Josephus's version of Numbers 22–24 is a significant source for ascertaining his understanding of the divine spirit. On the one hand, this story contains the highest concentration of references to the divine spirit in the Antiquities. Josephus regularly omitted references to the divine spirit, leaving, apart from this passage, a mere five. In marked contrast to this tendency, his version of Numbers 22–24 has three references to the divine spirit (Ant. 4.108, 118, 119), while the biblical version has but one (Num 24:2). The result is that one third of Josephus's references to the divine spirit are concentrated in the tale of Balaam and the ass.

Christianity always expressed the necessity of the proclamation of the gospel. During the second century, however, the different groups and churches were not able to agree on the nature of this proclamation. For some, the apostolic witness was constituted by a memory of fundamental salvific events, namely, the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. For others, particularly the author of the Acts of Andrew, preaching the gospel meant communicating divine wisdom and proclaiming life-giving words.

This article argues that early and later rabbinic texts, as well as Babylonian and Palestinian sources, express different attitudes toward minim (“heretics”) and Christians, and that these differing attitudes are useful in reconstructing the histories of diverse rabbinic communities. In evaluating the historicity of the rabbinic sources, it is important to bear in mind that early sources do not necessarily provide reliable information about early periods, nor do Palestinian materials necessarily depict Palestinian reality more accurately than do Babylonian materials. Portrayals of minim and Christians in talmudic sources may tell us much about relations between Jews and Christians in the Persian and Roman empires of late antiquity, but they perhaps tell us more about the desires and prejudices of rabbinic authors and editors.

The liberation of rabbinic theology from the reins of medieval theology is still underway. One of the central issues that sets rabbinic theology apart from later medieval developments is the attribution of body or form to the godhead. Even though the anthropomorphic tendency of rabbinic thought is widely recognized, it is still early to speak of a learned consensus on this issue. The standard work on the topic remains Arthur Marmorstein's Essays in Anthropomorphism, written in 1937. Marmorstein recognized the anthropomorphic tendency of rabbinic thinking. His way of dealing, both theologically and scholastically, with the issue was to suggest the existence of two schools in the tannaitic period. According to Marmorstein, the schools of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael were divided on the question of the literality of the understanding of the biblical text. Rabbi Akiva's literal reading gave rise to an anthropomorphic understanding of God. Rabbi Ishmael's nonliteral, or allegorical, reading brought about an opposition to anthropomorphism. This description of rabbinic anthropomorphism has informed the discussions of many scholars, including those who have dealt with our present topic—the image of God. I would, therefore, state my differences with this presentation.

The fact of religious plurality and how to interpret this fact have in the last decade become central issues in contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. The discussion in recent years has been focused on the debate between the pluralists and the inclusivists, as represented respectively in the volume edited by John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions and that edited by Gavin D'Costa, Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions.