Jewish Christian Polemics In Fourth Century Persian Mesopotamia

Author : Adiel Schremer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019538377X
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Download or read book Brothers Estranged written by Adiel Schremer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-20 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The emergence of formative Judaism traditionally has been examined as a result of a competition between "Christianity" and "Judaism" in the first centuries of the Common Era. In Brothers Estranged, Adiel Schremer attempts to shift the scholarly consensus, instead privileging the rabbinic attitude toward Rome over their concern with the nascent Christian movement. The destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt combined to spur an intense identity crisis in Palestinian Jewish society - and, consequently, the formation of a new "Jewish" identity." "Schremer gives particular attention to the rabbinic discourse of minut, equivalent to the Christian term "heresy." In the wake of the destruction of the Temple, the category of heresy took on a new urgency as Palestinian rabbinic society sought to reaffirm and preserve its values and distinct Jewish identity. The rabbis reestablished religions boundaries by labeling some Jews as minim, and thus placing them beyond the pale. This rabbinic discourse emphasized notions of social and communal solidarity and belonging; minim, accordingly, were Jews whose fault was seen in their separation from the rest of the Jewish community." "The place that Christianity occupied in rabbinic discourse was relatively small, and the early Christians, who only gradually were relegated to the category of minim, were not its main target. Relying on the recent scholarly acceptance of the slow and measured growth of Christianity in the empire up to and even after Constantine's conversion, Schremer minimizes the attention that the rabbis paid to the Christian presence. He goes on, however, to pinpoint the parting of the ways between the rabbis and the Christians in the first third of the second century, when Christians were finally assigned to the category of heretics. Yet, throughout late antiquity, he contends, the Roman Empire was the real "significant other" for Palestinian rabbis. The religious challenge with which they were most occupied was the Empire's power and the threat it posed to the belief in God's power and divinity." --Book Jacket.