Religion vs Ethnicity in 2nd temple era
As far as I can tell there is no consensus on whether Judaism of the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods should be categorized as a “religion” or “ethnicity.” How can I use Logos to find the current status of the debates?
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What demands it be either/or?
Is there really a debate? Judaism without ethnic jews? Judaism without religious jews?
Now, you could probably argue jews without Judaism, presumably. But that wasn't your question.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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I am trying to do a study like Paul within Judaism except this one is John within Judaism. Judaism is a religion, but it is also a practice. I am trying to see how Judaism worked within the ethnicity and religious world of the Second Temple. As Peter Burke describes, historians use models "to emphasize the recurrent, the general, and the typical, which it presents in the form of clusters of traits or attributes.” Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 28.
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What I am bringing up here is that this approach to identity fits very uneasily with a major aspect of popular and scholarly understanding of the Mediterranean in the first century CE. I do not know how to map this kind of argument. This presupposition holds that when discussing that world and the influence Jesus had on it, we are discussing two religions: "Judaism" and "Christianity," the followers of which are properly referred to as "Jews" and "Christians." For example, it is fair to use the metaphor of "the parting of the ways" to represent their eventual separation because these are usually recognized as two things of the same genus, with a symmetrical relationship to one another. In discussions of the first century CE, this two-religion perspective is an ingrained and mainly unquestioned premise. How can I find further resources on the topic from an identity perspective?
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Christian Alexander said:
In discussions of the first century CE, this two-religion perspective is an ingrained and mainly unquestioned premise.
Are you sure about this? I have seen the Bar Kokhba Revolt described as increasing the divergence between Judaism and Christianity which implies that the break was not yet complete. I have thought of the split as gradual over several centuries as the elements of scriptural interpretation and ritual inherited from Judaism became wholly Christianized. Or ask was Christianity seen as a single religion or as a constellation of related religions including Judeo-Christian Gnosticism? Or ask if Judaism was seen as a single religion as it split into those hoping to hang on to the Temple-oriented Judaism, the emerging rabbinic Judaism, and the Karaites holding a somewhat middle ground.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
Are you sure about this? I have seen the Bar Kokhba Revolt described as increasing the divergence between Judaism and Christianity which implies that the break was not yet complete. I have thought of the split as gradual over several centuries as the elements of scriptural interpretation and ritual inherited from Judaism became wholly Christianized...
I don't have the references at my fingertips (I'm on my corporate computer), but I've seen it argued that one key break occurred with the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of Temple worship in AD 70, and then the split was finalized, if you will, when the Christian community didn't join in the Bar Kokhba revolt.
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A couple items that feed into this is, first, that neither Judaism nor Christianity were monolithic. Also, saying a groups "is considered" implies someone is considering. Did they (insiders on either side) or outsiders, or historians, consider them in that way?
That second issue could easily generate multiple volumes of essays, especially when incorporating the first issue.
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Lew Worthington said:
A couple items that feed into this is, first, that neither Judaism nor Christianity were monolithic.
Absolutely. Though I'm beginning to conclude that the jewish Jesus followers in Jerusalem pretty much were divorced from the Antioch > Asian gentile Christianity fairly early. The 'apostles' a residual doctrinal touchstone. The James/Paul sequence is way too raw, followed by Josephus and James. And finally rejection of the Hebrew gospel, and then Ignatus.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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The earliest prohibition against Jewish practices that I find is Council of Laodicea (circa 363) which implies Christians engaging in Jewish practices was still an issue.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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The earlies prohibition against Jews I see is in the Crisis under Caligula (37–41) has been proposed as the "first open break between Rome and the Jews". H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976, 254–256: "The reign of Gaius Caligula (37–41) witnessed the first open break between the Jews and the Julio-Claudian empire. Until then – if one accepts Sejanus' heyday and the trouble caused by the census after Archelaus' banishment—there was usually an atmosphere of understanding between the Jews and the empire ... These relations deteriorated seriously during Caligula's reign, and, though after his death the peace was outwardly re-established, considerable bitterness remained on both sides. ... Caligula ordered that a golden statue of himself be set up in the Temple in Jerusalem. ... Only Caligula's death, at the hands of Roman conspirators (41), prevented the outbreak of a Jewish-Roman war that might well have spread to the entire East."
The writings in Greek by ethnic Jews collected about 135 are the only documented records of the conflicts over Jesus in different Jewish groups. These texts are thereafter referred to as the New Testament. They were composed during a period when the newly powerful Rabbis were repudiating the use of the language of the gentiles, which had given rise to a great deal of Jewish post-biblical literature. The Christian texts, which were composed approximately between the years 50 and 125, became known by the name they were thought to have attested to: a "new" or, better yet, "renewed" covenant. The majority of Jews were not Roman subjects. Greeks and Jews became tense as Jewish desires for citizenship grew. Greeks complained that there were too many Jews and took offense at them for requesting Romanization while maintaining their own customs. Deadly anti-Jewish riots occurred in cities like Alexandria. Eventually, in 66 CE, not long after Jesus' death, a significant uprising against Rome began in Jerusalem.
I do not quite understand Jacob Neusner's quote: "In many ways, therefore, the fourth century marks the point of intersection between the histories o f the two religions, Judaism and Christianity. Before that time there was no confrontation. For Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity present histories that mirror each other. When Christianity began, Judaism was the dominant tradition in the Holy Land and expressed its ideas within a political framework until the early fifth century. Christianity was subordinate and had to operate against the background of a politically definitive Judaism. From the time o f Constantine onward, matters reversed themselves. Now Christianity predominated, expressing its ideas in political and institutional terms. Judaism, by contrast, had lost its political foundations and faced the task o f working out its self-understanding in terms of a world defined by Christianity, now everywhere triumphant and in charge of politics." (Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age o f Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel, and the Initial Confrontation (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), x). This is where my readings have lead me.
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Christian Alexander said:
How can I use Logos to find the current status of the debates?
I'm not seeing any answers to this query. I don't know if it is even possible due to the delay between debates, publication, and tagging into the Logos environment.
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