Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity. A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus.

Relations between Jews, Christians and pagans in late antiquity which previously tended to be studied from the point of view of 'triumphant' Christianity are currently being reassessed by both ancient historians and theologians. All four books reviewed here make a contribution to this endeavour. This contribution consists in shifting the focus to the role of Judaism and paganism in the religious history of the Roman empire (Lieu and others), and in trying to identify the ideological purposes of early Christian writings which deal with Jews (Carlton Paget, Guerra, Taylor).

The volume of articles edited by Lieu is based on a series of Ancient History seminars held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London. The articles deal with the internal diversity and the blurred boundaries of the Jewish community in late antiquity (Rajak, Goodman), the Jewish origins of Paul (Hengel) and the moribund image of Judaism in later Christian writings (Lieu), relations between Jews and Christians in the Diaspora (Millar, Drijvers, Weitzman), and the emergence of religious pluralism (North). While …