How Christianity Parted from Judaism

Although Jesus and his earliest followers had seen themselves as Jews, by the fourth century the Christian community perceived itself as separate. Scholars have offered various views of how that took place. Some think of Christianity as having evolved out of Judaism, while others see them as different components within the same tradition that eventually went separate ways. There is also disagreement as to when the separation took place – whether around the end of the first century as a result of Christians’ understanding of Jesus and their outreach to gentiles or as a consequence of the fourth century Christianization of the Roman empire.

Conclusion

The diversity of contemporary Judaism, which resembles that of antiquity, is a product of the collapse of rabbinic authority that began during the Enlightenment. Both then and now there was a Jewish state existing alongside a substantial diaspora. During both periods there was also disagreement as to whether Jewishness is a matter of religion, behavior, or ethnicity and Jewish leaders having to convince Jews to follow their views in the aftermath of trauma.

Second Temple Literature outside the Canon

Many of our sources pertaining to 2nd Temple Judaism, including the Apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, and Philo, were preserved by Christians, leading Robert Kraft to warn against assuming that they were originally Jewish despite the presence of biblical allusions. Several of these works, such as those associated with Enoch, are pseudepigraphic and retell biblical stories. Others demonstrate the development of wisdom teachings and apocalyptic ideas, with accounts of heavenly ascents, divine revelations, and symbolic visions like those found in earlier texts from this genre.

Introduction

Although Judaism traces its roots to the Hebrew Bible, it differs significantly from the religion prescribed there. The essays in this book describe what modern scholars have learned about the transition from biblical religion to the now prevalent form of Judaism, including synagogues, rabbis, fixed prayer, and the diaspora as well as its break from Christianity. This was also the period in which the biblical writings were collected and various ancient documents, including both inscriptions and, most famously, the Dead Sea Scrolls, were written. Many features of contemporary Judaism, including diversity and the diaspora, developed in this period, even as modern Judaism has increasingly come to resemble that of antiquity.

Inventing Rabbis

The origin of rabbinic Judaism and its rise to dominance were debated in antiquity as they are today. Although the rabbis saw themselves as direct heirs of biblical religion and traced their understanding of Torah to Sinai, they presented a form of Judaism that could function without the Temple, which had been destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Breaking from previous generations’ polemical views, some modern scholars regard them as the group which emerged triumphant after that event, while others see the rabbis as having created a grand coalition of several earlier forms of Jewish expression.

New Directions in Understanding Jewish Liturgy

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Cairo Geniza, and critical study of rabbinic literature have contributed to our understanding of when and how fixed public worship developed within the Jewish community. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that prayer was practiced by at least some Jewish groups while the Second Temple still stood and that it drew heavily from biblical language, as can also be seen in the latest biblical books. However, Genizah documents demonstrate the persistence of liturgical diversity as late as the tenth century and, with critical study of rabbinic texts, raise questions about the acceptance of rabbinic authority.

Were the Ancient Jews a Nation?

Historians’ definitions of ancient Jewish identity, whether as a race, a people, a nation, an ethnic group, or a religious community, have been influenced by modern ideologies, which do not always take the realities of antiquity fully into account. Despite ample evidence of Jewish diversity in this period, there is no support for the idea that Jews then thought of there being distinct “Judaisms” in the way some modern scholars have suggested. Until the time of Constantine, Jews constituted an ethnos and were often allowed to use their own laws; however, after the events of 70 CE they became a religion.

Diaspora and the “Assimilated” Jew

There were Jews throughout the Mediterranean basin during the Greco-Roman period. Inscriptions and other writings demonstrate that they were well integrated into the communities where they lived but did not give up their Jewish identity. Despite claims to the contrary, the evidence points to social and cultural interaction rather than assimilation, as Jews and non-Jews supported each other’s religious institutions without compromising their respective identities.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Most archeologists believe that the ruins at Khirbet Qumran were used by a communal sect during the first century BCE and CE, which was part of the Essene movement described by Josephus and Philo. About a quarter of the scrolls found nearby are of books that are now part of our (Hebrew) Bible. There were also copies of several other books, such as Enoch and Jubilees, that were regarded as authoritative, though they are not included in today’s Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish Bibles. Variations in these texts show that standard versions of these books had not yet been determined.

Ancient Jewish Gender

Because our sources about ancient Judaism were composed by rabbis, they reflect a limited perspective and certainly not that of women (nor how Jews actually lived). The rabbis’ attitudes towards domesticity and their description of ritual and menstrual requirements understand men as householders and women, like children, as inhabitants. Both archeological evidence and rabbinic texts suggest that men and women did not occupy separate spaces, so that gendered identities had to be crafted within shared space.