"One Would Not Consider Them Jews": Reassessing Jewish and Christian "Heresy"

With some regularity one encounters the claim that early Christian and rabbinic constructions of and responses to "heresy" exhibit striking similarities. These commonalities have been variously explained in terms of influence by Judaism upon Christianity (or vice versa) or as evidence of an undifferentiated Judeo-Christianity. This essay problematizes the idea that rabbinic and patristic discourses about heresy were remarkably similar. It argues, first, that this notion is to a significant extent based on statements in early Christian literature that should not be taken as reliable accounts of contemporary Jewish discourse and, second, that substantial differences between rabbinic and patristic responses to deviance have been insufficiently appreciated.