synagogue leaders to ask anyone suspected of being a secret “Nazarene” to “stand before the ark” and lead the congregation in the benediction, so that anyone guilty of being a Christian would be calling a curse upon himself and his fellow believers. The historian Reuven Kimelman disagrees, and argues that this ritual curse entered synagogue services considerably later and so could not have precipitated a first-century crisis. The author of John speaks, however, as if synagogue leaders had taken measures more drastic than the birkat ha-minim, suggesting that they actually excluded Jesus’
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