Partings of The Ways: Origins of Judaism and Christianity

Course Info

It is not a secret that Christians draw their heritage from ancient Israel and that the first followers of Jesus were Jews. But how exactly did non-Jewish Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism suddenly emerge as the normative forms of Christianity and Judaism and as two distinct traditions? What roles did the turmoil of Roman persecution, theological differences, institutional separation, and contested-yet-shared histories play in the processes of separation? This course examines many historical and biblical texts and looks at both sides, trying to understand what really happened. What caused the rift between the Jewish followers of Christ and other Jews that lead to new identities and the emergence of non-Jewish Christianity?

About Author

Dr. John Van Maaren

Lecturer in Jewish and Biblical Studies

John Van Maaren has a PhD in Early Christianity and Early Judaism from McMaster University (Canada). He was a fellow at Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies in Jerusalem during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years. His research focuses on changing conceptions of Jewishness in the Southern Levant during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods (200 BCE-135 CE) and the gradual emergence of a distinct, non-Jewish, Christian identity. His dissertation, The Gospel of Mark within Judaism: Reading the Second Gospel in Its Ethnic Landscape, is the first systematic argument that Mark should be read as Jewish literature.