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Winner of the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological PromiseMatthew Thiessen offers a nuanced and wide-ranging study of the nature of Jewish thought on Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. Examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity, he gives a compelling account of the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose. Beginning
with analysis of the Hebrew Bible, Thiessen argues that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision
practiced within Israelite and early Jewish society, excluded from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews began to subscribe to a definition of Jewishness that enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Other Jews, such as the author of Jubilees, found this definition problematic, reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. As a result, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism
because of their suspect genealogy. Thiessen's examination of the way in which Jews in the Second Temple period perceived circumcision and conversion allows a deeper understanding of early
Christianity. Contesting Conversion shows that careful attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has crucial implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.
Winner of the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological PromiseMatthew Thiessen offers a nuanced and wide-ranging study of the nature of Jewish thought on Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. Examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity, he gives a compelling account of the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose. Beginning
with analysis of the Hebrew Bible, Thiessen argues that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision
practiced within Israelite and early Jewish society, excluded from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews began to subscribe to a definition of Jewishness that enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Other Jews, such as the author of Jubilees, found this definition problematic, reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. As a result, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism
because of their suspect genealogy. Thiessen's examination of the way in which Jews in the Second Temple period perceived circumcision and conversion allows a deeper understanding of early
Christianity. Contesting Conversion shows that careful attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has crucial implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: Genealogy and Circumcision in the Hebrew Bible
Chapter 1: Ishmael, Isaac, and Covenantal Circumcision in Genesis
17
Chapter 2: Uncircumcised and Circumcised Gentiles in the Hebrew
Bible
Part II: Genealogy and Circumcision in Early Judaism and
Christianity
Chapter 3: Eighth-Day Circumcision in Jubilees
Chapter 4: Jewishness as Genealogy in the Late Second Temple
Period
Chapter 5: Jews, Gentiles, and Circumcision in Early
Christianity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Matthew Thiessen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University and the author of Paul and the Gentile Problem (OUP 2016).
"It is a worthwhile read for students of the Hebrew and Christian
Bibles, as well as rabbinic literature." --The Center for Jewish
Law
"Contesting Conversion addresses an important topic in a
fascinating way. It's convincing, makes a highly significant
argument cogently, and is extremely well written. The remarkable
thing about the book is that Thiessen demonstrates, over and over,
that texts that have been understood to support the idea of
conversion via circumcision say precisely the opposite. It is not
that he has come with an agenda to the texts and discovered that
for which he
searched, but rather that scholarship till now has done that.
Thiessen removes the scales from our eyes."---Daniel Boyarin,
Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of
California-Berkeley
"This is a fine piece of historical investigation which
successfully challenges a scholarly consensus. Exploring the
insistence on eight-day circumcision in the Hebrew Bible, some
strands of Second Temple Judaism, and Luke-Acts, Thiessen unearths
a robustly genealogical conception of Jewish identity that defies
modern notions of religion. The result is a highly significant
contribution to current debates about conversion, Jewishness and
ethnicity in
ancient Judaism and early Christianity."---John M. G. Barclay,
Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, Durham University
"Contesting Conversion argues convincingly, on the basis of a wide
range of biblical and post-biblical evidence, that the notion that
being a Jew is determined by birth alone, and so cannot be affected
by choice, was current in antiquity and alive and well among many
Jews in the Second Temple period down to the first century C.E.
With regard to circumcision, which many took to be part of a
process of conversion, Thiessen argues that many other Jews
limited its religious efficacy to male Jewish babies and therefore
denied that it could turn a Gentile into a Jew. This book is a
welcome and important balance to research into the ethnic vs.
religious nature of
ancient Jewishness, especially insofar as such research often
builds its notions on the basis of rabbinic and Christian
universalism."---Daniel R. Schwartz, Professor of Jewish History,
Hebrew University
"...refreshing reading...."--Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Haverford
College
"...Thiessen has written an important monograph that should be read
by anyone intersted in questions surrounding Israelite and Jewish
identity in antiquity...Furthermore, he has offered a fresh and
insightful was to make sense of apparent tensions surrounding the
question of circumcision in Luke-Acts."--Council of Centers on
Jewish-Christian Relations
"This is a significant dissertation, building substantially on
previous scholarship to establish the fairly widespread nature of
the view that Jewishness was not something to be acquired by
circumcision."--Journal for the Study of the New Testament
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