By focusing on the ways in which biblical ideas about blood were reinterpreted, reapplied, and re-imagined in Late Antiquity, this theme-issue of Henoch will explore the dynamics of Jewish and Christian self-definition, their parallels and points of contact, and their relationship to the broader range of reflections about the nature and power of blood in the ancient Mediterranean world. Accordingly, special attention will be paid to possible Christian responses to Jewish positions (real or imagined), and the converse - as well as to the common assumptions and concerns that late antique Jews and Christians shared with their “pagan” contemporaries.
Far from seeking to conflate Jewish and Christian approaches to blood or to collapse their differences, we seek to draw attention to the dynamics of their differentiation by specific Jewish and Christian authors working within particular cultural and social contexts. It is from this perspective that we investigate the commonalities informing these discourses, as variously rooted in the scriptures shared by Jews and Christians, their contestation over ancient Israelite concepts of chosenness, and their common participation in the broader late antique cultural landscape - commonalities thus reproduced in these discourses, even despite their differences. Accordingly, our aim is not only to analyze the symbolic significance of blood for various groups within Judaism and Christianity; rather, we hope also to shed light on the social and cultural parameters within which these discourses of blood operated.
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