Three Powers in Heaven

A fresh look at how Christianity and Judaism became two distinct religions through the parting of their intellectual traditions.

How, when, and why did Christianity and Judaism become separate religions? This book reinterprets the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians in late antiquity as a split between two intellectual traditions, a split that took place in the context of Christian theological debates. By demonstrating that the constitution of communal borders coincided with the elaboration of different ways of producing religious knowledge, Emanuel Fiano shows that Christian theological controversies, often thought to teach us nothing beyond the history of dogma, can cast light on the broader religious landscape of late antiquity.

Fiano marks not only a historical but also a methodological intervention in the study of the parting of the ways and in the study of late ancient religion more broadly. In his thought-provoking book we observe Christianity fall away from Judaism through the constitution of its own intellectual tradition, sustained by new practices for religious inquiry.