This diverse collection of essays clusters around the theme of Judaism from the first to the third century ce, the study of which has undergone radical changes over the past fifty or so years. Claude Mimouni summarises some of these in the opening chapter of the volume, drawing attention in particular to the de-centering of the place of rabbinic Judaism in any reconstruction of the history of the Jews in this period and the concomitant emphasis upon diversity, conclusions which in various ways have transformed our understanding of Christianity as a Jewish movement and by extension our understanding of Jewish and Christian separation. Mimouni, partly recalling the work of R. Goodenough from between the two world wars, thinks that in broad terms Judaism should now be understood in this period in terms of three different movements, Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and what he terms ‘synagogal Judaism’. Defining the last element of this trinity is difficult because of our restricted knowledge of the entity, though most of the essays in the volume allude to it and in broad terms it might be thought to be the theme of the book. In this vein we are presented with essays on Jewish inscriptions (D. Hamidovic), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (A. Y. Reed) and Flavius Josephus (E. Nodet). Because so-called ‘synagogal Judaism’ is in some senses the Judaism to which Christianity is most closely related, however understood, there are essays on what one might broadly call Jewish-Christian relations, some of which seek to elucidate synagogal Judaism by reference to Christian texts (Marguerat on Luke's presentation of the Judaism of the Diaspora synagogue in Acts), and others of which concern themselves more directly with the question of continuities and discontinuities between Jewish and Christian identity, whether expressed through the apparently Jewish character of a Christian author (Bertho on Theophilus of Antioch), exegesis (Bucur on biblical theophanies), practices of reading (Clivax on the much-contested subject of Christian uses of the codex), or beliefs (Touati on Jewish and Christian texts from Egypt on purgatory). Costa and Naiweld provide interesting engagements with aspects of rabbinic literature, and Inglebert, in what is described as a conclusion but barely lives up to such a billing, not least through its failure to refer to any of the essays which form the volume, re-examines the question of synagogal Judaism, asserting, inter alia, that rabbis and inhabitants of the Diaspora were closer in terms of the circumstances in which they lived, especially after the Bar Kokhba revolt, than some have thought the case.

As ever with such collective volumes it is difficult to know quite what to conclude from reading it. This reviewer did not find the introduction of synagogal Judaism particularly helpful aside from giving voice to the existence of a Judaism other than rabbinic Judaism. The entity posited is surely too diverse and too little known (what do we actually know about such a Judaism, especially from the second century onwards?) to have any real purchase upon our historical consciences. Many essays are, however, not hampered by their attachment to such a concept and have valuable insights to make about Jewish and Christian identity.

I want to end this short review with an observation about the English-language synopses of essays in French. In principle the idea of having these is good but in almost every instance of their appearance in this volume, the English is less than clear and has obviously not been placed under the eye of a native speaker.