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Covering the period from 200 BCE to 600 CE, this book describes
important aspects of identity formation processes within early
Judaism and Christianity, and shows how negotiations involving
issues of ethnicity, stereotyping, purity, commensality, and
institution building contributed to the forming of group
identities. Over time, some of these Jewish group identities
evolved into non-Jewish Christian identities, others into a
rabbinic Jewish identity, while yet others remained somewhere in
between. The contributors to this volume trace these developments
in archaeological remains as well as in texts from the Qumran
movement, the New Testament and the reception of Paul's writings,
rabbinic literature, and apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings,
such as the Book of Dreams and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. The
long timespan covered in the volume together with the combined
expertise of scholars from various fields make this book a unique
contribution to research on group identity, Jewish and Christian
identity formation, the Partings-of-the-ways between Judaism and
Christianity, and interactions between Jews and Christians.
Anders Runesson explores the theme of divine judgment through
Matthew's text and contemporary Jewish literature. This nuanced
discussion of Judaism at the end of the first century has important
consequences for understanding Christian origins. Judgment and the
wrath of God are prominent themes in Matthew's Gospel. Because
judgment is announced not only on the hypocritical but also on
those who reject God's messengers - - and because this rejection is
implicitly connected with the destruction of Jerusalem - - the
Gospel has often been read in terms of God's rejection of Israel.
To the contrary, Anders Runesson shows, through careful study of
Matthew's composition and comparison with contemporary Jewish
literature, that the theme of divine judgment plays very different
and distinct roles regarding different groups of Jew (the chosen,
the leaders in Jerusalem, the crowds, "this generation"). This
important work is essential reading for scholars and students of
the New Testament and Matthew's Gospel.
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