The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity, by Magnus Zetterholm. Routledge Early Church Monographs. London/New York: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xiv + 272. $92.95 (hardcover). ISBN 0415298962. Historical analysis of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the first centuries of the Common Era, long a central concern in the study of Christian origins, seems to be approaching a crossroads. The general "Parting of the Ways" model that has dominated scholarship since the Second World War has become the object of substantial and serious criticism (see, e.g., Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages [TSAJ 95; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003]). And Paul, traditionally regarded as a (if not the) decisive figure in this respect, has himself been read "within Judaism" in an increasing number of recent studies (see on this point John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul [New York: Oxford University Press, 2000]). Yet another sign of the healthy reconsideration of conventional wisdom on this matter is the revised version of Magnus Zetterholm's doctoral dissertation (Lund University, 2001), which brings current sociological theory to bear on the separation as it occurred in one specific location, Antioch-on-the-Orontes. The book's provocative thesis is that the "parting of the ways," at least here, was essentially an inner-Christian affair: the result of a conscious effort by "Jesus-believing Gentiles" to dissociate themselves from the "Jesus-believing Jews" to whose community they were attached. What is more, it was not Paul who laid the groundwork for this separation, but James.
