It's Complicated: Jews and Christians in the First Centuries CE

The relationship between Jews and Christians in the first centuries CE was far more complicated than a simple story of separation, conflict, or replacement. This talk explores the lively contact, rivalry, and dialogue that shaped both traditions. Drawing on rabbinic texts, the Babylonian Talmud, and the writings of the Church Fathers, it reveals how Jews and Christians developed their identities in conversation with one another—in religious practice, biblical interpretation, and theology.

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Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is a scholar of rabbinic Judaism. Her work focuses on aspects of Jewish-Christian interactions in the ancient world, and compares between Early Christian and rabbinic sources. She is a full professor at The Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and was an elected member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences. She was a visiting professor at Yale, Upenn law school and is now the Gruss visiting professor at Harvard law School.

Her first book is Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2013, winner of the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award). Her second book is Jewish – Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2019, a finalist, National Jewish Book Award (2019).) and her forthcoming book is Jews and Christians in the First Centuries CE: Complicated Beginnings, Cambridge University Press.