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Parting of the Ways
The Parting of the Ways is James Dunn's classic exploration of the important questions that surround the emergence of Christian distinctiveness and the pulling apart of Christianity and Judaism in the first century of our era. The book begins by surveying the way in which questions have been approached since the time of F C Baur in the nineteenth century. The author then presents the four pillars of Judaism: monotheism, election and land, Torah and Temple. He then examines various issues which arose with the emergence of Jesus: Jesus and the temple; the Stephen affair; temple and cult in earliest Christianity; Jesus, Israel and the law; 'the end of the law'; and Jesus' teaching on God. The theme of 'one God, one Lord', and the controversy between Jews and Christians over the unity of God, lead to a concluding chapter on the parting of the ways. The issues are presented with clarity and the views and findings of others are drawn together and added to his own, to make up this comprehensive volume. James Dunn was Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham until his recent retirement. He is the author of numerous best-selling books and acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on New Testament study.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
James D.G. Dunn
130 books90 followersJames D. G. ("Jimmy") Dunn (born 1939) was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. Since his retirement he has been made Emeritus Lightfoot Professor. He is a leading British New Testament scholar, broadly in the Protestant tradition. Dunn is especially associated with the New Perspective on Paul, along with N. T. (Tom) Wright and E. P. Sanders. He is credited with coining this phrase during his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture.
Dunn has an MA and BD from the University of Glasgow and a PhD and DD from the University of Cambridge. For 2002, Dunn was the President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the leading international body for New Testament study. Only three other British scholars had been made President in the preceding 25 years.
In 2005 a festschrift was published dedicated to Dunn, comprising articles by 27 New Testament scholars, examining early Christian communities and their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. (edited by Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker & Stephen Barton (2004). The Holy Spirit and Christian origins: essays in honor of James D. G. Dunn. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8028-2822-1.)
Dunn has taken up E. P. Sanders' project of redefining Palestinian Judaism in order to correct the Christian view of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness. One of the most important differences to Sanders is that Dunn perceives a fundamental coherence and consistency to Paul's thought. He furthermore criticizes Sanders' understanding of the term "justification", arguing that Sanders' understanding suffers from an "individualizing exegesis".
Dunn has an MA and BD from the University of Glasgow and a PhD and DD from the University of Cambridge. For 2002, Dunn was the President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the leading international body for New Testament study. Only three other British scholars had been made President in the preceding 25 years.
In 2005 a festschrift was published dedicated to Dunn, comprising articles by 27 New Testament scholars, examining early Christian communities and their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. (edited by Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker & Stephen Barton (2004). The Holy Spirit and Christian origins: essays in honor of James D. G. Dunn. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8028-2822-1.)
Dunn has taken up E. P. Sanders' project of redefining Palestinian Judaism in order to correct the Christian view of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness. One of the most important differences to Sanders is that Dunn perceives a fundamental coherence and consistency to Paul's thought. He furthermore criticizes Sanders' understanding of the term "justification", arguing that Sanders' understanding suffers from an "individualizing exegesis".
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 31, 2026
Deep dive into when and how Christianity became its own religion, instead of just a sect within Judaism. If you think about it, why did Paul continue to go to the temple throughout the book of Acts?? Weird. It helps make sense of so much of the New Testament; to see it through the lens of the writers navigating this issue of Christianity’s relationship to Judaism (this is the theme of Galatians, Romans, Ephesians, Philippians 3).
First half of Partings is fascinating (5 stars!); second half a bit of a slog (2 stars!). As i re-read through my notes, I upgraded my original rating from a 3 to a 4.
Incredibly helpful for understanding the world of the first century that the New Testament was written in.
Dunn shows how Christianity parted on the four pillars of Judaism:
1. Land focussed in Temple
2. Covenant focussed in Torah
3. Monotheism - God is One
4. Election of Israel - a covenant people, a promised land
Brilliant insights:
- Worth the price of reading to get his brilliant synthesis of Philippians 2 as a summary of Genesis 1, Ps 8, and Ps 110 (pgs 253-256)
- Really helped me understand ‘covenantal nomism' - “obedience to the law of Moses as Israel's response to God's choice of Israel to be his people”. The Jews (and Pharisees) were not legalistic and works-based, earning salvation by merit. They were saved by grace (by being born a Jew). Keeping the law was how they responded to that grace, and how they remained in the family of God. “For the devout Jew, obedience to the law was not a way of entering the covenant, not a way of winning a place in God's favour. Obedience to the Torah was what God demanded of those already within the covenant, already part of his chosen people. The law told the covenant member how to live as a covenant member.”
- Paul attacking “works of the law” was not Paul attacking salvation by works. But circumcision and purity laws as THE way to be marked as a member of the family of God. We become children of Abraham by being in Christ, through faith.
- 'Sinner’ ≠ an ethically bad person. ‘Sinner’ = someone who is outside the people of God. It was a pejorative term used in intra-Jewish squabbles, to label other Jews as not being real Jews. ‘You are not even a Jew, you are a sinner/gentile because you don’t _______ (whatever righteous deed was their marker of being a REAL Jew).’ The Pharisees’ “claim to righteousness [was] fundamental to their identity. They believed that they were being faithful to their covenant obligations and therefore were 'righteous’.” To accuse Jesus of being a friend of sinners was effectively to call him a “not-a-real-Jew”, outside the people of God.
◦ Furthermore, Jesus was confirmed to be a ‘sinner’ by his death. To die as “hung on a tree” was considered a publicly display of being outside the covenant, forever damned to exclusion from the people of God. Permanent exile. Jesus became a ‘sinner’ so that we might be declared righteous - a true son of Abraham.
- Paul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus was most likely:
◦ “God has affirmed one whom the law had cursed [Jesus]
◦ If God is 'for' one such, then he is 'for' Gentiles; to be 'in Christ' is to be in one who was reckoned outside the covenant, but nevertheless acceptable to God.
◦ Thus Paul can proclaim that in Christ the good news of…the blessing of Abraham…is after all for those outside the covenant, that is, for Gentiles.
◦ The eschatological fulfilment of the promise through Abraham does not require Gentiles to merge their ethnic identity into that of the Jewish people.”
- Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 provided the theological insight necessary to move from a centripetal religion (centered on the temple in Jerusalem) to centrifugal (the presence of God goes with the people of God). Prior to Acts 7, they assumed the nations would stream INTO Jerusalem, not that the temple would stream OUT to the nations. Stephen asserted that nearness to God and forgiveness of sins is not to be found in Jerusalem and the temple. This cut the rope that tied Christianity to Jerusalem. It was a “very crucial transition in the thought of the first Christians - from belief that God would convert Gentiles by bringing them in to worship in the Temple, to a recognition that God may actually want them to go out to the Gentiles.” Sacred space (the presence of God) was no longer confined to one room within one building within one city within one country. The entire world was to become sacred space, the temple of God.
◦ This is illustrated in the very next chapter - The Ethiopian Eunuch came to Jerusalem to be near to God. But he was unable to come near to the presence of God at the temple (as a foreigner AND a eunuch). And, even if he was able to enter, he would find that the presence of God was no longer there. BUT he got close to God as he moved away from Jerusalem and its temple - through Philip.
- It would have been SHOCKING that Stephen said the temple in Jerusalem was ‘built by human hands’. ‘Built by human hands’ is shorthand for gentile gods/idols. Temple language= ‘not built by human hands’. “For just that word to be used of the Temple would certainly have sent shock waves through any Jewish audience”
- In the ancient world, successful world-conquering kings built temples. That was a commonly known dynamic. Jesus’ claim to build a temple was a claim to kingship. That’s what Jesus was saying/doing. Becoming king and building a temple.
- Early Christianity was something never-before-seen - “It is difficult for us now to appreciate how very odd these earliest Christian home churches must have seemed in the cities of the Roman Empire. They had no temple, no priests, no sacrifices. At all these points they would have been unlike the typical cults of the time.”
First half of Partings is fascinating (5 stars!); second half a bit of a slog (2 stars!). As i re-read through my notes, I upgraded my original rating from a 3 to a 4.
Incredibly helpful for understanding the world of the first century that the New Testament was written in.
Dunn shows how Christianity parted on the four pillars of Judaism:
1. Land focussed in Temple
2. Covenant focussed in Torah
3. Monotheism - God is One
4. Election of Israel - a covenant people, a promised land
Brilliant insights:
- Worth the price of reading to get his brilliant synthesis of Philippians 2 as a summary of Genesis 1, Ps 8, and Ps 110 (pgs 253-256)
- Really helped me understand ‘covenantal nomism' - “obedience to the law of Moses as Israel's response to God's choice of Israel to be his people”. The Jews (and Pharisees) were not legalistic and works-based, earning salvation by merit. They were saved by grace (by being born a Jew). Keeping the law was how they responded to that grace, and how they remained in the family of God. “For the devout Jew, obedience to the law was not a way of entering the covenant, not a way of winning a place in God's favour. Obedience to the Torah was what God demanded of those already within the covenant, already part of his chosen people. The law told the covenant member how to live as a covenant member.”
- Paul attacking “works of the law” was not Paul attacking salvation by works. But circumcision and purity laws as THE way to be marked as a member of the family of God. We become children of Abraham by being in Christ, through faith.
- 'Sinner’ ≠ an ethically bad person. ‘Sinner’ = someone who is outside the people of God. It was a pejorative term used in intra-Jewish squabbles, to label other Jews as not being real Jews. ‘You are not even a Jew, you are a sinner/gentile because you don’t _______ (whatever righteous deed was their marker of being a REAL Jew).’ The Pharisees’ “claim to righteousness [was] fundamental to their identity. They believed that they were being faithful to their covenant obligations and therefore were 'righteous’.” To accuse Jesus of being a friend of sinners was effectively to call him a “not-a-real-Jew”, outside the people of God.
◦ Furthermore, Jesus was confirmed to be a ‘sinner’ by his death. To die as “hung on a tree” was considered a publicly display of being outside the covenant, forever damned to exclusion from the people of God. Permanent exile. Jesus became a ‘sinner’ so that we might be declared righteous - a true son of Abraham.
- Paul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus was most likely:
◦ “God has affirmed one whom the law had cursed [Jesus]
◦ If God is 'for' one such, then he is 'for' Gentiles; to be 'in Christ' is to be in one who was reckoned outside the covenant, but nevertheless acceptable to God.
◦ Thus Paul can proclaim that in Christ the good news of…the blessing of Abraham…is after all for those outside the covenant, that is, for Gentiles.
◦ The eschatological fulfilment of the promise through Abraham does not require Gentiles to merge their ethnic identity into that of the Jewish people.”
- Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 provided the theological insight necessary to move from a centripetal religion (centered on the temple in Jerusalem) to centrifugal (the presence of God goes with the people of God). Prior to Acts 7, they assumed the nations would stream INTO Jerusalem, not that the temple would stream OUT to the nations. Stephen asserted that nearness to God and forgiveness of sins is not to be found in Jerusalem and the temple. This cut the rope that tied Christianity to Jerusalem. It was a “very crucial transition in the thought of the first Christians - from belief that God would convert Gentiles by bringing them in to worship in the Temple, to a recognition that God may actually want them to go out to the Gentiles.” Sacred space (the presence of God) was no longer confined to one room within one building within one city within one country. The entire world was to become sacred space, the temple of God.
◦ This is illustrated in the very next chapter - The Ethiopian Eunuch came to Jerusalem to be near to God. But he was unable to come near to the presence of God at the temple (as a foreigner AND a eunuch). And, even if he was able to enter, he would find that the presence of God was no longer there. BUT he got close to God as he moved away from Jerusalem and its temple - through Philip.
- It would have been SHOCKING that Stephen said the temple in Jerusalem was ‘built by human hands’. ‘Built by human hands’ is shorthand for gentile gods/idols. Temple language= ‘not built by human hands’. “For just that word to be used of the Temple would certainly have sent shock waves through any Jewish audience”
- In the ancient world, successful world-conquering kings built temples. That was a commonly known dynamic. Jesus’ claim to build a temple was a claim to kingship. That’s what Jesus was saying/doing. Becoming king and building a temple.
- Early Christianity was something never-before-seen - “It is difficult for us now to appreciate how very odd these earliest Christian home churches must have seemed in the cities of the Roman Empire. They had no temple, no priests, no sacrifices. At all these points they would have been unlike the typical cults of the time.”
August 24, 2012
Scholarly, but for the persevering reader, excellent for getting a clearer view of the earliest Christian sects, and how and when they gradually grew apart from their origins in Judaism.
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September 24, 2015A thorough survey of the status of Judaism at the time of Jesus, and how Christianity slowly positioned itself as 'not Jewish.' A readable classic in the field.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews