Border Lines

Daniel Boyarin is the Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity, Judaism and A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity, and other books.

• Preface: Interrogate My LoveList of AbbreviationsChapter 1. IntroductionPART I. MAKING A DIFFERENCE: THE HERESIOLOGICAL BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISMChapter 2. Justin's Dialogue with the Jews: The Beginnings of OrthodoxyChapter 3. Naturalizing the Border: Apostolic Succession in the MishnaPART II. THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE LOGOS: HOW LOGOS THEOLOGY BECAME CHRISTIANChapter 4. The Intertextual Birth of the Logos: The Prologue to John as a Jewish MidrashChapter 5. The Jewish Life of the Logos: Logos Theology in Pre- and Pararabbinic JudaismChapter 6. The Crucifixion of the Memra: How the Logos Became ChristianPART III. SPARKS OF THE LOGOS: HISTORICIZING RABBINIC RELIGIONChapter 7. The Yavneh Legend of the Stammaim: On the Invention of the Rabbis in the Sixth CenturyChapter 8. "When the Kingdom Turned to Minut": The Christian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of ReligionConcluding Political Postscript: A FragmentNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"Encourages us to see historic Christianity as but one expression of a universalistic potential in Jewish monotheism. . . . In a fruitful career not yet nearly over, Border Lines, the culmination of many years of work, may well remain Daniel Boyarin's masterpiece." (Jack Miles, Commonweal) "Boyarin's book challenges the ordinary usage of the terms 'Judaism' and 'Christianity' and juxtaposes the formation of orthodoxy as it is formulated within rabbinic tradition and among Christians of the patristic period. His bold thesis will no doubt prove controversial and important." (Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas) "Boyarin proposes that by constructing the categories of religious orthodoxy and heresy, second-century Gentile Christians created the concept of religion which pervades the Western world to this day. The work is intensely provocative and innovative and is destined to take its proper place as a modern classic among Boyarin's previous works." (Shofar)