"Encourages us to see historic Christianity as but one expression of a universalistic potential in Jewish monotheism... In a fruitful career not yet nearly over, Border Lines, the culmination of many years of work, may well remain Daniel Boyarin's masterpiece."-Jack Miles, Commonweal Preface: Interrogate My Love ix List of Abbreviations xvii 1 Introduction 1 Part I Making a Difference: The Heresiological Beginnings of Christianity and Judaism 2 Justin's Dialogue with the Jews: The Beginnings of Orthodoxy 37 3 Naturalizing the Border: Apostolic Succession in the Mishna 74 Part II The Crucifixion of the Logos: How Logos Theology Became Christian 4 The Intertextual Birth of the Logos: The Prologue to John as a Jewish Midrash 89 5 The Jewish Life of the Logos: Logos Theology in Pre- and Pararabbinic Judaism 112 6 The Crucifixion of the Memra: How the Logos Became Christian 128 Part III Sparks of the Logos: Historicizing Rabbinic Religion 7 The Yavneh Legend of the Stammaim: On the Invention of the Rabbis in the Sixth Century 151 8 "When the Kingdom Turned to Minut": The Christian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion 202 Concluding Political Postscript: A Fragment 227 Notes 229 Bibliography 333 Index 361 Acknowledgments 373