Rabbinic Judaism Research Articles

Born into Covenantal Salvation? Baptism and Birth in Early Christianity and Classical Rabbinic Judaism

Born into Covenantal Salvation? Baptism and Birth in Early Christianity and Classical Rabbinic Judaism

Did the Ways Part? New Models in Judean/Christian Relations


 
 
 In this paper I reconsider the evidence for the traditional “Parting of the Ways” model, which posits an official separation of Judaism and Christianity between 70 and 135 CE. I argue that neither Rabbinic Judaism nor Centrist (or proto-orthodox) Christianity obtained hegemony in the second century CE, but that many diverse groups on the Judaeo-Christian spectrum continued to interact and engage with one another in an attempt to formulate their own distinctiveness.
 
 
 

What are the Limits of Protest Theology? A Review EssayPious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism, DovWeiss, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017 (ISBN 978‐0‐8122‐4835‐7), xii + 287pp., hb $69.95Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest, David R.Blumenthal, Westminster/John Knox, Louisville, 1993 (ISBN 978‐0664254643), xxviii + 319 pp., pb $40

AbstractPious Irreverence presents the classic rabbinic traditions that embody, or allow, protest of God's actions as well as the anti‐protest tradition that opposed criticism of God. By arranging this material chronologically, Weiss is able to analyze the development of both traditions. He concludes that the rabbis expanded the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic semantic field and, in so doing, allowed very deep criticism of God as a sign of God's intimacy with the Jewish people. Blumenthal, reflecting on Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest, twenty‐five years after its publication, in light of the new material brought forth by Weiss, enters into a dialogue in which he shares second thoughts about his earlier work.

Building on the Ruins of the Temple: Apologetics and Polemics in Early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. By AdamGregerman. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 165. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Pp. xiv + 266. €115.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 43, Issue 3 p. 288-288 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Judaism: Hellenism Through Late Antiquity Building on the Ruins of the Temple: Apologetics and Polemics in Early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. By Adam Gregerman. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 165. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Pp. xiv + 266. €115. Andrew W. Higginbotham, Andrew W. Higginbotham Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of ReligionSearch for more papers by this author Andrew W. Higginbotham, Andrew W. Higginbotham Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of ReligionSearch for more papers by this author First published: 13 September 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.13141Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume43, Issue3Special Issue: Studying the Extraordinary: Marian Apparitions and Anomalous Religious ExperiencesSeptember 2017Pages 288-288 RelatedInformation

Early Rabbinic Judaism and the Danger in Ezekiel 1

Rabbinic tradition indicates a revision of the text of the Book of Ezekiel in the first century ce and suggests the rationale behind it. Hanania ben Hezeqiah is said to have “harmonized” Ezekiel with the Torah shortly before the first Jewish revolt, to save the book from suppression by the rabbis. Hasty redaction, followed by immediate standardization, offers the best explanation for the atrocious grammar, orthography, and syntax of the received Hebrew text, along with the plethora of words and expressions common to post-biblical Hebrew. The goal of Hanania’s project was to discourage the conflation of the enthroned figure in Ezek. 1 with the “one like a son of man” in Dan. 7:13 and thus combat the “two Powers heresy.” His project is related to the outburst of speculation on the throne of yhwh and the merkabah in the mid-first century ce

Luther against the Jews

Luther against the Jews

„Miłości pragnę, nie krwawej ofiary”. Relektura Oz 6,6 w Ewangelii według św. Mateusza

Abstrakt

祭司的ユダヤ教からラビ・ユダヤ教へ(ローマ帝国における諸民族と宗教,パネル, 第73回学術大会紀要)

祭司的ユダヤ教からラビ・ユダヤ教へ(ローマ帝国における諸民族と宗教,パネル, 第73回学術大会紀要)

The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism

The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism

The Rabbinic God and Mediaeval Judaism

From the earliest stages of Wissenschaft des Judentums, scholars of Judaism typically read statements about God in the classical sources of Judaism with a mediaeval philosophical lens. By doing so, they sought to demonstrate the essential unity and continuity between rabbinic Judaism, later mediaeval Jewish philosophy and modern Judaism. In the late 1980s, the Maimonidean hold on rabbinic scholarship began to crack when the ‘revisionist school’ sought to drive a wedge between rabbinic Judaism, on the one hand, and Maimonidean Judaism, on the other hand, by highlighting the deep continuities and links between rabbinic Judaism and mediaeval Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah). The revisionist scholars regarded rabbinic Judaism as a pre-cursor to mediaeval Kabbalah rather than mediaeval Jewish philosophy. This article provides the history of scholarship on these two methods of reading rabbinic texts and then proposes that scholars adopt a third method. That is, building on the work of recent scholarship, we should confront theological rabbinic texts on their own terms, without the guiding hand of either mediaeval Jewish framework.

Dov Weiss . Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 304 pp.

Dov Weiss . Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 304 pp.

Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135–700 CE. By Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, Yehudah Cohn, and Fergus Millar.

The idea for the Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity arose out of a conversation between its authors at the conference ‘Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine’ at the British Academy in 2008, where the need for a comprehensive and brief reference book was felt. This need was met five years later with the publication of the Handbook that is, according to its editors, ideally to be read in combination with the conference volume edited by M. Goodman and P. Alexander, and published under the conference title by Oxford University Press in 2010. The Handbook is mostly arranged as a bibliographical reference work on all the relevant modern editions, translations, commentaries, and secondary literature related to the different text corpora that are included. In addition to this arrangement, the individual sections on the various sources address questions of content, date, and language. The authors are mainly concerned with Hebrew and Aramaic works from the period given in the book title, to which they consign ‘the central place in the formation of Judaism’ (p. 1). Therefore, Greek and Latin Jewish sources from the same period have been left out, except for a Shabbat Amidah in Greek (pp. 138–9). The authors of the Handbook followed the proverb ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, which allowed them to include many texts that cannot be found in other reference works or introductions to Late Antique Jewish literature. Thus, the authors offer their intended audience of students of ancient history, theology, and of course Jewish literary and cultural history a notion of the wide range of literary and documentary evidence from Late Antiquity. The temporal classification as ‘literature of late antiquity’ from 135 to 700 ce, however, seems rather misleading for the layman. None of the texts under discussion dates back to the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 ce. Some of them nevertheless contain traditions from that period, and even earlier ones from the late Second Temple period. Thus, one might question the terminus a quo of 135 ce as both too early and too late. Since the work primarily aims at introducing Jewish literary works from the Eastern Mediterranean and Babylon, while excluding a detailed description of the political history of Palestine, it would have been more convenient to take the redaction of the Mishnah around 200 ce as a starting point—the earliest completed rabbinic work, whose redaction by R. Yehudah HaNasi is not disputed among scholars of Rabbinic Judaism. In addition, some of the texts such as Qohelet Rabbah and Kallah may even be post-talmudic and thus belong to the early Middle Ages. Moreover, the authors themselves justifiably raise awareness of the problems related to some of the rabbinic texts included: they are best characterized as open-ended products of school discourses that are likely to contain not only ancient traditions but also medieval accretions, due to the fact that the oldest attainable manuscripts originate in the Middle Ages (p. xi). For this reason, a more open time-frame from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages might have better matched the character of the texts, while at the same time not questioning the relevance of both the Handbook and the sources for the study of Late Antiquity.

Rethinking the Notion of Universality in Judaism and its Implications

The Vatican document, “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable,” insists that the covenant between God with Israel “has never been revoked,” yet at the same time asserts that there is universal salvation for the world through Christ, that “Christ is also the Redeemer of the Jews” and that Jews and Christians are ultimately “united in Christ.” What is termed universality in this document is essentially triumphalist universality, in which salvation is the universal goal open to everyone, but ultimately through Christ. Yet this triumphalist universalism has its roots in the Hebrew Bible itself, in which the salvation of the world lies in everyone accepting the specific monotheism of Israel, and this triumphalist view continues in rabbinic Judaism as well. Nevertheless, the seeds of an inclusive universalism, in which all people are worthy in the eyes of God whether they part of Israel or not, does appear in the Tanakh and in rabbinic sources, and this inclusive universalism can serve as a model for Jews and Christians today.

Pauline Traditions and the Rabbis: Three Case Studies

The comparative study of Paul and the rabbis, an interest of students of the New Testament ever since Christian Hebraism, radically changed in the second half of the twentieth century. If “the study of relations between Judaism and early Christianity, perhaps more than any other area of modern scholarship, has felt the impact of World War II and its aftermath,” then, within this, Pauline scholarship has felt this impact the most. Various post-Holocaust studies read Paul not only in connection to early Judaism but specifically to rabbinic Judaism, which they saw as the epitome of both halakhic and Midrashic discourses. Turning to Tannaitic and Amoraic literatures expressed an urgent need to recontextualize Paul as part of traditional Judaism.

Matrilineality in rabbinic Judaism

This paper examines the origins of matrilineal principle in rabbinic Judaism and analyses the most important motives for this rabbinic practice. Despite the fact that marriage was recognized as a sensitive part of a private sphere, Ezra brought huge legal changes in Judea in the 5th century BC. He has excluded foreign wives from the corpus of Jewish people. There are still many dilemmas about the influence of the Roman legal system on Ezra, since it is clear that the matrilineal principle was introduced to Israelites at the time of Ezra. Orthodox Judaism still follows matrilineal descent. It holds that anyone with a Jewish mother also has irrevocable Jewish status; in other words, even if someone with a Jewish mother converts to another religion, that person is still considered Jewish by Jewish Law.

De parabels van Jezus en van de Rabbijnen als ‘media’ van Tora

Abstract This study provides the outline of the Research Project ‘Parables and the Partings of the Ways’, a comparative reading of Rabbinic and synoptic parables (Utrecht and Tilburg Universities, 2014–2019). It delineates the status quaestionis of comparative parable research, focusses on issues of form and rhetoric of parables and argues a multi-faceted methodology to study parables as religious media or ‘sensational forms’ in several contexts of teaching Torah. The development of the genre may also attest to the growth and separation of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

In Our Time: Nostra Aetate—How Catholics and Jews Built a New Relationship by James M. Barrens, and: Post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian Dialogue: After the Flood, before the Rainbow ed. by Alan L. Berger, and: Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jews by Philip A. Cunningham, and: The Holocaust and Nostra Aetate: Toward a Greater Understanding ed. by Carol

Reviewed by: In Our Time: Nostra Aetate—How Catholics and Jews Built a New Relationshipby James M. Barrens, and: Post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian Dialogue: After the Flood, before the Rainbowed. by Alan L. Berger, and: Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jewsby Philip A. Cunningham, and: The Holocaust and Nostra Aetate: Toward a Greater Understandinged. by Carol Rittner Eugene J. Fisher James M. Barrens, In Our Time: Nostra Aetate—How Catholics and Jews Built a New Relationship. St. Petersburg, FL: Mr. Media Books, 2015. Pp. 114. $5.99, paper. Post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian Dialogue: After the Flood, before the Rainbow. Edited by Alan L. Berger. Lanham, MD, and London: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2015. Pp. 162. $39.99, paper. Philip A. Cunningham, Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jews. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2015. Pp. 268. $30.00, paper. The Holocaust and Nostra Aetate: Toward a Greater Understanding. Edited by Carol Rittner. Greensburg, PA: National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, Seton Hill University, 2017. Pp. 239. $15.00, paper. These four books celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of what was has been called the most revolutionary document of our times, Nostra aetate( NA), promulgated by the Second Vatican Council on October 28, 1965. Barrens's In Our Timesuccinctly summarizes for the general reader the significance of the document, especially its fourth section on Jews and Judaism, and subsequent Catholic Church documents expanding its implications. NArejected two millennia of Christian teaching of contempt against Jews and Judaism in favor of acknowledging the ongoing validity of God's covenant with the Jews as the People of God. Barrens summarizes the tragic history of accusing the Jews collectively of killing Jesus and of claiming that Judaism (the revelation by God to the Jewish People in the Hebrew Scriptures [HS]) had been superseded or replaced by Christianity. The teaching of contempt led to persecution and massacres of Jews, to their marginalization and being forced into ghettos, and to blood-libel charges and expulsion from numerous European countries beginning with England in the twelfth century. The teaching of contempt laid the groundwork for the development of modern racial Antisemitism and the Holocaust/ Shoah, the founding of the State of Israel as a refuge for Jewish survivors, and the Catholic examination of conscience led by such figures as Saints John XXIII and John Paul II, French Jewish historian Jules Isaac, Cardinal Augustin Bea S.J., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Barrens presents the teachings of NAand the fruits of Catholic-Jewish dialogue since the Council, concluding with Pope Francis and the future of the relationship. Appended are key texts and a short bibliography. It is an excellent book for beginners in the field and for local parish/synagogue dialogue groups. [End Page 352] Cunningham's lengthier study will be richly rewarding for those who wish to delve more deeply into the re-thinking of Catholic understandings of the HS and the New Testament (NT), as well as the new theological understandings and insights precipitated by NAand subsequent Catholic-Jewish dialogue, with regard to both Judaism and our understanding of the nature of the church and of many of the central elements of our faith. He makes full use of the relevant Catholic documents, both of the Holy See and the U.S. Catholic Bishops, especially God's Mercy Endures Forever: Guidelines on the Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Catholic Preaching(Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, 1988). Cunningham surveys biblical scholarship, in which Catholic scholars were allowed to engage by Pope Pius XII's classic encyclical, Divino afflante Spiritu(1943), how historical-critical biblical scholarship laid the groundwork for NA, and how NAaltered our understanding of the Bible in general and of the NT—especially the epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels' presentation of Judaism, the passion narratives, and Christology. Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are seen as intertwining branches from the root of Second Temple Judaism (see Romans 9–11). NAand subsequent official documents, which in turn have been based upon the best of Catholic biblical and theological scholarship developed in...

Jewish-Christian Relations: The First Centuries by Abel Mordecai Bibliowicz, and: Jesus Reclaimed: Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene by Walter Homolka

Reviewed by: Jewish-Christian Relations: The First Centuries by Abel Mordecai Bibliowicz, and: Jesus Reclaimed: Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene by Walter Homolka Eugene J. Fisher Abel Mordecai Bibliowicz, Jewish-Christian Relations: The First Centuries. Columbus, OH: Biblio Publishing, 2016. Pp. 485. N.p., paper. Walter Homolka, Jesus Reclaimed: Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene. Translated by Ingrid Shafer. Brooklyn, NY, and Oxford, U.K.: Berghahn, 2015 (orig.: Jesus von Nazareth im Spiegel jüdischer Forschung [Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2009–11]). Pp. 144. $39.95. The authors of both of these books are Jews active in dialogue with Christians. Homolka's short and very readable book surveys the scholarship over the past two centuries of the quest for the historical Jesus and the involvement of Jewish scholars in that quest. Bibliowicz meticulously goes through the New Testament (NT) and the works of some of the Fathers of the church on Jews and Judaism, challenging scholars in the field to rethink ideas with regard to the interpretation of the NT and the development of the ancient Christian teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism. I highly recommend both books for anyone interested in the Jewish-Christian dialogue today. Jesus Reclaimed focuses especially on German and Jewish scholarship. There is an excellent foreword by Leonard Swidler and preface by Ingrid Shafer. After a brief look in the Introduction at the historical sources for recreating the life and death of Jesus, Homolka discusses Jesus as presented in the Mishnah and the Talmud and in the Jewish apologetical/polemical work, Toledoth Yeshu, which argues, among other things, that the disciples stole and hid the body of Jesus so that they could falsely claim that he had been raised from the dead. Toledoth Yeshu, Homolka correctly states, is "evidence of the suffering of the Jews in the Middle Ages" and quotes Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz that "The Christians shed our blood, we merely shed ink" (p. 18). There is a brief survey of rabbinic polemics directed at Jesus and Christian belief in the Incarnation and with Christian (mis)reading and censorship of the Talmud. Chapter 2 summarizes the scholarly "quest for the historical Jesus" and the debates and controversies that occurred between leading Christian and Jewish scholars in the field. [End Page 349] In Chapter 3 Homolka takes an extended look at the presentation of Jesus in the work of his fellow German scholar, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), criticizing Ratzinger for viewing Jesus solely through the lens of Christian doctrine, especially the doctrine of the Incarnation, and thus, in essence, missing the point of the life and teachings of Jesus, who was a pious Jew of his time. I underscore Homolka's point that Jesus and the apostles were not Christians, but Jews steeped in the Bible of their Jewish people. He concludes by noting that Jesus has been integrated into Jewish literature (and, I would add, art, e.g., Chagall); despite the differences in their theological understandings of Jesus, there is much that can be used in Jewish-Christian dialogue now and in the future. The book includes an extensive and very useful bibliography (pp. 117–134). While Jesus Reclaimed is a brief and very helpful summary of a large body of scholarly work, Jewish-Christian Relations, which makes use of that scholarship, re-visits each book of the NT, seeking in them the source of the negative (and false) portrayals of Jews and Judaism that developed in the early centuries of the church. The book has excellent forewords by two leading scholars in the field, Norman A. Beck and Clark M. Williamson. Much of what has been taken as anti-Jewish polemic in the NT, Bibliowicz argues, is a reflection of the rivalry between the original Jewish followers of Jesus and the gentile followers (and their Jewish supporters) brought into the church under the rubric of Paul, who convinced the early church Fathers that gentiles could become Christians by taking the Jewish mikvah, ritual bath. Rabbinic Judaism does require the mikvah for conversion to Judaism. We Christians call it "baptism." But, when they have become Christians, Paul argued successfully, they do not need to observe the whole of the Law but only the...

Festschriften & Collected Essays

Festschriften & Collected Essays Christopher T. Begg, Andrew E. Steinmann, Jaime A. Banister, Thomas Hieke, Bradley C. Gregory, Frederick E. Greenspahn, and Francis M. Macatangay 1996. Anneli Aejmelaeus and Tuukka Kauhanen (eds.), The Legacy of Barthélemy: 50 Years after Les Devanciers d'Aquila (De Septuaginta Investigationes 9; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). Pp. 230. $163. ISBN 578-3-525-54062-6. The majority of the ten papers making up this volume emanate from a conference held at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, in 2015 to commemorate the epoch-making text-critical monograph of Dominique Barthélemy entitled Les devanciers d'Aquila: Première publication intégrale du texte des fragments du Dodécaprophéton (VTSup 10; Leiden: Brill, 1963) more than half a century after its publication and to review the course of the discussion on topics raised by Barthélemy's work in the intervening years. The editors provide an orientation to the collection that includes summaries of the component papers. For abstracts of these, see ##1379, 1380, 1394, 1401, 1405, 1411, 1415, 1420, 1426, 1430, 1433, 1441.—C.T.B. 1997. Gary A. Anderson, Christian Doctrine and the Old Testament: Theology in the Service of Biblical Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017). Pp. 240. $29.99. ISBN 9 78-0-8010-9825-3. This volume comprises 10 essays, all but one previously published between 2001 and 2015 on the OT underpinnings of a variety of Catholic Christian doctrines. The essays are organized under four headings as follows: (1) "Who Is a God like You?" consists of: "Apophatic Theology: The Transcendence of God and the Story of Nadab and Abihu" (originally published 2015) and "The Impassibility of God: Moses, Jonah, and the Theo-Drama of Intercessory Prayer" (2008). (2) "In the Beginning" contains: "Creation: Creatio ex Nihilo and the Bible" (previously unpublished); "Original Sin: The Fall of Humanity and the Golden Calf" (2001); and "Election: The Beloved Son in Genesis and the Gospels" (2003). (3) "The Word Became Flesh" features: "Christology: The Incarnation and the Temple" (2008); "Mariology: The Mother of God and the Temple" (2007); and "Christology: Tobit as Righteous Sufferer" (2012). Finally, (4) "Conformed to the Image of His Son" has as its content: "The Treasury of Merits: Faith and Works in the Biblical Tradition" (2007); and "Purgatory: Sanctification in This Life and the Next" (2013). The essays are preceded by an introduction to the collection and followed by an epilogue and indexes of ancient sources, authors, and subjects. For an abstract of the one previously unpublished essay, see #1911.—C.T.B.] 1998. Hans Ausloos, Bénédicte Lemmelijn, and Julio Trebolle Barrera (eds.), After Qumran: Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts—The Historical Books (BETL 246; Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2012). Pp. xiv + 320. Paper €84. ISBN 978-90-429-2573-l. This book is a collection of papers from a symposium held in Alcala, Spain, in 2010. It contains sixteen papers organized under four headings: (1) Theological Tendencies—Historical Linguistics—Textual Criticism; (2) The Books of Samuel; (3) The Books of Judges and Joshua; and (4) The Books of Kings. For abstracts of the essays, see ##1381, 1382, 1389, 1392, 1402, 1403, 1407, 1410, 1421, 1425, 1429, 1431, 1432, 1434, 1436, 1437.—A.E.S. [End Page 652] 1999. Koert van Bekkum, Jaap Dekker, and Henk R. van de Kamp (eds.), Playing with Leviathan: Interpretation and Reception of Monsters from the Biblical World (Themes in Biblical Narrative: Jewish and Christian Traditions 21; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017). Pp. xvi + 315. $138, €130. ISBN 978-90-04-33795-4. The 16 papers on various dimensions of the monster thematic through the millennia making up this volume stem from a conference held in Kampen, the Netherlands, in April 2013. The papers, a number of which are accompanied by iconographic illustrations, are arranged under six headings: Ancient Near East (1 paper) Old Testament (5 papers); Early and Rabbinic Judaism (1 paper); New Testament and Early Christianity (3 papers); Theological Reflections (4 papers); and Iconographic Representations (2 papers). The volume opens with an introduction by the editors...

Summary Alleen bruiden, slavinnen en weduwen? De rol van vrouwen in vroegrabbijnse en vroegchristelijke gelijkenissen

Summary Some scholars have argued that the parables attributed to Jesus in the New Testament featuring women as characters have had a specifically radical and liberating quality for women within early Christianity. The present article challenges a similar appreciation of the texts by comparing them to rabbinic parables which use the same imagery and narrative techniques. This comparison demonstrates that parables as such cannot simply be used to reconstruct the sociohistorical position of women within either early Christianity or early Rabbinic Judaism.