Katz, Steven T. 2006. "The rabbinic response to Christianity." In The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume IV: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, edited by Katz, Steven T., 259–298. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Bikar ha-Minim, pp. 280-294.

"Conclusion.

It remains to be demonstrated that emerging Christianity was of urgent concern to the rabbinic sages between the fall of Jerusalem and the defeat of Bar Kochba. The Sages were certainly aware of the new faith and its theological challenges to rabbinic Judaism, but there is no evidence that this awareness led to extreme official actions specifically against Jewish Christians – for example, the circulation of anti-Christian letters to the Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora by the Jewish leadership. Jewish (and other) Christians certainly separated themselves for purposes of worship and teaching (and social support) from the synagogue at an early date, but this was a free choice based on internal Christian needs and wants.

It was not the consequence of actions taken by Jewish leaders in Jerusalem or Yavneh." (p. 294)

(...)

"During and after the Bar Kochba Revolt the situation almost certainly changed for the worse.

(...)

But even with regard to the period between 135 and the end of the tannaitic period, caution is required in characterizing rabbinic attitudes and policy towards Jewish Christians and Christianity in the absence of sufficient meaningful evidence on this matter." (p. 295)
Kimelman, Reuven. 1981. "Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity." In Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. Volume Two: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, edited by Sanders, E. P., I., Baumgarten A. and Mendelson, Alan, 226–244. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

"A decisive stage in the process of communal self-definition is reached when a community sets criteria for exclusion. The exclusionary benediction, birkat ha-minim, played such a role in the process of achieving normative self-definition in rabbinic Judaism.

Since the talmudic period birkat ha-minim has constituted the twelfth benediction of the rabbinic Statutory prayer, the so-called ‘eighteen benedictions’ or ‘amidah. The ‘amidah is recited thrice daily on week-days. On the Sabbath or holidays an alternative form is employed which does not contain birkat ha-minim." (p. 226)

(...)

"The following are the salient results of our investigation of birkat ha-minim:

1. Birkat ha-minim was not directed against Gentile Christians, but against Jewish sectarians.

2. The Genizah version which reads ha-nosrim ve-ha-minim was primarily directed against Jewish Christians.

3. There is no unambiguous evidence that Jews cursed Christians during the statutory prayers.

4. There is abundant evidence that Christians were welcome in the synagogue.

5. Thus birkat ha-minim does not reflect a watershed in the history of the relationship between Jews and Christians in the first centuries of our era.

6. Apparently, there never was a single edict which caused the so-called irreparable separation between Judaism and Christianity. The separation was rather the result of a long process dependent upon local situations and ultimately upon the political power of the church." (p. 244)
Kinzig, Wolfgang. 2007. "The Nazoreans." In Jewish Believers in Jesus, edited by Skarsaune, Oskar and Hvalvik, Reidar, 463–487. Pabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

"Since Solomon Schechter's publication of a Palestinian recension of the Birkat Haminim from the Cairo Genizah at the end of the 19th century,(1) the Nazoraeans have received widespread attention from scholars, for this recension includes a malediction not only of minim (i.e., "heretics"), but also of a group called nosrim, which was identified by some scholars with the Nazoraeans.(2) It may be said that this scholarly attention is somewhat out of proportion to the historical significance of this Jewish-Christian group. For the Birkat Haminim notwithstanding, the evidence for the Nazoraeans is scanty, which seems to reflect their rather exotic character."(p. 463)

(...)

"Conclusion

The Nazoraeans were, then, the Aramaic-/Syriac-speaking Jewish Christians of northern Syria who sought good relations with the Gentile church. If their theological views were also reflected in their everyday life, relations with the Gentiles should have been fairly relaxed, as long as the different positions towards the observance of the Law were mutually tolerated. Yet the hostile reactions by both Epiphanius and Jerome appear to indicate that this was not always the case. It is, unfortunately, entirely unclear how the Nazoraeans were organized. We do not know whether they formed part of the Greater Church (as some kind of conventicle within the community) or whether they had their own organization, as had the Ebionites. Here again the testimony of Epiphanius and Jerome treating them as a heretical sect appears to indicate the latter, but this need not reflect the actual state of affairs. Finally, it should be emphasized that, whereas in the first centuries of the Common Era the Jewish Christians may even have outnumbered the Gentile Christians, by the fourth century Jewish Christian groups no longer appear to have played a significant role. Apart from the relatively scarce remarks preserved by Epiphanius and Jerome, the Nazoraeans are rarely mentioned and cannot, therefore, have had a strong influence on the mainstream church." (pp. 486-487, notes omitted)

(1) Cf. Solomon Schechter, "Genizah Specimens," Jewish Quarterly Review, 10 (1898): 197-206; 654-59.

(2) Cf. below, section 5.

(3) The following paper is based on an article originally published in 1991 (Wolfram Kinzig, " 'Non-Separation': Closeness and Co-operation between Jews and Christians in the Fourth Century," Vigiliae Christianae 45 [1991]: 27-53). A fresh study of the evidence has led me to considerable modifications of my earlier conclusions.
Laato, Antti. 2010. "Justin Martyr Encounters Judaism." In Encounters of the Children of Abraham from Ancient to Modern Times, edited by Laato, Antti and Linqvist, Pekka, 97–123. Leiden: Brill.

Section The Case of Birkat Ha-Minim, pp. 113-117.

"The crux is the date of the information in the rabbinical writings where the formulation of Birkat haminim is associated with the first century rabbi Samuel Ha-Qatan, the contemporary of Rabbi Gamaliel in Yavneh (b. Ber. 28b–29a). The Mishnah does not refer to this invocation but Tosefta Berakhot 3:25 comments that minim are included in the benediction (curse) of “the pharisees.” The term “pharisees” here should not be interpreted as referring to Pharisees but rather to those who “separate themselves” from the community." (p. 113)

(...)

"In the light of the above evidence I see no obstacle to the conclusionthat there is a development from the Johannine literature to Justin so far as the Jewish practice of excluding Christians from the synagogue is concerned, and that the rabbinical tradition presented in b. Ber. 28b–29a regarding the formulation of Birkat ha-minim against Christians is well suited to this picture. But this does not imply that Birkat ha-minim had this exclusive attitude to Christians in every synagogue.

Synagogal liturgy was apparently not homogeneous in Justin’s time. Justin apparently encountered this trend in some synagogues, or received information about such a practice in some synagogues, and assumed its universal application." (p. 117)
Langer, Ruth. 2005. "Birkat ha-minim." In A Dictionary of Jewish–Christian Relations, edited by Kessler, Edward and Wenborn, Neil, 60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The Talmud (Berakhot 28b–29a) records that the birkat ha-minim (the malediction of the sectarians/heretics) was established under Rabban Gamaliel II’s direction in the late first century as an apparent addition to the Amidah as its twelfth blessing. The occasion for this enactment and its original object has been the subject of significant scholarly speculation. The suggestion that it was a specific response to Christianity, explaining John’s references (9.22; 12.42; 16.2) to the eviction of Christians from the synagogue, is now largely rejected.

Epiphanius (c. 315–403) and Jerome are the first Church Fathers to refer to it unambiguously, and they know that it curses Jewish Christians, calling them minim and Nazarenes. No Jewish texts predate the ninth century CE, when some, but not all, do indeed specify these categories, among others.

One version from the Cairo Genizah, likely recited by Jews living under Islam, reads: ‘May there be no hope for the apostates, and may the arrogant empire be uprooted, smashed, and brought low speedily in our days, and may the noẓerim and the minim be immediately lost.’ The precise application of the blessing’s terms depended on the historical realities of the worshippers. Noẓerim and minim probably originally referred to Jewish Christians, but likely later came to refer to Gentile Christians as well. Minim at times seems also to refer not to a specific group, but rather to Jewish heretics in general. For Jews living in Christian lands, whose text did not include the more specific noẓerim, minim often did designate Christians. From at least as early as the mid-sixteenth century Christian converts to Christianity and its prayers for the downfall of persecuting governments and of Israel’s enemies, forced changes to this prayer (see censorship).

Many twentieth-century texts pray for the downfall of ‘evil’ and of God’s enemies and omit all reference to apostates and minim."
———. 2012. Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim. New York: Oxford University Press.

"My initial questions on facing the censorship of the birkat haminim were: "How did Jews respond to this censorship and what was its impact on the prayer? How long did it take for the text to restabilize? How did the censorship itself affect Jewish attitudes to their Christian neighbors?" I quickly learned, though, that the questions were really much larger. Answering these questions required delving into the prehistory of the censorship itself, into the Christian polemics surrounding the prayer and the Jewish responses to them. Ultimately, too, as the scope of the study broadened, it became clear that intellectual currents within the Jewish community itself, and the varieties of Jewish communities affected, themselves generated a shifting range of responses that emerged differently in different places and different times. These responses, embedded both in the texts of the birkat haminim and in the meanings and history ascribed to it, provide a window simultaneously onto the dynamics of liturgical change in Judaism and onto the realities of the shifting relationships between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors especially the Christians-through the centuries. Unlike many such windows, it provides us with a single persistent Jewish text that for much of its history was explicitly anti-Christian; with periodic Christian polemics against this text; with Jewish apologetics for the text that are also periodic but not necessarily corresponding to known Christian polemics; and with modern resolutions to the issues that allow this prayer to cease functioning as a flash point in Christian-Jewish relations.

The exploration of this multifaceted window is the focus of this book." (pp. 3-4)
———. 2012. "Jewish Liturgical Memory and the Non-Jew: Past Realities and Future Possibilities." In Jewish Theology and World Religions, edited by Goshen-Gottstein, Alon and Korn, Eugene, 167–186. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

"Bridging the boundary between semi-direct and direct reference to non-Jews are prayers like the birkat haminim, the ‘malediction of the sectarians’, which calls for the destruction of various categories of non-Jews and borderline Jews. Because this prayer is recited in every week-day Amidah including its repetitions, it arguably has a huge impact on the liturgical image of the non-Jew. We cannot reconstruct the original text of this prayer, which the Babylonian Talmud remembers as having been instituted under Rabban Gamliel at Yavneh (BT Ber. 28b–29a). Before the text was censored severely in the sixteenth century, it consisted of curses of two categories of people: Jews who crossed the communal boundary, either as apostates (most often to Christianity), informers, or other sorts of heretics; and non-Jews who maliciously harmed Jews, called the enemies of Israel and the empire of insolence.

In this, Christians received explicit mention, in versions of the prayer discovered in the Cairo genizah, a repository of worn texts, as notserim and in medieval versions as minim.(21) These people impede the realization of the messianic scenario for which the Amidah petitions. Censorship eliminated all the prayer’s nouns and hence its specificity; replacements resulted in a prayer for the removal of evil and for the elimination of God’s enemies, making it no longer apply so obviously to non-Jews. However, one reciting today’s text can still easily interpret it to apply to those non-Jews perpetrating evil in the world, and various communities have reintroduced or maintained some of the censored language. Note, though, that the prayer tells us nothing specific about these malefactors except that they are deserving of immediate and radical divine punishment for their treatment of Israel." (p. 175)

(21) See Ruth Langer and Uri Ehrlich, ‘The EarliestTexts of the Birkat Haminim’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 76 (2006), 63–112, as well as my forthcoming Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim (Oxford, 2011).
———. 2013. "The Zedah Laderekh’s Apologia for the Birkat Haminim." In Ke - Tavo Be - Harim: Studies in Rabbinic Literature Presented to Joseph Tabory, edited by Atzmon, Arnon and Tzur Shafir, Tzur, 7–39. Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press.

"The birkat haminim, according to rabbinic tradition, was added to the ‘amidah in the late first century CE in response to minim, some sort of sectarians. If not originally, then at least by the end of the fourth century, it explicitly named noẓerim (Nazarenes or Christians) with these minim in some versions. There is no surviving evidence that this explicit mention was ever recited in Christian Europe".(p. 8, a note omitted)

(...)

"Christian documents of the time show no trace of the modern sensitivity that might see Jewish anti-Christian prayers to be a logical answer to the many Christian anti-Jewish equivalents. However, there is no evidence of any real consequences from these thirteenth-century condemnations, perhaps because these accusations were insufficiently specific, but also because principles of tolerance for Jews prevented the blanket shuttering of all synagogues and because orally recited and transmitted prayers are difficult to control. In addition, Christian preference for more theologically oriented disputations meant that many, like the Barcelona disputation in 1263 [*], or Fr. Raymundo Martini’s massive missionary manual, the Pugio Fidei (c. 1280) never broach our subject. The Ẓedah Laderekh, a late fourteenth-century halakhic handbook designed to aid Jewish courtiers who lack the time to study properly, is aware of the omission in Barcelona and uses it to discredit the slanderous accusations being made in his own day. This text is our focus here." (p.11, notes omitted)

(...)

"Our primary interest here will be the here-to-fore unpublished discussion of the Ẓedah Laderekh. However, comparison of it to the ‘Ezer Ha-’Emunah as well as to R. Yeḥiel’s defense of the blessing in Paris will enable us to understand it more fully.

It seems unlikely that these two fourteenth-century texts rely on a common literary source in spite of their substantial similarities. They do contain much common content, and we can attribute many of their difference to the demands of their literary contexts. However, had they drawn on a common source, we would expect even fewer differences in the specifics of their arguments. This suggests that there probably was no literary record circulated among Jews in the wake of the 1336 disputation with Abner. It may also suggest that the content of Abner’s lost Las malliciones de los judios did not touch deeply or at all on this issue, which might have created a need for a coordinated response. There is more coherence, however, in the criticisms leveled at the birkat haminim than in the rabbinic defenses of it, suggesting the possibility that these rabbis are responding to the same situation(s)." (pp.16-17)

[*] Robert Chazan. Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; Hyam Maccoby(ed.). Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages, London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993.
———. 2015. Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Research. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

"5.3.2.2.1 Birkat HaMinim (12)

At least in its medieval forms, (parts of) this petition functioned as an anti-Christian curse. Consequently, it generated anti-Jewish polemic. It has received much modern scholarly attention, particularly because of questions about its role in the “partings of the ways.” Although many Johannine scholars have understood this blessing to be the source of John’s report of the expulsion of Christians from synagogues, many today discredit this theory."

Item 549-557 are an annotated bibliography on the Birkat HaMinim.
Manns, Frédéric. 2011. "The Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel." Liber Annuus no. 62:127–210.

§ 3.1. The Birkat ha Minim reconsidered once more, pp. 150-157.

"According to J.L. Martyn a special indication gives a precise marker for the terminus post quem of the FG [Fouth Gospel]: the Birkat ha Minim which was added to the Shemone Esre after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple(134). With other exegetes, he holds that the use of the adjective aposynagogos [expelled from the synagogue or excommunicated].(9:42, 12:42, 16:2), and in particular the statement in 9:22 that “the Jewish authorities had already agreed that anyone who acknowledged Jesus as Messiah should be banned from the synagogue”, reflect the formal exclusion of Christians from Judaism with the introduction of the twelfth blessing of the Shemone Esre, against ‘the Heretics’.

But this is an inference whose precarious basis must be exposed in some details, since it is frequently made with an apodictic tone." (p. 150)

(...)

"For many exegetes it was taken for granted that the FG reflected the tense situation between Jews and Christians after 80 that it may seem bold to question it(164).

The absence of reference to the Sadducees is frequently said to reflect their demise after 70: yet the chief priests and their party are certainly not absent, but still very busy. The FG never speaks of the scribes either – yet they certainly did not disappear after 70, but rather started their midrashic reading of Scripture. In fact John is remarkably well informed about the parties and divisions of Judaism before the Jewish war and attempts to prove him ignorant tend to recoil upon those who make them(165). While there are many things upon which in the absence of evidence it would be prudent to suspend judgment, there is nothing which is anachronistic or which requires a later perspective. Above all, there is nothing that suggests that the temple is already destroyed or that Jerusalem is in ruins – signs of which calamity are present in any Jewish or Christian literature that can with any certainty be dated in the period of 70-100 A.D. For all these reasons Jn 9:22 does not have to be dated from the 80s and the Birkat ha Minim cannot be its background." (p. 157)

(134) For the history of this Benediction see D. Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early Christianity, Jerusalem 1989; D. Flusser, “Das Schisma zwischen Judentum und Christentum”, Evangelische Theologie 40 (1980) 232.

(164) C.K. Barrett, The Gospel of John and Judaism, London 1975, 40-58.

(165) [Ethelbert Stauffer, “Historische Elemente im vierten Evangelium”, in E.H. Amberg - U. Kuhn (ed.), Bekenntnis zur Kirche. Festschrift E. Sommerlath, Berlin 1960, 33-51], 34.
Marcus, Joel. 2009. "Birkat Ha-Minim Revisited." New Testament Studies no. 55:523–551.

Abstract: "J. Louis Martyn and others have argued that a decision by late first-century rabbis to introduce a liturgical curse against heretics (Birkat Ha-Minim) provides the background for early Christian passages about Christians being excluded from and cursed in synagogues. More recent scholars, however, have challenged the assumption that the earliest form of Birkat Ha-Minim referred to Christians and that the rabbis controlled the synagogues. The present article defends the basics of Martyn’s reconstruction while nuancing the extent of rabbinic control in the early Christian centuries. It also suggests, however, that the original of Birkat Ha-Minim may have been a Qumranian curse on the Romans."
———. 2012. "A Jewish-Christian ‘Amidah?" Early Christianity no. 3:215–225.

Abstract: "In Jerusalem Berakhot 4.3// Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2.2, Rav Huna (296–297 CE) addresses Jews who recite only seventeen benedictions instead of eighteen, reminding them that the sages had already introduced the benediction against heretics (Birkat Ha-Minim) in Yavneh. The opponents of the Birkat Ha-Minim mentioned here are possibly Jewish Christians, whose existence at such a late date is revealing insofar as it testifies to such a strong and self-assured Jewish Christian group that they either supported a synagogue or challenged the authority of the rabbis."
Martyn, J. Louis. 2003. History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. Third Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

FIrst edition 1968; Second edition 1979.

D. Moody Smith, The Contribution of J. Louis Martyn to the Understanding of the Gospel of John, 1-18; D. Moody Smith, Postscript for Third Edition of Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 19-23.

"This is not the place to summarize Martyn’s position. That has been done often enough, with variations on the theme, by myself and others. Suffice it to say that Martyn, unlike the dominant interpreters antecedent to him, took seriously the tension and hostility between the "Jews" and Jesus as the key to the historical life-setting and purpose of the Gospel of John. His entre proposal is based on two fundamental assumptions or insights. First, the prominence of the Jews and their hostility to Jesus and his disciples likely represents a genuine historical setting (that is, it is not an exercise in theological symbolism). Second, this historical setting can scarcely be that of Jesus and his actual, original disciples and opponents.(11) Therefore, one is not only justified, but also impelled to look for a historical setting and state of affairs corresponding to the nature and direction or thrust of the Gospel’s tensions and conflict. Martyn is actually invoking the modern, form-critical principle that the Gospels bear testimony primarily to the life-setting in which they were produced, and only secondarily to their subject matter.

As is well known, Martyn finds the major key to that setting in the thrice repeated reference to the expulsion from the synagogue of those who confess belief in Jesus (9:22; 12:42; 16:2), and more particularly in the evangelist’s statement that “the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess him to be Messiah, he would become an excommunicate from the synagogue.”’(12)

This agreement is traced to the Jamnian Academy under the leadership of GamalIiIe (80- 115 c.e.) and to ethe reformulation of the Twelfth Benediction of the Eighteen (Shemoneh Esre) by the legendary Samuel the Small. According to Martyn, this malediction against Nazarenes (Christian and Minim (heretics) was used to smoke out followers of Jesus in the synagogue service, for they could not in good conscience recite it, much less lead it." (p. 6)

(11) Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (1968). [References in this essay are to the present volume, the third edition (2003)] 47.

(12) Ibid.
———. 2007. "The Johannine Community among Jewish and Other Early Christian Communities." In What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present, and Future of Johannine Studies, edited by Tatcher, Tom, 183–190. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

"New to History and Theology, vis–à–vis the dissertation, were (a) the suggestion that the peculiar Johannine locutions ἀποσυνάγωγος γένηται (“be put out of the synagogue,” John 9:22; 12:42) and ἀποσυναγώγους ποιήσουσιν ὑμᾶς (“you will be made outcasts from the synagogue,” 16:2) were probably related to the Twelfth Benediction (the Birkat–Haminim), (b) a more developed emphasis on the thoroughly theological nature of the Fourth Gospel as a “two–level drama,” one that to some extent told the story of the Johannine community while narrating the story of Jesus of Nazareth because in the work of the Paraclete the risen Lord continues to determine the life of his new community." (p. 186)

(...)

"Scholars having a far greater rabbinic expertise than my own expressed skepticism about directly connecting the ἀποσυνάγωγος references in John’s Gospel to the Twelfth Benediction. Wayne Meeks identified that part of my work as a red herring (it did indeed prove to be a pink one), and Moody Smith called it a tactical error in the sense that a few Johannine interpreters were taking the work of Kimelman and Katz as proof against the larger thesis that the Fourth Gospel is a two–level drama shaped in part by the experience of a group of Christian Jews who had suffered—against their wills—the trauma of being severed from their undisturbed membership in their synagogue." (p. 187)

References

Katz, Steven T. 1984. “Issues in the Separation of Judaism and Christianity after 70 C.E.: A Reconsideration.” Journal of Biblical Literature 103:43–76.

Kimelman, Reuven. 1981. “Birkat Haminim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity.” Pages 2.226–44, 391–403 in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. 2 vols. Edited by

E. P. Sanders with A. I. Baumgarten and Alan Mendelson. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Meeks, Wayne A. 1972a. “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism.” Journal of Biblical Literature 91:44–72.

Smith, D. Moody. 2003. “The Contribution of J. Louis Martyn to the Understanding of the Gospel of John.” Pages 1–23 in History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. New Testament Library. 3rd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Matsunaga, Kikuo. 1992. "Christian Self-Identification and the Twelfth Benediction." In Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, edited by Attridge, Hariold W. and Hata, Gohei, 355–371. Leiden: Brill.

"Eusebius' work on the history of Christianity introduces the present-day reader to many of the tense confrontations the church experienced during its first three hundred years. Among these confrontations was the one between Judaism and Christianity, which led to centuries of unfortunate relations.

The polemical elements of Eusebius' work appear to have their roots in the formative period of the Christian movement, particularly in the period of tension to which the fourth gospel bears testimony. The present essay seeks to lay bare the nature and cause of this tension." (p. 355)

(...)

"Conclusion

To summarize: the way of writing and the theology peculiar to the fourth gospel are to be understood in light of the tension caused by the Jamnia decision when, following amendment of the twelfth of the Eighteen Benedictions, Christian Jews were legally excommunicated from the synagogue sometime in the 80s. The fourth gospel was written in the midst of this conflict with the intention of clarifying Christian self-identification by showing that Jesus is more than the expected Jewish Messiah, that he is God himself." (p. 366)
Mayo, Philip L. 2006. "The Role of the "Birkath Haminim" in Early Jewish-Christian Relations: A Reexamination of the Evidence." Bulletin for Biblical Research no. 16:325–353.

Abstract: "The publication of the Genizah version of the Birkath Haminim a century ago ignited renewed interest in the impact of this Jewish "blessing" on early Jewish-Christian relations. Several scholars have seen in this text evidence for an early and decisive event in the separation of Jews and Christians. Recent scholarship, however, has retreated from this conclusion, questioning the impact of the benediction. A reexamination of the evidence will help shed some light on this debate."
Reinhartz, Adele. 2007. "Reading History in the Fourth Gospel." In What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present, and Future of Johannine Studies, edited by Tatcher, Tom, 191–194. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

"It is an honor to respond to J. Louis Martyn’s reflections upon his own intellectual formation and upon an issue that has preoccupied both of us for many years—the Johannine community. Of course, as Martyn well knows, this is by no means my first response to his work; much of my thinking and writing on the Fourth Gospel has been inspired by his research, in particular his History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. In this I am not alone. Indeed, for those of us who became interested in the Gospel of John in the 1970s and 1980s, Martyn’s work served a role that was very similar to the role he ascribes to Bultmann’s commentary in stimulating his own work on the Gospel of John. That my own position differs from his by no means diminishes my deep appreciation of and indebtedness to his work." (p. 191)

(...)

"Yet even the act of exploring other readings of the Fourth Gospel, and of broadening the theoretical basis to include literary considerations, could not have taken place without Martyn’s important work. He has enticed us to look beyond the text to discern, if dimly, and to empathize with, if imperfectly, its earliest readers as they told and retold Jesus’ story in their struggle for identity in response to and in conflict with their own historical, cultural, social, and religious circumstances. Seeing with their eyes and hearing with their ears may be acts of historical imagination more than historical reconstruction, but our encounters with the Gospel of John are the richer for trying." (p. 194)
———. 2017. "Story and History: John, Judaism, and the Historical Imagination." In John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, edited by Culpepper, R. Alan and Anderson, Paul N., 113–126. Atlanta: SBL Press.

"Martyn’s narrative is constructed entirely from the gospel itself. But crucial to his case is the claim that in about 85 CE the central Jewish authority, established at Jamnia or Yavneh, promulgated a decree that forbade Jewish believers in Jesus from participating in synagogue services.

This authoritative body inserted a curse—euphemistically called the blessing on or of the heretics (Birkat Haminim) into the daily liturgy in order to flush out Christ confessors." (p. 118)

(...)

"Critique

Most scholars now concede that Birkat Haminim probably was not yet in wide circulation, or perhaps even not formulated, in the late first century, and even if it were it could not have been used to exclude Christ confessors from the synagogue.(6) This point was made as early as Reuven Kimelman’s 1981 article, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” and was clinched in Ruth Langer’s exhaustive 2011 study Cursing the Christians? Some scholars who acknowledge this point nevertheless abide by the expulsion hypothesis but suggest that it was a local edict and not mandated by a central Jewish authoritative body (Rensberger 1988, 24).

(,,,)

"My own work on the Fourth Gospel over many years has suggested that the gospel is addressing an audience that is mixed with respect to ethnic identity, consisting not only of Jews but also of pagans, and perhaps, as Raymond E. Brown (1979) suggests, also Samaritans. At the same time, the conceptual framework within which the gospel is working, while amenable to both pagan and Samaritan ideas, is fundamentally Jewish, involving an exclusive covenantal relationship with the one God of Israel and a privileging of the Jewish Scriptures as a source of prophecy about Jesus. The rhetoric of affiliation and disaffiliation may reflect the tension inherent in this situation." (p. 126)

(6) A notable exception is Marcus 2009. Through the 1970s it was generally thought that Yavneh was the central authority of post-70 Judaism and that it was preoccupied with self-definition and therefore excluding those who did not conform to proto-rabbinic Judaism. See, for example, Berger 1998, 42. This view has been challenged, in my view successfully, by numerous scholars. See, for example, Cohen 1984 and Boyarin 2000.

References

Berger, Michael S. 1998. Rabbinic Authority. New York: Oxford University Press.

Boyarin, Daniel. 2000. “A Tale of Two Synods: Nicaea, Yavneh, and Rabbinic Ecclesiology.” Exemplaria 12:21–62.

Brown, Raymond E. 1979. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. New York: Paulist.

Cohen, Shaye J. D. 1984. “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism.” Hebrew Union College Annual 55:27–53.

Kimelman, Reuven. 1981. “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity.” Pages 226–44 in Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period. Vol. 2 of Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. Edited by E. P. Sanders, A. I. Baumgarten, and Alan Mendelssohn. London: SCM.

Langer, Ruth. 2011. Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marcus, Joel. 2009. “Birkat Ha-Minim Revisited.” New Testament Studies 55:523–51.

Martyn, J. Louis. 2003. History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. 3rd ed. Nashville: Abingdon.

Rensberger, David. 1988. Johannine Faith and Liberating Community. Philadelphia: Westminster.
Schremer, Adiel. 2013. "Wayward Jews: minim in early rabbinic literature." Jouraal of Jewish Studies no. 64:242–263.

Abstract: "The content of the early rabbinic discourse of minim and minut has rarely been treated systematically in scholarly literature. This article assesses the tannaitic material pertaining to minim and minut, and suggests that the early rabbinic discourse of minut revolves around three issues: doctrine, religious practice and social enmity. Its characterization as an attempt at establishing 'orthodoxy' (correct belief) should therefore be qualified."
Sperber, Daniel. 2007. "Min (Heb. מִין , pl. מִינִים , minim; “heretic,” “sectarian”)." In Encyclopaedia Judaica: Second Edition. Volume 14: Mel-Nas, edited by Skolnik, Fred, 263–264. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.

"The term was widely applied to cover many different types of “heretics” or sectarians. From some halakhic definitions in the Talmud, it would appear the min was used to refer only to a Jewish sectarian (Ḥul. 13b; cf. Tosef., Shab. 13:5). Thus, for example, Horayot 11a states that a Jew who eats forbidden fat in a flaunting and defiant manner or (according to another opinion) worships idols is a min. The minim who ridiculed aggadic descriptions given by the rabbis (Git. 57a; BB 75a) were probably Jewish. However, there is also abundant evidence to show that the term was applied to non-Jews as well, as in Pesaḥim 87b where a Roman nationalist is called a min (see Ḥul. 13b; see also S. Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942), 141, n. 196; idem, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (1950), 135, n. 69).

Any attempt to identify minim with one single sectarian group is thus doomed to failure." (p. 263)

(...)

"According to Berakhot 28b, Samuel ha-Katan (fl. c. 80–110), at the invitation of Gamaliel II of Jabneh, composed the “benediction against the minim,” included in the Amidah as the twelfth benediction (see E.J. Bickerman, in HTR, 55 (1962), 171, n. 35). This was directed primarily against Judeo-Christians (specifically mentioned in one old text – see Schechter, JQR 10 (1897/98), either to keep them out of the synagogue or to proclaim a definite breach between the two religions. This undoubtedly “represented the formal recognition by official Judaism of the severance of all ties between the Christian and other schismatic bodies, and the national body of Judaism” (Baron, Social², 2 (1952), 135, 381, n. 8, incl. bibl.)." (p. 264)

References

Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Volume 2: Ancient Times to the Beginning of the Christian Era: The First Five Centuries, New York:Columbia University Press 1952.

Elias J. Bickerman 1962. The Civic Prayer for Jerusalem (Harvard Theological Review 55, pp. 163–185).

Saul Lieberman 1994. Greek in Jewish Palestine. Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, New Yok: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Solomon Schechter 1897. Geniza Specimens: Ecclesiasticus (Jewish Quarterly Review 10, pp. 197-206).

Solomon Schechter 1898.Geniza Fragments: Liturgy (Jewish Quarterly Review 10, pp. 654-659).
Stemberger, Günter. 2010. "Rabbinic reactions to the Christianization of Roman Palestine: a survey of recent research." In Encounters of the Children of Abraham from Ancient to Modern Times: Volume I, edited by Laato, Antti and Linqvist, Pekka, 141–163. Leiden: Brill.

"Decisions at Yavneh: Heretical Books and the Birkat ha-Minim

A central topic has always been the so called “Synod of Jamnia” at the end of the first century. According to a scholarly tradition going back to Heinrich Graetz the rabbis assembled in Jamnia under Gamaliel II at some date between 85 and 95 C.E. decided crucial measures to exclude Christians from the Jewish community: One concerns the canon of books to be used in the synagogue, the other is the introduction of the the birkat ha-minim. Even if the idea of a “synod” is now almost completely abandoned,(6) it is still widely acknowledged that these two topics played a certain role in the period of Yavneh, i.e. in the decades between 70 and 135." (p. 143)

(...)

"In recent research it has become quite common to assume that an earlier version of the birkat ha-minim was directed against the Sadducees, the Roman occupiers, Jews who cooperated with them, or some other group, and that only its reformulation at Yavneh was intended to include Jewish-Christians as well. Some authors find evidence of the effects of the birkat ha-minim on the early Christians in John 9:22, 12:42, 16:2 and in Justin Martyr, but the earliest unambiguous testimony comes from Epiphanius of Salamis in the fourth century who states that the Jews curse the Nazoreans three times a day, saying “May God curse the Nazoreans” (Panarion 29, 9, 2). This still does not prove that the birkat ha-minim was used as a means to exclude Jewish-Christians from the synagogue; it rather demonstrates the separation that has already taken place. Thus the rabbinic texts on the birkat haminim can be used only for a late stage in the separation of Christians and Jews; for a historical reconstruction of its beginnings they are not explicit enough." (pp. 146-147, two notes omitted)

(6) But see the recent study by D. Jaffé, Le Talmud et les origines juives du christianisme. Jésus, Paul et les judéo-chrétiens dans la litterature talmudique (Paris: Cerf 2007): The Birkat ha-Minim was composed “à l’époque de Rabban Gamaliel II et de l’assemblée de Yabneh, soit dans les années 90/100” (p. 130). The term “assemblée” here seems to be equivalent to “synod,” a clearly datable unique reunion of the rabbis in order to reach important binding decisions.
———. 2012. "Birkat ha-minim and the separation of Christians and Jews." In Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity, edited by Isaac, Benjamin and Shahar, Yuval, 75–88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"Was Birkat ha-Minim introduced under Gamaliel in Yavneh?

There are no early or even contemporary sources for the introduction of birkat ha-minim. The Mishnah does not even mention its existence; it is first attested to in the Tosefta:

The Eighteen Benedictions which the sages ordained correspond to the eighteen invocations of the Tetragrammaton in (Ps 29): ‘Ascribe to the Lord …’

One inserts (the blessing) for the minim in (the blessing) for the sectarians (perushin), that for the proselytes in that for the elders, that for David in (the blessing) ‘Who builds Jerusalem’.

If he recited each of them separately he has (still) fulfilled his obligation.

One responds ‘Amen’ to an Israelite who recites a benediction, but one may not respond to a Samaritan who recites a benediction, unless one has heard the entire benediction (tBer iii, 25–26, ed. Lieberman, pp. 17–18).(6)" (p. 76-77, Hebrew text omitted)

(...)

"There is no serious reason to doubt that birkat ha-minim, whatever its precise wording, existed as part of the Shemoneh ʿEsreh from the period of Yavneh (or at least from the second century). But we do not know how widely it was used in Jewish communities beyond the small circles of the rabbis, and what precise function it had within the prayer. Formulations like מכניע זדים are too general to be given a precise interpretation. When the prayer became clearly anti-Christian, the split between Christians and Jews was already definitive. Thus birkat haminim cannot have played more than a minimal role in the separation of Christians and Jews.

At this point of research, no clear-cut answers can be expected, but it is important to identify clearly the main questions which are still open, and to suggest at least some possible elements of an answer to them." (pp. 87-88)

(6) All translations of rabbinic texts are taken from those of J. Neusner, slightly adapted wherever necessary.
Teppler, Yaakov Y. 2007. Birkat haMinim: Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient World. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Translated from the Hebrew by Susan Weingarten.

"The book is called Birkat haMinim/the Blessing of the Minim, after the twelfth blessing of the prayer called the Shemoneh Esreh/Eighteen Blessings, and it centres on the question of the identity of the people who were called ‘minim.’ Apart from the discussions of Birkat haMinim itself in the Talmudic sources, there are more than three hundred further sources which deal with these same minim without any direct connection with the blessing. These passages are mostly scattered over different parts of this literature, from the Mishnah, through the Talmudim and up to the later midrashim. It is clear that the particular characteristics of each genre, including the question of when they were written or edited, produce a wide spectrum of possibilities of identification, together with some difficult methodological problems." (p. 1)

(...)

"The aim of this study was to clarify two basic questions touching on Birkat haMinim. The first aim was to arrive as close as possible to the first or original textual version of the blessing, and the other was to clarify who were the minim in the period when the blessing was constructed.

These two questions have occupied Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, halakhic authorities, commentators and researchers. Usually the most attention has been paid to the problem of the identity of the minim. These minim are mentioned in so many places in our sources that the task of reconstructing the original text of Birkat haMinim seemed, quite rightly, extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

In this study, the two problems have been put together, and this has dictated the order of discussion of the different questions: reconstruction of the textual version, the time of its composition and the identity of the minim. This decision was made for the following reason: a partial reconstruction of the earliest textual version of the blessing, or at least the negation of various elements based on a historical analysis, helps us to fix the framework of the conceptual contents of the blessing. The identity of the minim is linked to these contents." (p. 360)
Thatcher, Tom. 2017. "John and the Jews: Recent Research and Future Questions." In John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, edited by Culpepper, R. Alan and Anderson, Paul N., 3–38. Atlanta: SBL Press.

"At the present time, the Martyn-Brown hypothesis and its numerous variants remain perhaps the most influential model for understanding the relationship between the Gospel of John and late first-century Judaism.

This has been the case simply because this approach readily explains the paradox noted earlier: John’s indebtedness to Jewish themes and Scriptures in explaining Jesus (that John’s is the most Jewish gospel), and John’s evident sense of alienation from the Jewish community (that John’s is also the most anti-Jewish gospel). Following the Martyn-Brown theory, John, as a Jew himself and possibly even from Palestine, would naturally think of Jesus in Jewish terms, connecting Christ’s life and teachings to the Old Testament and talking about him in ways that would be consistent with the theological language of other Jews, such as the group that produced and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls. But this theory also readily explains why John, as a Christian Jew, would feel alienated from other Jews after being expelled from the synagogue. The explanatory power of this model perhaps explains the fact that forty years of critique and criticism did not lead Martyn to change his mind. In his last article on the topic, a reflective essay in the volume What We Have Heard from the Beginning, Martyn (2007) insists that debates over the historical details of the Birkat Haminim and the political atmosphere of first-century Judaism cannot change the basic facts. “The word aposynagogos … is there in the text, and it was not coined in an individual’s private fit of paranoia: the occurrences of this term are communal references to a communal experience” (2007, 187).(6)" (p. 15)

(...)

"Overall, the present volume, collectively and in its individual entries, reorients discussion of the nature, historical origins, and hermeneutical implications of John’s presentation of the Ἰουδαῖοι. The discussion is timely, not only on the advent of the fiftieth anniversary of Martyn’s milestone History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (1968) but also at the beginning of a new millennium of religious discourse and dialogue." (p. 38)

(6) Martyn also suggests that attempts to reduce the apparent tensions between John and the synagogue may reflect the ecumenical spirit of today’s post-Shoah world more accurately than they reflect the actual data from the Fourth Gospel (2007).

References

Martyn, J. Louis. 2007. “The Johannine Community among Jewish and Other Early Christian Communities.” Pages 183–90 in What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present, and Future of Johannine Studies.

Edited by Tom Thatcher. Waco: Baylor University Press.
Thornton, Timothy C. G. 1987. "Christian understandings of the 'Birkath ha-Minim' in the Eastern Roman Empire." The Journal of Theological Studies no. 38:419–431.

"It is hard to determine when Christians in the centuries after Jerome first definitely interpreted the birkath ha-minim as being directed against Christians. In the ninth century Archbishop Agobard of Lyons regarded Jews as daily cursing Christ and Christians (under the name of Nazarenes) in all their prayers. It is relevant to note that Agobard seems to rely on Jerome as his chief witness on this point, although he claims to have Jewish witnesses also. It would appear that in the course of time Jerome's assertions about the birkath ha-minim were given more weight by later generations of Christians than they had received from Jerome's own contemporaries. While relations between Christians and Jews continued to be hostile a good smear, however unfounded it may have been originally, would always be liable to be remembered and accorded more significance than it deserved." (p. 430, two noteds omitted)
van der Horst, Pieter W. 1994. "The Birkat ha-minim in Recent Research." The Expository Times no. 105:363–368.

"It is time to draw some conclusions. Let us begin with a short inventory of things which are, or seem to be, established facts. It is certain that minim in Tannaitic times are always Jews (so rightly Kimelman). It is certain that notsrim was not a part of the earliest version(s) of our berakhah. It is certain that Jerome knew the distinction between Nazoreans and Nazarenes (so, rightly, Schiffman). It would also seem to be certain that the development of the relations between Judaism and Christianity in the first two centuries (as far as we can trace them) was of such a nature that there was increasing enmity that created a climate in which mutual curses are a distinct possibility (Maier underrates this for the Jewish side). Further it seems probable that Schiffman is right with his thesis that the berakhah had as its primary purpose to strengthen the unity within the nation because the lack of it had proved so disastrous in the first war with the Romans. That the Birkat ha-minim also applied to Jewish Christians is extremely likely in view of the other data about the relations between Christians and Jews in this period. One has to concede that to Horbury, although I am of the opinion that he gives too much weight to Justin’s testimony about the curse against Christians. That need imply nothing more than that Justin misunderstood a curse that was directed against Jewish Christians inter alios, as referring to Christians in general. In the polemical situation in which Justin wrote such a misunderstanding seems only natural. I think Schiffman is right when he says that for the situation at the end of the fourth century we can rely upon Jerome who was much better informed than Epiphanius. That is to say that, probably not long before Jerome’s time, notsrim, in the sense of Christians in general, was added to the twelfth berakhah. The anti-Jewish measures taken by the Roman government that was a Christian government by now, made such a development well nigh unavoidable. (pp. 367-368)

References

Wiliam Horbury, The Benediction of the Minim and Early Jewish-Christian Controversy, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 33 (1982), 19-61.

Reuven Kimelman. Birkat ha-minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity, In E. P. Sanders et al., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, II: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman World (London, 1981), 226-244.

Johann Maier, Jüdische Auseinandersetzüng mit dem Christentum in der Antike. Darmstadt 1982.

Lawrence Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism, Hoboken, 1985.
Wróbel, Miroslaw Stanislaw. 2006. "Birkat ha-Minim and the Process of Separation Between Judaism and Christianity." The Polish Journal of Biblical Research no. 3:99–120.

Abstract: "The article "Birkat ha-Minim and the Process of Separation between Judaism and Christianity" discusses the origins, function, and contemporary discussion of the Twelfth Blessing, which is part of the Prayer of the Eighteen Blessings. The author cites the wording of this liturgical formula in both Palestinian and Babylonian reviews. He pays particular attention to the meaning of the term "Minim" in early rabbinic sources in Tannaitic literature (Mishna, Tosefta) and in later Amoraic literature. He also cites some texts from rabbinic literature that clearly identify this concept with Judeo-Christians. He also analyzes the term "Nozerim," which appears in the Palestinian review of the Twelfth Blessing. While examining the historical context of the Birkat ha-Minim formula, the author cites New Testament texts (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2) and patristic texts (Justin Martyr, Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome), which may be an echo of the analyzed liturgical formula. The final part of the article presents a contemporary discussion of the Birkat ha-Minim formula, the most important points of which are: a. the original wording of the formula; b. the meaning of the terms "Minim" and "Nozerim"; c. the reliability of the sources. New Testament and patristic; d. the function of the formula. The author notes that many authors rely on the same sources and reach completely different, and sometimes even clearly contradictory, conclusions. This article attempts to present the arguments of individual authors and subject them to critical evaluation. In this way, it becomes an important contribution to opening up a broad research space for historians, biblical scholars, and specialists in rabbinic literature on the meaning and function of the formula Birkat ha-Minim."

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