The most Jewish of gospels in its contents and yet the most anti-Jewish in its polemics, the Gospel of Matthew has been said to mark the emergence of Christianity from Judaism. Anthony J. Saldarini overturns this interpretation by showing us how Matthew, far from proclaiming the replacement of Israel by the Christian church, wrote from within Jewish tradition to a distinctly Jewish audience.
Recent research reveals that among both Jews and Christians of the first century many groups believed in Jesus while remaining close to Judaism. Saldarini argues that the author of the Gospel of...

In this broad-ranging inquiry into ritual and its relation to place, Jonathan Z. Smith prepares the way for a new approach to the comparative study of religion.
Smith stresses the importance of place in particular, constructed ritual environments to a proper understanding of the ways in which "empty" actions become rituals. He structures his argument around the territories of the Tjilpa aborigines in Australia and two sites in Jerusalem the temple envisioned by Ezekiel and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first of these locales the focus of one of the more important contemporary...

In this major theoretical and methodological statement on the history of religions, Jonathan Z. Smith shows how convert apologetic agendas can dictate the course of comparative religious studies. As his example, Smith reviews four centuries of scholarship comparing early Christianities with religions of late Antiquity (especially the so-called mystery cults) and shows how this scholarship has been based upon an underlying Protestant-Catholic polemic. The result is a devastating critique of traditional New Testament scholarship, a redescription of early Christianities as religious traditions...