Traditional scholarship on the history of Jewish/Christian relations has been largely based on the assumption that Judaism and Christianity were shaped by a definitive "Parting of the Ways". According to this model, the two religions institutionalized their differences by the second century and, thereafter, developed in relative isolation from one another, interacting mainly through polemical conflict and mutual misperception. This volume grows out of a joint Princeton-Oxford project dedicated to exploring the limits of the traditional model and to charting new directions for future research.
Drawing on the expertise of scholars of both Jewish Studies and Patristics, it offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the interactions between Jews and Christians between the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the rise of Islam. The contributors question the conventional wisdom concerning the formation of religious identities, the interpenetration of Jewish and Christian traditions, the fate of "Jewish-Christianity" and the nature of religious polemics in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
