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Identity and the Other: the Emergence of Christianity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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Two areas of interaction have contributed to the essential identity of Christianity from earliest to contemporary times. One relates to an external phenomenon, that is to say, Christianity as an entity encountering something it distinguishes from itself; and the other to an internal phenomenon, relating to an encounter from within which has allowed one group to be dominant The external encounter is between Christianity and Judaism, and the internal encounter is between male and female. Both are named by orthodox voices as the ‘Other’, both raise problems for Christianity today, although the solutions may be diametrically opposed.
There has been growing attention given to anti-Judaism in earliest Christianity, and the contemporary implications of this have been an issue taken up by a number of scholars over die past twenty years. Furthermore, writers such as Charlotte Klein, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and John Gager were also aware that the attitudes of previous generations of scholars reflected anti-Judaism in their work. Charlotte Klein, in particular, noted the pejorative use of phrases such as ‘Spatjudentum’, late Judaism’ which German scholars used to describe the Judaism of Jesus’ day. Today scholars of both Jewish studies and Christian origins would readily describe the same period as early Judaism, understanding that Judaism and Christianity both gained their essential identity during the first century c.e. What were those scholars of past generations telling us about their attitude to the Jewish people of their own day in their use of such a phrase? That Judaism was coming to an end with the advent of Christ? That Judaism should have ended with Christ? That Christianity succeeds Judaism?
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- Copyright © 1994 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 In relation to a later period, these same two examples were employed in Ilona N. Rashkow’s study, Upon Dark Places: Anti-Semitism and Sexism in English Renaissance Biblical Translation, Almond Press, Sheffield, 1990. Both issues are also central features in the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether.
2 Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology, SPCK, London, 1978.
3 Faith and Fratricide. The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, New York, 1974.
4 The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983.
5 op.cit., pp. 15-38.
6 Judith Plaskow, ‘Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism’, Cross Currents, 28 (1978), 306-309; Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, SCM Press, London, 1983, pp.106-107.
7 Jesus the Jew, London, 1975; Jesus and the World of Judaism, London 1983.
8 Jesus and Judaism, SCM Press, London, 1985.
9 op.cit.
10 Christian Origins, SPCK, London, 1985.
11 For a recent study of the Jewish context of Paul’s life, see Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolale and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1990.
12 A good biblical illustration of this is St Paul’s attitude to Christianity prior to his realisation that Jesus was the expected Messiah. He (as Saul of Tarsus) zealously persecuted the early believers. For him these people were committing blasphemy against the beliefs of Judaism, that is, he regarded them to be entirely within his religious boundary as a pharisaic Jew.
13 A recent discussion of this period and how Christianity developed at the time can be found in N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, SPCK, London, 1992, see especially pp. 161-166 and pp.444—464.
14 Is. 11 .6-8; cf. 65.25.
15 When the topic of life in the New Age is introduced in rabbinic literature the rabbis refer to Is.64.4: ‘... No one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen ... ’
16 For moderate and well researched comment on this point see Rowland, op.cit., p. 173.
17 See, for example, Philo, Embassy to Gaius, 299ff.
18 A notable exception to this presentation of Judaism is Luke’s treatment of Gamaliel in Acts 5. 33ff. Although this Jewish character is presented sympathetically, if we look at the account in context, the rest of Sanhedrin are said to want to kill the apostles. As a result of Gamaliel’s intervention they are beaten instead and forbidden to speak in the name of Jesus. Gamaliel is presented as the exception.
19 Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language, SCM Press, London, 1982, notes that feminist critique of western culture, religion and society recognises this basic dualism: ‘At the heart of patriarchalism as root¬metaphor is a subject-object split in which man is envisaged over against God and vice versa. God, as transcendent being, is man’s superior Other and woman in this hierarchy becomes man’s inferior other’(p. 148). This critique was developed at the beginning of the contemporary rise of feminist theology by Rosemary Radford Ruether, New Woman-New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation, Crossroad, New York, 1975 and Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, Beacon Press Boston, 1973.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p.15.
22 These codes mention slaves as part of the domestic hierarchical system, and yet, while these passages are quoted in contemporary contexts to uphold traditional family values, no one would consider using them to support slavery today.
23 op.cit., pp.245-284.
24 De Trinitate, XII, ch.7. For an accessible collection of the Church Fathers discussions on the female sex see Elizabeth A. Clark, Women in the Early Church, Wilmington, DE, Michael Glazier, 1983.
25 Summa Theologica, 1, Q.92, art. 1, vol.IV, pp.275-276.
26 Translation E.A. Clark, op.cit., p.39.
27 For a full discussion of the development of an institutional church at the end of the first century, see Fiorenza, op.cit., pp.285-342.
28 Church, Charism and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church, SCM Press, 1985 (first published Brazil, 1981).
29 For a fuller discussion of the Christological implications of feminist theology see Ruether, ‘The Liberation of Christology from Patriarchy’, New Blackfriars, 66 (1985), pp.324-335 and 67 (1986), pp.92-93.
30 op.cit., p.114.
31 Theology, 96, no.771, May/June 1993, p.l97.
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