Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity

Book excerpt: The book, which consists of some previously published and unpublished essays, examines a variety of issues relevant to the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity and their interaction, including polemic, proselytism, biblical interpretation, messianism, the phenomenon normally described as Jewish Christianity, and the fate of the Jewish community after the Bar Kokhba revolt, a period of considerable importance for the emergence not only of Judaism but also of Christianity. The volume, typically for a collection of essays, does not lay out a particular thesis. If anything binds the collection together, it is the author's attempt to set out the major fault lines in current debate about these disputed subjects, and in the process to reveal their complex and entangled character.