Jewish and Christian Festivals and Their Liturgies in the Context of Late Antique Civilizations

Basic data for this project

Description

Jews and Christians developed sophisticated systems of liturgies and customs for festivals during the first millennium (C.E.). The project investigates traces of the formative period of these systems, especially in rabbinic literature and contemporary Christian and other Jewish texts. It tries to establish criteria for the explanation of clear similarities as well as differences between the systems and customs. Regarding the middle ages, cultural contacts between Christians and Jews can be described on a relatively broad basis of historical data. The project traces such contacts back into earlier epochs where the two later religions were on the way of developing their identities not only vis-à-vis the respective other, but also embedded in the civilization of the Roman Empire, that predetermined ways of organization and interaction of groups and associations even before they could shape their own customs and rituals according to their inherited concepts and beliefs. Recent approaches to explain the relationship between Judaism and Christianity (e.g. I. Yuval, D. Boyarin, P. Schäfer) as well as renewed interest in the Roman associations and their networks provide new data, insights, and methods that require also a reevaluation of the history of Jewish and Christian festivals.