So excited for this review panel of @AnnetteYReed’s book Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism. #aarsbl19 (1/?)

First up, Daniel Boyarin: Reed excels in “brilliant moderation that is deeply radical” (2/?)

Boyarin: Earlier scholarship is plagued by “Assuming the term, the emergence of which is precisely under question” in this case “Judaism”. E.g., misreadings of Ignatius of Antioch’s use of “ioudaismos”. (3/?)

Boyarin: the translation from Greek to Latin of the “-mos” ending in “ioudaismos” lead to the verbal noun “judaizing” in Greek transforming into the abstraction “Judaism” in Latin. (4/?)

Boyarin: @AnnetteYReed is perhaps the new Harnack! (Thank goodness!!) (5/?)

Next up: Krista Dalton. Reed shows how scholarly preconceptions shape the archive according to scholarly ideologies. (6/?)

Dalton: While scholars of ancient Judaism are required to have knowledge of ancient Christian texts, while scholars of Ancient Christianity are able to ignore Jewish texts. They do not have to think of Jews because Christians are presumed to be the generic. (7/?)

Dalton: Reed encourages us to give up our labels of “Christianity” and “Judaism” as an organizing principle for the examination of the historical archive. Instead we can use other categories, such as regional histories (8/?)

Dalton: Certain characteristics within the texts are overdetermined, e.g., a positive attitude about The Law (or Torah) as characteristic of Judaism or Judaizing rather than, perhaps, something else. (9/?)

Next, Charlotte Fonrobert: Reed “makes her home at the margins that she moves to the center” (10/?)

Fonrobert: Does the master narrative Reed debunks still exist? (11/?)

Fonrobert: “I’m not sure anyone actually believes in a master narrative anymore. But once a critique has taken root,” what are we to do we scholars or late antiquity? (12/?)

Next up: @drewjakeprof Reed’s encourages us to lean in to “the heuristic irritant” of Jewish-Christianity as it challenges the “clumsy binary” of sorting differences (13/?)

Jacobs: Taking up Reed’s model to address another “heuristic irritant”, the Jewish convert which is also a clumsy category (14/?)

Jacobs: the ancient Jewish convert remains in some way both Jewish and Christian. Since the Jewish convert is not treated as fully Christian despite their conversion, or they would just be a Christian. Instead, they seem to maintain their hybridized Jewish identity (15/?)

Jacobs: Scholasticus describes two different Jewish converts, one of which is depicted as “genuine” and one that is not, despite both being baptized. How should we interpret these two figures? (16/?)

Now up: Susannah Heschel: “The 19th century had a maternity crisis” (17/?)

Heschel: 19th c. Christian scholars have a triumphalist narrative behind the question: “What’s wrong with Jews that they couldn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah?” (18/?)

Heschel: BUT 19th c. Jewish scholars ALSO have a kind of triumphalism by showing how there was nothing new about Jesus’s teaching. The only thing new, they argue, was the teachings ABOUT Jesus. (19/?)

Heschel: How much does 19th c. scholarship reflect the political interests of the day? (And now, also) (20/?)

Heschel: When we seek to unmask and unveil Christian origins, we play with an aura of secrecy and conspiracy which, as we can see today, is a dangerous game. (21/?)

Next: Elaine Pagels: Reed has made our work much harder (and better) now that we can’t just throw around our terms as if we know them. (22/?)

Pagels: Reed makes us rethink our landmarks of historical time—where things start and stop. (23/?)

Many apologies for all the typos.

Pagels: Reed’s analysis of older scholarship helps us to historicize OUR OWN scholarly practices (24/?)

Pagels: Why are we so obsessed with how these ancient authors identify? Why does it matter if they would call themselves “Christian” or “Jewish”? (25/?)

Finally, @AnnetteYReed: part of my purpose is I love these weird texts and I want to get people to read these weird texts (26/?)

Reed: The problem is that we take the evidence that doesn’t fit and put them into small rooms and footnotes. (27/?)

Reed: But after all this, what now? Where do we go from here? (27/?)

Reed: How do we critique the category of “Jewish-Christianity” without critiquing the categories “Judaism” and “Christianity”? We still have a long way to go in critiquing these terms. (28/?)

Reed: I can imagine an ideal world where we don’t use the term “Jewish-Christianity” anymore where grad students learn both Jewish & Christian sources & Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek/Latin. But we’re not there yet. How do we get there? (29/?)

Reed: Ultimately this is an anti-Harnack project. (30/?)

Reed: within the field there still is such a thing as work being too Jewish to be Christian and that line is policed (31/?)

Reed: We spend a lot of time questioning the Parting of the Ways (for example) but what’s been holding up these models isn’t an issue of history, it’s about other things like disciplinary practices and boundaries (32/?)

Reed: when do we start to tell different stories and use different words? Our usages of these words are just habitual—we fall back into the use of these categories out of habit (33/?)

Reed: There still is a master narrative that we can see, for example, from grad students emailing and asking if they should have to know anything about Judaism, and asking if any type of post-70 Judaism is relevant to the study of early Christianity (34/?)

Reed: But it is possible to tell different stories, we just need to GET TO WORK! (35/?)

Reed: Scholars like Graetz represent Jewish scholars of early Christianity that are paths not taken. For example, Jewish Studies scholars now tend not to quote things like the pseudo-Clementines but Graetz does. (36/?)

Reed: We should also address Islam and how it fits into this story (37/?)

Reed: Secrecy discourse in contemporary politics is a practice that implies that what is secret is more true than what’s public—and it’s dangerous. We need to look at how scholars unintentionally contribute to this idea. (38/?)

That was amazing! Time for Q&A. Panelists will respond first. (39/?)

Boyarin: My problem with the use of “Judeo-Christian” is that it reifies the terms Jewish and Christian. We’re concerned about the same thing, but we may disagree on terms. (40/?)

Reed: We need to also think about what categories do. My fear in the short term is if we get rid of the category—the heuristic irritant of “Jewish-Christianity”—the hybrid will just disappear or be assimilated into Christianity (41/?)

Jacobs: Perhaps we need to get rid of identity, but if we get rid of identity, are we getting rid of people? (42/?)

Heschel: what do we foreclose when we focus so much on text? Are there other elements that get lost? Texts can be a fence. The textualization of religion may be a problem that needs to be addressed. (43/?)

Q (mine): what do we do if our jobs depend on us assuming things like Judaism and Christianity are stable categories because we’re employed by institutions with religious affiliations? (44/?)

A (Boyarin): if you need to code-switch to keep a job, go ahead and code switch (45/?)

Q: if these terms are so slippery, what is at stake for ancient authors in using these terms? (46/?)

A (Reed): We need to maintain a sense of curiosity to the text and not assume we know what ancient authors mean when they use these terms, and also we need to look at how these terms of used constructively and rhetorically (47/?)

A (Jacobs): biblical studies has structured religious studies in antiquity insidious ways by taking a fragmented archive and asserting a kind of unified field (48/?)

A (Pagels): *students* know that identity is complicated so it’s more intellectually (and perhaps) theologically honest to acknowledge that. (49/?)

Q: what about practices? Were Jewish and Christian practices more similar than our texts make them appear (50/?)

A (Fonrobert): it’s really hard to reconstruct actual practice in anquity. (Reed): these Jewish-Christian texts tend to be labeled as such because they describe practices that don’t adhere to our expectations of difference. (51/?)

A (Boyarin): Judaism and Christianity are not ancient categories. When Ignatius talks about ioudaismos, we today would just call that person Christian. (52/?)

A (Reed): I’m happy to make the margins really big and the center irrelevant (53/?)

Q: Can we get to clear categories by making explicit an assumption of a disconnect between belief and practice and differences of identify based of belief vs. practice? (54/?)

A (Reed): Jewish-Christian texts tend to be classed that way because they trouble the binary between belief and practice, but also there’s belief in practice and belief is embodied. (55/?)

Q: Would we look at Matthew as Jewish or Christian if we take out our typical categories? (56/?)

A (Boyarin): The New Testament can and should be read productively as a text within Jewish tradition. (57/?)

That was amazing. Thanks for taking this ride with me. (58/58)