Peter Tomson boasts an expertise both in early Christian studies and Rabbinic Judaism. This collection of essays, all of which bar one have been published before, and emerge from thirty-five years of intense scholarly work, touch upon a set of important issues relating to the increasingly complex question of Jewish-Christian relations in the first and second centuries. The book divides itself into four parts: halakah and Jewish self-definition; the teachings of Jesus and evolving Jewish and Christian tradition; Paul and his place in Judaism; and historiography and the import of early Christian sources. The essays assume that Christian and Jewish sources are mutually illuminating – indeed all Christian texts of the first century and a half of Christian history are distinctively Jewish in their character (‘As long as any Christian text does not set itself off from Judaism, it can be approached as being of Jewish or Judaeo-Christian background or sympathetic to such’: p. 415). One of the consequences of this view is that we should assume that Christian texts can illuminate Jewish texts as well as the other way round. This assumption becomes especially clear in Tomson's claim, present in a number of these essays, that the period from about 50 ce onwards was one marked by a rising level of Jewish nationalism in Jerusalem and Palestine, a point which receives support not just from Josephus and some rabbinic sources but from Paul's letters and from the Acts of the Apostles. Along the same lines, Paul becomes a witness to Jewish Pharisaism; Matthew and Didache to developments within the same, to take but two examples from these essays. Related to this assumption is Tomson's view, somewhat at odds with a growing consensus among some rabbinic scholars, that the Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrashim and Talmudim, in particular the first two, can, if used carefully, give us an insight into pre-70 Judaism as well as its post-70 manifestation, and reflect the thoughts of a group of individuals who wielded a reasonable amount of influence upon parts of the Jewish Diaspora and Palestine, the Rabbis. His conclusions, which strike a balance between the maximalism of a scholar like W. D. Davies and the minimalism of Seth Schwartz and Catherine Hezser, derive not only from a detailed engagement with rabbinic material, but also from an appreciation of the importance of the Pharisees in some New Testament writings like Matthew and Acts, and the clear evidence, as he sees it, of the presence of Pharisaic influence in these and other texts (seen in evidence relating to prayer, divorce, women and eschatology), though the essays bring to bear other influences, for example as found in the texts of the Dead Sea and a range of Jewish texts in Greek.

Consistent with such a position, many of Tomson's studies are erudite attempts to show the continuities between Jewish and Christian texts, in particular as these relate to Scripture and tradition. Unsurprisingly, Jesus emerges from all of this as thoroughly Jewish, as does Paul (Tomson in fact posits much greater continuity between Paul and Jesus than is usually the case among scholars), Matthew, Didache and sundry other texts. Even where there may be contestation between those identified as Jews or Christians, the ideological similarities are strong. In this respect Tomson identifies himself as a member of the school of thought which has come, perhaps rather cumbersomely, to be known as the ways that never parted (here playing upon the well known metaphor, associated with James Parkes, entitled the ways that parted). But Tomson is much clearer than some members of that loose scholarly grouping might be that as we move into the second century institutional divisions begin to emerge and Jews and Christians come, not always, but usually, to be identified as separate groups, though he eschews any idea that such ‘partings’ were uniform. Tomson supports such observations by combining Jewish and Christian evidence. Particular significance is attached to Tosefta Hullin 2.22–4, which implies that Jews, understood here as followers of the Rabbis, should not interact with minim/heretics (in this case clearly Christians), together with evidence in John for expulsion from the synagogue of those who profess Jesus to be the Messiah (Tomson is clear, too, again kicking against some recent trends in Johannine study, that John's use of ‘Jews’, a title usually, though not always, used to give voice to an outsider's perspective, implies separation). The notorious twelfth benediction of the well-known Jewish prayer, the Amidah, is brought into the discussion but not treated as decisive in the way it is by some. Matthew and Didache reflect communities moving towards separation (in the case of Matthew as with John, the final form of the Gospel gives evidence of different strata of tradition which enable a narrative of sorts to be told), Barnabas a community clearly separated. In all of this Tomson attributes significance both to the role of the Romans – there is, he argues, a chronological convergence between the date of the events recorded in Tosefta Hullin 2.22–4, and the account of Pliny's interaction with the Christians and Tacitus’ account of the persecution of the Christians, indicating that Jewish distancing from Christians may have been influenced by political factors, a point that is implied in Tosefta Hullin, with its mention of the Roman ‘hegemon’ (Roman influence is also seen in that most separatist of documents, Barnabas, but explained slightly differently: see p. 530); and to the fact of the Jewish revolts, which served to destroy the influence of Christians in Jerusalem, and aggravated relations between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews. The emphasis placed by Tomson upon external political factors in accounting for separation forms part of a more developed thesis, entirely consistent with his emphasis upon ideological continuities between first- and second-century Christians and Jews, so much emphasised in this volume, that separation should not be accounted for by reference to theology, or at least only minimally so.

This review has sought to draw out some of the more general and significant conclusions of this volume, necessarily leaving out a good deal in the process. Its author's combination of erudition, manifested both in terms of his knowledge of a galaxy of primary sources and of the historiography of individual subjects, his range of reference and his originality of observation, and the fact, indicated above, that he engages with subjects which are both highly contested and also relate to matters of real and enduring significance, make the volume under review necessary reading for scholars interested in ancient Judaism and Christianity.