Among its many achievements, The Ways That Never Parted marked a paradigm shift in the study of Jewish–Christian relations by challenging the notion of rigid, essential group identities and boundaries and emphasizing instead that identities were fluid, discursively constructed, and frequently marked by interaction rather than conflict. While the methodological shifts consolidated in this work have had far-reaching and transformative effects, particularly in the study of Late Antiquity, this paper contends that certain tendencies that have emerged in its wake deserve reappraisal. Specifically, the critique of rigid group boundaries has sometimes led to an overcorrection, downplaying the extent to which identities were embedded within broader social and institutional contexts. Likewise, the rejection of an overemphasis on conflict and violence has at times given rise to an overly harmonious portrayal of Jewish–Christian relations. The paper calls for approaches that avoid both extremes in favor of acknowledging the complexities of identity formation in antiquity as well as the complicated and ongoing interplay between conflict and coexistence. By reexamining these scholarly trends, the paper aims to advance a more balanced understanding of ancient Jewish–Christian interactions, attentive to both the local and translocal sociopolitical forces that shaped them.
Simcha Gross (Wed,) studied this question.