Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE?

Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? PDF

Author: Jens Schröter

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-08-23

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 3110742241

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The present volume is based on a conference held in October 2019 at the Faculty of Theology of Humboldt University Berlin as part of a common project of the Australian Catholic University, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Humboldt University Berlin. The aim is to discuss the relationships of “Jews” and “Christians” in the first two centuries CE against the background of recent debates which have called into question the image of “parting ways” for a description of the relationships of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. One objection raised against this metaphor is that it accentuates differences at the expense of commonalities. Another critique is that this image looks from a later perspective at historical developments which can hardly be grasped with such a metaphor. It is more likely that distinctions between Jews, Christians, Jewish Christians, Christian Jews etc. are more blurred than the image of “parting ways” allows. In light of these considerations the contributions in this volume discuss the cogency of the “parting of the ways”-model with a look at prominent early Christian writers and places and suggest more appropriate metaphors to describe the relationships of Jews and Christians in the early period.

The Ways That Often Parted

The Ways That Often Parted PDF

Author: Lori Baron

Publisher: SBL Press

Published: 2018-11-09

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 0884143163

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Focused studies on the historical interactions and formations of Judaism and Christianity This volume of essays, from an internationally renowned group of scholars, challenges popular ways of understanding how Judaism and Christianity came to be separate religions in antiquity. Essays in the volume reject the belief that there was one parting at an early point in time and contest the argument that there was no parting until a very late date. The resulting volume presents a complex account of the numerous ways partings occurred across the ancient Mediterranean spanning the first four centuries CE. Features: Case studies that explore how Jews and Christians engaged in interaction, conflict, and collaboration Examinations of the gospels, Paul’s letters, the book of James, as well as rabbinic and noncanonical Christian texts New evidence for historical reconstructions of how Christianity came on the world scene

Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity

Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity PDF

Author: Gerald McDermott

Publisher: Lexham Press

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1683594622

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How Jewish is Christianity? The question of how Jesus' followers relate to Judaism has been a matter of debate since Jesus first sparred with the Pharisees. The controversy has not abated, taking many forms over the centuries. In the decades following the Holocaust, scholars and theologians reconsidered the Jewish origins and character of Christianity, finding points of continuity. Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity advances this discussion by freshly reassessing the issues. Did Jesus intend to form a new religion? Did Paul abrogate the Jewish law? Does the New Testament condemn Judaism? How and when did Christianity split from Judaism? How should Jewish believers in Jesus relate to a largely gentile church? What meaning do the Jewish origins of Christianity have for theology and practice today? In this volume, a variety of leading scholars and theologians explore the relationship of Judaism and Christianity through biblical, historical, theological, and ecclesiological angles. This cutting-edge scholarship will enrich readers' understanding of this centuries-old debate.

Jewish and Christian Views on Bodily Pleasure

Jewish and Christian Views on Bodily Pleasure PDF

Author: Robert Cherry

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-10-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1532647441

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At the beginning of the Common Era, Jewish renewal movements, including Jesus’ ministry, had similar views: embracing moderate ascetic behavior. Over the next three centuries, however, they moved in opposite directions. Christianity came to firmly privilege anti-pleasure views and female lifelong virginity while the Babylonian Talmud strongly embraced positive views on bodily pleasures and female sexuality. The books most distinguishing feature is that it is the first time that one book contrasts in detail the evolution of Christian and Jewish ascetic beliefs. More than other books, it systematically presents the critical role played by Babylonian Jewry: how they became the center of world Jewry with the virtual extinction of the Palestinian community; their decisive rejection, more so than the Palestinian community, of any ascetic tendencies; and how they came to migrate to the European continent during the medieval period. It concludes by relating how the eighteenth-century Hasidic movement and the nineteenth-century Irish devotional movement reestablished the contrasting views that helps explain why Jewish immigrants and not Irish Catholics came to dominate twentieth-century vaudeville.

Coins as Cultural Texts in the World of the New Testament

Coins as Cultural Texts in the World of the New Testament PDF

Author: David H. Wenkel

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0567670740

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Coins have long been a vital part of the discipline of classical studies of the ancient world. However, many scholars have commented that coins have not been adequately integrated into the study of the New Testament. This book provides an interdisciplinary gateway to the study of numismatics for those who are engaged in biblical studies. Wenkel argues that coins from the 1st century were cultural texts with communicative power. He establishes a simple yet comprehensive hermeneutic that defines coins as cultural texts and explains how they might be interpreted today. Once coins are understood to be cultural texts, Wenkel proceeds to explain how these texts can be approached from three angles. First, the world in front of the coin is defined as the audience who initially read and responded to coins as cultural texts. The entire Roman Empire used coins for payment. Second, the world of the coin refers to the coin itself – the combination of inscriptions and images. This combination of inscription and image was used ubiquitously as a tool of propaganda. Third, the world behind the coin refers to the world of power and production behind the coins. This third angle explores the concept of authorship of coins as cultural texts.

Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls

Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls PDF

Author: Joel Baden

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-10-11

Total Pages: 1538

ISBN-13: 9004324747

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This volume, a tribute to John J. Collins by his friends, colleagues, and students, includes essays on the wide range of interests that have occupied John Collins’s distinguished career.

Republican Jesus

Republican Jesus PDF

Author: Tony Keddie

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0520385691

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The complete guide to debunking right-wing misinterpretations of the Bible—from economics and immigration to gender and sexuality. Jesus loves borders, guns, unborn babies, and economic prosperity and hates homosexuality, taxes, welfare, and universal healthcare—or so say many Republican politicians, pundits, and preachers. Through outrageous misreadings of the New Testament gospels that started almost a century ago, conservative influencers have conjured a version of Jesus that speaks to their fears, desires, and resentments. In Republican Jesus, Tony Keddie explains not only where this right-wing Christ came from and what he stands for but also why this version of Jesus is a fraud. By restoring Republicans’ cherry-picked gospel texts to their original literary and historical contexts, Keddie dismantles the biblical basis for Republican positions on hot-button issues like Big Government, taxation, abortion, immigration, and climate change. At the same time, he introduces readers to an ancient Jesus whose life experiences and ethics were totally unlike those of modern Americans, conservatives and liberals alike.

Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: How to Write Their History

Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: How to Write Their History PDF

Author: Peter J. Tomson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-08-21

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 9004278478

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The papers in this volume are organized around the ambition to reboot the writing of history about Jews and Christians in the first two centuries CE. Many are convinced of the need for a new perspective on this crucial period that saw both the birth of rabbinic Judaism and apostolic Christianity and their parting of ways. Yet the traditional paradigm of Judaism and Christianity as being two totally different systems of life and thought still predominates in thought, handbooks, and programs of research and teaching. As a result, the sources are still being read as reflecting two separate histories, one Jewish and the other Christian. The contributors to the present work were invited to attempt to approach the ancient Jewish and Christian sources as belonging to one single history, precisely in order to get a better view of the process that separated both communities. In doing so, it is necessary to pay constant attention to the common factor affecting both communities: the Roman Empire. Roman history and Roman archaeology should provide the basis on which to study and write the shared history of Jews and Christians and the process of their separation. A basic intuition is that the series of wars between Jews and Romans between 66 and 135 CE – a phenomenon unrivalled in antiquity – must have played a major role in this process. Thus the papers are arranged around three focal points: (1) the varieties of Jewish and Christian expression in late Second Temple times, (2) the socio-economic, military, and ideological processes during the period of the revolts, and (3) the post-revolt Jewish and Christian identities that emerged. As such, the volume is part of a larger project that is to result in a source book and a history of Jews and Christians in the first and second centuries.

Assembling Futures

Assembling Futures PDF

Author: Jennifer Quigley

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2024-08-20

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1531506577

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Transdisciplinary insights at the intersection of religion, democracy, ecology, and economy What is the relationship of religion to economy, ecology, and democracy? In our fraught moment, what critical questions of religion may help to assembly democratic processes, ecosystems, and economic structures differently? What possible futures might emerge from transdisciplinary work across these traditionally siloed scholarly areas of interest? The essays in Assembling Futures reflect scholarly conversations among historians, political scientists, theologians, biblical studies scholars, and scholars of religion that transgress disciplinary boundaries to consider urgent matters expressive of the values, practices, and questions that shape human existence. Each essay recognizes urgent imbrications of the global economy, multinational politics, and the materiality of ecological entanglements in assembling still possible futures for the earth. Precisely in their diversity of disciplinary starting points and ethical styles, the essays that follow enact their intersectional forcefield even more vibrantly.