Le judaïsme et l’avènement du christianisme: Orthodoxie et hétérodoxie dans la littérature talmudique Ier–IIe siècle (review)

This is a study of the so-called parting of ways between Judaism and Christianity and the creation of orthodoxy and heresy as viewed from the perspective of the emerging rabbinic Judaism.

Jaffé starts with a rich and detailed introduction (15–116), which sets forth the methodological axes of the study and describes the socio-historical context of Judaism in the first two centuries of the common era. In the wake of the destruction of the temple, among the dissidents who failed to adhere to the new halakha imposed by the Sages (which now acquires “inherent status,” becoming the single criterion of Judaism [170–71]), a distinction exists between minim and amei-ha-aretz. The latter are “a heterogeneous group, without self-consciousness, without really common characteristic traits, and without precise religious ideology” (96), whose fault is not one of doctrine but of lax observance of the purity laws. By contrast, before 135 (when the semantic range of the term is broadened) minim designates in particular the followers of Jesus, who are doctrinal infractors targeted by the birkat-ha-minim (“the blessing of heretics”—in fact a self-imposed malediction) (90).

Jaffé’s assumption is that the events narrated in the Talmud can be useful for historical reconstruction because of their paradigmatic value (77). In one text, for instance, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus is arrested on suspicion of being a Christian because in his early years he had had dealings with a certain “Jacob the min.” The fact that Eliezer, who had initially “found pleasure” in the expositions of Jacob, later expressed regret over that discussion suggests, according to Jaffé, that the interaction with followers of Jesus and their interpretation of the Law was perfectly acceptable during the first few decades of the Christian movement and was only later shunned as dangerous exposure to minut (“heresy”). Another story warns against recourse to healers “in the name of Joshua ben Pantera”; Jaffé interprets this text as a witness to an already radical rejection of Christian beliefs and practices in the early second century (80). Finally, the controversy between Rabban Gamaliel, his sister Imma Shalom, and a judge who seems to be quoting from the Gospel of Matthew is indicative of a stage at which the only possible dialogue is the dialogue of cynicism (335). The chapter on the relation between the Sages and the people of the land (amei-ha-aretz) proceeds in the same manner, uncovering, however, the opposite trajectory: from early vilification and rejection to eventual acceptance and reintegration around the third century.

Jaffé retains the historical reliability of the Talmudic accounts (e.g., the council of Yavneh; the birkat-ha-minim) and the system of relative chronology that allows the ascription of Talmudic texts to various Sages. In his estimation these texts do not reflect the views of a minority with little influence over second-century Jewish society and are not merely retrospective fiction in the service of later power legitimation but are rather “vectors of concrete realities” (73) stemming from the socio-religious elite of that society (74). Many readers will find that this is the “old” paradigm so forcefully called into question by Daniel Boyarin’s Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Nevertheless, Jaffé’s every statement rests on masterful analysis of the sources and solid scholarship (including archaeological evidence, as, for instance, with respect to the degree of ritual observance in the early centuries c.e. [73]); indeed, from his vantage point assertions about Yavneh and the birkat-ha-minim as legendary, late, and ideologically driven constructs are repeatedly denounced as speculations that “lack any foundation.” In general, this study reflects the views of Israeli and French scholars (e.g., Alon, Oppenheimer, Safrai, Urbach, Blanchetière, Mimouni), which...