Overview

This collection of essays investigates signs of toleration, recognition, respect and other positive forms of interaction between and within religious groups of late antiquity. At the same time, it acknowledges that examples of tolerance are significantly fewer in ancient sources than examples of intolerance and are often limited to insiders, while outsiders often met with contempt, or even outright violence. The essays take both perspectives seriously by analysing the complexity pertaining to these encounters. Religious concerns, ethnicity, gender and other social factors central to identity formation were often intertwined and they yielded different ways of drawing the limits of tolerance and intolerance. This book enhances our understanding of the formative centuries of Jewish and Christian religious traditions. It also brings the results of historical inquiry into dialogue with present-day questions of religious tolerance. The book contains contributions by Ismo Dunderberg, Carmen Palmer, Michael Labahn, Nina Nikki, Anna-Liisa Rafael, Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, Galit Hasan-Rokem & Israel Yuval, Paul Middleton, Outi Lehtipuu, Elizabeth Dowling, and Amy-Jill Levine.

Full Product Details

Author:   Outi Lehtipuu ,  Michael Labahn
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.580kg
ISBN:  

9781041189626

ISBN 10:   1041189621
Pages:   314
Publication Date:   01 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

I Introduction: Outi Lehtipuu & Michael Labahn, II Conditions of Tolerance, From Conflict to Recognition: Rethinking a Scholarly Paradigm in the Study of Christian Origins (Ismo Dunderberg), Mutable Ethnicity in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Intertwined Acts of Tolerance and Intolerance (Carmen Palmer), Der geliebte Feind: Wahrnehmung des Anderen in Jesu Gebot der Feindesliebe und ihre Rezeption im Dokument Q - ein Beispiel antiker Toleranz und Anerkennung? (Michael Labahn), III Jewish-Christian Relations between Tolerance and Intolerance, Was Paul Tolerant? An Assessment of William S. Campbell's and J. Brian Tucker's Particularistic Paul (Nina Nikki), Since When Were Martyrs Jewish? Apologies for the Maccabees' Martyrdom and Making of Religious Difference (Anna-Liisa Rafael),Hiding One's Tolerance: Cyril's Use of Philo (Sami Yli-Karjanmaa), Rabbinic Reflections on Divine-Human Interactions: Speaking in Parables on the Miracle of Pregnancy and Birth (Galit Hasan-Rokem & Israel J. Yuval), IV Tolerance and Questions of Persecution, Gender, and Ecology, Were the Early Christians Really Persecuted? All who Desire to Live a Godly Life in Christ Jesus will be Persecuted. (2 Tim 3:12) (Paul Middleton), No Male and Female: Women and the Rhetoric of Recognition in Early Christianity (Outi Lehtipuu), Learning from Others: Reading Two Samaritan Stories in the Gospel of Luke from an Ecological Perspective (Elizabeth V. Dowling), V Epilogue: Amy-Jill Levine, Index.

Reviews

''This superb volume will be of interest not only to those wishing to learn how tolerance and recognition can be understood and analyzed in ancient contexts, but also to those who seek to use the evidence of the ancient world to think and speak about similar concerns in the present day''.,-Jeffrey Cross, Church History Journal , June 2023

Author Information

Outi Lehtipuu is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her recent publications include Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead: Constructing Early Christian Identity (2015). Michael Labahn is außerplanmäßiger Professor at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. He is co-editor with Lehtipuu of the volume People under Power: Early Jewish and Christian Responses to the Roman Empire (AUP 2015).

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