Full Description
Covering the period from 200 BCE to 600 CE, this book describes important aspects of identity formation processes within early Judaism and Christianity, and shows how negotiations involving issues of ethnicity, stereotyping, purity, commensality, and institution building contributed to the forming of group identities. Over time, some of these Jewish group identities evolved into non-Jewish Christian identities, others into a rabbinic Jewish identity, while yet others remained somewhere in between. The contributors to this volume trace these developments in archaeological remains as well as in texts from the Qumran movement, the New Testament and the reception of Paul's writings, rabbinic literature, and apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, such as the Book of Dreams and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. The long timespan covered in the volume together with the combined expertise of scholars from various fields make this book a unique contribution to research on group identity, Jewish and Christian identity formation, the Partings-of-the-ways between Judaism and Christianity, and interactions between Jews and Christians.
Contents
Introduction: Exploring the Intersection Between Judaism and Christianity in their Formative Phases
Karin Hedner Zetterholm, Anders Runesson, Cecilia Wassén, and Magnus Zetterholm
1. Setting the Stage: The Variety of Judaism and the Origin of Christianity
John J. Collins
Part I. Polemics and Sectarian Identities (2nd Century BCE - 1st Century CE)
2. Competition rather than Conflict: Identity Discourse in the Qumran Rule Scrolls
Jutta Jokiranta
3. Meals, Identity, and Purity in the Qumran Movement
Cecilia Wassén
4. Was Gentile Reclamation an Apocalyptic Apologetic? Ethnic Identities in the Book of Dreams as Precedent for Ethnic Reasoning in the Early Jesus Movement
Genevive Dibley
5. Slip-Slidin' Away: Rethinking the 'Parting of the Ways'
Adele Reinhartz
6. Where Do We Go from Here? Polemics and Sectarian Identities
Adela Yarbro Collins
Part II. Intra-Jewish Interaction and the Role of Non-Jews Within the Jesus Movement (2nd Century BCE - 1st Century CE)
7. Gentile Alterity an
