Parting Ways or Rival Siblings? A Review and Analysis of Metaphors for the Separation of Jews and Christians in Antiquity

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, ‘the parting of the ways’ has become academic shorthand, especially in anglophone scholarship, for the separation of Jews and Christians in antiquity. Often it is associated with a onetime, global break that occurred by the end of the second century, particularly over one or more theological issues. This model has been challenged as being too tidy. Other images have been offered, most notably that of ‘rival siblings’, but the ‘parting’ model remains supreme. Consensus has shifted in other ways, however. The ‘parting’, or better, ‘partings’, is now understood to be a localized, protracted, and multifaceted process that likely began in the second century and continued into or past the fourth century. It is also suggested here that the current debate covers five distinguishable topics: (1) mutual religious recognition, (2) the continued existence of ‘Jewish Christians’, (3) religious interaction, (4) social concourse, and (5) outsider classification.