Browsing by Author "Marcus, Joel"

In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he asks the readers this question: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:16). Although Paul is the earliest Christian writer to explicitly identify the Christian community with the temple of God, this correlation is not a Pauline innovation. Indeed, this association between the community and the temple first appears in pre-Pauline Christianity (see Gal 2:9) and is found in many layers of first-century Christian tradition. Some effects of this identification are readily apparent, as the equation of the Christian community with a temple conveyed the belief that the presence of God was now present in this community in a special way, underlined the importance of holy living, and provided for the metaphorical assimilation of Gentiles into the people of God. Though some of the effects of this correlation are clear, its origins are less so.

This study contends that the early Christian idea of the Christian community as a temple should be understood in relation to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Moreover, this nascent Christian conception of the community as a temple should be seen in light of the existence of other Jewish temples which were established as alternatives to the one in Jerusalem: namely, the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, the Oniad temple in Leontopolis, and the "temple of men" at Qumran. Though the formation of each temple was a complex affair, in each case the primary motivating factor appears to have been conflict with the Jerusalem religious establishment.

This work concludes that the application of temple terminology to the Christian community also developed through conflict with the Jerusalem chief priests charged with oversight of the temple, and that the creation of a communal temple idea should be understood as a culturally recognizable way to register dissent against the Jerusalem priesthood. As a result, we are better able to situate the early Christians in their originally Jewish nexus and see the extent to which tension in Jerusalem helped to forge the nascent Christian psyche.

In his important work, The Beginnings of Jewishness, Shaye J. D. Cohen has argued that what it meant to be a Jew underwent considerable revision during the second century B.C.E. While previously a Jew was defined in terms of ethnicity (by which Cohen means biological descent), in the wake of Judaism's sustained encounter with Hellenism, the term Jew came to be defined as an ethno-religion--that is, one could choose to become a Jew. Nonetheless, the recent work of scholars, such as Christine E. Hayes, has demonstrated that there continued to exist in early Judaism a strain of thinking that, in theory at least, excluded the possibility that Gentiles could become Jews. This genealogical exclusion, found in works such as Jubilees, was highly indebted to the "holy seed" theology evidenced in Ezra-Nehemiah, a theology which defined Jewishness in genealogical terms.

This dissertation will attempt to contribute to a greater understanding of differing conceptions of circumcision in early Judaism, one that more accurately describes the nature of Jewish thought with regard to Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. In terms of methodology, my dissertation will combine historical criticism with a literary approach to the texts under consideration. The dissertation will focus on texts from the Hebrew Bible as well as Jewish texts from the Second Temple period as these writings provide windows into the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose.

Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, I will argue that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision instantiated within Israelite and early Jewish society excludes from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews did begin to conceive of Jewishness in terms which enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Nonetheless, some Jews found this definition of Jewishness problematic, and defended the borders of Jewishness by reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. Consequently, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism because of their suspect genealogy. Our sources record such exclusion with regard to the Herodians, Idumeans who had converted to Judaism.

Additionally, a more thorough examination of how circumcision and conversion were perceived by Jews in the Second Temple period will be instrumental in better understanding early Christianity. It is the argument of this dissertation that further attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has broader implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.

This dissertation explores the nature of early Christian identity in relation to non-Christian Jewish alterity as these are portrayed in the Gospel of Luke. Recent study of the relationships among Jews and Christians in the first centuries of the Common Era has been marked by an increasing awareness of the substantial overlap that existed between what would emerge only later as clearly delineated “Jewish” and “Christian” identities. The study of the so-called “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians has thus opened up new avenues for inquiry into questions that were once thought, at least by New Testament scholars, to be settled by paradigms that are now roundly judged to be unsatisfactory. However, these developments in the study of early Jewish/Christian relations have not yet prompted an adequate reinvestigation of the place of the Lukan writings within the conflicts and convergences of early Jewish and early Christian life. This dissertation therefore examines Luke’s Gospel as both a theological text and an historical artifact in the light of the question of how early Christian identity was conceived in relation to early Christian conceptualizations of Jewish identity. It seeks to explain the theology of Israel exhibited in the Lukan narrative and to situate this theological narrative within its historical setting in a manner that sheds light on both the author’s mode of explicating religious identity and alterity and the otherwise shadowy history of earliest Jewish/Christian relations.

Methodologically, this study utilizes standard tools of biblical criticism, including historical and literary approaches. Source-critical and redaction-critical analyses are combined with historical-critical reflection on early Christianity, early Jewish/Christian relations, and the gospel tradition in order to evaluate the socio-rhetorical nature of Luke’s presentation of Christian and non-Christian Jewish identities. Through this exegetical analysis, I argue that the orientation toward non-Christian Jewish others in Gospel of Luke (along with the Acts of the Apostles, which is treated in connection with Luke’s gospel throughout) is not adequately described by standard theories of identity construction in early Christianity, in which Christian identity is said to have taken shape historically as the church distanced itself socially from non-Christian Jews and formulated its self-understanding in contradistinction to its constructed image of a denigrated non-Christian Jewish alterity. Against this model, I argue that Luke’s theological presentation of Christian and non-Christian Jewish identities exhibits a consistent parallelism in Luke’s call to the church and to those outside its community to repent and gather with Jesus in the face of coming judgment. I argue further that this rhetorical characteristic of Luke’s gospel is best accounted for by positing a social context in which the evangelist lived in close proximity to both the Christian church, which he called to greater faithfulness, and to non-Christian Jews, whom he called to repent and sought to persuade to accept his vision of the fulfillment of hopes of Israel in Jesus of Nazareth.

This study examines the use of the Tanakh (the Jewish canon of the Bible) in the gospels of Mark and Matthew. At its core is a comparison of Tanakh references in these gospels which focuses on two central questions: Does Matthew raise the prominence of the Tanakh in his gospel? Is there a correlation between Matthean adaptations of Markan references and a the strength of his Jewish identity?

First and foremost, this investigation focuses on Mark, Matthew and the books that comprise the Tanakh in Greek (LXX) and Hebrew (MT). The gospels are surveyed according to NA28, the LXX according to the Gottingen Septuagint series, and the MT according to BHS. Additionally, all major variants of these three texts are considered.

The first methodological step in this comparison is the categorization of the 104 Tanakh references in Mark into three groups - explicit, implicit, and subtle references - with one chapter devoted to each. In each chapter, I open by pointing out the main focus of the Markan references. On a verse-by-verse basis, I then determine whether each Markan reference relies on the LXX or the MT, and if its Matthean version makes the Tanakh presence more or less prominent. Each chapter concludes with a concise summary of these individual comparisons.

A fourth chapter provides a discussion of the four Matthean omissions of the first verse of the Shema (Deut 6:4), an overview of scholarly understandings of these omissions, and my explanation for their elimination.

The main findings of this study are: 1) Matthew tends to make explicit Tanakh references more prominent in his gospel. This trend is present, albeit less evident, in the implicit references, and it is reversed in the subtle references. 2) Both Mark and Matthew were probably able to independently translate from the Hebrew text of the Tanakh. 3) The phrase “God is One,” which appears four times in Mark, is entirely eliminated from Matthew. 4) The primary effect of Matthean modifications of Markan references is the elevation of Jesus’ image rather than Law observance.

Thus, the primary conclusions of this study are: 1) that the Tanakh presence is enhanced in Matthew. 2) However, the evidence does not support the notion that this pattern stems from a Matthean Judazation of Mark but, rather, from an attempt to underscore the divine identity of Jesus.

The question of Matthew’s missiology in modern scholarship frequently centers the relationship between contradictory commissions in 10:5-6 and 28:19-20. Does Matthew believe that the mission to Israel is the primary focus of the nascent church, or that the gentile mission has replaced it? Or does Matthew believe that the mission that began in Israel has now expanded to include all nations? The goal of this dissertation is to complicate this question by expanding our object of study to other passages in the Gospel that discuss missions. We begin with Matt 10. In Matt 10, missionary work is an ethnically and geographically limited project. Missionaries are sent as envoys of Jesus. They depend on their targets for hospitality. They focus on Jews, though gentiles are present as onlookers. The missionary project forces confrontation with Jewish leadership, particularly Pharisees. Neither Jews nor gentiles are singled out as persecutors. The mission is associated with imminent eschatology, and it is underway when Matthew writes. We compare this missiology with five passages that precede the final commission: the parable of the tenants (21:33-46), the wedding banquet (22:1-14), the woes against scribes and Pharisees (chapter 23), the tribulation (chapter 24), and the parable of the sheep and the goats (25:31-46). What becomes clear is that Matthew’s missiology is unified. He entertains a mission that is no longer restricted, but other tropes from Matt 10 reappear. This continuity reemerges again in the final call to international mission (28:16-20). Matthew’s missiology is not discontinuous, but stable. He introduces a missionary task in 10:5-42, places it in Israel, and expects that this work will continue in the rest of the world. Outreach to Jews and gentiles bleeds into each other from the beginning, given Matthew’s awareness of gentiles in Palestine and of Jews in the Diaspora. The question of whether Matthew intends his message to go to Jews, or gentiles, or both, therefore, is significantly more complicated than it first appears.

This dissertation examines the ideological developments and strategies of boundary formation which accompanied the sociological novelty of gentiles’ becoming Jews in the Second Temple period. I argue that the phenomenon of gentile conversion influenced ancient Jews to re–conceive their God as they devised new ways to articulate the now–permeable boundary between Jew and ‘other,’ between insiders and outsiders. Shaye Cohen has shown that this boundary became porous as the word ‘Jew’ took on religious and political meanings in addition to its ethnic connotations. A gentile could therefore become a Jew. I focus on an ancient Jewish author who thought that gentiles not only could become Jews, but that they should: that of Joseph and Aseneth. Significant modifications of biblical traditions about God, Israel, and ‘the other’ were necessary in order to justify, on ideological grounds, the possibility of gentile access to Jewish identity and the Jewish community.

One such rewritten tradition is the relationship of both Jew and gentile to the ‘living God,’ a common epithet in Israel’s scriptures. Numerous Jewish authors from the Second Temple period, among whom I include the apostle Paul, deployed this biblical epithet in various ways in order to construct or contest boundaries between gentiles and the God of Israel. Whereas previous scholars have approached this divine title exclusively as a theological category, I read it also as a literary device with discursive power which helps these authors regulate gentile access to Israel’s God and, in most cases, to Jewish identity. Joseph and Aseneth develops an innovative theology of Israel’s ‘living God’ which renders this narrative exceptionally optimistic about the possibilities of gentile conversion and incorporation into Israel. Aseneth’s tale uses this epithet in conjunction with other instances of ‘life’ language not only to express confidence in gentiles’ capability to convert, but also to construct a theological articulation of God in relationship to repentant gentiles which allows for and anticipates such conversion. A comparison of the narrative’s ‘living God" terminology to that of the book of Jubilees and the apostle Paul sets into relief the radical definition of Jewishness which Joseph and Aseneth constructs — a definition in which religious practice eclipses ancestry and under which boundaries between Jew and ‘other’ are permeable.

In John's Gospel, Jesus does not cite the Shema as the greatest commandment in the Law as he does in the Synoptic Gospels ("Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" [Deut 6:4-5]; only Deut 6:5 appears in Matthew and Luke). This dissertation, however, argues that, rather than quoting the Shema, John incorporates it into his Christological portrait of Jesus' unity with the Father and of the disciples' unity with the Father, the Son, and one another.

This study employs historical-critical methodology and literary analysis to provide an exegetical interpretation of the key passages relevant to the Shema in John (John 5:1-47; 8:31-59; 10:1-42; 13:34; 14, 15, 17). After examining the Shema in its Deuteronomic context and throughout the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Jewish literature, the study considers how John's understanding of the divine unity has been shaped by some of these writings. Just as some of the OT prophets and authors such as Philo and Josephus interpret the Shema within their historical settings, John, in turn, interprets the divine unity within the socio-historical realities of his community.

According to John, Jesus does not violate the unity of God as it is proclaimed in the Shema. Rather, Jesus resides within that unity (10:30); he is therefore uniquely able to speak the words of God and perform the works of God. John depicts the unity of the Father, Jesus, and the disciples as the fulfillment of OT prophecies of restoration. Zechariah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel envision Israel as one people regathered in the Land, worshiping the one God of Israel (11:52; 17:11, 21-23). John filters this eschatological understanding of the Shema through a Christological lens: disciples of Jesus are the one flock gathered to the one Shepherd and testifying to Jesus' unity with the Father (10:16). The Farewell Discourse material confirms this thesis; Jesus models obedience to the Shema and also commands that he receive the love normally reserved for YHWH (14:15, 21, 23, 24). He issues his own commandment of love (13:34; 15:12), which has far-ranging implications for John's view of the Mosaic Law.

This reading of the Shema coheres with the Martyn-Brown hypothesis that some Jewish leaders during the late first century excluded believers in Jesus from the synagogue. The author of the Fourth Gospel reverses the situation, composing a narrative of empowerment for his embattled community. His rendering of the Shema provides legitimation for the Christological claims of the Johannine community, while at the same time excluding unbelieving Jews from God's eschatological people. John's high Christology, intertwined with his expulsion of unbelieving Jews from Israel's covenantal life and eschatological hopes, constitutes a form of theological anti-Judaism which defies mitigation. The Johannine crucifixion and Prologue bear this out: "the Jews" reject Jesus' unity with the Father and thereby cut themselves off from the people of God (19:15; 1:11).

John's language has all-too-often been used in a pernicious manner against Jewish people in the post-biblical era. One of the aims of this study is to properly situate John's reinterpretation of the Shema in its social and historical setting and thereby to apprehend fully its anti-Jewish potential. In so doing, it sheds fresh light on the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity and creates new opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation.

This dissertation pursues a re-examination of the late ancient parting between Christianity and Judaism. It argues that the progressive emergence of two distinct intellectual traditions out of a prior state of interfusion was produced by the crystallization of different discursive modes aimed at addressing a fundamental problem, shared by Jesus-believing and -disbelieving Jews: the question as to how mediation between the godhead and humankind is achieved. The first part of the dissertation tracks the appearance, reception, and history of effects of a particular theological expression in the course of the trinitarian controversies in Roman Syria, in order to illuminate a series of epistemic shifts within Christian theological thought. This study suggests that the increasing formularization, technicalization, and dogmatization of Christian manners of discussing the divine led to the development of a set of highly specialized discursive rules, which in turn brought about the formation of a distinct Christian intellectual field. In the second part of the dissertation, the re-interpretation of a passage from the Babylonian Talmud traditionally understood as disavowing binitarian beliefs leads to the hypothesis of a late ancient rabbinic rejection of the pursuit of exact knowledge about the divine realm, in favor of forms of religious discourse focused on halakhah and more directly supporting rabbinic authority. The dissertation concludes that, more than conflict over specific theological issues (such as the unicity vs. multiplicity of divine entities), it was different intellectual practices and modes of religious discourse that came to affect Jews’ and Christians’ separate self-understandings.