Why another book on Jews and Christians in antiquity? The answer, according to the editors of this volume, lies, negatively, in a dissatisfaction with the way in which the subject as presently studied seems overly concerned with the question of establishing the reality behind ancient texts taken up with this subject; and positively by applying to the evidence what they term a set of spatial methods. The latter is not ‘simply a matter of mapping the distribution of religious groups in a specific area, but of using methods capable of accounting for the spatial and geographic variations of the religious phenomena that are analysed’. Such an approach does not have as its aim the creation of some unified theory. Precisely by concentrating on the local, and upon a range of material, literary, epigraphic and papyrological, the picture that emerges will be a varied and composite one.

Some of the essays under discussion come close to fulfilling what the subtitle of the book describes as ‘a regional perspective’. Willy Clarysse looks at some well and lesser known papyrological evidence for Jewish life in Ptolemaic Alexandria, some of which, interestingly, supports the idea of a Jewish politeuma, or special Jewish constitution within certain locations, though the discussion of Christianity, exclusively concerned with onomastic evidence and what it shows about population increase in the fourth and fifth centuries and beyond, appears almost as an appendix. Daniel Tripaldi examines the Apocryphon of John showing how facets of its content do not allow for a simple distinction between what is Jewish and what is Christian, and locating some of its traditions in a developing Alexandrian Jewish Hellenism; and this sense of the permeability of relations recurs in Marie-Françoise Baslez's essay on Jewish-Christian relations as presented in the Martyrdom of Pionios. An emphasis on proximity rather than separation permeates the essay by Raúl Salinero on Jewish-Christian relations in Roman Spain, here reading evidence from the early fourth-century Council of Elvira and sermons of the same city's bishop, Gregory, delivered some forty years later, as proof positive of the cordial relations between Jews and Christians on the ground. For various reasons the ecclesiastical authorities opposed this state of affairs, and by the fifth century Jewish and Christian communities ceased to interact in positive ways. The essay by Sabine Fialon on Africa is, given the evidence, necessarily sketchy and looks at the ways in which Jews are presented in a number of later (fifth- and sixth-century) martyrdom accounts from that province. These are used in part, however, to enquire as to what kind of relationship between Jews and Christians might be deduced from their presentation, a point which the editors, as has been noted, identified as an issue that, by implication, they wanted to avoid (it occurs as a concern in other essays). David Noy's essay on the inscriptional evidence for Jews and Christians in Rome points to differences and similarities between the two groups’ epigraphic habits but refrains, probably correctly, from deducing anything too precise about their interaction. Gerard Rouwhorst examines evidence relating to Jewish ritual habits in Christian sources ‘east of Antioch’. Noting the persistent attraction of some of these rituals, not least the Sabbath, for Christians, he argues that most of the relevant texts are intra-Christian rather than evidencing relations between Jews and Christians. Claude Momouni examines Jewish-Christian relations in Anatolia, especially as we find these in Ignatius’ Epistles, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Melito and some others. He posits that most Christians were originally Gentiles, even if possibly God-fearers with a link to the synagogue, and argues strongly for minimal rabbinic influence in the area, invoking in its stead the developing concept of a so-called synagogal Judaism. R. Lizzi Testa asks whether Jews were a presence in Aquileia in the fourth and fifth centuries, cautiously positing that they were and arguing for possible alliances between themselves, heretics and pagans ‘in reaction to a stronger pressing of the Nicene church’.

Other essays seem to betray a less regional approach. Peter Tomson's stimulating piece argues for the importance of the Jewish revolts in the history of early Jewish-Christian relations. These events and their aftermaths, for a variety of reasons, better explain what could be seen as an accelerating ‘split’ between Jews and Christians after 70 ce than much-touted, but insignificant, ‘theological’ differences. In one of the most interesting pieces in the volume Marco Rizzi argues for an early date for Celsus’ True word (possibly in the 130s rather than 160s or later), not only through a thoughtful refutation of traditional data favouring the later date, but also, inter alia, by arguing that the character of Jewish-Christian relations that Celsus assumes, ones in which Jews who convert to Christianity are strongly attacked and where Jews were strongly associated with strife and so revolt, implies an earlier stage in such relations. Gilles Dorival's contribution discusses places in Origen where debate with Jews is assumed, concentrating on the question of whether such interaction occurred and leaving local issues largely unexamined. Essays by Thierry Murcia and Ron Naiweld on facets of Jewish-Christian relations as found in Rabbinic and related literature are of interest (especially Naiweld's in which he shows how a number of passages in the rabbinic material, often taken to be responses to Christian assertions, can as easily be seen as responses to discussions within the Jewish community) but again not clearly related to the regional perspective touted in the subtitle and introduction. Perluigi Lanfranchi's piece is in part a study in the role of prejudice in later nineteenth-century examinations of the claim in the Life of Caesarius of Arles that the Jews allowed the Burgundians to take the city in 507, but then becomes an attempt to examine the claim itself.

The volume, then, is a collection which, perhaps inevitably, does not consistently reflect the remit set out by its editors. The essays as individual contributions are by and large informative and thoughtful, and some truly stimulating, but as a whole they do not leave the reader with a strong sense of a new avenue in this possibly over-studied area. That is in part because regional approaches have long been advocated by those interested in Jewish-Christian relations, not least because they are a potential check, as the editors imply, on more generalised and potentially misleading studies of Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity. Judith Lieu's attack, launched as early as 1989, upon the abstract nature of old-fashioned models of the parting of the ways when all that we know is local, is a case in point. The difficulty, however, illustrated by some essays in this volume is that what we in fact know of the local (given that we know the provenance of a text) in antiquity is often minimal, not least as this relates to the question of Jewish-Christian relations. Regionalism may promise a lot but may be in less of a position to deliver very much.