This collection of essays has its origin in the discussions of the Early Christianity research group held at the annual meeting of the European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS), hosted in Córdoba in 2015. The editors further credit as an important influence the research conducted at the Centre of Excellence on Reason and Religious Recognition supported by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki from 2014 until 2019. The volume under consideration here brings together ten essays along with an introduction by the editors and a compelling epilogue by Amy Jill Levine.
Three sections structure the essays in this volume: (1) Conditions of Tolerance; (2) Jewish-Christian Relations between Tolerance and Intolerance; and (3) Tolerance and Questions of Persecution, Gender, and Ecology. The essays of section 1 examine the contexts of tolerance in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, and early Christian communities using interpretive lenses such as ethnicity, theological constructions of the “other,” and the management of intercommunal conflict, respectively. In section 2, the authors highlight the varying nature of Jewish–Christian relations under the Roman empire. Topics of interest here range widely, encompassing Paul's attitudes toward Jews and Gentiles; interpretations by patristic figures (Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, and Augustine) of the Maccabean martyrs; Cyril of Alexandria's covert use of Philo to hide his intellectual debt to an influential Jewish thinker; and, finally, the interplay of Jewish and Christian discourses in Origen and the rabbinic text Leviticus Rabbah on the idea of miraculous birth. Section 3 features essays that bring the volume's overall themes of tolerance and recognition into dialogue with issues of religious persecution, gender, and ecology. The essays on gender and ecology in this last section, as well as Amy Jill Levine's epilogue, helpfully underscore the relevance of ancient debates on tolerance and recognition to the contemporary world.
This superb volume will be of interest not only to those wishing to learn how tolerance and recognition can be understood and analyzed in ancient contexts, but also to those who seek to use the evidence of the ancient world to think and speak about similar concerns in the present day.
