ISBN:
0812219864
Language:
English
Pages:
XV, 374 Seiten
Edition:
1. paperback ed.
Year of publication:
2007
Series Statement:
Divinations : rereading late ancient religion
Series Statement:
Divinations
Keywords:
Christentum
;
Judentum
;
Spätantike
Abstract:
The historical separation between Judaism and Christianity is often figured as a clearly defined break of a single entity into two separate religions. Following this model, there would have been one religion known as Judaism before the birth of Christ, which then took on a hybrid identity. Even before its subsequent division, certain beliefs and practices of this composite would have been identifiable as Christian or Jewish. In Border Lines, however, Daniel Boyarin makes a striking case for a very different way of thinking about the historical development that is the partition of Judaeo-Christianity. There were no characteristics or features that could be described as uniquely Jewish or Christian in late antiquity, Boyarin argues. Rather, Jesus-following Jews and Jews who did not follow Jesus lived on a cultural map in which beliefs, such as that in a second divine being, and practices, such as keeping kosher or maintaining the Sabbath, were widely and variably distributed. The ultimate distinctions between Judaism and Christianity were imposed from above by "border-makers," heresiologists anxious to construct a discrete identity for Christianity. By defining some beliefs and practices as Christian and others as Jewish or heretical, they moved ideas, behaviors, and people to one side or another of an artificial border ̶ and, Boyarin significantly contends, invented the very notion of religion.
Abstract:
Preface: Interrogate My Love List of Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction Part I. Making a difference: the heresiological beginnings of Christianity and Judaism Chapter 2. Justin's Dialogue with the Jews: The Beginnings of Orthodoxy Chapter 3. Naturalizing the Border: Apostolic Succession in the Mishna PART II. The crucifixion of the logos: how logos theology became Christian Chapter 4. The Intertextual Birth of the Logos: The Prologue to John as a Jewish Midrash Chapter 5. The Jewish Life of the Logos: Logos Theology in Pre- and Pararabbinic Judaism Chapter 6. The Crucifixion of the Memra: How the Logos Became Christian Part III. Sparks of the logos: historizing Rabbinic religion Chapter 7. The Yavneh Legend of the Stammaim: On the Invention of the Rabbis in the Sixth Century Chapter 8. "When the Kingdom Turned to Minut": The Christian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion Concluding Political Postscript: A Fragment Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
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