This focused collection of essays by international scholars first uncovers the roots of the study of ancient Jewish Christianity in the Enlightenment in early eighteenth-century England, then explores why and how this rediscovery of Jewish Christianity set off the entire modern historical debate over Christian origins. Finally, it examines in detail how this critical impulse made its way to Germany, eventually to flourish in the nineteenth century under F. C. Baur and the Tübingen School. Included is a facsimile reproduction of John Toland’s seminal Nazarenus (1718), which launched the modern study of Jewish Christianity. The contributors are F. Stanley Jones, David Lincicum, Pierre Lurbe, Matt Jackson-McCabe, and Matti Myllykoski.

F. Stanley Jones is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Director of the Institute for the Study of Judaeo-Christian Origins at California State University, Long Beach. He has published widely on the subject of Jewish Christianity, including An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine "Recognitions" 1.27–71 (Scholars Press/Society of Biblical Literature) and Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana: Collected Studies (Peeters).