Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and by Daniel Boyarin

Not some time past, all people knew that Judaism got here prior to Christianity. extra lately, students have began to acknowledge that the ancient photograph is kind of a piece extra complex than that. within the Jewish international of the 1st century, many sects competed for the identify of the real Israel and the real interpreter of the Torah—the Talmud itself speaks of seventy—and the shape of Judaism that used to be to be the seedbed of what finally grew to become the Christian Church was once yet this type of many sects. students have come to gain that we will and wish to talk of a dual start of Christianity and Judaism, now not a family tree within which one is mum or dad to the other.

In this e-book, the writer develops a revised realizing of the interactions among nascent Christianity and nascent Judaism in past due antiquity, examining the 2 "new" religions as intensely and complexly intertwined all through this era. even supposing the "officials" of the eventual winners in either communities—the Rabbis in Judaism and the orthodox leaders in Christianity—sought to disclaim it, till the top of past due antiquity many of us remained either Christians and Jews. This resulted, between different issues, in a lot shared non secular innovation that affected the respective orthodoxies as well.

Dying for God goals to set up this version as a pragmatic one via shut and comparative readings of up to date Christian texts and Talmudic narratives that thematize the connections and ameliorations among Christians and Jews as those emerged round the factor of martyrdom. the writer argues that, after all, the constructing discourse of martyrology concerned the stream and trade of cultural and spiritual strategies among the 2 groups as they moved towards sharper self-definition.