750

JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

The rst Christians in the Roman world. Augustan and New Testament essays. By E. A. Judge (edited by James R. Harrison). (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum bingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2008. E149. Neuen Testament, 229.) Pp. xix+795. Tu 978 3 16 149310 2; 0512 1604 JEH (60) 2009 ; doi :10.1017/S002204690999039X This is one of three volumes collecting some of the most important of Professor Judges many articles. Still forthcoming at the time of writing is a collection edited by A. M. Nobbs (What Jerusalem had to do with Athens : cultural transformation in late antiquity), and already published is a smaller collection of (mainly Pauline) pieces in D. M. Scholer (ed.), Social distinctives of the Christians in the rst century (Hendrickson 2008), which contains among other items Judges perhaps most well-known essay, The social pattern of the Christian groups in the rst century . The rst Christians is divided into four sections: part I, Augustus in his times ; part II, The Roman empire and the rst Christians ; part III, Social innovation in the early Churches ; and part IV, The First Christians and the transformation of culture . The volume includes some signicant large-scale pieces, such as the Social pattern essay (included here in German), and a translation and commentary on the Res gestae. In some of the Augustan essays Judge locks horns with Syme on matters of Augustan policy, especially on the so-called fac ade of the respublica restituta (esp. chapters xiv, xviixviii). While his disagreements with Syme and others are often forcefully expressed, he also acknowledges when puzzles remain, as in his brief discussion of Augustus extraordinary monopoly of wealth (chapter xi, The real basis of Augustan power ). There are also smaller pieces, particularly on epigraphic subjects, and some of the chapters are lecture notes or summaries (chapters iv, v, viii, xii, xiii, xxviii). The essays on early Christianity are concerned in particular with prosopography (chapters xxxiv and xxxv), the relationship between Christians and other contemporaneous groups (for example chapters xxxviii and xxxix), and educational practices (chapters xlii and xliii). In sharp contrast to much New Testament scholarship, Judge sees no reason to think that Romans ever perceived Christians as a subset within Judaism, Suetonius notice about Chrestus providing no support for such a view (chapter xxx). Judges extraordinary learning is exhibited on nearly every page. He moves eortlessly between straightforwardly Roman topics and the study of early Christianity in a way which is almost unmatched today, and which threatens to be virtually extinct in generations to come. One hopes that there will still remain some who in the future will be able to propose an elegant restoration to one of the Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (chapter vi) one minute, and to comment on the meanings (as in chapters xxviii and xxxvi) of the mark of the beast or the body of Christ in the next. UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE SIMON GATHERCOLE

Jewish believers in Jesus. The early centuries. Edited by Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik. Pp. xxx+930 incl. 12 ills. Peabody, MA : Hendrickson, 2007. 27.99. 978 1 56563 763 4 JEH (60) 2009 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046909990819 This hefty volume undertakes a comprehensive presentation and analysis of the extant sources on Jewish believers in Jesus in the rst six centuries. Sixteen authors

REVIEWS

751

from various countries have contributed. After an introductory section in which Oskar Skarsaune lays the necessary groundwork with an discussion of terminology and methods ( pp. 321) and James Carleton Paget illuminates the diculties previous scholarship experienced in dening the term Jewish-Christian ( pp. 2252), a second part is devoted to Jewish believers in Jesus in the New Testament and related materials ( pp. 55238) : here the focus is upon the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem and on Paul (the evidence of Pauls letters and of Acts is reviewed separately by D. A. Hagner and R. Hvalvik), but Jewish believers in Rome (R. Hvalvik, pp. 15478) and Asia Minor (P. Hirschberg, pp. 21838) are not neglected. A third part presents an extensive and detailed survey of The literary heritage of Jewish believers ( pp. 241416) : here the Jewish Christian Gospels (C. A. Evans, pp. 24177), Jewish Christian editions of Old Testaments Pseudepigraphy (T. Elgvin, pp. 278304), the Pseudo-Clementines (G. Stanton, pp. 30524) and fragments of Jewish Christian writings in some Greek and Latin Fathers (such as Papias, Hegesippus, Julius Africanus, Origen, Jerome and particularly Justin Martyr) are discussed (O. Skarsaune, pp. 325416). Part IV deconstructs the ancient reports about two Jewish Christian groups in exhaustive detail with regard to both sources and bibliography : the Ebionites (O. Skarsaune, pp. 41962) and the Nazoreans (W. Kinzig, pp. 46387). Whether Cerinth and Elxai are to be considered Jewish llstro m and O. Skarsaune, pp. 488502). A fth part Christians is doubtful (G. af Ha explores the evidence for Jewish believers in Christ in Greek and Latin patristic literature (O. Skarsaune, pp. 50567), in Christian Syriac sources (S. Hidal, pp. 56880), in Christian-Jewish dialogues (L. Lahey, pp. 581639), in Church orders and liturgical sources (A. Ekenberg, pp. 64058) and in early rabbinic literature (P. S. Alexander, pp. 659709). The nal chapter of this part of the book considers possible archaeological evidence for Jewish Christian groups in Palestine ; the bold hypotheses of B. Bagatti, E. Testa and B. Pixner are presented and briey discussed (J. F. Strange, pp. 71041). A sixth and nal part concludes the volume with a thoughtful discussion of the history of Jewish believers in Christ in antiquity : how many were there? Where did they live ? How close were the contacts between Jews and Christians in antiquity ? What was the impact of the Constantinian revolution on Jewish Christians ? (O. Skarsaune, pp. 74581). A very full bibliography ( pp. 783884) and helpful indices are appended. The comprehensiveness and generally high quality of the individual chapters will ensure that for the foreseeable future this volume will be a work of reference for all those who are seriously interested in ancient Jewish Christianity. It is, surely, high lous pioneering treatment is replaced. It would be invidious to time that J. Danie single out for praise individual contributions ; Skarsaunes ingenious and careful discussion of the fragments of Jewish Christian literature in some Christian authors (ch. xii) provides a good example of the high standard maintained thoughout. Skarsaune and his colleagues assiduously and for the most part successfully try to circumnavigate the many theological, ideological and methodological pitfalls that have beset this topic. In the introduction Skarsaune gives reasons for preferring the term Jewish believers in Jesus (or, in short, Jewish believers) to the more traditional Jewish Christianity . The latter term, Skarsaune argues, focused upon (Jewish Christian) theology and praxis rather than on ethnicity. Jewish Christians in the traditional sense were those Jews who believed in Jesus, and at the same time continued a wholly Jewish way of life . Thus scholarship neglected those Jews who became

752

JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Christians and forsook Jewish custom. Skarsaune wants to include them as well ; he is also sensitive to criticism from present-day Jewish believers who feel oended by the term Jewish-Christian . However, Skarsaune himself is aware that his choice does not solve all the problems: arguably, those Jewish believers whose beliefs and practices were totally assimilated to those of Gentile Christians are not theologically interesting ( p. 7). As far as I can see Skarsaune does not really answer this objection although he justly points out that the question of ethnicity was of great theological importance because seen from the Jewish side, Gentiles who believed in Jesus and Jews who believed in Jesus were perceived at least by the Jewish leadership as belonging to quite dierent categories ( p. 7). This, however, may have looked dierent from the Christian side. Moreover, nowadays we are constantly reminded that ethnicity itself is a historical category, a construct , and consequently the term Jew or Jewish become problematical, too. Skarsaune is very alert to this question ( pp. 1113), and he pays ample attention to D. Boyarins arguments for denouncing the pre-Constantinion categories of Jews and Christians as little more than a virtual conspiracy between Christian and Jewish religious elites ( pp. 747f). In the end, however, Skarsaune remains sceptical about ways that for centuries allegedly never really parted, and he condently asserts that whereas certain borderlines may be blurred, the term Jew can be meaningfully applied to the religious landscape of the ancient world : Since the latter part of the Second Temple period, Jews in general have had little doubt about who were Jews and who were not ( p. 13). Still, Skarsaunes defence of privileging ethnicity over against theology notwithstanding, the bias of the source material exploited in this volume is heavily in favour of those Jewish believers who retained some of their Jewish religious identity (again a problematical term), i.e. the Jewish Christians . These are the individuals and groups whose literature (for example the Jewish Christian Gospels), deviant beliefs (the Ebionites, for example, derived Jesus messianic identity from his Davidic descent through Joseph) and practices (the Nazoreans, for example, practised circumcision and kept the Sabbath) attracted the interested, inquisitive or suspicious gaze of their Christian contemporaries. Their very existence calls into question exclusivist versions of the religious identities of both Christians and Jews ; they seem to indicate lost possibilities of being Jewish and Christian this is the reason why the scattered information about them to this day arouses learned and educated interest. Those ancient sources that are unaected by the developing Christian discourse on Jewish Christians yield characteristically tenuous testimony : P. Alexanders masterly discussion of the dicult and indirect evidence of the rabbinic sources evokes, on the one hand, the fascinating picture of a rabbinic movement whose missionary drive until the third century aimed at ideological hegemony within Judaism and thus had to confront an alternative, Jewish Christian version of Judaism. On the other hand, Alexander suspects, the more open confrontation from the late third century onwards dealt with Gentile rather than Jewish Christianity. The distinction itself being absent from the rabbinical sources, Alexander has to rely on considerations of general plausibility: From a rabbinical perspective, Jewish Christianity, he argues, surely posed a greater danger than Gentile Christianity, because Jews would rather join Jewish than Gentile churches ( p. 663). UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG
HR WINRICH LO