chapter one
revised categories which are necessary in changing social situations.
However, these categorizations cannot be captured through the analysis
of necessary and sufficient traits. Thus, it follows that an approach which
allows degrees of “Jewishness” and degrees of “Christianness” and which
focuses on several aspects that are determinative in social relations—
such as ideology, practice, identity and group formation—is likely to
do better justice to ancient Jewish Christian groups than the attempts
to find one clear definition or a set of definitions for Jewish Christian-
ity.
A number of Jewish and Christian scholars have, during the past
decades, emphasized that the parting of ways between Judaism and
Christianity took much longer than was assumed earlier and that we
can start speaking of two separate religions only after the Constantine
turn. A notable proponent of this view, which can be termed as “ways
that never parted”-paradigm, has been Daniel Boyarin.^25 I agree with this
overall characterization although it is also clear that the ways started to
separate much earlier locally. I gladly admit that the concept of Jewish
Christianity is anachronistic. It does not appear in ancient sources but
I think that it still provides the best starting point for historical analy-
sis. It is useful because it directs attention to the way our modern cate-
gories “Judaism” and “Christianity” overlapped in some ancient commu-
nities.
The following list ofindicators of Jewish Christianityincludes the most
common meanings given to the term “Jewish Christianity.” Instead of
calling these subcategories as competing “definitions,” I have called them
“indicators.” The term “indicator” acknowledges the value of different
“definitions” as appropriate viewpoints in the discussion about Jewish
Christianity but keeps reminding that none of them can be taken as the
definitive characterization of Jewish Christianity or conclusive proof of
the Jewish Christianity of a document or a group. In each case, the type
of Jewish Christianity under examination can only be determined in a
critical discussion that brings together several of these indicatorsforming
a Jewish-Christian profileof a text or a group.
The study of the indicators of Jewish Christianity concentrates on the
following questions:
(^25) Boyarin , . This position is emphatically argued for in a collection of
articles edited by Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Becker & Reed ; Mohr
Siebeck edition in ). See also Skarsaune , –.