Reading New Testament Texts Within Judaism: Networks of Jesus-Followers from Among Jews and Gentiles

The contributors engage in a critical dialogue on the "within Judaism" trend as a heuristic perspective whose historical, exegetical, and methodological consistency calls for careful examination. By attempting
- and in some cases challenging - a reading of New Testament texts as Jewish literature, they investigate how early followers of Jesus and their textual expressions took shape within the plural world of early Judaism in its Greco-Roman environment. They evaluate the approach's explanatory power, its limits, and what its application achieves when directed toward specific texts.
To begin with, definitional and methodological issues are addressed: how the boundaries of "Judaism" should be drawn, whether the Jewishness of individual writings must be demonstrated case by case, and how chronological, ethnic, or theological criteria contribute to classification. The contributors further explore how interethnic settings of the first century reshaped perceptions of boundaries between Jews and Gentiles, including eschatological and soteriological aspects.
They also investigate, through New Testament texts, interactions between believers in Jesus and the broader Jewish ethnos, highlighting inner-Jewish tensions, Roman and pagan perceptions, and the role of external observation in shaping emerging identities.
Literary and genre-oriented contributions examine how Gospels, letters, and the Apocalypse function as rhetorical acts of self-definition. Attention to Greco-Roman forms such as the bios underscores the need for broader interpretive frameworks, including social identity complexity theory. Contributions on worship, messianic faith, and life practices situate even polemical or innovative features within the diverse spectrum of early Judaism.