"The Ways that Never Parted: A Roundtable." 2025. Studies in Late Antiquity no. 9:373–429.

Contents: The Ways that Never Parted: A Roundtable; Jae Hee Han: Histories from Contradiction: Introduction to the Twenty-Year Retrospective on The Ways That Never Parted 373; Simcha Gross: Beyond Coexistence: Social Boundaries and Violence Betweeen Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity 379; Andrew S. Jacobs: “Jewish Studies, Christianity, and Even Paganism”: Disciplining the Ways That Never Parted 401; Heidi Wendt: Partings Never and Pretend: Considerations from the First Two Centuries 411-429.
Âdna, Jostein, ed. 2005. The Formation of the Early Church. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

I. The Relationship between Christians and Jews, "Parting of the Ways" and Development of New Identities

Mikael Tellbe: The Temple Tax as a Pre-70 CE Identity Marker 19; Ander Klostergaard Petersen: At the End of the Road - Reflections on a Popular Scholarly Metaphor 45; Hanna Stenström: New Voices in Biblical Exegesis - New Views on the Formation of the Church 73-90.
Alexander, Philip S. 1992. ""The Parting of the Ways" from the Perspective of Rabbinic Judaism." In Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70 to 135, edited by Dunn, James D., 1–25. Grand Rapids (MI): Eerdmans.

"The following three points will serve to indicate the distinctive standpoint of this paper.

(1) Rabbinic Judaism cannot easily be equated with normative Judaism before the third century C.E., and even then only in Palestine. The reason for this is that it was not until the third century that a majority of the Jews of Palestine accepted the authority of the Rabbinate. Nevertheless Rabbinic Judaism must remain central to discussion of the parting of the ways even when we are talking of the first and second centuries, not because it represented normative Judaism then, but because it was the form of Judaism which ultimately triumphed and became normative Judaism. The forward-looking character of the question should always be borne in mind.

(2) It is simplistic to look for a decisive moment in the parting of the ways, a crucial doctrine or event that caused the final rupture. There was no sudden break between Christianity and Judaism, but rather an ever-widening rift. The War of 66-74 destroyed whatever existed of a centralized religious authority within Judaism and so removed the institutions which might have speedily and definitively resolved the problem of the status of Christianity. There were radical aspects to the Christian message which aroused opposition not only from the Pharisaic-Rabbinic party, but it was not inevitable that such radicalism should have led to a parting of the ways. History surely can provide examples of radical movements which have sucessfully transformed themselves into the dominant orthodoxy. In the power-vacuum created by the First Revolt the Rabbinic party and the Christians competed for the hearts and minds of Jewry.

The Rabbis emerged victorious. It was the gradual rabbinization of Palestinian Jewish society that pushed Christianity and Judaism ever further apart.

(3) Jewish Christianity must be seen as playing a central role in the story of the parting of the ways. Jewish Christianity continued to represent Christianity within the Jewish community even after substantial parts of the Church had become Gentile. It blurred the boundaries and retarded the final separation. So long as Jewish Christianity remained a significant presence within the Palestinian Jewish community it is hard to talk of a final rupture. Rabbinic policy towards Christianity was aimed specifically at the Jewish Christians. It attempted successfully to keep them marginalized and to exclude them from Kelal Yisra'el. The story of the parting of the ways is in essence the story of the triumph of Rabbinism and of the failure of Jewish Christianity to convince a majority of Palestinian Jews of the claims of the Gospel." (p. 3)
Alon, Gedaliah. 1980. The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age (70-640 C.E.): Vol. 1. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press.

Translated from Hebrew (1955) and edited by Gershon Levi. (Notes in square brackets are added by the translator)

Chapter Thirteenth: Jewish Christians; The Parting of the Ways, pp. 288-307.

"Summary:

What, then, prompted the Sages of Yavneh to place the Jewish Christians outside the Jewish fold? Why did they sometimes even regard them as worse than Christians who had never been Jews?

Up to the time of the Destruction, the Pharisees did not generally take any punitive measures against Jews who believed in Jesus, even though they did occasionally discipline them as sinners. It is true that, according to The Acts of the Apostles, the High Priest sent Saul of Tarsus to Damascus to take steps against the Jewish Christians. And Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, claims that the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem used to send delegates and missives to the Diaspora denouncing the Christians. But on the other hand, we do read in Acts that Rabban Gamaliel the Elder successfully defended the Apostles against the death penalty which the Sadducees and the High Priest wanted to impose.(46) Similarly, Josephus tells us how Onias ben Onias the Sadducee convened a Sanhedrin which condemned James, the brother of Jesus, to death, whereupon the "men of Jerusalem"—that is, the Pharisaic Sages—raised a bitter complaint. They took the issue to Agrippa II, and asked him to put a stop to such goings on. They went further, and lodged a complaint with Albinus, the new Procurator of Judaea.(47)

But there were two factors that caused the atmosphere to change radically. The first was that, in moments of national crisis, the Jewish Christians turned their backs on the national cause of the Jewish people. In a report relayed by Eusebius,(48) Hegesippus tells us how the Mother Church in Jerusalem left the besieged city in the year 68, and went to Pella. And again, when the battle lines were drawn against the Roman occupation in the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Jewish Christians refused to identify with the Jewish side.

Secondly, the Destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple brought about a sense of national emergency and a consequent closing of ranks. It would seem that the nation could no longer afford the latitude previously allowed to a wide range of sectarians and schismatics. (This may also account for the disappearance of the Sadducees and Essenes.)(49)

Thirdly, as time went on, the Jewish Christian sects tended to intermingle with one another. And the Ebionites themselves split, as one wing (the Ebionites B) drew ever closer to the Gentile Christians. It is therefore possible that the whole thrust of the Birkat ha-Minim was originally directed only against those elements who had joined hands with the Gentile Christians, and had diluted their Judaism to a considerable degree.

(...)

What then was the purpose of Birkat ha-Minim? Most scholars believe that it was designed to keep the Minim away from worship in the synagogue, and they may well be right. But it is probably truer to say that that was the end result, rather than the original purpose.

It is likely that the main intention was to make all Jews aware of the fact that the Minim were to be regarded as apostates, and could no longer be called Jews.

Whichever way we look at it, it will be seen that the Beth Din of Rabban Gamaliel at Yavneh took a fateful step, one that was to have far-reaching historical consequences. They declared in unequivocal terms that the Jewish Christians could no longer be considered part of the Jewish community nor of the Jewish people.*?

(46) Acts V:35-39.

(47) Ant. XX (200).

(48) Eccles. Hist. III:5:2-3.

(52) A common juxtaposition in our sources is “Minim and informers.” On the basis of this usage, many scholars have conjectured that Jewish Christians made a habit of denouncing Jews to the Roman authorities, and that this led to bad blood, and finally to the anathema of Birkat ha-Minim. However, there is no real evidence to support this conjecture.

The juxtaposition of terms does not necessarily imply any connection between them. Besides, as we now know, the original version of Birkat ha-Minim contains no mention of malshinim.

(53) [The study of the Jewish Christians has naturally been affected by the discovery of new source-materials bearing on the subject. For examples, see “The Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity,” by David Flusser, in Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. IV (1958), pp. 215 ff.; and “The Jewish Christians in the Early Centuries of Christianity According to a New Source,” by Shlomo Pines, in Proceedings of The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. Il, no. 13].
Amos, Anne. 2016. The Parting of the Ways. Jewish-Christian Relations: Insights and Issues in the ongoing Jewish-Christian Dialogue: 1–7.

"The split between Judaism and Christianity was gradual and happened at different rates in different places. There is remarkably little agreement among scholars as to what precisely caused the rift and estimates vary about the date, from the middle of the first century CE to the middle of the fourth CE." (p. 1)

(...)

" "The parting of the ways" has two distinct stages. The first, in the first century, was a preoccupation with determining who was Christian and who was not. The second stage was longer, more tortuous, painful and destructive to Jewish sensibilities. It was marked by a move from concern with purely Christian self-definition to formulating the Church as a distinct entity from Judaism, a move heretical to Jews." (p. 1)

(...)

"The second stage, the constitution of the Church as a distinct institution from Judaism, was a struggle for legitimacy against the antiquity and attractiveness of Judaism. By the end of the first century the influence of Jewish practices inthe liturgy, beliefs and morals of the infant Church was evident. There was an authority given to Jewish practice and belief that became a threat to the Church in particularly the Christian East which had the greatest concentration of Jewish communities. There, Christians frequented both church and synagogue, observed both the Jewish and Christian festivals, and some of Judaism"s foundations were enshrined in Christian liturgy." (p. 2)
Baron, Lori. 2018. "The Shema in Mark and John and the Parting of the Ways." In The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus, edited by Baron, Lori, Hicks-Keeton, Jill and Thiessen, Matthew, 187–210. Atlanta: SBL Press.

Shema: "Israel’s central confession of faith (Deut 6:4–5)" (p. 187)

"Building on Marcus’s work on the Shema in Mark,[*] this essay argues that the Fourth Evangelist makes a similar move for similar reasons: although the Johannine Jesus does not cite the Shema, the evangelist, too, links the word εἷς with Jesus in order to highlight Jesus’s unique relationship with God.(2) In both Mark and John, this christological use of the Shema reflects a common Sitz im Leben in the late first century, when some Jewish religious authorities alleged that messianic claims about Jesus infringed upon the unity of God.(3) This conflict is more pronounced in John than in Mark.

So, too, John’s use of the Shema is much more thoroughgoing than Mark’s: whereas the Markan Jesus uses the Shema to hint at Jesus’s true identity, John boldly proclaims Jesus’s divinity. Moreover, the Johannine Shema does not focus strictly on Christology; it also attends to ecclesiology. In this essay, I will show that in John, believers in Jesus form a unity with Father and Son, an eschatological Shema foreshadowed by the Hebrew prophets and noted in Second Temple Jewish literature as well. For John, this unity has begun to take shape among believers in Jesus; they are the eschatological people of God, united with God and with one another in fulfillment of the promised restoration of Israel. Jews who do not believe in Jesus, however, are excluded from this unity and, in effect, from the covenant of Israel." (pp. 187-188)

[*] Joel Marcus, “Authority to Forgive Sins upon the Earth: The Shema in the Gospel of Mark,” in The Gospels and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig Evans and W. Richard Stegner, JSNT Sup 104 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 196–207.

(2) 2. i treat the use of the shema in Matthew (22:34–40) and lLke (10:25–29) in my forthcoming book, The Shema in the Gospel of John, WunT 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Diebeck, [2022]).

(3) 3. Marcus, “Authority,” 198–200.
Baron, Lori, Hicks-Keeton, Jill, and Thiessen, Matthew, eds. 2018. The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus. Atlanta: SBL Press.

Contents: Cursus Vitae for Joel Marcus IX; Abbreviations XVII-XXV; Lori Baron, Jill Hicks-Keeton, and Matthew Thiessen: Introdction 1; Timothy Wardle: Samaritans, Jews, and Christians: Multiple Partings and Multiple Ways 15; Albert I. Baumgarten: John and Jesus in Josephus: A Prelude to the Parting of the Ways 41; Matthew Thiessen: Paul, the Animal Apocalypse, and Abraham’s Gentile Seed 65; Susan Grove Eastman: Unveiling Death in 2 Corinthians 79; Michael Winger: “Being a Jew and Living as a Gentile”: Paul’s Storytelling and the Relationship of Jews and Gentiles according to Galatians 2103; John M. G. Barclay: The Epiphany of Christ and the Identity of Scripture 123; Suzanne Watts Henderson: Was Mark a Supersessionist? Two Test Cases from the Earliest Gospel 145; Claudia Setzer: Sinai, Covenant, and Innocent Blood Traditions in Matthew’s Blood Cry (Matt 27:25) 169 Lori Baron: The Shema in Mark and John and the Parting of the Ways 187; Martinus C. de Boer: The Johannine Community under Attack in Recent Scholarship 211; Susan Miller: “Among You Stands One Whom You Do Not Know” (John 1:26): The Use of the Tradition of the Hidden Messiah in John’s Gospel 243; Jill Hicks-Keeton: John Makes a Way: A Narrative-Critical Reading of Psalm 69 in John 2:17 265; Bart D. Ehrman: Christian Persecutions and the Parting of the Ways 283; Daniel Boyarin: Why Ignatius Invented Judaism 309; Dale C. Allison Jr: The Paraleipomena Jeremiou and Anti-Judaism 325; Lucas Van Rompay: “The Blessed Land and the Inheritance of Israel”: The Old Testament and Judaism in a Fourth-Century Refutation of Marcion 353; Philip S. Alexander.: Narrative and Counternarrative: The Jewish Antigospel (The Toledot Yeshu) and the Christian Gospels 377; List of Contributors 403; Ancient Sources Index 405; Modern Authors Index 414-422.
Bauckham, Richard. 1993. "The Parting of the Ways: What Happened and Why." Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology no. 47:135–151.

Reprinted in R. Bauckham, The Jewish World around the New Testament: Collected Essays I, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008, pp. 175-192.

"The problem of the 'parting of the ways' between Judaism and Christianity (to use the increasingly popular term for a currently popular subject) is in part a problem of finding an appropriate conceptual model with which to interrogate the evidence." (p. 145)

(...)

"It is much better to change the model, as E. P. Sanders does in his Judaism: Practice and Belief. What Dunn regards as the common denominator of all the Judaisms, Sanders regards as 'common Judaism/ which for most Jews (those who did not belong to the parties) simply was Judaism. Because he sees it as focused on the temple, he says it is 'what the priests and the people agreed on.(10) However, the merit of Sanders' account of common Judaism is that this notion actually means more than what, as it happens, Jews agreed about. Sanders shows how thetemple and shared religious practices gave Jews a real sense of commonality with all other Jews.(11) At one of the great pilgrim festivals at the temple, attended by Jews from all parts of the world (even if not from Qumran), what they concretely and emotively shared was not simply what different forms of Judaism had in common, but what gave them their own ethnic-religious identity as Jews. Common Judaism - the temple, the torah, the one God who was worshipped in the temple and obeyed in following the torah, election as his covenant people to whom he had given temple and torah - this common Judaism gave Jews common identity in very concrete ways. This common Judaism makes the parting of the ways a real issue, as the model of many Judaisms does not." (p.139)

(10) 10. Sanders, Judaism, 47.

(11) 11. E.g. Sanders, Judaism, 256-257.

References

E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE - 66 CE (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992)
Baumgarten, Albert I. 2018. "John and Jesus in Josephus: A Prelude to the Parting of the Ways." In The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus, edited by Baron, Lori, Hicks-Keeton, Jill and Thiessen, Matthew, 41–63. Atlanta: SBL Press.

"In short, however Josephus understood the limits of acceptable and legitimate variety in the Jewish world of his day—one should remember that he considered three very different philosophies equally valid expressions of Judaism—John [the Baptist] did not exceed these parameters. Even Jesus, whom Josephus did not believe to be the Messiah, may not have broken the bounds of legitimate variety for Josephus as catastrophically as Jesus and his followers did for Ananus and his followers or as they later would for Celsus’s Jew, who addressed his fellow Jews who now believed in Jesus: “what was wrong with you, citizens [politai, that is, nominal members of the same group], that you left the law of our fathers … and have deserted us for another name and another life?” (Origen, Cels. 2.1). In these senses, Josephus’s comments on John were a prelude to the sorts of diversity many ancient Jews could accept as authoritative, while Jesus’s teachings as elaborated over time came to be seen as breaking those limits. By the end of the process of the “parting of the ways,” ancient Jews came to agree with Celsus’s Jew and recognize that those who followed Jesus were perceived as having “another name” and living “another life, leaving the law of our fathers.” They had crossed an invisible line into a different but unacceptable way of serving the God of the Hebrew Bible." (pp. 57-58, two notes omitted)
Becker, Adam H. 2007. "Beyond the Spatial and Temporal Limes: Questioning the "Parting of the Ways" Outside the Roman Empire." In The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Becker, Adam H. and Reed, Annette Yoshiko, 373–392. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

"This paper is composed of three parts. First, I look at the history of the Church of the East and the very different conditions under which the East Syrians lived vis-a-vis both the state and the Jewish community. The history of Christianity in fourth- through sixth-century Sassanian Mesopotamia - where the Christian community continued to suffer persecution despite its semiformalized status as a recognized minority - problematizes the nascent scholarly model which holds that, if a decisive break did occur between Jews and Christians, the moment of this fracture must be pushed forward from the first and second centuries to the fourth and fifth, when the development of a Christian empire helped determinatively to differentiate between the two religious communities.

Second, I will look at how the increase in anti-Jewish literature in the period after the Arab conquest may help to confirm this aforementioned model of separation based upon assertions of power through the state, albeit only in those regions previously under Roman rule. Finally, I discuss one instance from the early Islamic period when "the ways" actually approached each other; that is, when, for lack of a better term, what we might call a "shared discourse" developed between Jews and Christians." (p. 374)
Becker, Adam H., and Reed, Annette Yoshiko, eds. 2007. The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

First edition: Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 2003.

Contents: Martin Goodman, Simon Price, Peter Schäfer: Foreword VII; Preface to the Fortress Paperback Edition IX-XIII; Annette Yoshiko Reed and Adam H. Becker: Introduction: Traditional Models and New Directions 1; Paula Fredriksen: What "Parting of the Ways"? Jews, Gentiles, and the Ancient Mediterranean City 35; Daniel Boyarin: Semantic Differences; or, "Judaism" / "Christianity" 65; Robert A. Kraft: The Weighing of the Parts: Pivots and Pitfalls in the Study of Early Judaisms and their Early Christian Offspring 87; Andrew S. Jacobs: The Lion and the Lamb: Reconsidering Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity 95; Martin Goodman: Modeling the "Parting of the Ways" 119; David Frankfurter: Beyond "Jewish Christianity": Continuing Religious Sub-Cultures of the Second and Third Centuries and Their Documents 131; E. Leigh Gibson: The Jews and Christians in the Martyrdom of Polycarp: Entangled or Parted Ways? 145; Amram Tropper: Tractate Avot and Early Christian Succession Lists 159; Annette Yoshiko Reed: "Jewish Christianity" after the "Parting of the Ways": Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines 189; Alison Salvesen: A Connvergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scripture by Origen and Jerome 233; Daniel Stokl Ben Ezra: Whose Fast Is It? The Ember Day of September and Yom Kippur 259; Naomi Koltum-Fromm: Zipporah's Complaint: Moses is Not Conscientious in the Deed! Exegetical Traditions of Moses' Celibacy 283; Ra'anan S. Boustan: Rabbi Ishmael's Miraculous Conception: Jewish Redemption History in Anti-Christian Polemic 307; Averil Cameron: Jews and Heretics—A Category Error? 345; John G. Gager: Did Jewish Christians See the Rise of Islam? 361; Adam H. Becker: Beyond the Spatial and Temporal Limes: Questioning the "Parting of the Ways" Outside the Roman Empire 373; List of Contributors 393; Modern Author Index 397; Subject Index 403-410.
Becking, Bob. 2007. "Do the Earliest Samaritan Inscriptions Already Indicate a Parting of the Ways?" In Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E., edited by Lipschits, Oded, Gary N. Knoppers, Gary N. and Albertz, Rainer, 213–222. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

"The origins of Samaritanism are still hidden under the dust of the past. How, when, and where this religion (closely akin to Judaism and still alive in Israel and Palestine) emerged will remain a topic for scholarly debate for quite some time, I presume. The well-known texts in the New Testament indicate that by the first century c.e. the parting of ways had taken place:(2) by the time of Jesus, Judaism and Samaritanism had developed into two separate religions. When this separation took place, however, is unclear. Earlier texts reflect antagonisms between North and South, between Samaria/Gerizim and Jerusalem. We should not, however, overinterpret the evidence. At best, some hints at proto-Samaritanism can be found (Bowman 1972; Zsengellér 1998)." (p. 213, a note omitted)

(...)

"Until new evidence is found, we have to assume that the origins of Samaritanism as a specific religion are still buried under the dust of history and that the parting of the ways most likely was the result of a

long process(21) of independent developments on both sides of the divide.

The erection of an alternative temple on Mount Gerizim should, however, be seen as a first step in the process that eventually turned out to be decisive." (p. 220, a note omitted)

(2) 2. Luke 10:30–37; John 4; see, e.g., Bowman 1972: 57–90.

References

Bowman, J. 1972 The Samaritan Problem: Studies in the Relationship of Samaritanism, Judaism and Early Christianity. PTMS 4. Pittsburgh: Pickwick.

Zsengellér, J. 1998 Gerizim as Israel: Northern Tradition of the Old Testament and the Early History of the Samaritans. Utrechtse Theologische Reeks 38. Utrecht: Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid.
Binder, Stéphanie. 2012. Tertullian, On Idolatry and Mishnah Avodah Zarah: Questioning the Parting of the Ways between Christians and Jews. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 3: The “Parting of the Ways", pp. 7-46.

"This study aims at making an important contribution to the scholarly literature in two respects. First, with regard to Tertullian studies, it will provide a wide overview of the themes dealt with in the De Idolatria and the reasons that might have led Tertullian to raise these specific subjects.

A comparison of the two texts will allow us to reassess and recontextualise Tertullian, and to observe the ways in which he fits into or diverges from the general mentality of his time. This work is in no way a mere repetition of the excellent analysis of Waszink and Van Winden, who have established a definitive text for the De Idolatria, analysing its diction, grammar and subtleties but touching only briefly on the background against which it was written.(1) My aim is rather to give a general picture of Tertullian’s state of mind when he wrote this work. Secondly, the comparison between the Mishnah and the De Idolatria is related to the wider scholarly discussion of the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity, including the question of the existence of continuing contacts between proponents of the two religions after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

The inherent interest of such a comparison is to investigate the historical issue through a particular and precise example, and not through theoretical hypotheses scarcely supported by factual testimonies." (p. 1)

(1) Tertullianus De Idololatria, Waszink J.H., and Van Winden, J.C.M., eds. (Leiden, 1987).

For a discussion of the titles De Idolatria and De Idololatria and of the irregularity of the orthography of the term in the manuscripts, see Waszink (op. cit.) 7–8. Throughout the present work, the simple form Idolatria is adopted.
———. 2026. Tertullian and the Jews in Early Christian Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "This Element explores Tertullian, the first author to write Christian theology in Latin. It focuses on the primary critical issues relevant to understanding his biography and work, with special attention

to his presentation of the Jews in the wider context of early Christian literature. This topic offers the opportunity to assess how socio-historical circumstances have influenced the way that scholars, throughout the centuries, have read and understood the image of the Jews in patristic texts, thereby calling attention to the issue of objectivity in academic research. Finally, examples of the diverse treatment of the figure of the Jews in Tertullian’s texts are provided to analyse the range of his perspectives, understand where he stands in relation to other Christian authors, and examine how his work reflects the state of Christian identity formation in his time."

"The “prehistoric” stages of the idea of two groups parting paths go back to the second half of the nineteenth century with and Ferdinand Christian Baur, who appear to be the first to employ a metaphorical way to depict their insights into the situation. They were followed in the early 1910s by Frederick John Foakes (e.g., The Parting of the Roads). James Parkes, in his 1934 work, The Confliict of the Church and the Synagogue, titled one of his chapters, “The Parting of the Ways.” There, he writes about the separation of the religions from one another." (p. 28)

References

Baur F. C., Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings; A Contribution to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity. 2 vols. London: Williams & Norgate, 1873-1875.

Translated from the original German edition Paulus, Der Apostel Jesu Christi, (1845).

F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Parting of the Roads: Studies in the Development of Judaism and Early Christianity, E. Arnold, 1912.

J . B. Lightfoot, Saint's Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, London: Macmillan 1865.

Parkes, J. The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue. Athlone Press, 1934.
Bird, Michael F. . 2011. "Jesus and the "Parting of the Ways"." In Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. Volume 2: The Study of Jesus, edited by Holmén, Tom and Porter, Stanley E., 1183–1215. Leiden: Brill.

"Conclusion

This study has argued that constituent elements of the Jewish-Christian rift find their germinal roots in the historical Jesus. The reasons for Jesus’ death (a false prophet, blasphemy, Messiah) and his debates with his contemporaries that touched upon the pillars of Judaism (God, Torah, election and Temple) illustrate points of contention between Jesus and his contemporaries. Although Jesus himself remained within the orbit of a “common Judaism,” his attitudes and actions did push those boundaries to the point that he incurred violent opposition from other Jews. These actions and attitudes of Jesus were subsequently developed in the early church in a new religious and social context where a split between Jews and Christians became inevitable.

The ongoing process of Jewish and Christian self-definition in light of the political developments of the first century prompted persons from both groups to see the other as excluded from the designation “the people of God.” (p. 1215)
Bolton, David J. 2010. "The "parting of the ways" between Christianity and Judaism: inheriting a covenantal paradox." In Le buissonnement monothéiste, edited by Rogno, Frédéric, 259–271. Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg.
Boyarin, Daniel. 1999. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

"The Plan of the Essay

This short book intends to be the beginning of a new investigation of the religious histories of rabbinic Jews and Christians in late antiquity. It is to be read more as a series of hypotheses than as a series of conclusions. Some of these hypotheses already seem well-founded. Some will require much further investigation to test them.

I use two different strategies in order to support the "wave theory" of Christian-Jewish history. In the first three chapters, I employ close and thickly contextual reading of a single extended passage from the Babylonian Talmud, together with its Palestinian and Christian intertexts. After introducing the first chapter with a Christian and then a rabbinic text that directly thematize the Jewish-Christian junction, I try to show how the Talmud text reveals the blurred boundaries between Judaism and Christianity at the very moment that it is trying to insist on the clarity of those boundaries. Much of the discussion in this chapter involves close contextualized reading of a story about a single rabbinic legendary figure, Rabbi Elicezer.[*] This is a story of a martyrdom, or rather of a martyrdom cunningly

evaded, and thus prefigures the theme that will be a leitmotif of this book. This story, which is found in different versions in various rabbinic texts from different centuries of the crucial era, also is one important touchstone for rabbinic interactions with Christianity. In this chapter, I try to demonstrate the plausibility of the claim that Christianity held much more attraction for the Rabbis of the talmudic period than our canonical texts are prepared to "admit," and that there was much more contact, and even convergence, between the Rabbis and the Christians long after these contacts frequently are held to have ceased." (p. 19, notes omitted)

[*] Yitzhak Dov Gilat, Stephen G. Wald (2nd ed.), "Eliezer ben Hircanus", in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Second Edition, Vol. 6 Dr–Feu, Farmington Hills, MI: Thoson Gale 2007, pp. 322-325.

Y.D. Gilat, R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, A Scholar Outcast, Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press 1984; J. Neusner, Eliezer b. Hyrcanos: The Traditions and the Man, Leiden: Brill 1973 (two volumes).
———. 2007. "Semantic Differences; or, "Judaism" / "Christianity"." In The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Becker, Adam H. and Reed, Annette Yoshiko, 65–85. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

"The coming of Christianity, it would seem, made the difference. The most dramatic innovation that Christianity introduced into the world was the making of a new kind of identity, "religion." It would follow from this that it was this invention, moreover, that produced the Jewish religion as well. Accepting the positions of such scholars as Wilfred Cantwell Smith(21) and, more recently, Talal Asad,(22) that our modern concept of religion is a historical product of Christianity, I will suggest a revision to this thesis, proposing that this historical production does not belong to the eighteenth century but was in process from nearly the beginnings of certain parts of the Jesus movement and largely complete - whatever that might mean precisely - by the beginning of the fifth century. Late antique historian Seth Schwartz has strikingly phrased this point by referring to "Christianization, and what is in social-historical terms its sibling, the emergence of religion as a discrete category of human experience - religion's disembedding"(23)" (pp, 71-72)

(...)

"In other words, when Christianity separated religious belief and practice from Romanitas, cult from culture, Judaism as a religion came into the world as well. The Rabbis articulated their own sense of identity

and definition in part through "appropriation," not of course at this period owing to any power or dominance that "Christianity" - even if it made sense to claim the existence of such an entity - possessed, but owing to the compelling force of the question of identity asked by at least some early Christians." (p. 72)

(21) Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (London: SPCK, 1978).

(22) Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993).

(23) Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society from 200 B.C.E.. to 640 CE. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001), 179.
———. 2020. "The Christian Invention of "Judaism"." In The Parting of the Ways and/as Supersessionism / La chiesa al posto d’Israele? La nascita di un’ideologia nella separazione tra cristiani ed ebrei nel II / III secolo, edited by Cova, Gian Domenico, Neri, Camillo and Norelli, Enrico, 11–38. Brescia: Morcelliana.

"In this lecture I argue that ‘Judaism’ was invented by Christians to serve the formation of the Church (with a capital C) as a new form of human collective. Jewry, however, I suggest, remained forever the old form of human collective, in which a People (locatively defined) worshipped its god and practiced its historical practices.

1. A Retraction

In a much earlier adumbration of the argument that I am making here, I proposed that the invention of ‘Judaism’ by Christian writers was part and parcel of the invention of ‘religion’ in the 4th and 5th centuries. As demonstrated at length by Brent Nongbri in his Yale dissertation, some of my key evidence was simply misconstrued by me, in large part because I committed what I take to be now a cardinal sin, depending on translations for scholarly work. Consequently I now am convinced that the idea expressed there that ‘religion’ in something close to the modern sense was fabricated in the 4th century is generally invalid(1).

(...)

Abandoning the (now clearly perceived as) anachronistic term ‘religion’ in my analysis, I am going to term the new turn – not claiming, of course, any originality here – as the invention of ‘orthodoxy’, as well as its concomitant body, the Church, for which here, however, I will use the Greek term Ekklesia. Put in other terms, it involves the shift from locative to non-locative accounts of group boundaries and definitions. According to Rowan Williams, ‘orthodoxy’ is a way that a ‘religion’, separated from the locativity of ethnic or geocultural self-definition as Christianity was, asks itself: ‘how, if at all, is one to identify the “centre” of [our] religious tradition? At what point and why do we start speaking about “a” religion?’(3) I will modify this only by suggesting that in place of ‘religion’ here, and to keep things clear, let us substitute Ekklesia, not as the building or as the local community but as the corporate body of orthodox Christianity as well as its supernal homologue. The Ekklesia, we might say, invents ‘Judaism’ as an alternate, as the dark double of the true Ekklesia, transforming Jews from a People to an Ekklesia via the medium of orthodoxy, an Ekklesia that it names Ioudaismos in Greek."’. (pp. 11-12)

(1) Cf. B. Nongbri, Paul Without Religion. The Creation of a Category and the Search for an Apostle Beyond the New Perspective (Ph.D. diss.), New Haven, Yale University, 2008, p. 50-62. Nongbri goes sometimes too far, in my opinion, in dismissing some of my interpretations there and somewhat mischaracterizes others, but no matter, in essence he is right. In what follows, I simply delete the previous interpretations that I consider now partly or largely invalid and rephrase what remains in new terms that I think, today, make more sense.

(3) R. Williams, ‘Does it make sense to speak of pre-Nicene orthodoxy?’, in id. (ed.), The Making of Orthodoxy. Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, Cambridge – New York – Port Chester – Melbourne – Sydney, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 3.
Bremmer, Ian N. 2021. "Ioudaismos, Christianismos and the Parting of the Ways." In Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model, edited by Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A. and Verheyden, Joseph, 57–87. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "In discussions about the “Parting of the Ways” model, the terms Ioudaismos and Christianismos generally received little attention. Ioudaismos is the older term, which gradually evolved from characterizing a specific form of Judean life to a more static meaning closer to the modern concept of “Judaism.” However, the term was understood differently in Jewish and Christian circles. Christianismos was coined, probably by Marcion, as the opposite of Ioudaismos, but based on the term Christianos/us, which likely originated in Rome. In the East, Christianismos is still used today, but in the West, the term was soon replaced by Christianitas. These shifts in meaning cannot be separated from the process of the “Parting of the Ways,” but they were also influenced by political developments in the Roman Empire."
Broadhead, Edwin K. 2010. Jewish Ways of Following Jesus: Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Chapter 15: The "Parting of the Ways" and the History of Primitive Christianity, pp. 354-374.

"In the field of New Testament studies, most of the history of scholarship has presumed that Judaism and Christianity experienced a "parting of the ways." Where this is presumed, the only remaining issues are when and how this split occurred.

Scholars have defined several turning points:

1. the ministry of Jesus;

2. the division within the Jerusalem church between Hebrews and Hellenists;

3. the diversity and openness of the church at Antioch;

4. the mission of Paul to the Gentiles;

5. the 1st Jewish War (66-74 ce);

6. tension with the synagogues reflected in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John;

7. the 2nd Jewish War (132-135 ce).

Some scholars take one of these as the singular moment that marked Judaism and Christianity as distinct entities. Others imagine a process of separation in which there are several decisive moments." (p. 354)

(...)

"Chapter 16: Conclusions

This study has analysed various types of materials in search of historical markers for Jewish Christianity, that is, for persons or groups in antiquity who seek to continue God s covenant with Israel by both following Jesus and maintaining Jewishness. The impact of Jesus upon his followers was traced through the earliest communities and through the earliest literary productions. The patristic and rabbinic representations of Jewish Christianity were shown to provide an indirect witness to its vitality, diversity, and endurance. This portrait was affirmedin the remnants of Jewish Christian texts. Archeological confirmation proved

more elusive." (p. 375)
Bucur, Bogdan Gabriel. 2014. "Justin Martyr’s Exegesis of Biblical Theophanies and the Parting of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism." Theological Studies no. 73:34–51.

Abstract: "The article provides an overview of the three distinct approaches to the exegesis of theophanies documented in the surviving works of Justin Martyr. It argues, contrary to previous scholarship on Justin Martyr, and in agreement with Larry Hurtado, that the argument from theophanies precedes its use by Justin, and suggests that the Dialogue and the Apologies may offer a glimpse into the process by which the exegetical disagreement over theophanies contributed to the crystallization of distinct “Jewish” and “Christian” social identities."

References

Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).
———. 2015. "Early Christian Exegesis of Biblical Theophanies and the Parting of the Ways: Justin of Neapolis and Clement of Alexandria." In Les judaïsmes dans tous leurs états aux Ier-IIIe siècles (Les Judéens des synagogues, les chrétiens et les rabbins). Actes du colloque de Lausanne, 12-14 décembre 2012, edited by Clivaz, Claire, Mimouni, Simon Claude and Pouderon, Bernard, 245–274. Turnhout: Brepols.

Summary: "The scholarly discussion of the « parting of the ways » should also take into consideration the exegetical, doctrinal, and liturgical implications of the early Christian interpretation of biblical theophanies. The so-called « argument from theophanies » preceded its use by Justin; it was crucial for the theological appropriation of the sacred history of Israel, and figured significantly in the anti-Jewish, anti-dualistic, and anti-monarchian polemics of the second and third centuries. Although Clement of Alexandria’s “internalized apocalypticism” inaugurated a different approach to theophanies, the older apocalyptic traditions he is echoing (e.g., the cosmic-ladder imagery, the first created angels, and the « mechanism » of prophetic inspiration) allow us to speculate about the way in which early Christians contextualized the relevant theophanic passages of the Bible. Justin’s surviving writings offer a glimpse into the process by which the exegetical disagreement over theophanies contributed to the gradual crystallization of distinct « Jewish » and « Christian » religious and social identities."
Burns, Joshua Ezra. 2018. The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My inquiry will proceed as follows. Chapter 1 will address contemporary scholarship on the Christian schism as it relates to the experiences of the Jews. At issue will be a popular critical narrative of the schism known as the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. After commenting on the empirical validity of that narrative, I shall identify those of its critical assumptions that I believe render it incompatible with the Jewish evidences I intend to examine. By demonstrating the weaknesses of the “parting” model as a key to experiences of the early rabbinic sages, I aim to demonstrate the usefulness of my own historical project as well as to establish methodological guidelines for its pursuit in the pages to follow.

Chapter 2 will focus on the idea of Jewish identity during the early centuries of the Common Era. My goal will be to establish the existence of certain discernible standards of thought and behavior commonly, if not universally, understood to have defined the Jew during Christianity’s formative age.

(...)

Chapter 3 will examine precisely how the idea of Jewish identity came to be problematized within the Christian collective. Focusing first on Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Romans, I shall describe a conflict of missionary priorities among the earliest followers of Jesus ultimately to define the difference between Christian and Jew outside the rabbinic frame of reference.

(...)

Chapter 4 will focus on a series of early rabbinic texts attesting to that encounter. Mining these texts for historical data, I shall demonstrate their varied functions as fabricated memories testifying to their respective authors’ perceptions of the Christians operating in their midst. I thereby shall explain why the authors of those ancient notices cast the followers of Jesus as fellow Jews rather than subscribers to a cultural system foreign to their own. The resulting perception of Jewish commonality with the Christian other, I therefore shall argue, left a unique impression of Christianity on the writings of the Jewish sages distinct from that assumed by most Christians of their age.

Chapter 5, the final chapter, will trace the evolution of the rabbinic polemic against Christianity through the Christianization of the Roman Empire, a complex and multifaceted process that began in the early fourth century. Utilizing a range of Jewish and Christian texts, I shall demonstrate how the initial rabbinic impression of the Christian as Jew gave way to a more fully realized sense of difference as the Jewish population of Palestine began to sustain the effects of Christian imperialism. I thereby aim to show how the rabbinic sages who lived through that transition adjusted their received rhetoric of Christian otherness to reflect their own newly realized sense of Jewish otherness relative to their Christian neighbors." (pp. 16-17)
Carleton Paget, James. 2018. "Jewish Revolts and Jewish-Christian Relations." In Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70‒132 CE, edited by Joshua, Schwartz and Tomson, Peter J., 276–306. Leiden: Brill.

"Among the contested issues relating to the three Jewish revolts against Rome between 66 and 136 ce is their effect upon Jewish-Christian relations."(p. 276)

(...)

"This paper reexamines the question of the effect of the revolts upon Jewish-Christian separation under a number of headings, some of which are interconnected. It is argued that the evidence, such as it is, is too fragile to support a view which sees the revolts as playing a significant part in the history of Jewish-Christian relations." (p. 279)

(...)

"There is a sense in which some recent advocates of the separatism through revolt school (if one might put it that way) wish to undercut the view that Christians and Jews moved apart because of their ideological differences (or to lessen the importance of ideological differences). The conclusion of this might be that, without the revolts, Jews and Christians might not have separated to the degree that they did, or that separation would have been a slower process.

This is a much larger question to which this essay cannot provide an adequate answer. What is clear, however, is that in the face of so little evidence about the revolts and their consequences, scholars are in no position to speak with certainty about their effect upon the complex tale of Jewish-Christian separation.

Indeed what evidence does survive suggests that it was less great than some have assumed." (P. 306)
———. 2021. "The Epistle of Barnabas, Jews and Christians." In Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model, edited by Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A. and Verheyden, Joseph, 217–247. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "A characteristic of the Epistle of Barnabas, a text considered to be among the so-called Apostolic Fathers, is its—mostly polemical—engagement with Jewish themes. However, the author never uses the Greek terms for ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’. Against the backdrop of recent criticism of the basic assumptions of the “Parting of the Ways” paradigm, this essay examines various approaches to understanding the specific view of the Epistle of Barnabas on the Jews. Particular attention is paid to the notion that the letter attempts to construct a separation between Jews and Christians in a situation where there are no Jews at all. Given the very limited information on the historical context of the letter, however, it seems impossible to determine why the author adopts such a position toward those whom he nowhere refers to as 'Jews'."
Charlesworth, James H. 2013. "Did They Ever Part?" In Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Shanks, Hershel, 281–300. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.

"For approximately 1,400 years, Jewish and Christian scholars assumed that Christianity was something new in history. They held that while the matrix of Christianity was to be sought in the Greek and Roman world, something unprecedented clearly occurred in Jesus life. Jesus simply did not fit within Judaism as known from traditional Jewish sources." (p. 281)

(...)

"In light of archaeological discoveries that have informed us of the diversity and richness of early Judaism, and in light of the historical and philological research awakened by the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we may now observe a more scientific methodology for assessing the emergence of Christianity. Today, Jewish and Christian experts on Second Temple Judaism recognize the Palestinian Jesus Movement as one aspect of early Judaism and acknowledge that what would become Christianity was for decades a sect within Judaism. Scholarly assumptions of the past and what had been perceived to constitute early Judaism appear misinformed and in need of new paradigms and explanations." (p. 282)

(...)

"I am personally convinced that any focused discussion needs to be aware that both “orthodox” Christianity” and Rabbinic Judaism evolved and changed due to complex issues, including competing ideologies, competitive stories, and the loss of Jerusalem and the Temple. Both departed from the creative (and perhaps too chaotic) world of Second Temple Judaism that ended in 70 C.E." (p. 299, a note omiited)
Chester, Andrew. 1992. "The Parting of the Ways: Eschatology and Messianic Hope." In Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70 to 135, edited by Dunn, James D., 239–313. Grand Rapids (MI): Eerdmans.

"Introduction

For the period 70-135 this is a potentially vast theme, although the evidence (both Jewish and Christian) is in some respects limited or difficult to evaluate.

Some relevant texts will be touched on only briefly, since they are being dealt with elsewhere in this collection.(1) In this essay, I will first consider some main aspects of the Jewish evidence, starting with the potentially important but often neglected SibOr [Sibylline Oracles] 4 and 5, and then come to the larger, rather disparate, range of Christian texts from the Apostolic Fathers and early Apologists. Throughout, the intention is to indicate some of the main points of agreement and difference, and to perceive some of the issues that loom large as Judaism and Christianity begin to grow increasingly apart in this period." (p. 239)

(1) See especially the essays by Rowland and Horbury.

References

William Horbury, Jewish-Christian relations in Barnabas and Justin Martyr, pp. 315-345.

Christopher Rowland, The Parting of the Ways: The Evidence of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and Mystical Material, pp. 213-237.
Chilton, Bruce. 2013. "The Godfearers: From the Gospels to Aphrodisias." In Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Shanks, Hershel, 55–71. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.

"The term "Godfearers" designates non-Jews who, despite their identity as gentiles, sympathized with the religion of Israel. The difference between cooperative and uncooperative non-Jews is signaled within the Torah itself. For example, when Abraham sojourned in Gerar, he says that he came to the conclusion that “there is no fear of God in this place” (Genesis 20:11). The result of that judgment was dramatic, leading Abraham to tell Abimelech, the local king, that Sarah was his sister, in the belief that Abimelech would kill him if he knew he and Sarah were married.

But how much did a person need to sympathize with Judaism to qualify as a “Godfearer”? In this chapter, we will see that, although the basic factor of acknowledging the God of Israel remained constant, answers to that question varied over time. In addition, even within a given period policies varied from place to place, and teacher to teacher.

Although for the most part it was agreed that Godfearers, as gentiles, were not required to keep the covenant of circumcision, even that issue proved to divide leaders in nascent Christianity, when the movement was faced with the question: Could gentile Godfearers be baptized into the name of Jesus? We will see varying policies emerge in response to this question, framed by Pharisees who were part of Jesus’ movement, by the teaching of James, the brother of Jesus, and by Paul of Tarsus." (pp. 55-56)
Chilton, Bruce, and Neusner, Jacob. 1996. Trading Places: The Intersecting Hstories of Judaism and Christianity. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press.

"Some have supposed that the histories of early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism run parallel.(1) This book challenges that conception. We argue that the histories of Judaism and Christianity(2) not only do not run parallel, but that the lines of the respective histories intersect; and further, that in all the ways that count, they have nothing in common. That may seem surprising. After all, the two took shape in the period considered here, the first four centuries of the Common Era. Much of their respective histories took place in the same country, under the same political conditions of subordination to the multicultural empire of Rome, and they were founded on the same authoritative revelation, that of ancient Israel. But these formative histories share nothing beyond that point. The one started where the other ended. The one moved out of politics as the other moved in. The one abandoned history as a mode of organizing experience, while the other found itself compelled to invent history to explain the present age.

The fundamental exchange of positions within, and upon, politics accounts for the vastly divergent histories that each worked out in ancient times, and, indeed, even until our own day: the one within, shaping history, the other without, enduring events and denying these formed history at all. It is only in the twentieth century that political change of equivalent magnitude has taken over the historical careers of each, bringing the two together again, confronting them both with a single encounter in common with a new political universe." (Preface, p XI)

(1) See Hershel Shanks, ed., Parallel Histories (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1993) [Second edition: Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of Their Origins and Early Development, Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2011]

(2) Judaism the religion and Christianity the religion, not the institutions of the Jews as an ethnic group compared with the doctrines and structures of Christianity as a religion, as is the case in Shanks’s book.
———. 1997. Trading Places Sourcebook: Readings in the Intersecting Hstories of Judaism and Christianity. Eugene, OR: Wipfs & Stock.

"This sourcebook is a companion and complement to Trading Places: The Intersecting Histories of Judaism and Christianity. It amplifies the presentation of topics set forth in that book, and also introduces new topics to deepen readers’ understanding of the two religions at a critical time in their histories. To place the matter in its proper context, we wish to explore the exchange of indicative characteristics that left Judaism in the fourth century remarkably like Christianity in the first, and vice versa. In each case a nascent religious system responded to political change by completely reconsidering initial policies and doctrines, and both religions emerged from the formative age with a remarkable capacity to solve problems and deal with the challenge of change. During the centuries examined in Trading Places, the primary religions of Western civilization, Christianity and Judaism, reached the structures that would prevail from then to the present day.

This book, then, serves as a supplement to our systematic statement of matters. It represents a rich selection of primary sources, in English translation, so that readers, and especially students, can examine for themselves the documents on the strength of which we have constructed the account set forth here." (Preface, p. VII)
Claussen, Carsten. 2001. "Early Christianity and the Synagogue: A Parting of the Ways." In Who Was Jesus? A Jewish-Christian Dialogue, edited by Copan, Paul and Evans, Craig A., 97–110. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

"Christianity was born in the middle ofJudaism.1 Jesus was born as a Jewish child into a Jewish family and society. His early followers were Jews. Jesus himself obviously saw his mission as being primarily directed toward his fellow Jews (cf. Matt. 10:6, 23; 15:24). However, his later followers left the synagogues and started defining their own religious convictions against the background of their mainly Jewish origins. What did his early followers experience that made them set up their own meet¬ ings? Why did they finally have to leave the framework ofJudaism? The following essay will draw a picture of the development that set Jesus and his followers apart from the environment of ancient Judaism and will thus face the question: “Who was Jesus?” (p. 97)
Clivaz, Claire. 2012. "Jacob and Jesus in Alexandria as a Test-Case : « The Eldest Angel » and « The Mystic Angel »." In La croisée des chemins revisitée : Quand l'"Eglise" et la "Synagogue" se sont-elles distinguées ?, edited by Mimouni, Simon Claude and Pouderon, Bernard, 213–225. Paris: Cerf.

Abstract: "In debates on the «parting of the ways », genealogy and chronology especially are used to affirm identities, a temptation often present in historical research. This article suggests that a moratorium on such chronological battles is required, to rather focuse on what is missing and present among the evidence from Jewish and Christian traditions. It throws some light on the figure of Jacob and its comparisons and parallels with Jesus. The inquiry suggests that pre-orthodox Christian sources avoided saying anything about Jacob’s fight in Gn 32 until such time as the theology of the Logos was sufficiently established in early Christianity to make possible the identification between Jesus and the angel. But other Christian milieus did compare early Jesus with Jacob, as only John 4.12 attests it in New Testament, but as illustrates the transfer of the title ἀγωνιστής from Jacob to Jesus in Egypt.

Even though Philo does not explicitly connect the Logos with Jacob he implicitly offered the grounds for a syncrisis between Jacob and the Logos, a syncrisis later transferred from Jacob to Jesus. Such a comparison has got enough success to have influence the readings of Lk 22,43-44, until to provoke its omission from the Lukan Gospel by anti-separationnist and pre-orthodox Christian milieu in Egypt at the second century."
Cohen, Abraham. 1954. The Parting of the Ways: Judaism and the Rise of Christianity. London: Lincolns-Prager.

"...If Jesus subscribed to the fundamentals of Pharisaic Judaism, what was the cause of the break? From which issues sprang the parting of the ways? The Gospels make it clear that there were conflicts between Jesus and the contemporary Jewish leaders. Whatwere they about? Were they of such seriousness as to make him the founder of a new religion? If so, how can it be claimed that “Jesus lived and died a Jew” and that “ Jesus was not a Christian: he was a Jew”? If not, what happened after his death among his followers that induced them to part company with the community in which their master was born, reared and lived, and start a separate and distinct religious group? These are the questions to which an inquiry has to be addressed.

(ii) The Gospels as a Source of Information:

In the quest of the answer an initial difficulty is encountered in that the sources of information, the Gospels and other New Testament writings, are comparatively late and were composed at a time when the split was taking, or had already taken, place. Consequently there was an inevitable tendency in the authors to read back into the career of Jesus some at least of the differences between Judaism and the new religion which had become intensified at the time of writing." (p. 72)
Cohen, Shaye J. D. 2014. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah: Third Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

First edition 1987; second edition 2006.

Chapter 8: 8. Ways That Parted: Jews, Christians, Jewish Christians (ca. 100–150), pp. 231-258.

Here I briefly state the methodological foundations on which this chapter rests. Some of these foundations are contested by scholars, as indicated in the footnotes. The parting of the ways is a complicated and much debated subject.

• The parting of the ways is about people, societies, and institutions, not about disembodied truth claims or the abstractions “Judaism” and “Christianity.”

• No doubt arguments between Jews and Christians—about theological topics such as the oneness of God, the place of angels and other intermediaries in the cosmic order, the nature of the messiah, and the like— contributed to the social separation of the two groups, but the conflicting views in and of themselves did not necessarily cause that social separation.

Such a causal link needs to be demonstrated, not merely asserted.

• The parting of the ways involves people whom we call “Jews” and “Christians,” even if our ancient sources do not always use these labels. Rabbinic texts, for example, never use the term “Judaism” and never refer to the collectivity of Israel as “Jews.” Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew never uses the term “Christianity.” Nevertheless, for the sake of convenience and clarity, I shall continue to use these terms.

• The notion of “the parting of the ways” does not in the least suggest that Jews and Christians stopped speaking with each other, arguing with each other, and influencing each other. Christian literature of the first centuries CE bears many signs of reaction to Jewish truth claims, and if we believe modern scholarship, Jewish (rabbinic) literature of the first centuries CE bears many signs of reaction to Christian truth claims, but such reactions in and of themselves neither prove nor disprove a parting of the ways. They prove only that Jews and Christians continued to speak with each other.

• There was no parting of the ways between gentile Christians and non-Christian Jews for the simple reason that their ways had never been united. Even the most hellenized of Jews, such as Philo of Alexandria, belonged to Jewish communities that were socially distinct from “the Greeks,” no matter how well these Jews spoke Greek, knew Greek literature, and assimilated Greek culture high and low.

(...)

• Jewish believers in Christ had a choice: they could join the emerging Christian communities that were being populated more and more by gentile Christians; or they could try to maintain their place within Jewish society, a stance that would become harder and harder to maintain as the decades went by; or if they were uncomfortable among non-Jewish Christians and non-Christian Jews, they could try to maintain their own communities, separate from each of the others. In various passages the New Testament shows that in the first century CE the first of these possibilities was the norm; Jewish Christians and gentile Christians were alike members of the newly created Christian communities.

(...)

• The parting of the ways between Jews and Christians also involves a third party, the Romans, with whom I begin my survey of the evidence." (pp. 231-233, note omitted)
———. 2018. "The Ways that Parted: Jews, Christians, and Jewish-Christians ca. 100-150 CE." In Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70‒132 CE, edited by Joshua, Schwartz and Tomson, Peter J., 307–339. Leiden: Brill.

"The present essay is a revised version of my ‘In Between: Jewish-Christians and the Curse of the Heretics’ (this title was bestowed by the editor) in Shanks, Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, 207–236. An abridgement of the essay appeared as chapter 8 of my From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 231–258. My thanks to the editors of this volume for including the essay. – The application of the phrase ‘the parting of the ways’ to the separation of Christianity from Judaism became popular through the work of Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (title of chapter 3)." (p. 307, note 1)

"Conclusions

The evidence surveyed here supports the view, once regnant among scholars but now unaccountably out of fashion, that by the early second century CE Jews (that is, ethnic Jews who do not believe in Christ) and Christians (that is, ethnic gentiles who do believe in Christ) constituted separate communities, each with its own identity, rituals, institutions, authority figures, and literature.

To be sure we may assume that there were Jewish communities of various sorts, for example rabbinic and non-rabbinic, Hebrew-reading and non-Hebrew reading, and we may assume that there were Christian communities of various sorts, for example proto-orthodox and ‘Gnostic’, so generalizations are hazardous. But all the extant evidence points in the same direction.

There were no mixed communities of Jews and Christians, except of course for Christian communities which numbered among their members Jews who had converted to Christianity, and except for Jewish communities which numbered among their members Christians who had converted to Judaism. But absent conversion, the boundaries between the Jewish and the Christian communities were clear enough and stable enough. As the century proceeded, the boundary would become ever clearer and ever more stable." (p. 335)
———. 2024. "“Parting of the Ways” in Antioch in 386/7 CE as Seen by John Chrysostom." In A Vision of the Days: Studies in Early Jewish History and Historiography in Honor of Daniel R. Schwartz, edited by Brody, Robert, Hacham, Noah, Piotrkowski, Meron M. and van Henten, Jan Willem, 396–415. Leiden: Brill.

"In his Sermons against the Jews, delivered in Antioch in 386–387 CE, John Chrysostom fulminates against some of the Christians of the city, accusing them of consorting with the Jews, the enemies of Christ, and thus denying their own Christianity.(*) Modern scholars call these Christians “Judaizers,” and cite them as evidence for the porosity of the boundary between Jews and Christians, and between Judaism and Christianity. In this paper I would like to investigate more closely this boundary, in particular the self-conception of these “Judaizing” Christians. My thesis is that these “Judaizing” Christians were neither confused nor uncertain about the boundary between Judaism and Christianity; they simply disagreed with Chrysostom about its contours and location, and we modern scholars should not take sides in this dispute." (p. 396)

(*) I cite Chrysostom’s Adversus Judaeos from Patrologia Graeca, vol. 48, by sermon number, section number, paragraph number and column number; I omit “PG 48” and, unless there is the possibility of confusion, I also omit the title Adv. Judaeos. When citing Chrysostom’s other works I reference the volume number, the column number, and the title. This essay is a companion piece to my article “Jews and Judaism in Antioch as seen by John Chrysostom and the Rabbinic Sages” [in Markus Witte, Jens Schröter, and Verena M. Lepper, eds., Torah, Temple, Land: Constructions of Judaism in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 257-275] (...)"
Coogan, Jeremiah. 2023. "The Ways that Parted in the Library: The Gospels according to Matthew and according to the Hebrews in Late Ancient Heresiology." Jornal of Ecclesiastical History no. 74:473–490.

Abstract: "This article traces how early Christian thinkers (including Irenaeus, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome) conceptualised ‘Jewishness’ in bibliographic terms. The material that early Christian sources associate with the Gospel according to the Hebrews exhibits a substantial textual relationship with the Gospel according to Matthew. The distinction emerges within a fourth- and fifth-century heresiological project of bibliographic categorisation that seeks to differentiate Jewish and Christian books and readers. Bibliography is a way of distinguishing reading communities and thereby advances the late ancient rhetorical project often known as the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity."
Crabbe, Kylie. 2021. "Character and Conflict: Who Parts Company in Acts?" In Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model, edited by Schröter, Jens, Edsall, Benjamin A. and Verheyden, Joseph, 151–183. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: Early proponents of the “Parting of the Ways” model have, in various ways, also referred to the Acts of the Apostles, whereas others, who worked with more sharply defined models to describe the early relations between Christians and Jews, found evidence of a hostile divergence between Jews and Christians in Lucan's account.

The following article assumes that some narrative figures in the Acts of the Apostles do indeed separate from one another. However, it shows that these conflicts do not signify a fundamental, structural separation, just as the abrupt split between Paul and Barnabas does not mark a general break in tradition between different factions of Jesus' followers.

The following article assumes that some narrative figures in the Acts of the Apostles do indeed separate from one another. After a brief discussion of some hypotheses about the historicity and the structural development of “Christianity” in studies of the Acts of the Apostles, the first thesis put forward is that the striking hybridity of the identities of the introduced narrative figures shows that the binary nature presupposed by the “separate paths” model does not do justice to the identities and relationships in the Acts of the Apostles. Following this, further narrative objectives are examined that arise from characterizations and conflicts in the Acts of the Apostles, such as Paul’s confrontations with jealous “Jews from Asia,” his leaving the synagogues in Corinth and Ephesus, and the divided reaction of the Jewish assembly in Rome. Following an analysis of the meeting in Jerusalem, where Torah practice for Gentiles is discussed, the article ultimately concludes that the examination of the Acts of the Apostles as a literary work shows that the crucial question is not that of a conflict between “Christians” and “Jews”, but rather that of the inclusion of Gentiles in the eschatological people of God."
Crown, Alan David. 1993. "The Parting of the Ways." Australian Journal of Jewish Studies:62–81.
———. 2004. "Judaism and Christianity: The Parting of the Ways." In When Judaism and Christianity Began: Essays in Memory of Anthony J. Saldarini. Vol. 2: Judaism and Christianity in the Beginning, edited by Avery-Peck, Alan, Harrington, Daniel and Neusner, Jacob, 545–562. Leiden Brill.

"The process of reinterpretation and reexamination of the parting of the ways began to some extent in the modern era with the publication between 1922 and 1928 of Strack-Billerbeck’s Commentary on the New Testament, which examined the Jewish background of Christianity,(3) and of C.G. Montefiore’s Rabbinic Literature and Gospel Teachings(4) in 1930, which did much the same task and left its readers in no doubt that early Christian literature was a literary expression of the Jewish world into which Christianity was born. In other words, Christian literature seemed to be an extension of Jewish literature, and early Christian practice and belief seemed to be very Jewish.

However, the nature of the Judaism that underlay Christianity was not clear." (p. 546)

(...)

"The parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity has been described and identified in a variety of causes by different observers. To some, it was in the matter of the difference between Jews and Christians over the person of Jesus, the uniqueness of his teaching and the acceptance or rejection of his divinity. For others it was in the matter of the observance or abnegation of the Law.

Some have argued that there was a complete divorce between Judaism and Christianity early in the Christian era, to be precise, in the year 80, when Jews are alleged to have excommunicated Christians as heretics(12) or in the various acts of violence and ostracism recorded in the New Testament that are regarded as a consistent persecution of Christians by Jews. Yet others have argued for the separation’s being clear only when it was consummated by state legislation against the Jews, when Christianity became the official religion of the Byzantine empire. There are indications that some of these were stages in the parting of the ways but none in itself was a final breach, and that at every stage but the last there was no clarity in the matter." (p. 548)

(3) Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (1922–1928).

(4) Reprinted by Ktav (New York, 1970) with a prolegomenon by Eugene Mihaly, who points out that Montefiore’s work was a valuable correction to Strack-Billerbeck.

(12) [E.H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews (New York, 1965)], pp. 28–29. But see below for a discussion.
Dacy, Marianne. 2006. "The Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Early Christianity." In Anafim: Proceedings of the Australasian Jewish Studies forum, edited by Faigan, Suzanne, 93–110. Sydney: University of Sydney: Mandelbaum Publishing.

"In the first century CE, in the late Second Temple period, Christianity began its existence as a variety of Judaism. At this time, Judaism was a ferment of varying religious groups with many different philosophies vying for power. The Talmud of Jerusalem records that when the Temple was destroyed, there were twenty-four kinds of Judaism (y. Sanh. 29c). In the first century, the Christian movement could be grouped with Sadducees, Samaritans, Essenes, Ebionites and the creators of the Dead Sea writings. These were forms of Judaism that accepted the written torah, in whole or part, but not the oral torah. The oral torah was espoused by the Pharisaic movement, a two torah movement, which adhered to the written torah and the oral, which Jewish tradition declared had been received simultaneously on Mount Sinai. At this stage, the oral torah that was to be published in the Mishnah had not been codified. It was in this climate that Christianity started out as another expression of Judaism." (p. 93)
———. 2010. The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

"Chapter 1 examines the geographical evidence for separation, early Christian organisation, and the development of centralisation of the western church with the rise of the papacy. A map shows the relationships between Christian and Jewish populations, and tables included in the appendix name the towns from which they came to attend the Council of Arles and especially the Council of Nicaea. The reasons for the failure of the Jewish-Christian movement are studied in chapter 2. Chapter 3 looks at statements about Jews in the early church council documents and what they reveal about issues of separation. The fourth chapter discusses the Theodosian Code and the laws concerning Jews, pointing out the gradual erosion of Jewish privileges with the rise of Christianity, and the attempts to separate Christians from Jewish practices.

Chapter 5 examines the Jewish roots of Christian liturgy and notes the developing christological focus. The sixth chapter treats the church’s efforts to separate the Sabbath from Sunday. The seventh chapter provides a close study of the struggle to separate the date of Passover from Easter, the latter replacing Passover as the most important feast in Christianity.

Chapter 8 looks at what can be revealed from archaeology about separation, while chapter 9 examines the few remarks that appear to be about Christianity in the rabbinic sources, and their significance.(60) Conclusions about the separation of Christianity from Judaism have been constructed on the basis of the evidence examined." (Introduction, pp. 12-13)

(60) It is also worthwhile consulting the recent collection of essays: David B.Capes, April D. DeConick, Helen K. Bond, and Troy Miller, eds., Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity. Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007). Authors include the Israeli scholar Rachel Elior, ‘On the Changing Significance of the Sacred’ (277–301); Troy Millar, ‘Liturgy and Communal Identity: Hellenistic Synagogal Prayer 5 and the ‘Character of Early Syrian Christianity’ (345–358); and Paula Fredericksen, ‘Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go’ (25–38).
Danz, Christian. 2024. "Jesus the Judean and Jesus the Christ. Systematical-Theological Considerations on the Relationship between Judaism and Christianity." In Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians, edited by Tiwald, Markus and Öhler, Markus, 341–350. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Abstract: "Against the background of recent historical research on Jesus, which places Jesus in the ancient Judea of the Second Temple, this article addresses the relationship between Judaism and Christianity from a systematic perspective. According to the thesis of the article, Christian theology only reaches a positive appreciation of the Jewish religion if it renounces religion-spanning concepts such as the concept of religion or God and names a theological difference between the two religions. For dogmatic Christology this means that it is a descriptive element of the Christian religion and cannot be transferred to the Jewish religion. On this basis, systematic theology can take into account in Christology the results of recent historical Jesus research without appropriating Judaism."
de Bruin, Tom. 2019. "Nostalgia, novelty, and the subversion of authority in Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs." TWC - Transformative Works and Cultures no. 31:1–14.

Abstract: "The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, by negotiating the authorship and authority of its derivative readings, discusses the place of Israel vis-à-vis Christianity through almost fannish retellings of the lives of the patriarchs of Israel. The text thereby walks a line between nostalgic and novel readings of foundational narratives, in some places perpetuating canonical authority and in others subverting it. The outcome of this interplay is the displacement of the Israelite author and Christianization of Israelite history. Contemporary fan fiction studies discourse provides tools for analyzing this negotiation of textual authority."
Destro, Adriana, and Pesce, Mauro. 2012. "From Jesus Movement to Christianity: A Model for the Interpretation, Cohabitation and Separation of Jews and Christians." In La croisée des chemins revisitée : Quand l'"Eglise" et la "Synagogue" se sont-elles distinguées ?, edited by Mimouni, Simon Claude and Pouderon, Bernard, 21–49. Paris: Cerf.

Abstract: "Our hypothesis is that until around end of the second century, the groups of Jesus followers were sub-groups of Jewish groups, and, however, they possessed some distinctive characteristics. But they are not “separate” groups. Also during the first two centuries, there existed, therefore, profound bonds between Jesus followers and Jews, but also boundaries. From the end of the second century onwards, we witness a strengthening of the distinction and also a separation, as the groups of Jesus followers are no longer, by and large, sub-groups of groups of Jews. This coincides with the building of places of worship that are identifiable as Christian. It is marked by the emergence of funerary epigraphy that shows some Christian traits (while still preserving strong affinities with Jewish and pagan ones), by the creation of distinct burial sites, by the development of monarchic episcopates in some cities, and, finally, by the ethnic differentiation among groups.

However, when the boundaries became stronger with the passage of time, for example in the second half of the fourth century, exchanges and co-participation in daily life and ideas continued between Christians and Jews.

Finally, it must be borne in mind that situations varied among different geographical areas, and between urban and rural areas, while there were also displacements in the timing of these transformations."
Di Luccio, Pino. 2025. "Praying for the Coming of the Kingdom, Crystallizing Biblical Themes in Second Temple Prayers: The Shema, the Qaddish, and the Lord’s Prayer." Religions no. 16:1–16.

Abstract: "Some studies have pointed to the Jewish background of the prayer that, according to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus taught his disciples. However, the formulations of LP’s [Lord’s Prayer] words do not necessarily presuppose the conclusion of the formation of Jewish prayers and do not necessarily presuppose a unidirectional influence of Jewish prayers on the formation of LP. This prayer and its “midrash” in John 17 may have influenced the formulation and final formation of some Jewish prayers. The differences between these prayers may indicate the mutual influence that, in some cases, took place throughout the history of their formation. This reciprocity may be due to the intention to establish and define the differences between the religious groups of Judaic origin that inherited these prayers and between the communities that recited them. The crystallization of biblical themes in these prayers highlights the common heritage of these groups and a different understanding of the fulfilment of God’s word in relation to the coming of his kingdom. While this process, characterized by a conflict of interpretations, took place “within Judaism,” it also led to the parting of the ways of Judeo-Christians from the Synagogue."
Doering, Lutz. 2020. "Early Judaism and Early Christianity." In Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters. Second edition, edited by Henze, Matthias and Werline, Rodney A., 541–565. Atlanta: SBL Press.

"A chapter on early Judaism and early Christianity is an addition and innovation in the second edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters.

In the years around the rough terminus for the consideration of scholarship in the first edition (1980; see Kraft and Nickelsburg 1986), a number of fresh approaches to early Judaism began to appear in the scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity. These approaches partly responded to changes in the study of early Judaism after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which led to an appreciation of variegation in Second Temple Judaism. This essay will initially summarize these changes and then cover scholarship in the following areas: the historical Jesus and early Jewish texts and traditions, Paul’s place in early Judaism, the study of early Judaism and further aspects of early Christianity, and the so-called parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity." (p. 541)

(,,,)

"6. Conclusion

In the past four decades or so, early Judaism—now perceived as more variegated—has been considered increasingly and in various productive ways to illuminate early Christianity. Major foci of study have been Jesus and Paul in their respective Jewish contexts, various tradition-historical links or material similarities with early Christianity, and the question of the parting of the ways. The strong antagonism between early Judaism and early Christianity assumed in some earlier scholarship has largely been abandoned.

Not only does early Judaism shed light on early Christianity, but the same could also be said vice versa: Given the Jewishness of most New Testament texts, they can be read as early Jewish literature; moreover, there are ongoing discussions on how (Jewish) Christians may have informed the early rabbis (e.g., Burns 2016; and, considering also much later periods, Yuval 2006). The debate on the parting of the ways has in fact highlighted the question on when and how Judaism and Christianity can be distinguished from one another, and this debate is likely to continue." (p. 555)

References

Burns, Joshua Ezra. 2016. The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kraft, Robert A., and George W. E. Nickelsburg, eds. 1986. Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters. BMI 2. Philadelphia: Fortress; Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Yuval, Israel Jacob. 2006. Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Translated by Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2024. "The Didache and the Parting of the Ways." In Parting of the Ways: The Variegated Ways of Separations between Jews and Christians, edited by Tiwald, Markus and Öhler, Markus, 219–239. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh.

Abstract: "The article briefly reviews some aspects of the literary structure and source-critical questions of the Didache, comments on its genre, and discusses in detail the two selected topics of fasting and prayer in Did. 8.1–3, with a view to what the Didache might contribute to the issue of the so-called “Parting of the Ways”. It is argued that the Didache, directed at a Christ-believing group composed of both Jews and gentiles, attempts to establish boundaries vis-à-vis a specific group of Jews polemically called “hypocrites” which bears some relation with pre-70 CE Pharisees, and that this conversely shows that “the ways” between the Didache group “and Judaism” have not fully parted."
Draper, Jonathan A. 2005. "Do the Didache and Matthew Reflect an “Irrevocable Parting of the Ways” with Judaism?" In Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu?, edited by van de Sandt, Huub, 217–241. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

"Introduction

Most modern studies of the Didache have stressed the “Jewish” nature of the source material and orientation of this enigmatic early Christian writing.(1) The title I have been given thus raises one of the most intriguing questions facing the interpreters of the Didache, “When and how did the break come?” The answer to this question will, in some ways, determine the interpretation that follows. Adding the gospel of Matthew to the mix, adds an additional “wild card” to the pack, but is the logical corollary to the close connection that is seen between the two writings by many researchers, myself included. I have argued elsewhere that, while there is no literary dependency of the Didache on the current form of the gospel of Matthew,’ the two writings come from the same community and the Didache represents the “community rule” of the Matthean community.(2) I have also argued that the Didache is concerned to define itself in two directions: over against the gentiles on the one side and over against other Jewish groups on the other.(3) The recent appearance of a new work on the Didache by Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (2002), raises these issues again in an acute form. In particular, their book lays the same charge of “virulent anti-Jewish polemic” against the Didache as is frequently laid against Matthew’s gospel." (p. 215)

(1) So, for instance, Rordorf-Tuilier, La Doctrine des douze Apôtres: “son enseignement est principalement fondé sur la tradition judéo-chrétienne” (21) ; cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 44, and, most recently, Van de Sandt-Flusser, The Didache, passim.

(2) Draper, “The Jesus Tradition in the Didache,” 269-89 / 72-91.

(3) Draper, “Torah and Troublesome Apostles,” 347-72 / 340-63; Id., “The Genesis and Narrative Thrust,” 25-48.

(4) Draper, “Christian Self-Definition,” 362-77 / 223-43.

References

Draper, J. A., “The Jesus Tradition in the Didache.” In The Jesus Tradition Outside the Gospels, edited byD. Wenham (Gospel Perspectives 5). Sheffield 1985, 269-89. Revised and reprinted in J.A. Draper, The Didache in Modern Research, 72-91.

_______ “Torah and Troublesome Apostles in the Didache Community.” Novum Testamentum 33 (1991) 347-72; rev. and repr. in Id., The Didache in Modern Research, 340-63

_______ “Christian Self-Definition against the ‘Hypocrites’ in Didache 8.” In Society of Biblical Literature 1992 Seminar Papers, edited by E. H. Lovering. Atlanta (Ga.) 1992, 362-377. Rev. and repr. in J.A. Draper, The Didache in Modern Research, 223-43

______ (ed.), The Didache in Modern Research (Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 37). Leiden-New York-K6ln 1996

______ “The Genesis and Narrative Thrust of the Paraenesis in the Sermon on the Mount.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 75 (1999) 25-48

Niederwimmer, K., Die Didache (Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vatern 1). 2° ed. Géttingen 1993 (1989). ET: The Didache (Hermeneia). Minneapolis 1998

Rordorf, W., and A. Tuilier, La Doctrine des douze Apétres (Didaché) (Sources Chrétiennes 248). Paris 1978; 24 ed. (Sources Chrétiennes 248 bis). Paris 1998.

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