The Eye, the Sense of Sight, and Seeing God? Reflections on God’s (In)visibility Considering Early Jewish Christian Relations (Deborah Forger)
What might the eye, the sense of sight, and the desire of many in the ancient world to see God tell us about points of continuity and discontinuity between Jews and Christians in antiquity? Moreover, how might this specific question about humanity’s ability to see God offer us fresh perspectives on our primary task for this morning? Namely, to think about and discuss what it means to invest in a career in early Jewish Christian relations—the opportunities, pitfalls, joys, and challenges of centering one’s work on questions related to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.Do Rabbis Belong in Early Jewish Christian Relations? (Krista Dalton)
While I’ve raised concerns related to the framing of early Judaism and Christianity as a singular category of knowledge, I want to end by making the case for why the rabbis matter to this category. The rabbis did not arise in a vacuum. Judaism may have “shattered” following the Great Revolt (66-74 CE), as Seth Schwartz famously argued, and the rabbis may have initiated a new kind of grammarian piety using their ancestral texts, but they did so with the tools that they already possessed.
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