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‘Impregnable Ramparts and Walls Of Iron’: Boundary and Identity in Early ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2002

JUDITH LIEU
JUDITH LIEU
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
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Abstract

The metaphor of a boundary as that which separates ‘us’ from ‘the other’ is central in modern discussion of identity as constructed, yet it is also recognized that such boundaries both articulate power and are permeable. The model is readily applicable to the Greco-Roman world where kinship, history, language, customs, and the gods supposedly separated ‘us’ from barbarians, but also enabled interaction; Jews and Christians engaged in the same strategies. At the textual level it is the different ways in which boundaries are constructed, particularly using diet and sexuality, that invite attention. This may offer a way of addressing questions of unity and diversity, of Judaism versus Judaisms, and of how ‘Christianity’ emerges as separate from ‘Judaism’.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2002 , pp. 297 - 313
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Main paper read at SNTS General Meeting in Montreal, August 2001. I am grateful to those who discussed with me aspects of the paper; the paper has been edited for written format.