At your service: actions speak louder than words.

(DB) Among those different types of Jews, we will find "proselytes, G d-fearers, and gerim." The "proselytes" were non-Jews who completely threw their lot in with the Jewish people and became Jews, while the "G d-fearers" remained identified as Greeks and pagans but adhered to the G d of Israel and the synagogue because they admired the religion of the One G d. The gerim, sojourners or resident aliens, were Gentiles who lived among Jews in "their" land. As such, they were required to observe certain laws of the Torah and received certain protections and privileges as well. It has been recently pointed out that the 'gerim' were required to keep precisely the laws marked out in Acts for Gentile followers of Yeshua, thus giving even these a place in the household of Israel!

Talking about the borders of Judaism and Christianity is much more complicated (and interesting) than we might have thought previously. Belief in Yeshu was one of many overlapping forms of the complex of practices and convictions that we today call Judaism. But it is no longer clear that even this is the most interesting or important difference among various Jewish groups as seen from that time, as opposed to a view from our time with all the history that has intervened. Jews who didn't accept Yehoshua haNatsri shared many ideas with Jews who did, in-cluding ideas that today mark off any absolute difference between two religions, Judaism & Christianity. Some of those ideas were very close, if not identical, to the ideas of the Father and the Son and even the 'incarnation'. Not to pay attention to this is to continue to commit the theologically founded anachronism of seeing Jews (and thus Jewish Jesus folk also) as more or less "Jewish" insofar as they approach the religion ~ verbal and embodied practices ~ of the Rabbis.

My (Daniel Boyarin's) story is one of possibilities cut off by authorities, both orthodox Christian leaders such as Jerome on the one hand and "orthodox" ~ for Judaism the term is an anachronism and maybe even a misnomer ~ rabbinic or "Pharisaic" authorities on the other. What revisiting those possibilities might augur cannot be predicted in advance. One of those most secure ideas about the absolute difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of G d. So let's begin our journey there? {We've been together on these roads before in all (?) possible ways: hearing, seeing, walking, talking, eating, drinking, climbing & descending mountains, hills, valleys, orchards, fields, villages, cities, denominations, singing, dancing, showing, blowing, coming and going year after year and ages after ages! "At your service!"}~~~~~~~