and shameful in the world flows together and gains popularity. (Tacitus, Annals 15.44)(1)

Unlike most of the evidence to be considered in this chapter, the passage just cited can be dated with precision: It occurs just over half way through Tacitus’s account of “the year of the consuls Gaius Laecanius and Marcus Licinius” and so can be pinned down exactly to the summer (July) of 64 C.E. Thus little more than 30 years after the execution in Jerusalem of Jesus of Nazareth (Christus) by the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, Jesus’ followers in Rome, by now for the greater part gentile, had become sufficiently distinguished from the long-established Jewish community there for the commoners to have assigned them a nickname and the Roman authorities to have picked on them rather than the Jews as scapegoats of first choice.

Separation of Christians from Jews, then, must have started extremely early in the imperial capital, if within a generation of the death of Jesus of Nazareth neither the common people nor the authorities had any difficulty in distinguishing between the adherents of those two closely related “superstitions,” as elite Roman writers disparagingly referred to them. But how and why did that gulf open up so early and why did it become all but unbridgeable from around the end of the first century C.E.?" (pp. 151-152, three notes omitted)

(1) Trans. J.C. Yardley (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2008), pp. 359-360.
Wolfson, Elliot R. 2014. "Parting of the Ways that Never Parted: Judaism and Christianity in the Work of Jacob Neusner." In A Legacy of Learning: Essays in Honor of Jacob Neusner, edited by Avery-Peck, Alan J., Chilton, Bruce, Green, William Scott and Porton, Gary G., 299–317. Leiden: Brill.

"That Christianity arose from within the people of Israel and remained a form of Judaism for centuries is well known; less acknowledged is the fact that in the fourth century, each of the systematic aspects of Judaism—canon, teleology, and symbol—were framed by the politically triumphant Christianity.(73)

The rectification of this asymmetry is in no small measure due to the pioneering work of Neusner. As is often the case, what was once groundbreaking becomes conventional, so much so that the one responsible for breaking the ground goes unnoticed. And so it is with respect to Neusner, whose contributions to the depiction of Judaism and Christianity as distinct but intimately interconnected religious systems has served, albeit for the most part tacitly, as a foundation upon which many other scholars have built their arguments.

By insisting emphatically on the dissimilarity, Neusner has provided the way forward to bridge what must be kept apart. Dialogue will replace confrontation only when it is realized that Jews and Christians are the same in virtue of their difference. Once more I refer to Levinas, who taught that the notion of an “absolutely universal,” which constitutes the essence of spiritual life, “can be served in purity only through the particularity of each people, a particularity named enrootedness.”(74) Otherness is what makes the other the same; what I share with the other is that we are different. The identical credo, in my view, may be educed from Neusner’s copious and astute speculations on Judaism and Christianity." (p. 317)

(73) Neusner, Judaism in the Matrix of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), p. 3.

(74) Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, translated by Seán Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 136.
Zetterholm, Magnus. 2003. The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A social-scientific approach to the separation between Judaism and Christianity. New York: Routledge.

"Summary and conclusion

The present study aims to contribute an understanding of how the Jewish Jesus movement in Antioch turned into a Gentile religion and became separated from Judaism. The problems involved in interpreting literary texts in general and ancient sources in particular is dealt with from a theoretical point of view. It is suggested that it may be possible to construct a picture of the separation process using text interpretation in combination with theoretical models and ancient comparative material. As much as possible, the assumptions of the study are brought to the surface.

Such an approach of openly accounting for the assumptions leaves the present study exposed to criticism on several levels. This, of course, is an important part of scholarly discourse. One may, for instance, discuss the interpretation of individual texts from the suggested perspectives. Furthermore, the choice and application of the specific theories are open for discussion and the relevance of the ancient comparative material may be questioned. Finally, it is perhaps the coherence of the complete picture, including its assumptions and theoretical presuppositions, as well as the relation between the different elements, that will determine the plausibility of what is here suggested. The “truth” is out there—the present study is but one attempt to grasp some of its elusiveness." (p. 15)

Skip to the top of page