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The research of Martha Himmelfarb has pushed scholars to re-examine what we thought we knew about the formative histories of Judaism and Christianity. In studies on such topics as apocalypses, pseudepigrapha, and messianism, Himmelfarb opened up new perspectives on Second Temple Judaism and its legacy within its late antique and medieval successor communities. Inspired by the sweeping breadth of her learning and scholarship, this volume explores the transmission and transformation of Jewish and Christian texts and traditions within and across the boundaries of language, culture, and religion. The volume's contributors range widely across sources, genres, and contexts, from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic Judaism to Nag Hammadi literature and Jewish and Christian magic, and from classical rabbinic literature and patristic writings, to Hekhalot literature and medieval midrashim. Contributors not only revisit the histories of apocalypticism, sectarianism, and messianism but also take up questions regarding the materiality of manuscripts, the boundaries of religious communities and identities, the ritual uses of heavenly visions, and the history of Jewish priests and priesthood before and after the destruction of Jerusalem Temple. In dialogue with Himmelfarb's work, the volume exemplifies the value of studying Jewish and Christian traditions in concert as well as bridging the disciplinary divides that too often fragment the fields of Biblical Studies, Second Temple Judaism, New Testament Studies, Rabbinics, Patristics, Late Antiquity, and Medieval Studies.

To date, scholarly study of the allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4:21-31 has not paid adequate attention to the way Paul's use of the story - chiefly in relation to the figure of Hagar - can be located within streams of ancient Jewish tradition. In this study, Ryan Heinsch fills this scholarly gap by considering Paul's allegorical portrayal of the figure of Hagar in Galatians 4:21-31 within the context of ancient Judaism. The author argues that Paul stands in continuity with - rather than against - ancient Judaism in that he, like other Jews in antiquity, portrays Hagar and her descendants as non-Jews. As a result, the author demonstrates further that Galatians 4:21-31 is not to be read as a polemic against Jews, Jewish Christ-followers, or the continuing validity of the Jewish law (as is common among interpreters), but rather, that Galatians 4:21-31 is an allegory Paul develops about the experience of gentiles in general and the once pagan Galatian gentiles in particular.

Jesus von Nazareth lebte als Jude im Judentum der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels. Was bedeutet das für die dogmatische Christologie und für das Verhältnis von Judentum und Christentum? Christian Danz erläutert dies in seiner christologischen und religionstheologischen Skizze. Er arbeitet die These aus, dass die dogmatische Lehre von Jesus Christus nicht gegenständlich-realistisch zu verstehen sei, sondern als eine theologische Beschreibung der christlichen Religion. Hieraus ergibt sich eine neue Sicht sowohl des Judentums als auch anderer nichtchristlicher Religionen.

This collaboration brings into conversation scholars of Jewish and Islamic studies, theologians, and cultural historians to shed new light on the enduring intertwining between the Abrahamic faiths in the Mediterranean and Central Europe since the Middle Ages. Drawing on interdisciplinary expertise, the volume presents a series of case studies reflecting - in either a constructive or a disruptive way - the interactions between the dynamics of transfer and the role of religion in society. The long durée of the book's chronology helps outline the making of religious transfers in the medieval times and their transformations up to the twentieth-century challenges of nationalism and secularism. Considering a variety of distinct implications and reactions to religious transfer, the volume contributes to pinpointing past and present challenges towards religious conceptions, doctrines and narratives in the interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The present volume gathers up studies by Peter J. Tomson, written over thirty-odd years, that deal with ancient Jewish law and identity, the teachings of Jesus, the letters of Paul, and the historiography of early Jews and Christians. Notable subject areas are Jewish purity laws, divorce law, and the use of the name'Jews'. The author also examines Jesus'teachings as understood in their primary and secondary contexts, the various situations Paul's highly differentiated rhetoric may have addressed, and the causes contributing to the growing tension between Jews and Christians and the so-called parting of the ways.

'Jewish-Christianity'is a contested category in current research. But for precisely this reason, it may offer a powerful lens through which to rethink the history of Jewish/Christian relations. Traditionally, Jewish-Christianity has been studied as part of the origins and early diversity of Christianity. Collecting revised versions of previously published articles together with new materials, Annette Yoshiko Reed reconsiders Jewish-Christianity in the context of Late Antiquity and in conversation with Jewish studies. She brings further attention to understudied texts and traditions from Late Antiquity that do not fit neatly into present day notions of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. In the process, she uses these materials to probe the power and limits of our modern assumptions about religion and identity.

Pious Jews of the Second Temple period sought to conform their lives to Torah, the law God had given Israel. Their different sects disagreed, however, on how to interpret particular laws and even on the question of who had the authority to interpret them. Jesus and his earliest followers, while focusing primarily on what they believed God was doing in their own day, were repeatedly confronted with issues raised by its relation to God's prior revelation in Torah. This volume contains studies by Stephen Westerholm devoted to the meaning and place of Torah in Early Judaism as well as to New Testament understandings, particularly those of the gospels and Pauline literature. Attention is also given to the'New Perspective on Paul,'to recent discussions of justification and Paul's relation to Judaism, and to aspects of the transmission of Jesus tradition among his earliest followers.

The present volume reexamines both ancient Christian and Jewish portrayals of outsiders. In what ways, both positive and negative, do ancient writers interact with and relate to those outside of their ethnicity or religious tradition? This volume devotes itself to the methodological questions surrounding the use of diverse ancient sources for the construction of the other. The goal is to shed new light on ancient interactions between different religious groups in order to describe more accurately these relationships.

Near the beginning of the Joban Dialogues, Job's friend Eliphaz is attributed a remarkably subversive vision (Job 4:12-21). Laced with images of divine judgment and deception, this vision undermines the very foundation of the friends'theology, and closely conforms to Job's. In particular, the vision's distinctive corporeal imagery and its conclusion that anyone can suddenly perish reflect Job's characteristic style, and form the basis for his accusations of divine injustice. In this study, Ken Brown argues that the tensions between the vision's present attribution to Eliphaz and its role in the dialogue run much deeper than is generally perceived, and can only be resolved through a reassessment of the book's development, both synchronic and diachronic. Brown suggests that the present order of Job 3-4 and 25-27 is neither original nor accidental, but reflects an intentional reframing of the dialogue, and anticipates similar moves across the earliest reception of the book. This work was awarded the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise 2016.

In this book Christoph Ochs presents for the first time an extensive study of the use of the Gospel of Matthew in Jewish polemics. These often overlooked texts advance numerous exegetical arguments against Jesus'divinity, the incarnation, and the Trinity. Seven Jewish polemical key texts comprise the main sources for this inquiry: Qissat Mujādalat al-Usquf (c. 8/9th century) and Sefer Nestor ha-Komer (before 1170), Sefer Milhamot ha-Shem (c. 1170), Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne (c. 13th century), Nizzahon Vetus (13-14th century), Even Bohan (late 14th century), Kelimmat ha-Goyim (c. 1397), and Hizzuq Emunah (c. 1594) et al. Together with the relevant passages in the original Hebrew and in translation each text is presented with a historical and exegetical introduction. Contemporary parallels are also discussed, but in less detail. The result is a compendium of arguments against the divinity of Jesus based on the Jewish interpretation of Matthew. Jewish polemicists focused in particular on Jesus'portrayal as a human (e.g. as sleeping, hungry, and ignorant) and passages where he differentiates himself from God. Some of these arguments can be traced back to philosophical and heterodox dogmatic debates in antiquity, while others look surprisingly modern. The aim of the polemicists was to highlight what they saw as contradictions between Christian Scriptures and Christian beliefs.

This is a collection of twenty-four essays by Richard Bauckham first published between 1976 and 2008, some of which have been updated for this volume. Many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism are covered, including life after death, the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalypses, the book of Tobit, the Horarium of Adam, and the Contra Apionem of Josephus. There are discussions of'the parting of the ways'between early Judaism and early Christianity and of the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Other essays throw light on specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context. These include studies of the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement. The essays in this volume result from the author's conviction, throughout his career, that the New Testament texts can only be understood adequately through wide-ranging and detailed study of the Judaism of the late Second Temple period.

One of the intriguing questions in the study of the period of the re-formation of Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple is the identity of a group which appears in hundreds of Talmudic sources from those days - the minim.. It is clear that most of these sources reflect different facets of the polemic between Judaism and Christianity, which were both engaged in establishing their identities. This book concentrates mainly on the second century CE, and includes two basic questions: the question of the earliest text of the twelfth blessing of the central Jewish prayer composed at that time, Birkat haMinim; and the question of the identity of those minim who are cursed in this blessing. In the first section of the book, Yaakov Yanki Teppler analyzes the blessing itself. In the second section, which concerns the question of its principal objects, he sets out on a quest for the characterization of the minim, using all the hundreds of sources which deal with them. Having united these two sections in one framework, a proposal is made as to the identity of the minim. This proposal should provide a coherent basis for further research on this subject, laying a firm foundation for understanding the processes of separation between Judaism and Christianity in this stormy and fascinating period.