Introduction

Aristotle once remarked that “one sees matters most clearly if one studies them in the process of development from the beginning” (Pol. I.2, 1252a24). ¹ The implication of Aristotle’s statement for the study of Christianity would seem straightforward: in order to understand it accurately, one should start by scrutinizing its beginning. But determining Christianity’s originary moment has turned out to be challenging. Arguably the most important complicating factor is that it is difficult to identify when Christianity became something other than Judaism. ² Whereas earlier scholarship tended to think in terms of a clear break or “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity that could be relatively securely dated sometime between Jesus’s ministry and the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE, more recent work has recast this process as a complex, lengthy, messy, and ultimately not even fully resolved separation. ³ Christian identity vis-à-vis Judaism remained inchoate and in flux for a long time, certainly well into the second century CE.