New Narratives of Jewish-Christian co-emergence
April 10-11, 2000
University of Chicago Divinity School
Keynote speakers:
Daniel Boyarin-University of California, Berkeley
Miri Rubin-Pembroke College, Oxford
Steve Wasserstrom-Reed College
Israel Yuval-Hebrew University, Jerusalem
It is a commonplace of religious history that without Judaism there could be
no Christianity, indeed that Christianity emerged from Judaism. Recently
some historians of late antiquity have questioned this premise, arguing
instead for a "twin birth" model in which Judaism and Christianity emerged
in dialogic relation to each other from a late-antique cultural matrix that
included pre-rabbinic Judaisms, apocalypticism, and middle-platonism.
Simultaneously, some medieval historians have begun to write new histories
of the Jewish Diaspora analyzing the local interactions that have shaped
Jewish and Christian self-understandings, documenting complex mutual
influence in theology, philosophy, law, liturgy and the arts. These
investigations have been variously characterized as social histories of the
imaginary; maps of ludic or negotiated violence; depictions of the inner
life of the religious Other; and reconstructions of narratives of
containment, isolation and assault. What unites them all is their rejection
both of monolithic understandings of religious and ethnic essence and of
traditional "liberal" forms of inter-religious rapprochement founded in
universalizing models of identity. They eschew accusatory historical modes
and cultivate complex understandings of local differences as solutions to
particular cultural problems that are never one-sided.
In two days of papers and panel discussions we will test the validity and
limits of this new model of Jewish-Christian co-emergence. To what extent
is it the case that there could be no Judaism without Christianity? Was
there ever a final split? Have the two religious systems continued to
develop in dialogic relation with one another? Is it possible to map the
general shape of Jewish-Christian co-emergence? What detailed contours of
such a map can be supplied at this time?
Papers covering any historical period will be considered. Please send 2 -3
page abstracts by September 15, 1999 to
Willis Johnson
Swift Hall
1025 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
USA
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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Willis Johnson . Divinity School . Swift Hall . 1025 East 58th Street
University of Chicago . Chicago, IL 60637 [log in to unmask]
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