PAULA FREDRICKSEN is interviewed by BU Today:

In her latest book, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism, Fredriksen returns to her first love by exploring the historical, social, and cultural developments that gave rise to Christian anti-Judaism. The surprise, she says, isn’t just that Augustine espoused the Jews’ rights to their own religion — it’s that different faiths frequently borrowed from one another throughout the early Roman Empire. “In antiquity, all monotheists are polytheists,” she says. “It’s just that they each have heaven structured a certain way.”

Fredriksen spoke with BU Today about what Augustine’s writing reveals about cultural clashes and belief systems, then and now.