Verus Israel: Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire, AD 135-425

by Marcel Simon

Marcel Simon's classic study examines Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire from the second Jewish War (132-5 CE) to the end of the Jewish Patriarchate in 425 CE. First published in French in 1948, the book overturns the then commonly held view that the Jewish and Christian communities gradually ceased to interact and that the Jews gave up proselytizing among the gentiles. On the contrary, Simon maintains that Judaism continued to make its influence felt on the world at large and to be influenced by it in turn. He analyses both the antagonisms and the attractions between the two faiths, and concludes with a discussion of the eventual disappearance of Judaism as a missionary religion. The rival community triumphed with the help of a Christian imperial authority and a doctrine well adapted to the Graeco-Roman mentality.

554 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

Reviews

[Laura Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really revealing of my own inadequacies as a scholar, but I really wish there had been translations of all the Latin.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful introduction to the relations between Jews and Christians in the first 500 years AD (135-425, to be precise). Simon argues that Judaism during his period, contrary to scholarly opinion up to that point (1948) had not cut itself off from the world. Rather, Judaism participated actively in the Greco-Roman and was a serious rival of Christianity. We know this primarily through the active proselytizing mission Judaism had. This proselytizing mission brought Judaism into conflict with Christianity and accounts for much of the disparaging and violent rhetoric between the two.

Simon wrote the book as a doctoral thesis in 1947 and expanded into the book you have in this 1986 edition in 1948. No changes were made to the text (though more footnotes were added) to give the reader the text as written. His theories dominated the field until the 1990s when an early Jewish proselyting mission fell out of favor. Though his conflict theory of early Jewish-Christian relations has begun falling out of favor as well, this book still remains a must for anyone interested in the question of J-X relations in late antiquity. I gave it a three only to discourage tyros from reading it; if it is the only book you read on the subject, you won't get an up-to-date/accurate picture of what most scholars think happened.

The book is broken up into 3 sections with subdivisions: (1) Defining the groups, including Judaism in Palestine, Judaism in the Diaspora, nascent Christianity, and Judaism & Christianity under the Roman Empire. It unfortunately does not deal with Judaism (and Christianity) outside of the Roman Empire. (2) Where they interacted, including anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism, and Christians in Jewish writings. (3) The grey areas, including Jewish-Christianity, Judaizers, and magic.