Against the scholarly consensus that assumes early Christians were involved in a rivalry for converts with contemporary Jews, this book shows that the target of patristic writers was rather a symbolic Judaism, and their aim was to define theologically the young church's identity.
In identifying and categorizing the hypotheses put forward by modern scholars to defend their view of a Jewish-Christian "conflict," this book demonstrates how current theories have generated faulty notions about the perceptions and motivations of ancient Christians and Jews.
Beyond its relevance to students of...