Rabbinic texts are often cited in New Testament and Old Testament studies, but hitherto there has been no easy way for a student to grasp the scope and variety of the relevant rabbinic writings. This book introduces the student to the full range of the early rabbinic writings, with a thorough introduction and notes, so that both a bird's eye view of the literature as well as close aquaintance with typical and important texts can be obtained. This will enable the reader to embark on further study with a clearer orientation. The book also aims to correct many mistaken views about rabbinic Judaism arising from outdated conceptions of the relation between Christianity and Judaism.

Seeks the origins of later Christian anti-Judaism in Gnosticism and Pauline theology. Describes Gnostic anti-Judaism as directed primarily against the Jewish God and his law, rather than against the Jewish people who are their blind servants. Judaism for the Gnostics is more contemptible than dangerous, since its power is only in this world, to which the Gnostics attached no importance. Suggests that their hostility was aroused by Judaism's claim to equate its God with the higher God of Hellenistic thought. Paul took over much of the Gnostic two-power scheme, including the view of the Jews as blind servants of the Law. Argues that his own anti-Judaism did not go beyond that of the Gnostics. But in seeing the Crucifixion as central to salvation, and in singling out the Jews for a special role in salvation history, he added to the Gnostic two-power theology elements that later took shape as the Christian view of the Jews as Christ-killers and instruments of Satan.

The book describes in detail the ritual purity system of the Hebrew Bible, and its development into the system of the rabbis. Certain human conditions require purification before contact is made with holy foods or areas. Recent scholarly theories (Milgrom, Neusner, Douglas) are discussed, and new theories are proposed for the origin of the Red Cow and Scapegoat rites. It is argued that the impurities concerned all derive from the human cycle of generation, birth and death, from which the Sanctuary is to be guarded; not because it needs protection from demonic powers (as in other ancient purity systems), but because of the reverence due to the divine presence. While the priestly code of holiness displays traces of earlier conceptions, its ritual has lost urgent salvific force, and has become a protocol for the Temple and a dedicatory code for a priestly people; the sources distinguish it from universal morality.