Authors: Markus Bockmuehl
ISBN-13: 9780801027581, ISBN-10: 0801027586
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Date Published: November 2003
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Markus Bockmuehl (PhD, University of Cambridge) is a Fellow of Keble College and professor of biblical and early Christian studies at the University of Oxford. His books include Jewish Law in Gentile Churches, Philippians in Black's New Testament Commentary series, and Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study.
Why did the early Christian church, with its many Gentile members, keep Old Testament commandments about sex and idolatry but disregard many others, like those about food or ritual purity? Did Christianity inherit its norms of moral reasoning from Judaism or invent them afresh?
In Jewish Law in Gentile Churches, Markus Bockmuehl approaches such questions by examining the halakhic (Jewish legal) rationale behind the ethics of Jesus, Paul, and the early Christians. Bockmuehl offers an alternative to the prevailing attitude that "law-free" Christianity arose in response to Jewish "legalism." Drawing heavily upon primary sources, he suggests that early Christian ethics were more solidly based in Jewish legal teaching than has generally been thought.
This important study has far-reaching implications not only for the study of the New Testament, but more broadly for the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. First published by T & T Clark, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches is now available to a North American audience in this affordable paperback edition.
Preface | vii | |
Abbreviations | xvii | |
Part 1 | Christianity in the Land of Israel | 1 |
1. | Halakhah and Ethics in the Jesus Tradition | 3 |
The Precedence of Written Torah | 4 | |
'The Weightier Things of the Torah' | 6 | |
Act and Motive | 8 | |
Purity and Integrity | 10 | |
Antinomian Eschatology? | 12 | |
Conclusion | 14 | |
2. | Matthew's Divorce Texts in the Light of Pre-Rabbinic Jewish Law | 17 |
3. | 'Let the Dead Bury their Dead': Jesus and the Law Revisited | 23 |
The Prevailing Consensus | 23 | |
Assessment of the Case for the Prevailing Consensus | 26 | |
Possible Ways Forward | 34 | |
Nazirite Halakhah | 36 | |
Conclusion | 46 | |
4. | James, Israel and Antioch | 49 |
First-Century Antioch | 51 | |
Antioch from the Perspective of the Land of Israel | 61 | |
Four Theses on James the Just and Antioch | 70 | |
Conclusion | 82 | |
Part 2 | Jewish and Christian Ethics for Gentiles | 85 |
5. | Natural Law in Second Temple Judaism | 87 |
The Old Testament | 88 | |
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha | 97 | |
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Rabbinic Literature | 103 | |
Philo and Josephus | 107 | |
Conclusions | 110 | |
6. | Natural Law in the New Testament? | 113 |
'Nature' and other Conundrums | 113 | |
Jesus and the Gospels | 117 | |
The Acts of the Apostles | 126 | |
Paul | 127 | |
Conclusion | 140 | |
7. | The Noachide Commandments and New Testament Ethics | 145 |
Methodological Concerns | 146 | |
Form and Substance in New Testament Ethics | 148 | |
The Noachide Commandments | 150 | |
Noachide Law and the New Testament | 162 | |
Conclusion | 172 | |
Part 3 | The Development of Public Ethics | 175 |
8. | The Beginning of Christian Public Ethics: From Luke to Aristides and Diognetus | 177 |
Three Beginnings | 177 | |
New Testament Antecedents | 186 | |
Public Ethics in the Second Century | 194 | |
The Earliest Apologists | 201 | |
Aristides of Athens | 202 | |
The Epistle to Diognetus | 215 | |
Conclusion | 222 | |
9. | Jewish and Christian Public Ethics in the Early Roman Empire | 229 |
The Problem of Halakhah in Jewish and Christian Ethics | 230 | |
Jewish Public Ethics | 233 | |
Characteristics of the Christian Approach | 236 | |
Conclusion | 238 | |
Bibliography | 241 | |
List of First Publications | 281 | |
Index of Ancient Sources | 283 | |
Index of Modern Authors | 303 | |
Index of Subjects | 309 |