volume 16, issue 1, 2024, pages 50-76

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsAKHH7983
Published online: 2024-06-01
Published in print: 2024-06-30

Abstract: An important aspect of memory studies regarding Jewish religious tradition is that memory and faith are interconnected and as such represent its basic character. Besides an essential function of memory, which is to describe and analyze how the past was shaped to make a common identity of the community in the present, remembering is also, as Simon Butticaz and Enrico Norelli have aptly remarked on this interdependency, a semantic category with significant theological implications. It is a typical character of Jewishness that confirms this fact. The goal of this paper is to explore the conceptualization of the term Ioudaïsmos during the Second Temple period, from Maccabees through Paul the Apostle, up to nascent Christianity in the early Second Century CE, including its impact on the self-conception of the groups of non-Jewish Jesus followers. The findings of this investigation confirm that applying this approach to the topic enables us to understand this term, including its semantic shift historically and contextually, without bias and traditional (anti-Jewish) stereotypes.