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This article was downloaded by: [DUT Library] On: 06 October 2014, At: 07:14 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjbv20 When Jewish faith and the Jesus movement were not incompatible William S. Campbell a a University of Wales , UK Published online: 05 Dec 2007. To cite this article: William S. Campbell (2007) When Jewish faith and the Jesus movement were not incompatible, Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education, 28:3, 343-346, DOI: 10.1080/13617670701712588 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13617670701712588 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: When Jewish faith and the Jesus movement were not incompatible

This article was downloaded by: [DUT Library]On: 06 October 2014, At: 07:14Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies inReligion & EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjbv20

When Jewish faith and the Jesusmovement were not incompatibleWilliam S. Campbell aa University of Wales , UKPublished online: 05 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: William S. Campbell (2007) When Jewish faith and the Jesus movement werenot incompatible, Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education, 28:3, 343-346, DOI:10.1080/13617670701712588

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13617670701712588

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: When Jewish faith and the Jesus movement were not incompatible

Journal of Beliefs & Values,Vol. 28, No. 3, December 2007, pp. 343–346

ISSN 1361-7672 (print)/ISSN 1469-9362 (online)/07/030343–04© 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13617670701712588

REVIEW ARTICLE

When Jewish faith and the Jesus movement were not incompatibleWilliam S. Campbell*University of Wales, UKTaylor and Francis LtdCJBV_A_271156.sgm10.1080/13617670701712588Journal of Beliefs and Values1361-7672 (print)/1469-9362 (online)Book Review2007Taylor & Francis283000000December [email protected]

Jewish believers in JesusOskar Skarsaune & Reidar Hvalvik (Eds), 2007Peabody, MA, Hendrickson$49.95 (hbk), 930 pp.ISBN 1-565-63763-4

Jewish Christianity reconsideredMatthew Jackson-McCabe (Ed.), 2007Minneapolis, MI, Fortress Press$35.00 (hbk), 400 pp.ISBN 0-800-63865-8

The origins of Christianity are well documented in the New Testament texts. But theexistence of such texts does not of itself guarantee their significance, and this has tendedto vary greatly in different eras and differing contexts, depending on the issues Chris-tians themselves were facing. The above-noted volumes address this problem, eachone bringing together the wide-ranging expertise of many scholars. The Editors ofJewish Believers in Jesus have themselves written several of the total of 23 chapters thatcomprise this large study; Hvalvik deals with ‘Paul as a Jewish Believer—Accordingto the Book of Acts’, ‘Named Jewish Believers Connected with the Pauline Mission’and ‘Jewish Believers and Jewish Influence in the Roman Church until the EarlySecond Century’. Skarsaune writes the introductory chapter on ‘Jewish Believers inAntiquity—Problems of Definition, Method and Sources’ and several other chapterson different groups in Early Christianity, as well as a carefully considered Conclusion.Other contributors include: James Carlton Paget on ‘The Definition of the TermsJewish Christian and Jewish Christianity in the History of Research’; Richard

*Centre for Beliefs and Values, University of Wales, College Street, Lampeter, SA48 7ED, UK.Email: [email protected]

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Bauckham on ‘James and the Jerusalem Community’; Craig Evans on ‘The JewishGospel Tradition’; Graham Stanton on ‘Jewish Christian Elements in the Pseudo-Clementine Writings’; Philip S. Alexander on ‘Jewish Believers in Early RabbinicLiterature’ and James F. Strange on ‘Archaeological Evidence of Jewish Believers?’.

The need for such a volume must be viewed as in some aspects a response to thechallenge by Daniel Boyarin in 1999 in his Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Makingof Christianity and Judaism and in his later Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Chris-tianity (2004). Boyarin radically challenged the traditional wisdom and paradigm ofan early ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity pointing by analogyto border areas where language boundaries were almost completely obscured andwhere actual borders do not really exist. The authors are by no means agreed in theirperspectives nor do they propose an over-riding paradigm to resist Boyarin; they tendrather to seek to modify and adjust his scenario in differing directions. What unitesthem is ‘a common conviction that the phenomenon of Jewish believers in Jesus hasits own significance in the history of Christianity, and also for the history of therelationship between Judaism and Christianity’. The older ‘history of ideas’ approachis now seen to be entirely inadequate for understanding the history of Christianorigins in relation to Judaism. In this ‘Jewish Christianity’ was often constructed as auniform entity, an ideological entity that was studied as such. This had all the marksof being a modern scholarly construct, based on similar constructs by the early Chris-tian heresiologists. It was assumed that all those belonging to Jewish Christianitybelieved certain doctrines and had a corresponding life-style, all practice beingdetermined by theology. In contrast, these authors stress the significance of differentsettings, different milieus and different situations. Context is given due weight incontrast to the ‘history of ideas’ approach, which is deemed ‘too abstract, too bent ondiscerning cognitive systems as such, for the concrete constraints of human existenceto appear clearly within its horizon’ (p. 746). The result of this (the resultant thesisproposed) is that in studying the first five centuries, historians must seek to avoid themistake of taking normative definitions as descriptive and thereby privileging the defi-nitions of the religious leadership, thus settling the boundaries of where Judaismended and Christianity began. It is too easy in this scenario to overlook the fact thatit was in the interests of leaders to define their respective faiths and practices in sucha way that these appeared intrinsically and essentially incompatible with each other. In thisapproach Jewish Christianity was easily rendered marginal and such people wereregarded as seeking to combine two incompatible identities. The failure of arguingfrom ideology to life with arguments that claim ‘it must have been so, since it cannotlogically have been otherwise’ is recognised as having for too long obscured the factthat many groups of Jewish believers in Christ and other gentile Christians had a longand varied relationship with the synagogue, and that this endured in some areas evenafter the time of Constantine and the subsequent ‘Christianisation’ of the Empire.

The contributors to Jewish Christianity Reconsidered include the editor MattJackson-McCabe’s Introduction and the chapter, ‘What’s in a Name? The Problemof “Jewish Christianity”’; Craig Hill on ‘The Jerusalem Church’; Jerry Sumney on‘Paul and Christ-Believing Jews Whom He Opposes’; William Arnal on ‘The Q

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Document’; Petri Luomanen on ‘Ebionites and Nazarenes’; Warren Carter on‘Matthew’s Gospel: Jewish Christianity, Christian Judaism, or Neither?’; RaimoHakola on ‘The Johannine Community as Jewish Christians? Some Problems inCurrent Scholarly Consensus’; Patrick J. Hartin on ‘The Religious Context of theLetter of James’; John W. Marshall on ‘John’s Jewish (Christian) Apocalypse’;Jonathan A. Draper on ‘The Holy Vine of David Made Known to the Gentilesthrough God’s Servant Jesus: “Christian Judaism” in the Didache’; and F. StanleyJones on ‘The Pseudo-Clementines’.

McCabe in his chapter reminds us of the fact that despite centuries of awarenessof its existence in some form or other, and scholarly works such as those of J. J. A.Hort, Jean Danielou and Hans Joachim Schoeps, there is still no general consensuson what is signified by the term Jewish Christianity. Hort distinguished betweenJudaic Christianity and Judaistic Christianity assuming that the former refers essen-tially to a historical era, the earliest phase of Christianity, to ‘a time of transitionduring which the old (Jewish) order would live on by the side of the new (Christianone), not Divinely deprived of its ancient sanctity, and yet laid under Divine warningof not distant extinction’ (1894, pp. 37–38). McCabe notes that Hort’s reconstruc-tion of Christian origins is both overtly theological (assuming a providential hand inJewish and Christian history) and markedly anti-Jewish (anticipating the final extinc-tion of Judaism as fundamental to the divine plan). It would not be fair to claim thatthis two-fold approach exemplifying both theological and anti-Jewish aspects hastypified recent scholarship on this area, but some abiding elements, attributable tosome extent to the influence of F. C. Baur, have not assisted in clarity of under-standing. McCabe’s summary of the salient issues still facing research in this area isworth noting; he claims ‘Scholarship continues to be informed by the recognitionthat a segment of the religious movement that would eventually produce (amongother things) orthodox Christianity was in some way “more Jewish” than thislatter—to the point, in fact, of constituting a distinct class of religion; and accord-ingly scholars continue to assign particular ancient groups and works of literature tothat class’ (p. 4).

Jerry Sumney discusses the nature of the debate between Paul and those Christ-believing Jews whom he opposes, recognising that even the modern parameters of thisdiscussion were framed by Baur. Sumney seeks to bring greater clarity to this debateby positing two significant groups in Paul’s context. There were those for whom faithin Christ was the defining element of their religious identity but there were otherJewish believers for whom faith in Christ did not reorient their identity to the extentthat this faith reoriented Paul’s.

There existed at this time no single understanding of the Christ-believing commu-nity among Christ-believers who were Jewish. Sumney concludes that if we take thefirst part of their label to represent the most formative element of their religious iden-tity, then Paul and other Jews who make ‘Christ-believing’ central might be called‘Christ-believing (or Christian) Jews’, while those who make the Mosaic covenantcentral might be called ‘Jews who are Christ-believers (Jewish Christ-believers),’ orperhaps better ‘Jews who also believe in Christ’.

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The other contributions in varying ways and detail exemplify some of the issuesnoted above but overall emphasise how within the New Testament and related texts,the relation to Judaism and the question of Jewishness is fundamental to our ongoingattempts to define Christian identity without simply using Judaism as a negative foilin its construction.

These two volumes, parallel in some respects, but offering divergent insights inothers, are a useful and timely contribution to an area in which confusion, simplisticstereotypes and generalisations have sometimes hindered scholarly progress. There isa recognition by some of the authors, such as McCabe, that this discussion to a greatextent concerns the comparison of two world religions, and that as such only theemployment of disciplined scholarly grids and categories carefully used can enableprogress. Stereotypes such as ‘law is of the essence of Judaism’ will not advanceunderstanding. The emphasis on orthopraxis in Judaism as distinct from theChristian stress on orthodoxy is a helpful insight that reappears in several places inthe discussions, though sadly this, as noted, by itself does not resolve all the issues.

Scholars will be grateful for the greater clarification that these volumes offer intothe relationship between Jews and Christians in the first five centuries and to theunderstanding of Christian identity today.

References

Boyarin, D. (1999) Dying for God: martyrdom and the making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford,CA, Stanford University Press).

Boyarin, D. (2004) Border lines: the partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA, University ofPennsylvania Press).

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