Source: “Border lines : The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” By Daniel Boyarin, University of Pennsylvania Press. 2004
The Christian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion.wav
This podcast argues that in the late Roman Empire, particularly during the 4th and 5th centuries, Christianity actively invented the concept of "religion" as a distinct category separate from ethnicity or nationality. Through texts like heresiologies and legal codes, Christians defined themselves and others, portraying groups like Hellenists and Jews as separate "religions," even labeling Jewish-Christian groups as hybrid "heresies" or "nothing." Paradoxically, this Christian effort to define and legitimize itself as a distinct religion led to the unintended consequence of also legitimizing Judaism as a separate, though "wrong," religion within the empire, fostering a new form of inter-group understanding. Ultimately, while Christianity embraced this new "religious" identity, rabbinic Judaism, especially in the Babylonian Talmud, refused this Christian definition of religion, instead re-ethnicizing difference and continuing to see themselves as distinct from all Gentiles, including Christians.
The Epistemic Shift Towards Religious Self-Definition: A significant transformation occurred in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, evidenced by texts across different genres like heresiology, historiography, and law. This shift involved the gradual replacement of older forms of self-definition based on kinship and land with a new Christian notion centered on "religious" alliance. This period saw a "discursive universe" emerge with a common goal: the reorganization of life under a single, totalized imperial Christian framework. This process was linked to the rise in prominence of the Christian holy land, where Christian authors produced knowledge about Jews to construct a comprehensive vision of "Christianness."
The Invention of Christianity as a Disembedded Religion: A core element of the construction of "Christianness" was the invention of Christianity as a "religion," meaning it was disembedded from other cultural practices and identity markers. Fourth-century Christians were already committed to the idea of religions and understood the distinction between religious definition and other modes of identity formation. This involved turning practices into a formal institution that one must join, moving away from definitions tied solely to ethnicity or language.
Julian's Adoption of the Christian Model of Religion: Emperor Julian, despite his hostility towards Christianity, structured his own religiosity deeply by the model of Christianity. He participated in inventing a new notion of religion as a category and a regime of power/knowledge. Julian insisted that only those who believed in Hellenism could understand and teach it, using this to deny Christian teachers the right to teach philosophy. His action had the effect of inventing a new religion and religious identity for people in the Roman empire, making paideia (education/culture) a controlled commodity linked to a form of orthodoxy. Julian even articulated the notion of religion as a universal, the "universal yearning for the divine that is in all men."
Christian Definitions of "Religion" Distinct from Ethnicity: Christian thinkers like Gregory Nazianzen and Eusebius articulated a concept of "religion" that was distinct from ethnicity or language. Gregory, for instance, debated Julian's claim that Hellenism was a religion, suggesting that if it were, it would need to have received its rules from a specific place (like a book?) and priests, separate from merely being the identity of a people or a language. This indicated that Gregory had a definition of "religion" as an object distinct from ethnos. Eusebius clearly articulated Christianity, Hellenism, and Judaism as distinct "religions," suggesting that there was a concept of "religion" taking different "forms," a significant conceptual shift from earlier antique sources where religio referred to a single act of worship tied to culture and politics, not a separate system.
"Religion" as a Christian Cultural Product: The source argues against the idea that "religion" is a transhistorical or transcultural phenomenon with an autonomous essence. Instead, it contends that "religion" is a Christian cultural product, later appropriated by others. While some argue this notion emerged in the post-Reformation period, the source places its specific Christian history much further back, in the late Roman Empire. Key aspects often seen as generic features of religion (symbolic meanings, general order, generic functions) are argued to have a specific Christian history.
Semantic Shift of "Religio" and "Superstitio": A crucial conceptual shift occurred in the meaning of the Latin terms religio and superstitio. In early Roman usage, superstitio was not necessarily the binary opposite of religio but could be an excessive or improper form of worship, whether of the right gods or foreign ones. It focused on acts and practices. Under Christianity, superstitio was applied to paganism and transformed in meaning. It shifted from referring primarily to the worshiper's practices (especially excessive ones) to solely denoting "wrong belief and worship" – any worship of the wrong gods, not just improper worship of the right ones. Consequently, religio also shifted, becoming defined not as practices for maintaining social order but as belief in what is true, sanctioned by orthodox authority. These terms ceased to name acts and began to name institutions and communities; one no longer performed a religio or superstitio, but belonged to one.
Heresiology and the Creation of Boundaries: Christian heresiology, particularly in the work of Epiphanius, played a central role in this process. Heresiologists classified groups not just by ethnic names but as "heresies," which functioned as alternative "religions" other than orthodox Christianity. This discourse created and reinforced a binary opposition between "pure," orthodox forms (Christianity and Judaism) and "hybrid" or "nothing" groups, specifically the Jewish-Christian heresies like Ebionites and Nazoreans. These hybrid figures, by transgressing the newly established borders between Christianity and Judaism, paradoxically reified those boundaries. Heresiology was not just about defining right doctrine but also about establishing a discourse of purity versus hybridity, requiring the hybrid as an opposite term to guarantee the existence of the pure.
Judaism in the Theodosian Code as Superstitio Licita: The Theodosian Code illustrates the complex position of Judaism within the Christian empire. While older Roman usage sometimes referred to Judaism as superstitio, after 416, it was exclusively designated as such. However, paradoxically, the same period saw increasing legislative legitimation of Judaism, including recognition of the Sabbath, festivals, priesthood, synagogues, and the power of Jewish leaders like the Patriarchs. This suggests that superstitio had shifted meaning; Judaism became, in effect, a superstitio licita – a legitimate, though wrong, religion. This status was crucial because it positioned Judaism as a separate, bounded entity from which conversion to orthodox Christianity was possible, in contrast to heresies which were treated as internal threats. The code prioritized protecting Jews living quietly from violent attacks by Christians, while vigorously condemning hybrid groups.
Shift in Rabbinic Understanding of "Minut": Contemporaneous developments in rabbinic Judaism, particularly in the Babylonian Talmud, mirrored the Christian move to define difference religiously, but with a re-ethnicization. The term minut, which in earlier Palestinian texts referred to Jewish heresy (like Jewish Christianity), shifted meaning. In the Babylonian Talmud, minut came to mean the religious practices of the Gentiles, specifically the Christian Romans. Christianity was no longer seen as a threatening internal blurring but as a clearly defined external entity. This semantic shift changed the interpretation of older stories, where arrest for minut was reinterpreted as arrest for practicing Judaism (which was minut from the Roman perspective), rather than for association with Jewish-Christian groups. For the Babylonian Talmud, the other is the Gentile (Christian), reflecting a full re-ethnicization of religious difference.
Rabbinic Refusal of "Religion" and the Nature of Jewish Identity: Ultimately, the source argues that rabbinic Judaism, despite being interpellated as a "religion" by the Christian empire, significantly resisted defining itself in the Christian sense of a system of beliefs and practices to which one adheres voluntarily, with defalcation leading to heresy. Instead, rabbinic discourse came to emphasize a different model of identity, captured by the principle "an Israelite, even though he sin, remains an Israelite." This watchword, appearing late in classical rabbinic literature (Babylonian Talmud), suggests a rejection of the notion of heresy as a concept that could remove one from the community. Judaism refused to be, in the end, a "religion" in the Christian understanding of a belief-based system with strict internal boundaries policed by identifying and excluding heretics.