Purity has long been recognized as one of the essential drives which determines humankind's relationship with the holy. Codes of purity and impurity, dealing with such far-ranging topics as 'external stains' and 'inner remorse', represent the physical and 'bodily' side of religious experience and provide the key to the understanding of human orientation to nature, and the structure of society, including even relationships between the sexes. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, a number of articles study some rather neglected passages from both exegetical and cultural-anthropological standpoints....

This volume charts the interpretation of Genesis 3:16-21 in a number of patristic and classical rabbinic sources. It is a case study in the reception of a biblical fragment in two intrinsically related yet distinct interpretative communities: early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. Following the lead of the biblical text, this study sheds new light on each traditions' view of the human condition, more specifically on the way Church Fathers and Rabbis approach the themes of procreation, labour, mortality and corporeality. The book carefully studies the reading of the biblical text as proposed...

A Holy People investigates the various ways in which Jews and Christians define their religious identity, people or community, as being holy. Keeping in mind that historical studies can offer food for thought regarding contemporary issues, the study offers a large collection of essays, relating to the biblical, patristic and medieval period and especially to the modern period. The obvious question of many in the modern world as to whether the attribute of the 'holiness' allows for acknowledgement of authentic religion outside the own religious community, deserves an honest answer and...

Presenting new insights into the history and interaction between Jewish and Christian liturgy and worship, the various contributions offer a deeper understanding of the identity of Judaism and Christianity. It addresses issues such as: - Is the Eucharistic Prayer a 'Berakha' and what information is available for the reconstruction of the history of the Jewish 'Grace after Meals'? - How does Jewish liturgy rework the Bible, and are Christians and Jews using similar methods when they create liturgical poetry on the basis of a biblical text? - Which texts of the Cairo Genizah are of direct...

This volume discusses links between the exegetical trends current in various Second Temple Jewish circles and patterns of New Testament conversation with Jewish Scripture. The standard focus on Jewish background of Christianity is complemented here by an alternative direction: the "mapping" of New Testament evidence as the early witness to more general trends attested in their fully developed form only later, in rabbinic literature. The question that dominates much of the discussion is: How can the New Testament be used for creating a fuller picture of Second Temple Jewish exegesis? The book...

This book focuses on iconoclastic controversies and, in particular, their impact on the creation of religious identities. In the history of Jewish, Christian and Muslim culture, religious identity was not only formed through historical claims, but also through the use of certain images: 'images of God', 'images of the others', and 'images of the self.' Moreover, in the struggle for religious identity these 'images' were time and again employed for the purpose of establishing distinct groups, both ortho- dox and deviant. At the same time, they supplied weapons in the theological debate and...

This volume contains essays dealing with complex relationships between Judaism and Christianity, taking a bold step, assuming that no historical period can be excluded from the interactive process between Judaism and Christianity, conscious or unconscious, as either rejection or appropriation

The texts of the New Testament have long been understood to require interpretation in the light of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and other postbiblical literary and documentary sources. Conversely, they provide an invaluable source for the reconstruction of halakhah in the late Second Commonwealth period. These essays illustrate the complexity of the inter-relationships, and the methodological issues which arise: the "legal" content of the texts cannot be separated from the intertextualities of Jewish theology. The topics cover letter and spirit, prophecy and law, forgiveness, the accounts...

The 'Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity' is a collection of essays examining the relationship between Jewish and Christian biblical commentators. The contributions focus on analysis of interpretations of the book of Genesis, a text which has considerable importance in both Christian and Jewish tradition. The essays cover a wide range of Jewish and Christian literature, including primarily rabbinic and patristic sources, but also apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus and Gnostic texts. In bringing together the studies of a variety of eminent scholars on the...

Council texts from the eastern and western Mediterranean allow us to see how close relations were between Christians and Jews in late antiquity. These texts give precise descriptions of the continuing close relations between the ordinary faithful Christians and Jews on a daily basis.