Jewish-Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts (review)

The editor of this volume of essays acknowledges that “Jewish-Christianity” is a categorization that is slippery and full of pitfalls. Accordingly, he asked the contributors to address two primary issues. The first is to introduce readers to the varieties of social groups and literary genres of the era that embody both Jewish and Christian characteristics. The second is to address the question of terminology. Is the term “Jewish Christianity” appropriate for describing the phenomenon under study when the definitions for both terms individually are fraught with uncertainty, especially with reference to the first few centuries of the Common Era?

Contributors were selected primarily because they have articulated a wide variety of options for classifying “Jewish Christianity.” Jackson-McCabe begins by offering a much needed, concise, and well-represented discussion about scholarship on Jewish Christianity over the last 200 years. Though he limits his discussion to sources in English translation, his primary reason for doing so is to make the essay accessible to a more general audience. He demonstrates how difficult it is to find a set of categories to describe the first-century social groups whose members in some way bear a taxonomic resemblance to early Jews and early Christians but, in other ways, show taxonomic differences.

The volume focuses on social groups in Part I and texts in Part II. The essays are spotty, with some of the stronger work represented by the introductions to current scholarship on texts. William Arnal contributes an excellent essay that will serve students well as an introduction to the Q document and to the Two-Source Hypothesis. Warren Carter contributes an equally strong chapter on the Gospel of Matthew, offering a very good survey of the secondary literature represented by the late Anthony Saldarini on one side and by Donald Hagner on the other as a starting point for examining the extent to which terms such as “Jewish Christianity” or “Christian Judaism” are helpful in describing Matthew’s group. Patrick Hartin, writing on James, makes clear what the reader, by now, has recognized, i.e., that the two terms—Jewish and Christian—are simply inappropriate for defining what goes on in the Second Temple period. John Marshall’s contribution on the Apocalypse helps the reader appreciate the cultural and ideological problems that plague the modern study of the New Testament. Jonathan Draper argues for an early dating for the Didache that can shed light on how group identity evolved among Syrian followers of Jesus, and F. Stanley Jones’s piece on the Pseudo-Clementines makes a strong case for the significance of The Circuits of Peter in understanding how the followers of Jesus interacted with the larger Jewish world of their time.

Other chapters include those by Craig Hill, whose arguments were uneven and failed to convince, and Jerry Sumney, who proposed such an awkward set of terms for Jewish Christianity that, while certainly more accurate, is much too unwieldy for any sustained use. Both Petri Luomanen’s contribution on the Nazarenes and Raimo Hakola’s on the Johannine community stumbled over the question of defining Jewish identity. If we cannot determine “who is a Jew?” how can we determine “who is a Jewish Christian”? Both authors attempt to use the taxonomic category “Jewish” in a way that is not reducible to the limitations which each one places on it.

By the end, a consensus emerges as to why the terms “Jewish” and “Christian” are not only problematic but often unhelpful in sorting out the field. Instead, the contributors propose a picture that is much more complex, rich, and fluid. New ways of organizing the data and allowing for fluidity may be most helpful in gaining a more accurate assessment of “Jewish Christianity.” As such, the volume will be helpful for undergraduate and graduate students who seek an introduction not only to the texts and communities traditionally now labeled “Jewish Christian,” but also to the methodological debates that are current in the field.