Summary of Volume Contents

The volume begins with an article by Paula Fredriksen, aptly entitled " What 'Parting of the Ways'? Jews, Gentiles, and the Ancient Mediter­ranean City. " Fredriksen here demonstrates the inadequacy of the " Parting" model as a description of the lived experience of Jews, Christians, and " pagans" in the Roman Empire and, in the process, opens a new perspective on the Christian contra ludaeos tradition. First, she points to the essential differences between " pagan" anti-Judaism, which was an extension of a more general disdain for foreigners, and Christian anti-Judaism, which was rooted in a reaction against continuing interactions between Jews and Gentiles (both " pagan" and Christian). She then turns to the question of a possible Jewish mission to Gentiles - an idea often conjured by modern scholars to account for the vitriol of Christian anti-Judaism. In light of the intimate setting of the ancient Mediterranean city and the integration of Jews therein, she concludes that active Jewish proselytism is simply not required to explain the continuing Gentile interest in Judaism that so fed the ire of some Christian authors. Next, she considers the balance of " rhetoric" and " reality" in Christian accusations about Jewish participation in " pagan" persecutions of Christians; these statements, she argues, cannot be read simply as reports of events " on the ground" nor generalized into an explanation of Christian hostility towards Jews, inasmuch as they jar with the social dynamics of ancient urban culture. In the process, Fredriksen highlights the continuity in the interactions between Jews and Gentiles in the centuries between Alexander of Macedon and Augustine of Hippo. She proposes that this situation persisted even after the Christianization of the Empire; in her view, it ended only with the decline of the urban culture of the ancient Mediterranean between the fifth and seventh centuries CE, when socio-political developments led to the gradual erosion of long-lived civic patterns and to the development of a new social reality, built upon the ideology of separation in the contra ludaeos tradition.

Daniel Boyarin's " Semantic Differences, or 'Judaism'/'Christianity'" offers an alternative to the conventional view that " Christianity" was born from a second-century " Parting of the Ways" with " Judaism. " Boyarin here considers how the categories of " Judaism" and " Christianity" functioned in antiquity, by integrating recent scholarship on the changing meanings of " Jew" and " Judaism" with theoretical insights from the fields of linguistics and postcolonial criticism. He demonstrates that, prior to Christianity, the term " Jew" was an ethnic appellation, in the same sense as " Greek, " the term to which it was most often opposed. The category only became meaningful in a purely " religious" sense when countered with a new opposing term, namely, " Christian. " Consequently, there was no static entity " Judaism" from which early Christians could choose to " part ways, " precisely because the emergence of " Judaism" as a " religion" (as opposed to a culture of which cult was an inextricable component) only occurred " when Christianity separated religious belief and practice from Romanitas, cult from culture. " Boyarin then stresses the hybridity of late antique culture and likens the range of biblically-based forms of religiosity in the first centuries of the Common Era to " dialects" that preceded the definition of official " languages. " Likewise, the construction of " Judaism" and " Christianity" as mutually exclusive " religions" was initiated by proto-orthodox Christian and early rabbinic Jewish heresiologists, but not actualized or officialized until the Christianization of the Roman Empire.

The practices of definition and categorization also form the focus of Robert A. Kraft's essay, " The Weighing of the Parts: Pivots and Pitfalls in the Study of Early Judaisms and their Early Christian Offspring. " In his view, the recent challenges to the conventional wisdom about the early " Parting" of Judaism and Christianity serve as " an invitation to look more closely at the micro-histories behind that 'common knowledge'. " Kraft thus questions the selectivity that has lead scholars to deal with the relationship between " early Judaism" and " early Christianity" solely on the basis of their classical forms, and he points to the many more " parts" that need to be " weighed" in an analysis of the religious landscape of Late Antiquity. At the same time, he stresses the limits of modern labels and definitions, and he calls for increased attention to the self-definitions expressed in our ancient sources. Although these methodological caveats pose practical challenges for scholars accustomed to working within clearly delineated subfields, he suggests that these efforts are both valuable and necessary - not least because they open the way to a fuller understanding of the complex process by which classical Judaism and classical Christianity came to become distinct and dominant (at least in the West) from the fourth century onwards.

In " The Lion and the Lamb: Reconsidering Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity, " Andrew S. Jacobs considers the relevance of Christian comments about Jews for our understanding of the changing dynamics of interchange between Jews and Christians in late antique Palestine. Jacobs begins by surveying the history of research on Christian anti-Judaism, focusing on the debates between those who read the contra Iudaeos tradition as mere rhetoric and those who seek a social reality of Jewish-Christian competition behind these sources. Jacobs suggests a possible path out of the present impasse, by introducing insights from the field of post-colonial criticism. Using a discursive analysis that presumes a dialectical relationship between the " rhetoric" and " reality" of Christian anti-Jewish writings, Jacobs examines four examples, spanning the period from the third century CE to the seventh: Origen, Jerome, the Piacenza Pilgrim, and Strategios. By focusing on the changing power dynamics between Jews and Christians with regard to " imperial domination and colonial resistance, " he offers a fresh reading of their statements about Jews, geared towards " the way in which Christians and Jews constructed their world, reacted to their world, engineered their world through resistant or authoritative discourse. "

Debates about the heurism of various models and methodologies for the study of early Jewish-Christian relations are given a new twist in Martin Goodman's contribution. In " Modeling the 'Parting of the Ways', " Goodman presents a series of diagrams, which illustrate different conceptualizations of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the first four centuries of the Common Era. When taken together, Goodman's nine diagrams serve to communicate the dangers involved in making generalizations about Judaism and Christianity, apart from an awareness of how the outcome will inevitably be shaped by one's own perspective, the ancient perspective that one chooses to privilege, and the precise topics on which one decides to focus.

Whereas the first five contributions survey evidence from the entire period under discussion, the remaining eleven explore the theme of this volume through close analyses of specific texts, motifs, practices, and locales. We begin in the second and third centuries CE with David Frankfurter's " Beyond 'Jewish Christianity': Continuing Religious Sub­cultures of the Second and Third Centuries and Their Documents. "

Frankfurter here uses an analysis of the Ascension of Isaiah, 5 and 6 Ezra, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs to tackle the broader problem of the reification of religious categories in the study of Late Antiquity. Most scholars have responded to the combination of " Jewish" and " Christian" features in these sources by seeking to isolate (early) " Jewish" strata from (later) " Christian" ones. By contrast, Frankfurter undertakes a unified reading of each text, which allows for more complex self-definitions than the anachronistic imposition of a mutually-exclusive understanding of " Judaism" and " Christianity" onto this early period. He suggests that the Ascension of Isaiah, 5 Ezra, and 6 Ezra attest the Jewish prophetism of continuous communities that adopted Christ-devotion as an option within Judaism. Likewise, he proposes that the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs reflects a priestly messianism that resists dichotomous categorization as either " Jewish" or " Christian. " Consequently, these texts shed doubt on the existence of " an historically distinct 'Christianity'" already in the second and third centuries, while also exposing the profound inadequacy of the traditional view of " Jewish Christianity" as a singular and self-contained phenomenon.

Like Frankfurter, E. Leigh Gibson shows how our understanding of familiar texts can be enriched by new approaches to Jewish-Christian relations. In " The Jews and Christians in the Martyrdom of Polycarp: Entangled or Parted Ways? " she revisits the issue of the date and textual integrity of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, with special attention to the references to Jews therein. Whereas such statements have traditionally been taken as evidence for the hostility between Jews and Christians in Smyrna already in the second century, Gibson proposes that the " Jews" of the text are actually Christians, that is, Christ-believers who had different attitudes towards the Jewish Law than the author of this material. Later redactions - such as the version found in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History

- bear the marks of changes by tradents who misunderstood this original context; statements about conflicts within a fluid continuum of Jewish and Christian identities were read in terms of later views of the categorical difference between Judaism and Christianity. Likewise, modern scholars have brought to this text their own ideas about the mutual exclusivity of Judaism and Christianity, which echo the concerns of later orthodox Christians but do not fit with the situation in Asia Minor during the first three centuries of the Common Era. Through her reading of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Gibson thus offers a fresh solution to its textual problems, while simultaneously enriching our understanding of the early interchanges and ambiguities among Christians and Jews in Smyrna.

The next article, Amram Tropper's " Tractate Avot and Early Christian Succession Lists, " raises an important note of caution about comparative projects that analyze parallels between rabbinic Judaism and proto­orthodox Christianity without proper attention to their shared Greco-Roman cultural context. Tropper begins with an analysis of the structure of the chain of transmission in Mishnah Avot and investigates its relationship to different types of Greco-Roman succession lists. Only then does he turn to examine their early Christian counterparts. This two-fold comparison leads Tropper to critique attempts by Daniel Boyarin and Shaye J. D. Cohen to liken the purpose and function of Avot to contemporaneous Christian lists of similar form. In Tropper's view, both draw upon the same Greco-Roman genre, and they serve a similar apologetic function with regard to the assertion of institutional authority, but there are also notable divergences between them, which prove significant for our understanding of their origins and function in communities shaped by different social structures. He proposes that proto-orthodox Christian succession lists have an exclusionary function aimed outwardly towards so-called " gnostics, " whereas the list in Avot is more internal than heresiological in function, consistent with the relative lack of concern about minim among early Rabbis.

Whereas Tropper stresses the internal orientation of the early rabbinic movement in Roman Palestine, Naomi Koltun-Fromm points to the cultural contacts between rabbinic Jews and Syriac Christians in third-and fourth-century Sassanid Mesopotamia. In " Zippora's Complaint: 'Moses is Not Conscientious in the Deed! ' Exegetical Traditions of Moses' Celibacy, " Koltun-Fromm shows how Moses served both as a model and as a means for articulating the appropriate way of life for both rabbinic Jews and Syriac Christians. Moreover, these exegetes understood the prophethood of Moses and the role of celibacy in the sanctification of Israel at Sinai in surprisingly similar ways. Koltun-Fromm's analysis reveals that they often focus on the same issues and, at times, even seem to be responding to one another. Her article thus demonstrates the value of a comparative approach to Jewish and Christian biblical interpretation, which does not assume a radical separation between the two communities in all times and places; for, when these two literary corpora from the Semitic Orient are laid side-by-side, one is often able to discern a dialogue between them, shaped by the common discursive-exegetical space shared by Babylonian Rabbis and Christian authors in the same locale.

Annette Yoshiko Reed's contribution considers the continued ambiguities on the borders between " Jewish" and " Christian" identities, even into the fourth century CE. In '" Jewish Christianity' after the 'Parting of the Ways': Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines, " she shows how the modern scholarly discourse about " Jewish Christianity" has been shaped by assumptions about the " Parting of the Ways, " such that scholars have stressed the marginalization of " Jewish Christians" in Late Antiquity, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Rejecting a monolithic concept of " Jewish Christianity, " Reed argues for a more nuanced approach to so-called " Jewish-Christian" viewpoints, which regards them as part of a broad and variegated range of attempts to negotiate the relationship between Jewish and Christian identities. These methodological insights are then applied to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, two fourth-century texts that exhibit many so-called " Jewish-Christian" features, including the affirmation of the equal soteriological value of the Torah and the Gospel. Whereas these texts have traditionally been approached as mines for earlier " Jewish-Christian" sources, Reed seeks to recover the value of their redacted forms for our understanding of Judaism and Christianity in the fourth century, proposing that the authors/redactors responsible for the final forms of these texts may be participating in a broader debate about the place of Judaism and Jewish praxis in Christian self-definition.

With the contribution of Alison Salvesen, we turn to focus on two authors who clearly conceived of Christianity as distinct from (and in conflict with) contemporary Judaism: the proto-orthodox/orthodox Christian scholars Origen and Jerome. In " A Convergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scripture by Origen and Jerome, " Salvesen highlights a case of convergence that is as surprising as it is striking: in the period between the third and fifth centuries - precisely when the authors of Western Christian orthodoxy were establishing theological and hermeneutical traditions in radical distinction from Judaism - the Greek and Latin versions of the Old Testament used by Christians in the Roman Empire were being brought closer to the Hebrew of the Tanakh used by their Jewish contemporaries. In this, Origen and Jerome played key roles, both through their " Hebraization" of Greek and Latin translations of the Bible and through their use of earlier Jewish and/or " Jewish-Christian" Greek versions (esp., Aquila, Symmachus). The precedent that they set, Salvesen suggests, helped to lay the groundwork for Christian Hebraism in following centuries, thereby enhancing the Old Testament's function as a perennial link between Judaism and Christianity.

Just as Salvesen's article starkly demonstrates the value of integrating text-critical research on the Bible into the study of Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity, so the following article, by Daniel Stokl Ben Ezra, draws our attention to another understudied site of interchange: ritual practice and liturgy. In " Whose Fast is it? The Ember Day of September and Yom Kippur, " he focuses on the Fast of the Seventh Month, as it was observed in late antique Rome. Earlier scholars limited the possible Jewish background of this festival to an early period, prior to the presupposed " Parting of the Ways, " and/or posited that any influence thereafter must reflect Christian encounters with the Old Testament, rather than any response to a local, lived Judaism. By contrast, Stokl Ben Ezra highlights the Fast's close connections with the Jewish festivals of autumn, not just as they appear in the Old Testament, but also as they were practiced by late antique Jews. He notes the prominence of Christians of Jewish heritage within the ancient Roman church and speculates about the Fast's possible origins as a Christianized Yom Kippur. Stokl Ben Ezra then shows that, whatever its roots, the later development of this Christian festival continued to be shaped by Christians' familiarity with the practices of their Jewish contemporaries. As such, this example offers a fascinating case in which contact and competition with Jews continued to inform Christian praxis, even many centuries after the so-called " Parting of the Ways. "

Like Tropper and Koltun-Fromm, Ra'anan Abusch highlights the value of new approaches to Jewish-Christian relations for our understanding of late antique Judaism. In " Rabbi Ishmael's Miraculous Conception: Jewish Redemption History in Anti-Christian Polemic, " he focuses on a unit preserved within the early medieval Hebrew martyrological anthology, The Story of the Ten Martyrs: an " annunciation" scene that claims for Rabbi Ishmael a semi-divine origin. The parallels with Christian claims about Jesus are poignant, particularly in light of its martyrological context. Abusch thus reads this tradition as " a bold act of appropriation" and as a " pointed rejoinder to Christian accounts of Jesus' divine nature and of his uniqueness within human history. " Although this function evokes Toledot Yeshu traditions, he cautions against assuming a simple polemical aim. Abusch shows how this unit's use of the " contested cultural idiom" of miraculous birth is inextricably intertwined with Jewish martyrological traditions and with the Byzantine Jewish discourse about sexual purity. The latter, in his view, points to the distinct cultural context in which this unit took form. Even as its polemic against Rome may express a Jewish repudiation of Byzantine political power, so its stress on the possibility of paternity through sight raises the possibility that some Byzantine Jews shared the fascination with visuality that shaped Christian culture during the iconoclastic debates of the seventh to ninth centuries.

With Averil Cameron's contribution, we return again to the Christian contra ludaeos tradition. In " Jews and Heretics - A Category Error? " Cameron considers the conflation of the categories of " Jew" and " heretic" in Christian literature from the later Roman Empire and early medieval Byzantium. She shows how various Christian techniques of labeling religious beliefs and practices as " aberrant" developed in tandem with one another, such that Jews, pagans, and " heretics" could be conflated in orthodox Christian genealogies of error. Cameron focuses on the writings of the late fourth-century author, Epiphanius of Salamis. Like earlier heresiologists, Epiphanius does not categorize his enemies, real and imagined, primarily by doctrinal criteria. Rather, he groups them together using a genealogical model, thereby rewriting the history of ancient culture as an account of the divergence from orthodox Christian truth by a diverse set of " others, " not limited to those whom we would generally recognize as " Christian heretics. " Cameron thus stresses that the scholar engaged with heresiological sources must come to terms with " a mode of thinking, a kind of mindset and a way of describing, that informed Christian self-identity"; for, even as the conflation of categories obstructs our efforts to learn about " real" Jews and " heretics" alike, it tells us much about orthodox Christian heresiology, historiography, and self-definition.

The following article is the third to address the important issue of " Jewish Christianity. " In " Did Jewish Christians See the Rise of Islam? " John G. Gager takes as his starting point a debate between Shlomo Pines and Samuel Stern concerning the possibility that a late " Jewish-Christian" document is preserved in the tenth-century Tathbit of the Muslim author 'Abd al-Jabbar. Stern dismissed Pines' argument for the " Jewish-Christian" origins of this material, on the grounds that " Jewish Christianity" could not have survived to see the rise of Islam. For Gager, Stern's recalcitrance vis-a-vis Pines' position offers an important lesson about our own presuppositions concerning both the " Parting of the Ways" and the allegedly resultant demise of " Jewish Christianity. " These narratives originated in efforts to eradicate an identity that was, according to Gager, far more threatening to orthodox Christians (and perhaps also rabbinic Jews) than that of Christian Judaizers - precisely because they " insisted that there was no need to choose between being Christians or Jews. " Modern scholars, then, should be particularly wary, lest we replicate the " conceptual nihilation" of " Jewish Christians" by those ancient elites who had the most to gain from asserting the absolute incompatibility of Judaism and Christianity.

The final paper, Adam H. Becker's " Beyond the Spatial and Temporal Limes: Questioning the 'Parting of the Ways' outside the Roman Empire, " challenges the scholarly tendency to limit discussions about Jewish-Christian relations to the confines of the Roman Empire. He first focuses on events in the East, which followed a completely different trajectory than those in the West. As many scholars have noted, there seems to have been a post-Constantinian turning-point in Jewish-Christians relations in the Roman Empire; Christians in Mesopotamia, however, remained a minority religious community into the Islamic period. Becker then considers the increase in anti-Jewish literature in those Roman lands conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century, proposing that this development attests to communal boundary problems and, as such, underlines the impact that the formation of a Christian state had on Jewish-Christians relations within the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the possibility for the development of shared discourses between Jews and Christians remained open. As an example, Becker cites the common space of rational debate shared by early medieval Jews, Christians, and Muslims within the realm of Islamic dialectical or systematic theology (kalam). This, in his view, is an instance where the " ways" in fact converged and, hence, further problematizes a globalized view of the " Parting of the Ways, " whether dated to the second century or the fourth.