ABSTRACT
Issues relating to the nature and extent of Jewish and Christian interaction in antiquity are as complex as the available evidence is problematic and difficult to interpret. Indeed, the very terms 'Jewish' and 'Christian' themselves are awkward on several levels, all of which threaten to undermine the project of historical reconstruction. The historical Jesus and the group of people that formed around him were active and proclaimed their message in the public, civic institutions of the land of Israel that our sources use various terms to describe, but which in modern English are called synagogues. The earliest evidence speaking of interaction between followers of Jesus and other Jews is found in the New Testament Gospels: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. The importance of the associations can hardly be overestimated, since they provide us with a setting in which followers of Jesus, whether Jewish or not, and other Jews, for various reasons, gathered and interacted with one another.
