Review of Eric C. Smith, Jewish Glass and Christian Stone: A Materialist Mapping of the “Parting of the Ways.” Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World. London and New York: Routledge (2018). Review of Biblical Literature (original) (raw)

Material religion, meet the "parting of the ways." In his new book, Eric C. Smith plays matchmaker between these two subareas of religious studies scholarship: one a burgeoning field that highlights the importance of material remains as a supplement to understandings of religion that are driven by textual sources, the other a central question in the origins of Judaism and Christianity that considers how and why the two religions diverged from one another. What becomes of this new match that Smith orchestrates? Well, it gets messy, but in a good way.