The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism The moving apart of early Christianity from Judaism was a gradual process of de- judaisation, with separation taking place on several levels. Chapter One looks at the spread of Christianity and the physical moving apart of Jews and Christians by observing the geographical locations of the bishops attending various councils. Chapter Two examines the question of the Jewish-Christians who attempted to be both Jewish and Christian at the same time. In Chapter Three, statements about Jews in the early church councils which reveal judaising practices have been examined. Chapter Four studies the process of juridical separation of Jews from Christians as shown by an examination of the Theodosian Code. The fifth chapter examines the Jewish roots of Christian liturgy and focuses on the element that radically differentiated Christian from Jewish liturgy - its christological focus. Chapter Six speaks of the separation of Sabbath observance from Sunday observance, outlining the struggle to prevent Christians, who were accused of judaising, from celebrating the Sabbath as well as Sunday. Chapter Seven concentrates on the separation of Passover from Easter. While Chapter Eight investigates the development of a distinctly Christian archaeology, the ninth area of separation concerns the subject of Christianity in the rabbinic writings. In the nine areas studied, two pervasive causes of separation have been identified. The first concerns the non-practice of Jewish ritual law, when Christianity became predominantly a religion of non-Jews. Christianity, in order to define itself closed its ranks to Jewish practices. The second cause leading to separation was the messianic movement centred on Jesus, and the growing emphasis on the divinity of Jesus. This was reflected in the developing Christian liturgy, in the christianisation of Passover, the Eucharist and the practice of Sunday over and above the Jewish Sabbath.

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In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during the second to the fifth centuries CE. This contribution was to articulate ‘the way’ to be a Christian in a world which was not isolated from the secular, and not insulated from the reality of the Roman empire. First, I demonstrate that a tradition of texts which feature magic contests exists within the broader scope of non-canonical Christian literature (looking at this literature across communities, regions and time periods). Second, I identify what the major features of the traditions are, e.g. what form the narratives take, what the form for a magic contest is, and what the principles used to build the magic contests are, and how these principles feature in the texts. The principles I identify are power, authority, ritual, and conversion, as well as their use as historical exempla. Third, I discuss what the texts did in the context of the time period, and for the communities that produced and read them: in other words, how did the this tradition work? I show that they served multiple purposes: as tests of faith, religious truth and ways to proclaim such; as constructors and markers of group identity (and the perilous task of identifying the insiders and those who should be outsiders); as calls to unity within the overarching diversity of the times and places, and a unified front for the ‘battle’ against evil. I suggest that the texts present a model for how one could decide what the ‘true faith’ was and how one could practice it in the turbulent environment that early Christians faced both before and after Constantine.

This research project explores an area which had been touched only tangentially, being a comparative analysis of the idea and interpretations of friendship which emerge from the three vernacular collections attributed to the supervision of King Alfonso X of Castile (1252-1284): namely the Marian songs Cantigas de Santa María, the law code known as the Siete Partidas and the chronicle Estoria de España. These sources have been examined by adopting a thematic approach which has highlighted the existence of categories such as spiritual, religious and political friendships, as well as other forms of amicable relationships, including those between representatives of different religious, ethnic and social groups. Additionally, this study demonstrates that there was a conscious adoption of a specific lexicon of amicitia which contributed to reinforce either the opposition or the coincidence between friendship, companionship and counsellorship. Despite the undeniable inheritance of both classical eastern and western traditions, the works of the ‘Learned’ King present a peculiar idea of friendship which was deeply affected by contemporary historical contingencies and by the political and cultural projects of a sovereign who wanted to be regarded as a friend of his people, without denying, however, the unbridgeable gap which existed between different social groups. Interestingly, even if the Alfonsine works display a complicated range of relationships which envisage clear differences, they still outline a perfectly-balanced system within which the general and untouchable rules of friendship predominated, although in some cases certain variants were allowed in order to adapt such general requirements to contemporary social and political situations.

This paper deals with the anti-Semitic pamphlet The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is placed in the historical context of its origin, considering political and social causes behind the formulation of many previous conspiracy theories and anti-Jewish narratives and their motifs, which are eventually reflected in The Protocols. This complex conspiracy narrative is then subjected to structural analysis, which seeks to identify dominant themes structured into binary oppositions, through which it aims to capture a potential "meaning" or significance of the narrative that was relevant to readers of its time but also addresses contemporary conspiracy theorists. Finally, the work attempts to outline one of the root causes that makes Jews ideal adepts for a major role as conspirators in conspiracy narratives, that lies in their extraordinary, liminal state, defined by their relationship to the majority, in this case, Christian society.

Between 1648 CE and 1666 CE, news, rumours, and theories about the messiah and the Lost Tribes of Israel were disseminated amongst diverse populations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Employing a world history methodology, this thesis follows three sets of such narratives that were spread through the American colonies, England, the Dutch Republic, the Italian peninsula and the Ottoman Empire, connecting people separated by linguistic, religious, national, and continental divides. This dissertation starts by situating this transmission within a broader context that dates back to 1492 CE and then traces the three-stage process in which eschatological constructs originating in the Americas in the 1640s were transmitted across Europe to the Levant in the 1650s, preparing the minds of Jews and Christians for the return of these ideas from the Ottoman Empire in the 1660s. In this manner, this study seeks to make three contributions to the existing literature. It brings together often isolated historiographies, it unearths fresh archival sources, and it provides a new conceptual framework. Overall, it argues that one cannot understand the growth of apocalyptic tension that reached its peak in 1666 without examining the major historical events and processes that began in 1492 and affected Jews, Christians, and Muslims across the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds.