Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Intolerance and martyrdom: from Socrates to Rabbi ‘Aqiva
- 2 The other in 1 and 2 Maccabees
- 3 The pursuit of the millennium in early Judaism
- 4 Conservative revolution? The intolerant innovations of Qumran
- 5 Who was considered an apostate in the Jewish Diaspora?
- 6 Why did Paul persecute the church?
- 7 Paul and the limits of tolerance
- 8 Philo's views on paganism
- 9 Coexisting with the enemy: Jews and pagans in the Mishnah
- 10 Tertullian on idolatry and the limits of tolerance
- 11 The threefold Christian anti-Judaism
- 12 The intertextual polemic of the Markan vineyard parable
- 13 Jews and Jewish Christians in the land of Israel at the time of the Bar Kochba war, with special reference to the Apocalypse of Peter
- 14 The Nazoreans: living at the boundary of Judaism and Christianity
- 15 Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho: group boundaries, ‘proselytes’ and ‘God-fearers’
- 16 Accusations of Jewish persecution in early Christian sources, with particular reference to Justin Martyr and the Martyrdom of Polycarp
- 17 Early Christians on synagogue prayer and imprecation
- 18 Messianism, Torah and early Christian tradition
- 19 Jewish and Christian public ethics in the early Roman Empire
- Postscript: the future of intolerance
- General bibliography
- Index
14 - The Nazoreans: living at the boundary of Judaism and Christianity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Intolerance and martyrdom: from Socrates to Rabbi ‘Aqiva
- 2 The other in 1 and 2 Maccabees
- 3 The pursuit of the millennium in early Judaism
- 4 Conservative revolution? The intolerant innovations of Qumran
- 5 Who was considered an apostate in the Jewish Diaspora?
- 6 Why did Paul persecute the church?
- 7 Paul and the limits of tolerance
- 8 Philo's views on paganism
- 9 Coexisting with the enemy: Jews and pagans in the Mishnah
- 10 Tertullian on idolatry and the limits of tolerance
- 11 The threefold Christian anti-Judaism
- 12 The intertextual polemic of the Markan vineyard parable
- 13 Jews and Jewish Christians in the land of Israel at the time of the Bar Kochba war, with special reference to the Apocalypse of Peter
- 14 The Nazoreans: living at the boundary of Judaism and Christianity
- 15 Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho: group boundaries, ‘proselytes’ and ‘God-fearers’
- 16 Accusations of Jewish persecution in early Christian sources, with particular reference to Justin Martyr and the Martyrdom of Polycarp
- 17 Early Christians on synagogue prayer and imprecation
- 18 Messianism, Torah and early Christian tradition
- 19 Jewish and Christian public ethics in the early Roman Empire
- Postscript: the future of intolerance
- General bibliography
- Index
Summary
Patristic literature testifies to the existence of a number of Jewish-Christian groups (e.g., Ebionites, Elchasaites). In this essay, I want to pay some attention to one such group known from the ancient sources, the Nazoreans (Ncc∧copocToi), to see what light this group may shed on the formation of boundaries between Jews and Christians in the ancient world, from the first century onwards. The primary source for our knowledge of the Nazoreans is the Church Father Epiphanius (Panarion 29.7), though there are some others as well, particularly Jerome (c.342–420) whose life and career overlapped with that of Epiphanius (c.315–403) in the late fourth century GE. Epiphanius and Jerome seem to have had independent access to sources or information about the Nazoreans, though, according to Klijn and Reinink, ‘they had no first-hand knowledge of their beliefs.’
THE NAZOREANS IN THE CHURCH FATHERS
In her recent survey of scholarship on Jewish Christianity, Joan E. Taylor writes that the Nazoreans are the only group, ‘among all those described in patristic literature, which appears to have a good case for being an early Jewish Christian church’. What the Church Fathers, primarily Epiphanius and Jerome, say about other supposed Jewish-Christian groups (especially Ebionites and Elchasaites) is comparatively much more confused and unreliable.
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- Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity , pp. 239 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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