This study explores the historical development of orthodoxy and heresy within early Judaism and Christianity, challenging the notion of a natural "parting of the ways." The author argues that the division was an imposed partitioning, much like political borders, with heresiologists acting as "customs inspectors" who defined boundaries and declared certain ideas and practices as "contraband." This process involved both Christian writers like Justin Martyr constructing an independent Christianity, partly by labeling Logos theology as distinctly Christian, and Rabbis simultaneously defining Jewish identity by rejecting binitarian ideas, effectively "crucifying the Memra." In Aramaic, "memra" (מִמְרָא) translates to "word" or "speech.” Ultimately, the sources suggest that the very efforts to create distinct religious identities inadvertently led to the mutual development of heresiological discourse and the concept of "religion" itself as a category separate from ethnic or genealogical identity.
0. Jewish Christian Border Lines: Introduction
1. Justin's Dialogue with the Jews: The Beginnings of Orthodoxy
2. Naturalizing the Border: Apostolic Succession in the Mishna
3. The Intertextual Birth of the Logos: The Prologue to John as a Jewish Midrash
4. The Jewish Life of the Logos: Logos Theology in Pre- and Para-rabbinic Judaism
5. The Crucifixion of the Memra: How the Logos Became Christian
6. The Yavneh Legend of the Stammaim: On the Invention of the Rabbis in the Sixth Century
7. The Christian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion