Jerome had scholarly exchanges with learned Jews, and several patristic
sources gladly incorporate Jewish exegetical and haggadic traditions. But
on the whole the rabbis simply ignored Christianity. It is also true that Ju-
daism continued to be a vital religion that continued to attract Christian
believers into late antiquity. This is most evident in fourth-century
Antioch, where John Chrysostom preached a series of homilies against the
Judaizing proclivities of Christians in the city who were consulting with
rabbis, attending synagogue services, and participating in Jewish festivals.
This sort of evidence, however, is not abundant in late antiquity and has
no counterpart on the rabbinic side.
(3) Finally, although early Christianity is unthinkable apart from its
reliance on Jewish scripture, theology, and ethics, there remain two crucial
areas in which the Jesus movement diverged from the rest of Judaism at a
very early date: covenant election and monotheism. The moment Gentiles
began to be welcomed into the Jesus movement without being required to
adopt the chief ritual marks of Jewish identity — especially circumcision
— the Jewish notion of covenant election was radically spiritualized, and
the defining role that Torah observance had for most Jews was effectively
demoted. Further, the moment that Jesus began to be identified so closely
with the one God as to be petitioned in prayer and worshiped, Christian
messianism collided with Jewish monotheism. It is not that high Christol-
ogy did not build upon early Jewish logos and wisdom theology (it did), or
that the worship of Jesus was not prepared for by the veneration of media-
tor figures like exalted patriarchs or principal angels (it was). But the wor-
ship of the crucified and risen Jesus — a man of living memory and not a
figure of hoary antiquity — as the incarnation of a preexistent divine be-
ing represents a quantum leap beyond any form of Second Temple Juda-
ism. Neither of these theological developments nor their sociological cor-
ollaries are late phenomena but early realities that can be dated with some
precision to the 30s and 40sc.e.in texts like the pre-Pauline Christ hymn
in Philippians. If a definitive separation between Rebecca’s children was
long in the making, the seeds for it were sown very early on.bibliography
Barclay, John, and John Sweet, eds. 1996.Early Christian Thought in Its Jewish Con-
text.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bauckham, Richard. 2008.Jesus and the God of Israel.Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.417Early Judaism and Early ChristianityEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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