Daf Ditty Eruvin 66: Jew/Gentile

Personifications of Church and Synagogue at the Strasbourg Cathedral,

depicting the triumph of Christianity over Judaism

1
The Gemara relates a similar incident: Rabbi Ḥanina bar Yosef and Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba
and Rabbi Asi happened to come to a certain inn, and the gentile innkeeper, who was absent
when Shabbat began, came on Shabbat. They said: What is the halakha with regard to renting
from him now? The Gemara explains the two sides of the question: Is renting from a gentile like
making an eiruv? If so, just as one who establishes an eiruv may do so only while it is still day,
so too, one who rents a gentile’s property must do so while it is still day.

Or perhaps one who rents from a gentile is like one who renounces rights to his domain; just
as one who renounces rights to his domain may do so even on Shabbat itself, so too, one who
rents a gentile’s property may do so even on Shabbat. In that case, they would be able to rent
from the gentile in exchange for something of value, even on Shabbat itself.

2
Rabbi Ḥanina bar Yosef said: Let us rent, while Rabbi Asi said: Let us not rent. Rabbi
Ḥiyya bar Abba said to them: Let us rely now on the words of the Elder, Rabbi Ḥanina bar
Yosef, and rent. Later they came and asked Rabbi Yoḥanan about the matter, and he said to
them:

3
You acted well when you rented. The Sages of Neharde’a wondered at this teaching: Did Rabbi
Yoḥanan actually say this? Didn’t Rabbi Yoḥanan say just the opposite: Renting from a gentile
is like establishing an eiruv? What, is he not to be understood as imposing a stringency: Just as
one who establishes an eiruv may do so only while it is still day, so too, one who rents a gentile’s
property must do so while it is still day?

In the Jerusalem Talmud a slightly different version of this story is recounted, where it is added
that Reish Lakish stated: You did not act well when you rented. According to one opinion cited
there, Rabbi Yoĥanan and Reish Lakish disputed this issue, and others say that Reish Lakish said
to them that they acted improperly, because even though they had to rent the property they were
not allowed to carry.

4
The Gemara rejects this argument: No, his statement was intended as a leniency: Just as one who
establishes an eiruv may do so even with less than the value of a peruta, so too, one who rents
a gentile’s property may rent it for less than the value of a peruta. And just as the one who
establishes an eiruv need not be the owner himself, but even his hired laborer or harvester may
do so, so too, one who rents a gentile’s property need not rent from the landlord himself, but may
rent even from his hired laborer or harvester who are acting on his behalf.

Summary

The Gemara discusses how a person who rents a Nochri's share in a Chatzer is like one who makes
an Eruv.

The Gemara originally says that this means that he must rent the Nochri's share from before
Shabbos. The Gemara concludes that this in fact provides leniencies, such as paying less than a
Perutah and using the agency of the Nochri's worker.

Tosafos

‫תוספות ד"ה יפה עשיתם ששכרתם‬

(Tosfos explains why this is permitted on Shabbos.)
‫לא דמי למקח וממכר ליאסר בשבת‬
(a)
Implied question: This is like buying and selling, which is forbidden on Shabbos!
‫דלא הוי אלא כמתנה בעלמא שאין עושין אלא להתיר טלטול‬
(b)
Answer: It is like a mere gift. It is done only to permit carrying.

RAMBAM HIL ERUVIN 2:10

5
[In the case of] two Israelites and an idolater who dwell in the same courtyard and the Israelites
made an eruv for themselves, it is completely ineffective. And likewise, if they nullified [their
rights] to the idolater or he nullified [his rights] to them or the Israelites nullified [the rights of]
one to the other and they become like [the case of] one individual with an idolater, it is totally
ineffective. For an eruv is not effective with the presence of an idolater;

Orach Chayom 383: Renting on Shabbat for the purpose of an eiruv –

If a gentile who resides in a courtyard arrives there on Shabbat, one may rent from him for the
purpose of an eiruv even on Shabbat, as stated

Rav Avrohom Adler writes:1

There is a dispute regarding leasing rights from a gentile on Shabbos.

Rabbi Chanina bar Yosef and Rabbi Chiya bar Abba and Rabbi Assi stayed at an inn on Shabbos
where there were only Jewish guests. The gentile innkeeper arrived on Shabbos, and there was a
question whether they would be allowed to lease the rights of the gentile, and then all the Jews
would have to relinquish their rights so that at least one guest could carry in the chatzer.

The dilemma was if leasing is akin to joining in an eiruv. One must join in an eiruv before Shabbos,
and so too one must else the rights form the gentile, before Shabbos, or perhaps leasing is akin to
relinquishing rights, which can be performed even on Shabbos.

Rabbi Chanina bar Yosef wanted to relinquish their rights, and Rav Assi said they should
relinquish their rights on Shabbos. Rabbi Chiya bar Abba said they should rely on the lenient
opinion of Rabbi Chanina bar Yosef and lease. When they later came to Rabbi Yochanan, he told
them that they were correct in leasing the rights of the gentile on Shabbos. (65b - 66a)

There are similarities between joining in an eiruv and the laws of leasing the rights of a
gentile.

1
http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Eiruvin_66.pdf

6
Rabbi Yochanan said that the laws of leasing are akin to the laws of joining in an eiruv. This does
not refer to leasing on Friday afternoon, because Rabbi Yochanan permits one to lease from a
gentile even on Shabbos. Rather, the similarities are as follows: Just like one can join in an eiruv
by contributing even less than the value of a perutah, one can lease from the gentile his rights even
less than the value of a perutah. Furthermore, just like if a gentile resides in a chatzer, his Jewish
employee or farmhand can join in an eiruv, so too the gentile’s farmhand or employee can lease
out the rights in the chatzer. Just like when five people reside in one chatzer one can act on behalf
of all of them with regard to joining in an eiruv, so too regarding leasing, when five people reside
in one chatzer, one can lease the rights of the gentile in the chatzer for all of them. (66a)

Making an Eiruv on Shabbos

The Gemora states that Rabbi Yochanan ruled that a Jew could lease the rights of a gentile on
Shabbos. The Nehardeans found an apparent contradiction to Rabbi Yochanan’s ruling, where
Rabbi Yochanan said that the rules of leasing are similar to the rules of joining in an eiruv. The
Nehardeans assumed that the similarity referred to is that just like one must join in an eiruv prior
to Shabbos, so too one must lease the rights of a gentile prior to Shabbos. The Gemora answered
that Rabbi Yochanan’s comparing the rules of leasing to the rules of joining in an eiruv was said
with regard to three leniencies. Why must one make an eiruv prior to Shabbos? We must examine
the function of an eiruvei chatzeiros. Is an eiruvei chatzeiros an acquisition, where all the residents
of the chatzer relinquish their rights in the chatzer and they are all considered to be residing in one
house? If eiruvei chatzeiros is akin to making an acquisition, one is forbidden to make an
acquisition on Shabbos. Tosfos, however, writes that one can lease the rights of a gentile on
Shabbos as this is not categorized as a business transaction. Leasing the rights of a gentile is only
to permit carrying in the chatzer, and certainly the function of an eiruvei chatzeiros is to permit
carrying in a chatzer. Why, then, would it be forbidden to make an eiruvei chatzeiros on Shabbos
if there is no transaction taking place? Perhaps we can say that regarding leasing the rights from a
gentile, the residence of a gentile is not considered a residence, and leasing his rights is just to
make clear what is occurring. With regard to eiruvei chatzeiros, however, if there is no eiruv, then
the residents restrict each other from carrying, and this would fall under the category of a
transaction. It is also possible to say that we have learned that one acquires residence at the onset
of Shabbos. The same idea could be applied to eiruvei chatzeiros, as one cannot make an eiruv on
Shabbos since the time for the eiruv to begin functioning is at the onset of Shabbos.

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:2

The Gemara (65b) tells a number of stories that illustrate the rule about renting a non-Jew's rights
to the courtyard in order to allow for the creation of an eiruv. In one story, a number of amoraim
were staying at an inn, and did not have an opportunity to rent the non-Jew's space prior to Shabbat,
simply because he was not around at that time. When he arrived, Shabbat had already begun. A

2
https://www.steinsaltz-center.org/home/doc.aspx?mCatID=68446

7
discussion ensued as to whether renting from the non-Jew was similar to establishing an eiruv,
which needs to be done before Shabbat begins, or, perhaps, it is more similar to the rule of being
mevatel reshut - turning over one's rights in the courtyard to the others in order to allow them to
carry - which can be done even on Shabbat.

Rabbi Hanina bar Yosef said: Let us rent, while Rabbi Asi said: Let us not rent. Rabbi Hiyya bar
Abba said to them: Let us rely now on the words of the Elder, Rabbi Hanina bar Yosef, and rent.
Later they came and asked Rabbi Yohanan about the matter, and he said to them: You acted well
when you rented.

A similar story appears in the Jerusalem Talmud, where it is recorded that in response to Rabbi
Yohanan's comment "it is a good thing that you arranged to rent it" Resh Lakish said "it is not a
good thing." The ensuing discussion in the Jerusalem Talmud revolves around whether this is a
disagreement about the halakha. One opinion is that Rabbi Yohanan feels that such a transaction
can be done on Shabbat, permitting the eiruv, while Resh Lakish rules that it cannot be done on
Shabbat and any such arrangement must be concluded prior to Shabbat. The other opinion
understands that Resh Lakish did not fully understand what had taken place, and he thought that
they had not concluded a rental agreement at all. His statement was "it is not a good thing that you
carried." In any case, the accepted halakha (see Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 383) allows for such
an arrangement to be made with a non-Jew even on Shabbat in order to facilitate carrying.

Eruvin and Non-Participants

Gil Student writes:3

The theory of an eruv is that it is the joining of homes and property together into a communal area.
There is a problem, however, when the community includes non-observant Jews or those who do
not wish to be a part of the eruv.

I. Gentiles in an Eruv

The Mishnah and Gemara (Eruvin 61b-62b) states that gentiles cannot be part of an eruv but need
not be. Technically, their presence within an area does not require their participation in an eruv.
However, on a rabbinic level, two or more Jewish families who live in an area shared by gentiles
must rent permission from the gentiles to use their property. As it happens, my front walkway is
shared with my gentile neighbors but since we are only one Jewish family, we do not have to rent
permission.

Because this rental is only a rabbinic requirement added onto the generally rabbinic laws of eruvin,
the requirements for rental are low. The Gemara allows a weak rental (sekhirus re’u’ah) and
permits rental of even just the right of a worker to place items on the gentile owner’s property.

3
https://www.torahmusings.com/2010/05/eruvin-and-non-participants/

8
You are also allowed to rent permission from a worker or government official who has some rights
to enter the land without the knowledge or consent from the owner.

II. Renting from a Jew

Rishonim debate whether rental can also work for a Jew. The Rosh (Eruvin 6:13) rules that it works
while the Rambam (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhos Eruvin 2:16) rules that it does not. The Shulchan
Arukh (Orach Chaim 380:3) quotes both views and the Magen Avraham (ad loc. 6) and Mishnah
Berurah (ad loc. 13) are lenient. However, acharonim debate whether, even according to the
lenient view, a “weak” rental works for a Jew. Can we rent the rights from a worker or government
official, or do we have to go straight to the owner? R. Chaim Na’eh (Ketzos Ha-Shulchan 105:26)
is lenient but most are strict (e.g. Avnei Nezer 45:10). According to them, you must obtain the
consent of the owner, or at least cannot go against his explicit refusal. What, then, if he doesn’t
like the idea of the eruv and refuses to be a part of it?

R. Yehudah Leib Graubart (Chavalim Ba-Ne’imim vol. 1, Responsa no. 5) quotes R. Chaim Berlin
who in turn quotes a ruling of the Atzei Almogim (391:3) that nowadays renting from the
government is particularly effective. Tosafos (Bava Basra 55a sv. I’m) writes that in a place where
taxes are levied based on the property, the government has a lien on the house and is considered
its owner, to a degree. Therefore, the government has sufficient ownership over the town’s houses
to give permission for the eruv. This would solve all problems of Jews who choose not to
participate in the eruv. The government is sufficient to authorize participation.

R. Baruch Simon (Imrei Barukh on Eruvin U-Reshuyos, pp. 212-213) quotes R. Yoel Wosner who
holds that the government’s right of eminent domain, to seize anyone’s property, is sufficient to
consider the government an owner of the property. Therefore, as above, the government is
authorized to rent out property of both Jews and gentiles for eruvin purposes.

9
Gentiles4

4
Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile (Oxford University Press, 2018) Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi
propose a series of questions including: When did the goy come into being? What categories preceded it to mark the non-
Israelite and, later, the non-Judean and non-Jew? How did the appearance of the goy effect the rules and techniques of

10
Living in a Christian world and having come from post war Europe, I suffer from the ambivalence
of a Jew never having suffered any serious anti-Semitism (in the UK it is very svelt) I read these
texts from the late antique period with much discomfort.

The issue of joint courtyards then provides me a reason to present a scholar who has studied both
rabbinic texts and early Christian texts in the development of a theory about communal self-
determination as well as self-understanding in light of the “other’.

Much scholarship has been devoted to Jewish relations with gentiles in different periods, in both
halakhic and aggadic contexts. Scholars have discussed the boundaries between Jews and
gentiles/goyim, their creation and stability, and especially the ability to move from one side of the
boundary to the other. But something has been forgotten along the way: the category itself. The
distinction between the Jew and his/her other, the gentile, has been so central to Jewish history that
the vast scholarship dedicated to Jewish-gentile relations has treated the category “gentile” as self-
evident and has never questioned its history. But this concept – which divides humanity in its
entirety in a binary manner—Jews and non-Jews—is far from being self-evident, and was not
always a part of the thought-patterns of Israelites, Judeans, and Jews. The persistent presence of
this concept and the division, opposition, and discursive constellation(s) associated with it, from
rabbinic literature until the present, have made it almost invisible to scholarship. As a result, the
gentile has a long presence but no history.

Since the rise of Wissenschaft des Judenthums over two hundred years ago, almost every category
in the vast corpus of ancient Hebrew writings has been historicized, with the glaring exception of
(what eventually became) “the gentile.” This oversight is noteworthy, especially due to the vast,
recent interest in the birth and development of the opposite concept: “Yehudi” or “Ioudaios.” Thus,
for example, in his 1999 formative study, The Beginnings of Jewishness, Shaye Cohen historicizes
the category of the Yehudi/Ioudaios and traces its transformations from the ethnic “Judean” to the
cultural-religious “Jew,” but avoids any historicization of the Jew’s “other,” the gentile. The same
is true for other classic studies of ancient Jewishness by scholars such as Daniel Schwartz, Steve
Mason, Daniel Boyarin, and Christine Hayes (to name only a few). The “goy” remained the most
glaring blind spot of research for ancient Jewish ethnicity.

Shaye Cohen writes:5

The ways that parted: Jews, Christians, and Jewish-Christians ca. 100-150 CE

Jesus was a Jew, born in Galilee. Like most of the other inhabitants of the Roman province of
Judaea, he worshiped the God whose temple was in Jerusalem. Not only was Jesus a Jew, but so
were all of his disciples (“apostles”), all those who gathered to see his miracles or hear his words
(“crowds”), and almost all those who benefited from his miraculous cures. As “king of the Jews”

separation of Jews from non-Jews? How did it modify the category of the Jew, his laws, and his relationship with God? What
was God’s role in these discursive transformations? Was He transformed with them?

5
The ways that parted: Jews, Christians, and Jewish-Christians ca. 100-150 CE

11
(perhaps “king of the Judaeans” would be better) he was sentenced to death by the Romans. After
his death his followers, all of whom were Jews like Jesus himself, constituted a Jewish movement,
perhaps a sect, meeting and praying regularly in the temple of Jerusalem and interacting with other
Jewish worshipers. (At least this is the story in the opening chapters of Acts.) And yet before very
long the Jesus movement was no longer Jewish; it became something different, a social
phenomenon of its own. This division, sometimes called “the separation of Christianity from
Judaism,” usually called “the parting of the ways,”6 is the subject of this essay. I do not discuss
here the first century CE or the period of the New Testament, since these are discussed elsewhere
in this volume; I concentrate instead on the first half of the second century CE.

I would like to state briefly the methodological foundations on which this essay rests. Some of
these foundations are contested by scholars, as indicated in the footnotes. The parting of the ways
is a complicated and much debated subject.

• The parting of the ways is about people, societies, and institutions, not about
disembodied truth claims or the abstractions “Judaism” and “Christianity.”7
• No doubt arguments between Jews and Christians about theological topics such as the
oneness of God, the place of angels and other intermediaries in the cosmic order, the
nature of the messiah, and the like contributed to the social separation of the two
groups, but the conflicting views in and of themselves have no necessary connection
with the parting of the ways, unless we can demonstrate that such social separation was
caused by a particular theological dispute.8
• The parting of the ways involves people whom we call “Jews” and “Christians,” even
if our ancient sources do not always use these labels. Rabbinic texts, for example,
never use the term “Judaism” and never refer to the collectivity of Israel as “Jews.”
Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew never uses the term “Christianity.”
Nevertheless, for the sake of convenience and clarity I shall continue to use these terms.

6
The application of the phrase “the parting of the ways” to the separation of Christianity from Judaism became popular through
the work of James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (first published in 1934, often reprinted) 71 (title of
chapter 3).
7
Thus in this essay I speak about the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians, not between “Judaism” and “Christianity,”
because for a historian “Judaism” and “Christianity” have no meaning except as convenient labels for the beliefs, practices,
institutions, etc. of Jews and Christians, respectively. If instead one speaks about “Judaism” and “Christianity” as a collection of
theological abstractions, one might conclude that they were, and perhaps still are, one and the same, an approach and a conclusion
that I reject. This is (one of) my objection(s) to Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania 2004).
8
Thus, I take issue with the conclusion of the symposium convened by James D. G. Dunn, Jews and Christians; The Parting of
the Ways (1992; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). Dunn writes on 368, “The Symposium remained divided regarding
Christology, not on the fact that Christian claims regarding Jesus were the crucial factor in “the parting of the ways,” but on how
and when these Christological claims made the breach inevitable.” This is to assume what needs to be demonstrated: were Christian
claims regarding Jesus the crucial factor in the parting of the ways? Christian texts, beginning with the gospel of John, would have
us think so, but this fact hardly settles the matter.

12
 • The notion of “the parting of the ways” does not in the least suggest that Jews and
Christians stopped speaking with each other, arguing with each other, and influencing
each other. Christian literature of the first centuries CE bears many signs of reaction
to Jewish truth claims, and, if we believe modern scholarship, Jewish (rabbinic)
literature of the first centuries CE bears many signs of reaction to Christian truth claims,
but such reactions in and of themselves neither prove nor disprove a parting of the
ways. They prove only that Jews and Christians continued to speak with each other.9
• There was no parting of the ways between gentile Christians and non-Christian Jews
for the simple reason that their ways had never been united. Even the most Hellenized
of Jews, e.g. Philo of Alexandria, belonged to Jewish communities that were socially
distinct from “the Greeks,” no matter how well these Jews spoke Greek, knew Greek
literature, and assimilated Greek culture high and low. “God-fearing” gentiles may
have associated themselves in some way with synagogues and other Jewish communal
institutions, but unless they became proselytes (“converts”) they were not members.10
A non-Christian Jewish community which admitted Jews and non-Jews alike, without
prejudice and (in the case of males) without circumcision, is nowhere attested in
antiquity.11
• So, for gentiles who believed in Christ and for Jews who did not, there was no need for
a parting of the ways, even if there was a need on occasion for polemic, apologetic, and
recrimination. As we shall see, both the Romans and the gentile Christians of the early

9
Thus I take issue with the viewpoint of the editors of the anthology The Ways that Never Parted, ed. Adam Becker and Annette
Y. Reed (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), who seem to think that discussion between Jews and Christians in antiquity is evidence
against a parting of the ways, and that the “old model” of the parting of the ways (the view of James Parkes, e.g.) did not allow for
ongoing contacts between Jews and Christians. Parkes was well aware of ongoing contacts between Jews and Christians, but these
contacts did not for Parkes (or for me) call into question the reality of the parting of the ways. For ongoing interchange between
Jews and Christians see Parkes, Conflict of the Church and Synagogue 113-119, and also his “Rome, Pagan and Christian,” in
Judaism and Christianity Volume II: The Contact of Pharisaism with Other Cultures, ed. H. Loewe (1937; repr. New York: Ktav,
1969) 115-144. On one point, at least, Parkes is wrong; in Conflict 153 he writes that in Babylonia there was practically no
theological discussion between Jew and Christian, a position that we now know to be wrong. For contacts between rabbis and
Christians in late antiquity, see the bibliography assembled in my “Antipodal Texts,” in the Peter Schäfer Festschrift (forthcoming).
Peter Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus (Princeton University Press, 2012) 84 writes, “We have all learned by now that the old model of
the ‘parting of the ways’ of Judaism and Christianity needs to be abandoned in favor of a much more differentiated and sophisticated
model, taking into consideration a long process of mutual demarcation and absorption.” I do not know how long a process has to
be in order to be considered “long,” but, as I argue in this essay, I believe that the mutual demarcation had been achieved by the
early decades of the second century CE.
10
The distinction is apparent in the famous Aphrodisias inscription (add here ref to BAR article); this inscription was set up long
after the period under review in this essay (fifth century?), but I would argue that the social situation assumed by the text obtained
centuries earlier as well.
11
Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) 152 n. 41.

13
 second century CE, if not earlier, knew that the social space of Christians was separate
from that of Jews. In spite of all this, I shall continue to use the phrase “parting of the
ways” as a convenient shorthand to refer to the attitudes, institutions, beliefs, and
practices that attest the separateness of Jewish and Christian identities.
• Jewish believers in Christ had a choice: they could join the emerging Christian
communities which were being populated more and more by gentile Christians; or they
could try to maintain their place within Jewish society, a stance that will become harder
and harder to maintain as the decades go by; or, if they were uncomfortable among
non-Jewish Christians and non-Christian Jews, they could try to maintain their own
communities, separate from each of the others. In various passages the New Testament
shows that in the first century CE the first of these possibilities was the norm; Jewish
Christians and gentile Christians were alike members of the newly created Christian
communities.
• But as these communities became more and more gentile, and more and more hostile
to non-Christian Jews (see below), their ethnically Jewish members had to decide if
they were prepared to remain, at the cost of their Jewish identity, or if they preferred to
maintain their position within the Jewish community, or, if that were now impossible,
to occupy a separate and interstitial space between gentile Christians and non-Christian
Jews. Here, then, was a real parting of the ways, as Jewish Christians had to negotiate
their way between Jewish and Christian communities. Unfortunately, many aspects of
this story are hidden from us; the facts are few and far between, and the scholarly
conjectures are many.12 I shall discuss below the earliest rabbinic evidence on the
relations between the rabbinic Jewish community and Jewish believers in Jesus.
• The parting of the ways between Jews and Christians also involves a third party, the
Romans, with whom I begin my survey of the evidence.

12
The best place to begin is Jewish Believers in Jesus: the Early Centuries, ed. O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik (Peabody:
Hendrickson, 2007).

14
 “Pompeii Family Feast”, Naples National Archaeological Museum, a fresco
painted prior to 79 CE

Romans

By the early second century CE and consistently thereafter the Romans regarded Christians as not-
Jews and Jews as not-Christians. This is seen most clearly in the persecutions. Throughout the
second and third centuries CE the Romans persecuted Christians. Many Christians were arrested
and tried; some were released after negotiating an arrangement with the prosecutor, but others
were condemned and martyred. For the most part these were local persecutions, affecting the
Christians of specific times and places; the persecutions under the emperor Decius in the middle
of the third century and under Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century were the only
sustained empire-wide assaults on Christianity mounted by the Romans. The story of Christian

15
martyrs has been told many times.13 What is important for our purposes is the fact that the
persecutions did not affect the Jews. Christians were arrested, not Jews. Christians were tried, not
Jews. Christians were martyred, not Jews. In fact , by the middle of the second century CE
Christian writers regularly accuse the Jews of assisting, or even goading, the Romans in their
persecutorial activities.14 At least one case is attested of a Christian converting to Judaism in order
to escape persecution.15 In other words, in the eyes of the Romans, Christians were not Jews, and
Jews were not Christians. The two communities were separate.

This is confirmed too by the opposite case: when the Roman empire persecuted Jews it ignored
Christians. Simeon Bar Kochbar (Bar Kosba or Bar Koziva) led a rebellion against the Romans
in Judaea in 132-135 CE; as either cause of, or response to, the rebellion, the Romans launched a
persecution against Jewish observances. There is substantial scholarly debate about this
persecution, some maximizing, others minimizing, its course and extent.16 In any case, whatever
the details may be, in connection with this war rabbinic literature records the martyrdom of a
number of distinguished sages, the most famous being R. Aqiva. Christian texts accuse Bar
Kokhba of persecuting the (Jewish) Christians of Judaea; since Bar-Kokhba had messianic
pretensions, he could not abide the messianic claims of another.17 In any event, the Romans paid
no attention to the Christians in this war. In the eyes of the Romans Jews and Christians constituted
separate communities.18

In a recent book Marius Heemstra argues that the Roman administration of the fiscus Judaicus
played an important role in the parting of the ways.19 The fiscus judaicus was a tax imposed on
the Jews of the Roman Empire by the Emperor Vespasian in the early 70s C.E. Whereas formerly
the Jews had sent a half sheqel (two drachmas) annually to the Temple of Jerusalem, now, after
the destruction of that temple, they were required to send that same amount to the temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus in Rome, which had been badly damaged by fire and was in need of repair and
restoration. Vespasian did not concern himself about which Jews exactly would be liable for the

13
See e.g. W.H.C. Frend, “Persecutions: Genesis and Legacy,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity Volume 1 Origins to
Constantine (Cambridge University Press, 2006) 503-523. See now Candida Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom (Yale Anchor
Bible Reference Library, 2012).
14
The earliest appearance of this motif is the Martyrdom of Polycarp 12:2, 13:1, 17:2, 18:1, in The Apostolic Fathers Greek Texts
and English Translations, ed. Michael Holmes (3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007; repr. 2009). Polycarp was martyred
about 160 CE, and the text of the martyrdom was written shortly after the event.
15
Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.12.1 (during the reign of Septimus Severus). See too Jerome, commentary on Galatians 6.12,
in St. Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus and Philemon, trans. Thomas Scheck (University of Notre Dame, 2010) 268-
269 (slightly modified), “Gaius [Julius] Caesar, Octavian Augustus, and Tiberius, the successor of Augustus, had promulgated laws
that permitted the Jews, who had been dispersed throughout the whole sphere of the Roman Empire, to live by their own rites and
observe their ancestral ceremonies. Whoever had been circumcised, therefore, even if he believed in Christ, was reckoned as a Jew
by the gentiles. But anyone without circumcision, who proclaimed by his foreskin that he was not a Jew, became liable to
persecution from both Jews and gentiles. So those who were subverting the Galatians, wishing to avoid these persecutions, were
persuading the disciples to circumcise themselves for protection.”
16
Peter Schäfer, ed. The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome (Tübingen:
Mohr-Siebeck, 2003).
17
Justin, 1 Apology 31:6; Eusebius, Chronographia 2149; Orosius 7.13.4. These texts are conveniently available in Emil Schürer,
The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. and ed. Geza Vermes et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973) vol.
1 p. 545 n.141. The Bar-Kosba documents from the Judaean desert do not mention Christians (at least not explicitly).
18
Intellectuals of the second and third centuries CE also knew how to distinguish Judaism from Christianity: see the excerpts from
Galen, Celsus, and Porphyry in Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism vol. 2: From Tacitus to Simplicius
(Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1980).
19
Marius Heemstra, The Fiscus Judaicus and the Parting of the Ways (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2010). See my review in BAR
38 no. 6 (November/December 2012) 66-68.

16
new tax. His son Domitian (r. 81-96 CE), however, administered the tax “harshly,” trying to
impose it upon two classes of individuals who had escaped the tax up to that point: those who lived
a Jewish life without publicly acknowledging the fact, and those who concealed their Jewish
origins. These two groups, says Suetonius, the famous biographer of the emperors and our main
source, were now expected to pay the Jewish tax.20 There has been much scholarly debate about
the interpretation of these two categories. Heemstra argues that the first category includes gentile
Christians (who lived a Jewish life without publicly acknowledging the fact) and the second
includes Jewish Christians (ethnic Jews who concealed their Jewish origins). In other words, under
Domitian the Romans regarded both gentile Christianity and Jewish Christianity as forms of
Judaism; hence both gentile Christians and Jewish Christians were liable to the tax.

Domitian’s exactions were unpopular in Rome. In 96 C.E. his successor Nerva immediately set
about reforming the administration of the fiscus Judaicus, even issuing a coin celebrating this
reform. The essential part of the reform was to redefine Judaism as a religion; in the words of a
Roman historian of the early third century CE, only those “Jews who continued to observe their
ancestral customs” would be liable to the tax. Christianity was now seen by the Romans as not-
Judaism; the fiscus Judaicus applied to neither gentile Christians nor Jewish Christians. One
consequence of this fateful step is that Christians lost the legal protections that Jews had enjoyed
for decades under Roman rule.

There are many uncertainties and debatable points in this reconstruction but at least it confirms the
basic point that by the early second century CE Christianity – even Jewish Christianity – became
in Roman eyes a new thing separate from Judaism. Whether Roman perception in turn affected
Jewish and/or Christian self-definition, or whether Jewish and/or Christian self-definition helped
shape the Roman perception – these possibilities still require scholarly investigation.

Christians
Christian literature from ca. 100 CE to ca. 150 CE is uniformly hostile to Jews and Judaism.21 Here
is a brief survey of the main references.22 The Didache (ca. 100 CE) contains much material of
Jewish origin, but the only time that the author alludes to Jews is the passage in which he calls
them “hypocrites” and encourages his audience “Do not let your fasts coincide with those of the
hypocrites. They fast on Monday and Thursday, so you must fast on Wednesday and Friday”
(Didache 8). Ignatius writes (ca. 110-120 CE) that “if we continue to live in accordance with
Judaism, we admit that we have not received grace” (Magnesians 8:1) and “it is absurd to profess
Jesus Christ and to judaize” (Magnesians 10:3) and “if anyone expounds Judaism to you, do not
listen to him” (Philadelphians 6:1). For Ignatius “Christianity” (a term which appears here for the
first time) contrasts with “Judaism” (Magnesians 10:3; Philadephians 6:1).23 The Epistle of
Barnabas (ca. 130 CE) argues that Christians properly understand the Hebrew scriptures,

20
Suetonius, Life of Domitian 12.1–2 = Stern, Greek and Latin Authors no. 320.
21
The standard survey is Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches
Umfeld, vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1982).
22
For the dating and attribution of early Christian texts I follow Siegmar Döpp and Wilhelm Geerlings, edd., Dictionary of Early
Christian Literature (NY: Crossroad, 2000). The works of the Apostolic Fathers are cited from Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers.
23
The term also appears in Magnesians 10:1 and Romans 3:3. See my “Judaism without Circumcision and ‘Judaism’ without
‘Circumcision’ in Ignatius,” Harvard Theological Review 95 (2002) 395-415, reprinted in my The Significance of Yavneh and
Other Essays in Jewish Hellenism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).

17
especially the laws of the Torah, while “they” do not (2:7; 3:6; 8:7; 10:12). “They” are the Jews,
also called “the former people,” in contrast with Christians who are “this people” (13:1); “they”
received the covenant but were not worthy, therefore “we” have received it (14:1,4,5). The
Martyrdom of Polycarp (ca. 160) posits that Jews aid the Romans in persecuting Christians.24
According to the Epistle to Diognetus (ca. 190? perhaps earlier) “Christians are right to keep their
distance from the common silliness and deception and fussiness and pride of the Jews” (4:6); the
Jews fault the Christians as “gentiles” (5:17, lit. “of a different stock”).

The two main anti-Jewish texts of the second century are the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew by
Justin Martyr (ca. 160 CE, set in Ephesus, perhaps written in Rome), and the On the Pascha by
Melito of Sardis (ca. 170 CE). These works are too long and too rich to be discussed here in any
detail, so I merely touch upon the highlights. The main argument of the Dialogue with Trypho is
that the Bible (Justin is referring to the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, as there is no New
Testament yet) belongs to us Christians, not the Jews, because we read it and understand it, while
the Jews read it and do not understand it. Barnabas made the same point, but Justin is much longer
and much more detailed. The argument is developed around three themes: Christ is the new law,
replacing the old law of the Jews which need not be observed; Christ is the promised messiah,
fulfilling the biblical prophecies; Christians are the new Israel, taking the place of the Jews, the
old Israel.25

Scholars have long debated whether the anti-Judaism of these texts is the result of social
competition between Jews and Christians, each side eagerly trying to win over converts, or whether
it is a function of internal Christian self-definition, as the Christians of the second century CE tried
to sort out exactly what Christianity is and what Christianity is not. Thus, for example, the intended
audience of Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho has been much discussed. At first glance the book
appears to be directed to a Jewish audience, as Justin tries to win over Trypho the Jew, and with
him all Jewish readers. But the text also contains many signs that its primary function is to
establish the proper limits of Christianity, to teach its readers how Christianity differs from
Judaism. And some scholars have argued that Justin’s target audience consists of Greeks who are
thinking about converting to Judaism and becoming “proselytes.” Justin is trying hard to convince
them that Christianity, not Judaism, is the true fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures, and that they
should therefore convert to Christianity, not Judaism.26 In any case, no matter how this question
is answered, the anti-Jewish stance of virtually all early Christian texts shows that these authors
understand Christianity to be not-Judaism. These authors assume that Jews and Christians inhabit
separate communities. The texts regularly assert that Christians constitute a new people beside
pagans (“Greeks”) and Jews, a people that is both old and new, old in that it fulfills the prophecies
of scripture and new in that it replaces the old Israel.27 There is no evidence in any of these texts –
or anywhere else in antiquity for that matter – for the existence of a community, whether Jewish

24
See note 9 above.
25
A convenient and accessible translation is St. Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho, trans. Thomas B. Falls, revised by Thomas
Halton, edited by Michael Slusser (Catholic University of America Press, 2003).
26
Justin, Dialogue 23:3; 80.1; 122-123 (proselytes); cf. Barnabas 3:6. See Miroslav Marcovich ed., Iustini Martyris Dialogus cum
Tryphone (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997) 64-65. On the larger question see e.g. Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: the
Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996) and Miriam S. Taylor, Anti-Judaism
and Early Christian Identity (Leiden: Brill, 1995).
27
See the numerous passages assembled by Adolf von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei
Jarhunderten (4th edition; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924) 262-267 and 281-289; see too Denise Kimber Buell, Why this new race? Ethnic
Reasoning in Early Christianity (NY: Columbia University Press, 2005).

18
or Christian, that included on equal terms gentile believers in Christ, Jewish believers in Christ,
and Jewish non-believers in Christ. In other words, these texts assume that Jews and Christians
inhabit separate social spaces, each with its own leadership and membership.28

Justin adds more. He claims to know the reaction of the Jewish community to the spread of
Christianity:
You [Jews] not only refused to repent after you learned that he [Jesus] arose from
the dead, but, as I stated above, you chose certain men by vote and sent them throughout
the whole civilized world, proclaiming that “a godless and lawless sect had been started
by a deceiver, one Jesus of Galilee, whom we nailed to the cross, but whose body, after it
was taken from the cross, was stolen at night from the tomb by his disciples, who now
deceive men by affirming that he has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven”; and
accusing him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy things, of which to every
nation you accuse all those who acknowledge him as their Christ, their Teacher, and the
Son of God. And, in addition to this, even now, after your city has been seized and your
whole country ravaged, you not only refuse to repent, but you defiantly curse him and all
those who believe in him.29

Justin here makes two claims. First, shortly after Jesus died, the authorities of Jerusalem30 selected
emissaries to travel throughout the civilized world to make known to Jews31 the falsehood of
Christianity, specifically, the falsehood of the story of Jesus’ resurrection. The messengers accuse
Jesus of having been a “deceiver,”32 whose ultimate act of deception was carried out by his
disciples. They stole his body and then spread the false story of his resurrection. Matthew (27:62-
66; 28:11-15) knows the stolen-body story and attributes it to the chief priests, Pharisees, and
elders; Justin adds the universal messengers, the reference to the “godless and lawless sect,” the
accusation of obscene behavior (“godless, lawless, and unholy things”), and the acknowledgement
that “we” Jews (without any mention of the Romans!) crucified Jesus.33 Second, even now, Justin
says, after the city has been seized and the land ravaged in the war of Bar-Kokhba (132-135 CE),
the Jews persist in cursing him and all those who believe in him.

Scholars debate the reliability of these two claims. Justin’s claim that the Judaean
authorities sent out anti-Christian messengers throughout the Roman empire is of a piece with the
claim in the book of Acts (9:1-2; 22:5) that the high-priest commissioned Paul (via “epistles”) to

28
Bishops, presbyters, and deacons are attested already in 1 Clement, written ca. 96 CE.
29
Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 108.2-3; “as I stated above” alludes to 17.1; see also 138.
30
Justin does not identify precisely by whom these messengers were sent.
31
Justin does not identify precisely the recipients of these messages.
32
See too 69.7 (Jesus is accused of having been a magician).
33
There is remarkable confluence between the Jewish view of Jesus in this passage and the Jewish view of Jesus in B. Sanhedrin
43a , which also sees Jesus as an idolater and deceiver, and which also attributes his execution to Jewish authorities acting without
any involvement of the Romans. See Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2007) 63-74.

19
travel from Jerusalem to Damascus and to arrest there any followers of Jesus.34 Some scholars
accept the fundamental historicity of these reports, but I (and many others) do not, because I find
it impossible to believe that the office of the Jerusalem high-priest commanded sufficient support
and exerted sufficient authority so as to be able to control, or even attempt to control, Jewish
religious life in the diaspora. The high priest could not control Jewish religious life in Judaea –
how could he control Jewish religious life in the diaspora? It is more likely that Justin’s report of
the anti-Christian messengers – I leave aside the report of Acts –is a Christian invention, spun out
from the Christian interpretation of various biblical verses which highlight the Jewish rejection of
Jesus.35 The claim that the Jews “even now” curse Christ and Christians recurs several times in
the Dialogue with Trypho, and again there is scholarly debate about the meaning and reliability of
this claim. Many scholars connect this anti-Christian cursing with the rabbinic birkat ha minim,
to be discussed below, but the birkat ha minim does not curse Christ and did not in its earliest
stages mention Christians at all. Furthermore, Justin does not always locate this cursing in the
synagogue.36 So Justin’s report stands uncorroborated. Uncorroborated, of course, does not mean
untrue; it means that we are not sure what to do with it.37

What is important for our purposes is that Justin, an important witness to Christianity in
the mid-second century CE, thinks that there is an unbridgeable divide between Jews who do not
believe in Christ and gentiles (like Justin) who do. They speak with each other, as Justin does with
Trypho, but the communities are unambiguously separate.38 This is not particularly surprising: as
I remarked above Jews and gentiles had occupied separate social spaces long before Christians
entered the mix.

Jews

If the advent of Christianity did not change the social separation of Jews and gentiles, it did
introduce a new complication to Jewish communal life, since now there were two sorts of Jews,
those who believed in Christ and those who did not. The Tosefta shows that the former (Jews who
believe in Jesus) could be included by the latter (Jews who do not believe in Jesus) in the category
of minim, conventionally translated “heretics.” The meaning of this category and the identity of
the people so labeled are much-discussed problems.

Since in this essay I am primarily interested in the second century CE, I shall focus first on the
Mishnah and Tosefta. Perhaps a brief word of introduction is in order. The Mishnah is the first
rabbinic book, that is, the earliest rabbinic work to achieve closure. Over the centuries the text
was added to here and there, to be sure, but we may assume that the Mishnah as we have it is
substantially the Mishnah that emerged in the early or mid- third century CE. A large work, written

34
Paul himself does not claim any commission from the high priest (1 Corinthians 15:9, Galatians 1:13, Philippians 3:6).
35
William Horbury, “Jewish-Christian Relations in Barnabas and Justin Martyr,” in Jews and Christians, ed. Dunn (note 3 above)
342, reprinted in W. Horbury, Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998) 127-161. The
anti-Christian messengers are also mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome.
36
The Jews curse Christ and/or Christians: Dialogue with Trypho16.4*, 47.4, 93.4, 96.2*, 108.3, 133.6, 137.2* (the asterisked
passages place the cursing in the synagogue).
37
Aside from Horbury, “Jewish-Christian Relations,” none of the contributors to Dunn’s symposium even mentions Justin’s
reported messengers.
38
In 47.2-3, Justin mentions gentile Christians who observe the Law, and Jewish Christians who seek to impose the Law on gentile
Christians. In Justin’s eyes both belong to the community of Christians.

20
in Hebrew in the land of Israel, and devoted almost entirely to matters of practice, custom, and
law, it is remarkably uninterested in contemporary affairs. It is far more interested in the rituals
of the temple (which had been destroyed in 70 CE) than in the rituals of the synagogue, about
which it says very little; it has far more to say about priests than about rabbis, about purity laws
(which in the absence of the temple were on their way to desuetude) and sacrifices than about
atonement and prayer. It is not interested in establishing “orthodoxy” or delineating communal
boundaries; it has far more to say about goring oxen than about heretics and heresy, far more about
menstruating women than about the core beliefs of Judaism.

The Tosefta is similar to the Mishnah, only larger. It contains more ancedotes, more scriptural
exegesis, more ruminations about non-legal topics than does the Mishnah, but otherwise is very
close to the Mishnah in arrangement and language. There is a complex synoptic relationship
between the Tosefta and the Mishnah; on the one hand, the Tosefta regularly quotes or
paraphrases our Mishnah, or assumes the existence of our Mishnah, but, on the other hand, the
Tosefta also contains passages which seem to constitute the stuff out of which the Mishnah was
created. In other words, the Tosefta appears to be both earlier and later than the Mishnah.
Fortunately for us, this problem is not our problem.

So, to return to our topic: where does that leave Christians, whether Jewish or gentile? Nowhere.
They are invisible in the Mishnah. The Mishnah’s minim are not Christians (except in the
interpolated passage number 5), nor is there any sign of Christians anywhere else in the Mishnah.
The editors of the Mishnah have little interest in minim, no interest in heresy, and no interest in
Christians.

Conclusions

The evidence surveyed here supports the view, once regnant among scholars but now
unaccountably out of fashion, that by the early second century CE Jews (that is, ethnic Jews who
do not believe in Christ) and Christians (that is, ethnic gentiles who do believe in Christ)
constituted separate communities, each with its own identity, rituals, institutions, authority figures,
and literature. To be sure we may assume that there were Jewish communities of various sorts,
for example rabbinic and non-rabbinic, Hebrew-reading and non-Hebrew reading, and we may
assume that there were Christian communities of various sorts, for example proto-orthodox and
“Gnostic,” so generalizations are hazardous.

But all the extant evidence points in the same direction. There were no mixed communities of Jews
and Christians, except of course for Christian communities which numbered among their members
Jews who had converted to Christianity, and except for Jewish communities which numbered
among their members Christians who had converted to Judaism. But absent conversion, the
boundaries between the Jewish and the Christian communities were clear enough and stable
enough. As the century proceeded, the boundary would become ever clearer and ever more stable.

The evidence for all this, especially on the Christian side and from the perspective of the Romans,
is abundant and consistent, and has been surveyed briefly above. Here are some additional
considerations, not yet mentioned. A large stock of Judaeo-Greek literature migrated with

21
Christians in their journey out of Judaism; hence the Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible became
Christian scriptures, just as they are Jewish.

The works of Philo owe their preservation to this migration. The works of Josephus (which were
completed around the year 100 CE) mark the end of this literary migration; Judaeo-Greek writings
composed after around 100 CE were not preserved by Christians and as a result have disappeared
(aside from a few small exceptions).39 The simplest explanation for this phenomenon is that after
around 100 CE Christian communities were distinct from the Jewish, not only the Hebrew-writing
sages of Roman Palaestina but also the Greek-writing Jewish communities of the diaspora.

Justin (writing around 160 CE) states boldly and forthrightly that we gentile Christ-believers are
God’s holy people, God’s chosen people, the true children of God, and the true people of Israel.40
By the end of the second century Christians are producing their own scriptures which were
distinguished from Jewish scriptures not only in content but also in form: they were written in
codices (books) instead of scrolls, and they employed a distinctive system for abbreviating the
names of God and Christ (Jewish scrolls had no such system).41 By the end of the second century
CE we have our earliest description (in Rome) of parallel and separate religious congregations,
one a church (as we would call it) and one a synagogue.42 By the third century if not earlier we
have evidence for separate burials; Jews and Christians were separated in death, as in life.43

The Christian evidence also shows that through the centuries, from the second century on, some
Christians thought that other Christians associated with Jews too much, observed too many Jewish
practices, attended Jewish synagogues too often, had a theology of Christ that was too low, or
otherwise seemed “too Jewish.” While these accusations of “Judaizing” are good evidence for
intra-Christian disputes about proper practice and belief, they do not necessarily reveal anything
about the interactions of Christians with Jews. The accusation of “Judaizing” is one Christian
accusing another of doctrinal or ritual or attitudinal error; the accusation assumes that Judaism is
not-Christianity and that Christianity is not-Judaism.

Clearly the accused’s sense of the relationship of Judaism to Christianity was more nuanced than
that of the accuser, but we have no reason to believe the accuser’s assertion that the accused was
confused about the location of the boundary between Judaism and Christianity, or, what is more
important for our purposes, the location of the boundary between Jews and Christians.44 Thus, to
pick one much-cited example, in the 380s CE some of the good Christians of Antioch attended
synagogue on the Jewish New Year because they wished to hear the shofar being blown. This was
but one of the many ways by which they showed reverence for the synagogue. Bishop John
Chrysostom reproved them for being traitors to Christianity and for consorting with the enemies
of Christ. The bishop believed that these Christians had effaced the boundary between Judaism
and Christianity, but apparently these Christians disagreed.

39
The exceptions are some Sibylline Oracles and a small corpus of synagogue prayers; for the latter see Pieter van der Horst and
Judith H. Newman, Early Jewish Prayers in Greek (Berlin/New York, 2008).
40
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 119.3-4, 123.9, and 135.3. These points were implicit a generation earlier in the epistle of
Barnabas.
41
Larry Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).
42
See the story of Pope Callistus (Calixtus) in Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium heresium 9.12 p. 351 ed. Marcovich.
43
The Jewish cemetery at Jaffa and the Jewish catacombs of Bet She’arim and Rome contain no demonstrably Christian burials.
The Christian catacombs of Rome contain no demonstrably Jewish burials.
44
See the chapter “Judaizing” in my Beginnings of Jewishness.

22
They were Christians whose Christianity did not prevent them from respecting Judaism and its
rituals, and from consorting with Jews. The fulminations of the bishop aside, there is no evidence
that these Christians believed that they were violating their communal boundaries, or indeed that
they were uncertain about the location of those boundaries. The Christian community did not
include Jews, and the Jewish community did not include Christians, even if some Christians
wandered over to the synagogue from time to time. The accusation of “Judaizing” is not evidence
for the un-parting of the ways.45

On the Jewish side virtually all of our evidence about Judaism post 100 CE is from the group
known as rabbis or sages. We may be sure that there were non-rabbinic Jewish communities in
Roman Palaestina, Parthian/Sassanian Babylonia, and the Roman diaspora, but we do not have
their texts – we cannot even be sure that they wrote any texts – and we have little information
about their communal boundaries.46 Hence our discussion about Jewish evidence is basically a
discussion about rabbinic evidence.

The most striking feature of the rabbinic evidence is its paucity. Given the enormous bulk of
rabbinic literature, the paucity of explicit references to Jesus, Christianity, and Christians is
striking. The rabbis were basically not interested. Contrast, for example, the rabbinic discussion
of idolatry, which occupies an entire tractate in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi and Bavli, which
pops up in numerous other tractates as well, and which treats both the nature of idolatry (what is
it? where does it come from? why does God allow it to persist?) and the degree to which Jews
must distance themselves from it. In contrast, the sages are simply not interested in Christianity
and Christians.

This is not to say that the rabbis did not have contacts with Christians; of course, they did. In
addition to the (relatively few) stories about encounters between sages and Christians – the two
earliest such stories are discussed above – rabbinic literature contains various passages, usually to
be found in works of scriptural exegesis (midrash), which seem to reflect rabbinic responses to
Christian theological claims based on problematic scriptural verses.

These passages are interesting and important to be sure, and have received much attention in recent
scholarship,47 but do not affect the overall picture. The sages paid little attention to Christianity
and its truth claims, and there is no sign that rabbinic identity formation was shaped by the need
to respond to Christians. The communal boundaries were clearly delineated, even if doctrinal
points and scriptural passages were occasionally open to debate.

In any case when the sages do encounter Christians, and when they debate Christians about
Christian truth claims and scriptural exegesis, their Christian interlocutors are Jewish Christians,
not gentile Christians. No surprise here, since we may assume that the rabbis kept their distance
from gentile Christians just as they kept their distance from gentile polytheists. The Jewish

45
The standard discussion is Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). I
would observe too that there is far more evidence (all of it Christian) for Christians in synagogues than for Jews in churches.
46
The information that we do have derives from inscriptions; see PaulTrebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
47
Peter Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton University Press, 2012), reacting
to the work of Daniel Boyarin.

23
Christians whom the rabbis met seem to have lived on the margins of rabbinic society and on the
margins of gentile Christian society. By the second century CE these Jewish Christians did not fit
in anywhere.

The Christian evidence and the rabbinic are disconnected. Christian texts (like Justin’s Dialogue
with Trypho the Jew) emphasize that Christianity is right, and that Judaism is wrong, because
Christians, not Jews, properly understand the Hebrew Scriptures. There certainly is a parting of
the ways here, at least in the reality as constructed by these texts. In contrast rabbinic texts
completely ignore gentile Christians, basically ignore Christian truth claims, and provide limited
evidence for meaningful contact between sages and Jewish Christians. Here the parting of the
ways is expressed through avoidance and neglect. But it is a parting just the same.

David Burnette writes:48

Typically, when I think about the relationship between early Christianity and Judaism, I picture
binary opponents. That is, there are two extreme positions, each one deeming the other a heresy
and, thus, self-identifying in relation to their extreme counterpart. More specifically, I picture
Christians who viewed Judaism as antiquated, erroneous, or simply insufficient. On the other side,
I picture non-Christian Jews viewing the Jesus movement as a heretical and defunct sect of
Judaism, erroneously attesting to have certain ties to Judaism. Within this latter group I would also
place Jewish Christians who would view Jesus and the movement associated with him as
completely harmonious with Judaism and any Christian suggesting otherwise demonstrates in their
beliefs that they are, in fact, not followers of the God of Judaism, and thus, not followers of Jesus.

48
http://www.dburnett.com/?p=1530

24
This default picture of extreme parties having it out against their mirror opposites is a product of
the common view that the NT authors represent such binary conflict. While I do not doubt that
James and Matthew would have liked to punch Paul in the face (and vice versa), there seems to be
evidence that there were “bipartisan” groups, who viewed the extremist’s as valid in their own
way.

Finding this voice of a middle group is not always easy, for it is buried beneath the voice of its
louder opponents. Nevertheless, it seems that we first hear of such a mediating view from Barnabas
(late first–early second c.).

For Barnabas, the Jews never obtained the covenant. Just when they were about to receive it, they
permanently lost it when Moses smashed the stone tablets on the ground. From that point on,
according to Barnabas, the covenant was established for the Christians (4.6–8). “Christian” for
Barnabas is strictly of a non-Jewish persuasion. In fact, to believe otherwise––that is, to believe
that the Jews qua Jews also receive the covenant––is sinful. He writes:

Watch yourselves now and do not become like some people by piling up your sins, saying that the
covenant is both theirs [Jews] and ours [Gentiles]. (4.6)

This statement reveals to us that there was a group of believers––whether of Jewish or Gentile
origin––who believe that the Jesus movement is not an either/or but (perhaps) a both/and. In other
words, there are some who do not see Jesus as a divisive line between Jews and Gentiles, but
rather, Jesus was a mediator of a shared covenant.

This mediating position emerges again later in the second century in Justin’s Dialogue with
Trypho. In the middle of Justin’s defense of the virgin birth, Trypho retorts:

Let you who are of Gentile origin…who are all named Christians after Christ, profess him to be
Lord and Christ and God, as the Scriptures signify. But we Jews, who adore the God who made
him, are not obliged to confess or worship him. (64.1)

Despite Justin’s excoriating response to Trypho’s inability to understand his argument, Justin is
fairly “flexible” in what he views as acceptable conduct for Jewish converts to Christianity. For
instance, when Trypho asks whether a Jew who confesses Jesus to be the Messiah and yet
continues to observe the Mosaic Law, would still be saved, Justin responds:

In my opinion…I say such a man will be saved, unless he exerts every effort to influence other men
[Gentiles]…to practice the same rites as himself, informing them that they cannot be saved unless
they do so. (47.1)

Justin then speaks of “some Christians who boldly refuse to have conversation or meals with such
persons [Jewish-Christian law observers]” (47.2); thus, showing that there was diversity in Gentile
Christianity about the validity of Law observance for Jewish Christians. For Gentile Christians
who observe the Mosaic Law, Justin is uncertain of their final outcome. For these, he can only say

25
that they “will probably be saved” (v. 3). Finally, Justin states what he assumes to be the correct
(“orthodox”) belief of the time, that Jews or Gentiles who only practice Jewish Law and deny
Jesus, forfeit salvation (v. 4). There is no uncertainty in Justin’s tone here. Justin’s
uncompromising tone (and the fact that he brings the issue up at all) suggests that there were Jews
and/or Gentiles who argued that the “covenant is both theirs and ours” (Barn 4.6). In other words,
it seems that Justin is reacting against a group who believes that Jesus is good for the Gentiles,
Moses is good for the Jews, and both are from God; thus, both are acceptable.

At the beginning of the fourth century we find a text that stands between the extremes. The
author/editor of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions appears to be a Jewish
Christian and sees no conflict between Jesus and the Torah or Moses. He writes:

If anyone has been thought worthy to recognize by himself both [i.e., Moses and Jesus] as
preaching one doctrine, that one has been counted rich in God, understanding both the old things
as new in time and the new things as old. (Hom. 8.7; cf. Rec. 4.5)

From this selection, the author/editor is similar to Matthew, in that Jesus is the like Moses and
speaks and teaches in harmony with Moses. However, in the Recognitions we find a flexibility that
we do not see in Matthew. In Matthew, those who reject Jesus’ interpretation of the Torah will be
damned at judgment. In the Recognitions we read:

By which it is certainly declared, that the people of the Hebrews, who were instructed out of the
law, did not know him [Jesus]; but the people of the Gentiles have acknowledged Jesus, and
venerate him; on which account also they shall be saved, not only acknowledging him, but also
doing his will. But he who is of the Gentiles, and who has it of God to believe Moses, ought also
to have it of his own purpose to love Jesus. And again, the Hebrew, who has it of God to believe
Moses, ought to have it also of his own purpose to believe in Jesus; so that each of them having in
himself something of the divine gift, and something of his own exertion, may be perfect by both.
(Rec. 5.5)

For the author/editor of the Recognitions, each group “ought” to recognize the validity of the other,
but it is not commanded. It would seem that, for this author, the Gentiles are in good standing if
they do not acknowledge Moses and the Law and the Jews are in good standing if they do not
acknowledge Jesus. Perfection, though, is attained when the extreme parties acknowledge the
beliefs and traditions of the other as acceptable before God.

I can only imagine that this group found itself getting beat over the head by both extremes
(similar to the way bipartisan candidates today receive criticism from both Republican and
Democrats). In the end, the extreme groups are often the loudest and most prolific in writing;
thus, we find ourselves inundated with literature from the extreme parties. Perhaps, though, the
best way to see the legitimacy of the work of God is through the eyes of the author/editor of the
Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, who views the extreme factions as factions and
perfection is attained when these factions cease and harmony among God’s people is realized.

26
 Isaac, Jacob, and Esau at Cathedral of Monreale, Italy

Yair Furstenberg wrties:49

Jewish Palestinian literature of the Second Temple period includes particularly hostile vilifications
of non-Jews and an uncompromising demand for absolute separation from these threatening
peoples. The most familiar expression of this approach appears in Abraham’s command to Jacob
in the second century BCE Book of Jubilees: ‘Separate thyself from the nations, and eat not with
them. Do not according to their works, and become not their associate; for their works are
unclean, and all their ways are a pollution and an abomination and uncleanness' (22.16). The
dominant notion of gentile impurity (discussed widely in scholarship of the last two decades)
served in contemporary literature to prevent Jews from associating with these immoral foreigners.

Rabbinic literature in contrast suggests a relatively lenient approach towards non-Jews. According
to tractate Avodah Zara, one must limit his contact with gentiles only if it entails some involvement
in idolatry or other severe prohibitions. The language of gentile impurity in rabbinic literature is
significantly circumscribed, and most significantly the rabbis even promote conversion, which
clearly undermines a strictly exclusivist image of the Jewish people. Scholars who have tended to
judge the positions of the ancients according to their expressed “attitude” towards gentiles, have
thus argued for the relative liberality of the rabbis. Traces of such an approach have been identified
in the rabbinic dialogues with non-Jews over theological matters as well as in the remnants of

49
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2019/2/25/ethnic-and-cultural-identities-in-the-rabbinic-goy-discourse

27
universalistic ideology, which has been compared with Roman dissemination of citizenship or
Christian spread of the gospel among the gentiles.

In their new book preceded by a series of articles, which have succeeded to stir the study of Jewish
identity in Antiquity, Ophir and Rosen-Zvi offer an exciting new perspective to this question
through which they seek to completely revolutionize our image of Jewish discourse of Otherness
in antiquity. Counter to all previous scholarship, they argue that only in rabbinic literature the
Gentile (= Goy) has acquired the status of the absolute Other, formed in the image of the Jew’s
antiparticle. In contrast to earlier attempts to grapple with threatening foreign groups, the
generalized and abstract rabbinic Goy has no other quality besides his being a non-Jew. He has no
histories, cultures or ethnic features and regardless of the particular behaviors and origins of the
different groups of non-Jews, the generalized rabbinic Goy is by definition the absolute opposition
of the Jew. Thus, the book argues, the rabbis have transformed the varied strategies of distinctions
between Jews and others familiar from earlier Jewish literature into a binary, absolute and stable
divide.

Furthermore, the complete disinterest of the rabbis in the particular qualities of other groups (in
stark contrast to Greek preoccupation with the Barbarian forms of life), has created an image of an
essential (even metaphysical) divide between Jew and Goy, that transcends any particular features
of the two groups or the social or political relations between them. Consequently, the distinctions
between the two have become impregnable, and the integrity of Jewish identity has been safely
secured. This fascinating description of the novel rabbinic discourse leads to what is in my view
one of the most significant contributions of the book to our understanding of Judaism in Antiquity:
The rabbinic termination of separation technologies, so characteristic of pre-rabbinic Judaism.
Ophir and Rosen Zvi have identified various aspects of the new rabbinic discourse of Otherness,
including its binary structure, generalization (of all others within one term), and individuation, yet
in my mind these features are secondary (and less decisively rabbinic) in comparison to the
unprecedented stability that the rabbinic discourse offers. Instead of technologies of separation in
face of unstable boundaries, the rabbis offer a clear-cut system of classification.

As persuasively demonstrated in the second chapter, the decisive activity of Ezra to signal out
significant portions of the inhabitants of Judea during the Persian period as impure ‘people of the
land’ and to expel the ‘foreign’ women and their children, reflects first and foremost the absence
of a settled conception of otherness among Judeans. Within the ethnic and social confusion of the
post-exilic period, presumably the only way to create distinction was through the actual
performance of separation based on an artificial category of ‘holy seed’. In this sense, Ezra laid
the foundation for the prevalent sectarian discourse of otherness within Second Temple Palestinian

28
sources; a discourse which did not assume the primacy of the Jew\non-Jew divide over internal
forms of separation, but set these different practices of exclusion along the same continuum.

Thus, returning to Jubilees, alongside its harsh deprecation of the impure non-Jews, at the same
time it claims that Jews who do not adhere to the correct laws, in particular with respect to
circumcision, may slip into the status of the doomed gentiles. Here again we learn that the enduring
effort to separate from the impure sinners rests upon an underlying lack of conceptual distinction
between Jews and their others. Within the pre-rabbinic worldview, which lacked a definite
discourse of otherness, divine election was not identified with any recognized ethnic boundaries.
In this vein, Ophir and Rosen Zvi insightfully point out that eschatological universalism and
sectarian separatism rather than standing in opposition may in fact reflect two sides of the same
coin. The same it true with respect to Jewish-Hellenistic writings, such as in the Letter of Aristeas.
On the one hand, this text adheres to a universal worldview, while at the same time it promotes an
image of the commandments as means of achieving separation between Jews and others. Arguably,
there was no essential contradiction between these elements prior to the evolution of the rabbinic
dichotomous taxonomy. After all, by their very nature, technologies of separation are designated
to function within a diffused amalgamation of ethnic and normative entities, to which the Jews of
Antiquity were bound. Until the rabbis came along.

The rabbinic Goy discourse is primarily characterized by an elimination of internal distinctions

among gentiles in the aggadic texts and, in the rabbinic legal texts, by the elimination of any hybrid
in-betweens, such as God fearers, Samaritans, heretics, as well as the creation of an exclusive and
transformative conversion process that marks that total transition between the two binary
oppositions.

Each of the particular elements attributed here to the rabbis merits a detailed discussion concerning
its applicability to the general model. To what degree are these in fact novel rabbinic institutions
and do they indeed fit into the proposed binary scheme? Thus for example, since conversion by
means of circumcision was a widespread phenomena well before the rabbis, and the tannaitic
literature discussed in the book has actually very little to add to this procedure, what is its
significance in the creation of the binary scheme? True, there were those (such as the author the of
the Temple Scroll) that assumed that conversion was a multi-generational process, but the standard
view perceived it as a personal transformational act, and despite the development of a fixed
procedure documented in later rabbinic sources, I doubt whether it altered the basic nature of the
transformation. At the same time, rabbinic sources continue to testify to the inferior pedigree of
the convert as attested in earlier references to the status of the convert. With respect to the
Samaritans, I would argue (as I have suggested elsewhere)[1], that the rabbis did not simplify their

29
status and transform them into full-fledged Jews in order to fit them into the binary structure. To
the contrary, the rabbis rejected the relatively simple approach widely documented in Second
Temple literature, which conceived Samaritans as imposturous foreigners of a separate ethnos, and
applied to them a complex set of standards and a status of partial membership.

However, reflecting upon the argument as a whole, the point I find most intriguing considering the
authors' treatment of the rabbinic material is not their particular interpretations, which although
may be debatable at times, are extremely erudite and very well argued. Rather, most striking in my
view is the complete isolation of the rabbinic conception of the Other and its estrangement from
particular historical circumstances, social interests, and familiar political models. The rabbinic
Goy discourse is not only novel and sui generis, but as it is depicted by Ophir and Rosen-Zvi, it
does not correspond nor does it respond to any classification system among their contemporaries.
Admittedly, however, the fact that the rabbis do not disclose their motivation in the creation of a
new discourse, show very little historical sensitivity and present the image of the Goy as self-
evident and as a fact of nature, does not release us from contextualizing their discursive choices.
This would seem to be a pertinent component of any attempt to ‘historicize the Goy’, as the authors
understand their project.

In this respect, the comparison between the descriptions of Paul’s innovation and the rabbis’
parallel development is illuminating. The fifth chapter on Paul includes a section dedicated to the
question: why does Paul need the individualized generic Gentile? Here the authors offer a most
insightful analysis of Paul’s motivations, arguing that the creation of a new model of equal
membership of Jews and others within the ekklesia required a new binary language, which would
obliterate any particular ethnic identities, and at the same time maintain the separate identity of the
gentile qua gentile in the messianic age. Naturally enough, new eras and new social constellations
require a new discourse. But how about the rabbis? Can we suggest any corresponding justification
to their own discursive innovations, or would we prefer imagining them making their cultural
choices having withdrawn into an isolated (and perhaps resistant) conceptual sphere?

The last chapter of the book persuasively argues that the Greek/Barbarian divide does not provide
an apt analogy to the rabbinic Goy discourse. At the same time, an alternative model was available.
As the following midrash from Genesis Rabbah concerning the birth of Jacob and Esau
demonstrates, the rabbis were aware of the reconfiguration of humanity from multiple ethnicities
into a binary structure and they attributed this process to the separation between Jews and Romans.
“And the one people shall be stronger than the other (Gen. 25:23): R. Helbo in the name of the
School of R. Shila: Hitherto one speaks of Sabtecha and Raamah, etc. (following Gen 10.7), but
from thee shall arise Jews and Arameans [=Gentiles, identified particularly with Rome].” (Gen.

30
Rab. 63.7). The midrash alludes to the redistribution of the nations descending from Noah, such
as Sabtecha and Raamah and many others, into only two groups, Jews and Gentiles, particularly
identified with Romans, the descendants of Esau. In this midrashic image, previous ethnic
distinctions have been discarded in favor of a binary distinction between two antithetical
communities.

The midrash here seems to build upon a familiar motif concerning the role of Rome in restructuring
humanity and eliminating previous ethnic entities. Josephus mentions with respect to the spread of
Roman citizenship, “Thus those who were once Iberians, Tyrrhenians and Sabines are now called
Romans” (CA 2.40). In praise of the Roman citizenship, the second century CE orator Aelius
Aristides writes: “For the categories into which you now divide the world are not Hellenes and
Barbarians, and it is not absurd, the distinction which you made, because you show them a citizenry
more numerous, so to speak than the entire Hellenic race. The division which you substituted is
one into Romans and non-Romans. To such a degree have you expanded the name of your city’
(Roman Oration 63).

The rabbis were no doubt well aware of the decisive role of the mechanism of Roman citizenship
in rearranging the multiplicity of ethnic and cultural identities into an all-inclusive contrast
between citizens and non-citizens. Notably, as in the rabbinic discourse, the contrast to the Roman
was simply a generalized non-Roman (as in the formulation of Aelius Aristides), who has no other
particular qualities besides not belonging to the Roman legal and political community. That is
apparently the very essence and strength of the citizenship model, which served to transform the
fuzziness and indeterminacy of various social and ethnic identities into fixed legal distinctions,
regulating who is the subject of the legal system. Considering the legalistic orientation of the rabbis
and their deep interest in legal classification we can understand their disinterest in the gentile, who
is not considered the subject of the law, as Ophir and Rosen-Zvi demonstrate. Other elements as
well of the rabbinic Goy discourse seem to follow this model, which served more than any previous
mechanism to stabilize the conceptual boundaries between Jews and others (and might as well
have served the rabbinic hidden imperialist aspirations).

This however, as the authors emphasize, is just the first chapter of the story. After all, once this
discourse has been created it took on a life of its own and gained almost a metaphysical status of
metahistorical magnitude. How much are the early rabbis responsible for such an outcome, or is it
the result of the Goy’s long reception history, is a matter for further consideration.

31