franca of Jews in the Greco-Roman Diaspora (though knowledge of Greek
was not unknown among Palestinian Jews). In addition, there are some
points of contact, such as the Logos doctrine, which has affinities to Greek
philosophical traditions as well as to Jewish wisdom literature, even if C.H.
Dodd (1953, 263–85) has overstated the degree to which Johannine theol-
ogy is similar to Philo’s thought (cf. M. Scott 1992, 83–115).
Nevertheless, the very existence of a new religious movement implies
some degree of discontinuity in relationship to other groups, and the lan-
guage of conversion implies a rupture in the relationship of the new adher-
ent to his or her community of origin. Although Stark consistently uses
“conversion” to describe the adherence of Jews to the Christian move-
ment, Stark does not discuss discontinuity as a factor in the development
and spread of Christianity. The reason for this omission may be that Stark
is not so much interested in a detailed description of how and why Jews
would have joined the Christian movement, as he is simply to argue that
it is plausible that they continued to do so for the first few centuries CE. Yet
it would seem pertinent at least to acknowledge that areas of discontinu-
ity also need to be considered.
The Gospel of John itself draws attention to at least one element of this
discontinuity, namely, the confession of Jesus as the Messiah; which,
according to John 9:22, was the grounds for expulsion from the synagogue.
It might be argued that, in the context of a first-century Judaism in which
messianic speculation was rife, the belief in the coming of a Messiah is
not necessarily a mark of discontinuity. Stark addresses this point obliquely
when he comments that, due to their reverence for Jerusalem, Diaspora
Jews would be less dubious than Gentiles about claims that the Messiah
comes from Palestine, which Gentiles regarded as a backwater (1996, 62).
The Christology of the Gospel of John and its consistent portrayal of this
perspective as the stumbling block to Jesus’ Jewish audiences suggest,
however, that the confession of Jesus as Christ and Son of God was central
to the identity of the Johannine Christians, and marked the boundary
between the Johannine and Jewish communities. For a Jew to cross that
boundary therefore provided both continuity and discontinuity with his
or her Jewish heritage and identity.
Discontinuity may also be found in those passages that imply a critique
or replacement of the temple in Jerusalem and its place in Jewish worship
and belief. The Johannine Jesus declares to the Samaritan woman that
“the hour is coming and is now here” when worship will no longer be
associated with the temples in Gerizim and Jerusalem (John 4:21), but
“the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (4:23).
Rodney Stark and “The Mission to the Jews” 209