Slightly revised version of the authoor's thesis (Ph.D.)--Groningen, Netherlands, 2009.

This book will help you understand the history of Christianity and Judaism, get into greater alignment with God’s plan of redemption, be better equipped to share the gospel with Jewish people, and become more sensitive to and appreciative of their Hebraic heritage.

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.

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

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. Topics range from the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism and beyond into early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. The contributions deal with issues of text and interpretation, history and historiography, philology and archaeology, and more. The breadth of the volume is matched only by the breadth of John Collins’s own work.

Exploring the key documents, authors and themes of Early Christian traditions, this volume traces the vital trajectories of emerging distinctive Christian identity in the Graeco-Roman world. Special attention is given to the coherent growth of Christian faith in connection with worship, alongside the crucial transformation of Christian life and doctrine under the Christian Emperors. As well as offering a chronological development of the Early Church, the book examines the interaction between Christian worship and faith. In addition, readers interested in systematic theology can refer to chapters on the roots of some significant theological notions in Christian Antiquity, also with reference to ancient philosophy. Issues addressed include: · Distinctiveness of the Christian identity during the first centuries · Diversity of communities and their theologies · Connection between faith and worship · Transition from the persecuted minority to triumphant Church with Creeds · History of early Christian thought and modern systematic theology

In Torah Praxis after 70 CE, Oliver challenges conventional views of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well as the Acts of the Apostles. He reads the works not only against their Jewish “background” but also as early Jewish literature. In doing so, he questions the traditional classification of Luke-Acts as a “Greek” or Gentile-Christian text. To support his assertions, Dr. Oliver’s literary-historical investigation explores the question of Torah praxis in each book, citing evidence that suggests several ritual Jewish practices remained fixtures in the Jesus movement and that Jewish followers of Jesus played key roles in forming the ekklesia well into the first century CE.

This collection of learned essays helps to clarify the extent to which we can speak of the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism in the period spanned by two Jewish revolts against Rome. Twelve internationally respected scholars carefully analyze the chief Jewish and Christian documents and traditions relating to the period, drawing out their significance for the topic. The result is an integrated and comprehensive study of the diverging trajectories of Judaism and early Christianity. Contributors: Philip S. Alexander Neville Birdsall Andrew Chester James D. G. Dunn Martin Goodman Martin Hengel William Horbury Hermann Lichtenberger John McHugh Christopher Rowland Graham N. Stanton Peter Stuhlmacher

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.

Marlene Crüsemann examines the Thessalonian letters in the context of Jewish-Christian social history; building upon her analysis of 1 Thessalonians, Crüsemann comes to the conclusion that it is post-apostolic epistolary communication, and questions whether it is a letter of Paul and indeed whether it is an early letter. This analysis in turn adds weight to the thesis, propounded by some previous scholars, that the letter is somewhat out of place and may be a later work by another author. Crüsemann subsequently illustrates that 2 Thessalonians, by contrast, revokes the far-reaching social separation from Judaism that characterizes 1 Thessalonians, and thus aims socio-historically at a solidarity with the entire Jewish people. Analysing the concept of the Jews as supposed enemy, the future of the Greek gentile community, and the relationship between the two letters, Crüsemann concludes that the discussion about a "divergence of the ways of Christians and Jews" in early Christian times needs to be realigned.