Abstract:
This essay seeks to rethink the inscription of difference in early Christianity by focusing on the role of the circumcision of Jesus—a paradigmatically Jewish mark on the Christian savior''s body—in early Christian "dialogue"-texts (both external dialogues, such as Justin''s
Dialogue with Trypho, as well as
erotapokriseis-texts, here framed as internal dialogues). When we examine how difference is both inscribed and deferred in these texts, as it is on Christ''s body, we can realize how difference is never really "other" but always retained within the chorus of Christian cultural identity, a productive heteroglossia that recalls the dominant strategies of Roman imperial power.
Dialogical Differences: (De-)Judaizing Jesus’ Circumcision ANDREW S. JACOBS This essay seeks to rethink the inscription of difference in early Christianity by focusing on the role of the circumcision of Jesus—a paradigmatically Jewish mark on the Christian savior’s body—in early Christian “dialogue”-texts (both external dialogues, such as Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, as well as erotapokriseis-texts, here framed as internal dialogues).
When we examine how difference is both inscribed and deferred in these texts, as it is on Christ’s body, we can realize how difference is never really “other” but always retained within the chorus of Christian cultural identity, a productive heteroglossia that recalls the dominant strategies of Roman imperial power. CIRCUMCISION AND THE DIALOGIC IMAGINATION In recent decades, historians of ancient Christianity have become increasingly sensitized to the complex processes of differentiation, rewriting the simplified “Eusebian” model of providentially guided progression of a singular, distinct “Church.”1 In this complicating mode, these historians often turn to the murky processes of early Christian “self-definition.” Over a quarter century ago, Robert Markus elegantly noted: Journal of Early Christian