| This study investigates "the separation of the church and the synagogue in first-century Rome." We speak of the "church" and the "synagogue" because it is only in their concrete forms that Christianity and Judaism can be investigated historically. We refer to "first-century Rome" because the church and the synagogue are not global abstractions but local realities bound by time and space. We speak of the "separation" of these two institutions because we know that at one point some of the followers of Jesus Christ were to be found in the synagogue. We do not speak of a separation of the church "from" the synagogue because it is our view that it is socially and historically meaningless to speak of the church existing within the synagogue.;This study argues that the separation between the church and the synagogue in Rome happened much earlier than has previously been thought possible. This is based largely upon an investigation of the edict of Claudius, the persecution under Nero, the unlikelihood that a nonproselyte Gentile could belong to a synagogue, and the relevant literature associated with the church in Rome---predominantly Romans, but also Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas , and Ignatius' Romans. Furthermore, this study argues that within the church in Rome tensions arose between some ethnic-Jews and some ethnic-Gentiles that were aggravated by the tensions inherent in the church being both a Jewish sect and a Greco-Roman cult. This distinction, and the implications drawn from it, is based upon a Rational Choice Theory understanding of the nature of sects and cults as developed by Rodney Stark.;This dual-nature of the church, and the tensions associated with it, can be detected in the background of Paul's letter to the Romans. The mutually excluding tendencies of sectarians and cultists threatened to create a situation in which two separate Christian churches would be formed. Paul writes to the church in Rome, in part, to promote the unity of this church that was seriously challenged by these tensions. |
