The latest edition of the Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting (6) is now out. Once again, it offers some extremely good and interesting article.

Over the past year, I have noticed an increased interest in the question of vegetarianism and veganism. In this edition, Simon J. Joseph (University of California) investigates vegetarianism and Christian origins: Other Voices: Remembering the marginalized vegetarian in the study of Christian origins.

Interestingly, his conclusion mirrors some of the arguments being used today in the light of industrialised meat economy and environmental crises. He argues:

There is good reason to think that Jewish Christian vegetarianism may have had less to do with maintaining the laws of kashrut in foreign Lands, lamenting the loss of the Temple, or practicing asceticism, and more to do with efforts to realize and enact their eschatological convictions, one of which was the restoration of the antediluvian diet prescribed by God in Genesis 1, and to develop such early eschatological convictions in a progressively more philosophical direction.

Simon J. Joseph

There is also a fascinating article by Nils H. Korsvoll examining the discovery of late-Antique incantation bowls which invoke the name of Jesus.

Kathy Ehrensperger asks why Paul used the political term politeuma rather than ekklēsia in Philippians, and Jill Hicks-Keeton provides “a broader literary context in which Paul’s construal of diaspora-homeland relations should be situated”.

As before the journal can be read on a magazine-style screen reader (just click on the screen below) as well as offering the facility to download each article as an individual pdf.

Contents

• Jill Hicks-Keeton – Putting Paul in his place: Diverse diasporas and sideways spaces in Hellenistic Judaism.
• Kathy Ehrensperger – The Politeuma in the Heavens and the Construction of Collective Identity in Philippians.
• Simon J. Joseph – Other Voices: Remembering the marginalized vegetarian in the study of Christian origins.
• Karin Hedner Zetterholm – Jewish teaching for Gentiles in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies: A Jewish reception of ideas in Paul and Acts shaped by a Jewish milieu?
• Nils H. Korsvoll – Jesus of Nazareth Revisited: Markham J. Geller’s apotrophaic Jesus forty years later.
• Craig A. Evans and Marijn van Putten – “I am the Messiah and I can Revive the Dead” A Critical Note on T-S NS 164.26 a Fragment of the Toledot Yeshu.
• Jonathan Klawans – Review Article: Matthew V. Novenson’s major work, The Grammar of Messianism