{"id":171591,"date":"2026-02-20T16:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=171591"},"modified":"2026-02-21T07:29:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T15:29:54","slug":"decoding-shaye-j-d-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=171591","title":{"rendered":"Decoding Historian Shaye J. D. Cohen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written with AI: Per Alliance Theory<\/a>: Shaye J.D. Cohen<\/a> is a chronicler of Jewish ambiguity. He moves the origin of Judaism from the realm of legend to the realm of history. His work argues that the boundaries of Jewish identity remained porous for centuries. He challenges the idea that a single, monolithic Judaism ever existed in the ancient world.<\/p>\n

His alliance home is the prestigious secular university. He uses the tools of historical criticism and classical philology to analyze ancient sources. He treats the writings of Josephus, the Maccabees, and the early Rabbis as competing voices in a crowded marketplace. This approach denies any one group a monopoly on “authentic” Jewishness. By historicizing the development of the tradition, he replaces the idea of divine inevitability with the reality of human choice.<\/p>\n

Cohen treats the rabbinic movement with calm objectivity rather than religious deference. He argues that the Rabbis were not the undisputed leaders of the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple. Instead, they were one small group among many that eventually gained dominance. This reframing is disruptive to traditionalist alliances. It suggests that modern Orthodoxy is the result of a historical victory rather than an unbroken chain of Sinai-to-present transmission.<\/p>\n

His scholarship creates a specific crisis for boundary maintenance. He demonstrates that the definition of who is a Jew changed significantly over time. He traces the shift from a patrilineal to a matrilineal system and shows how conversion practices evolved from vague to rigid. This historical evidence complicates the efforts of modern institutions to enforce sharp, timeless standards of identity. He argues that what looks like a fixed law today was once a contested innovation.<\/p>\n

Inside Orthodox discourse, Cohen functions as a silent challenger. His work is often too clear and grounded to be dismissed as mere academic bias. He does not use the aggressive tone of a polemicist. He simply describes the evidence. This restraint makes his findings dangerous because they invite curiosity rather than defense. An educator who ignores Cohen risks leaving students vulnerable to a sudden loss of certainty when they eventually encounter the historical record.<\/p>\n

Cohen refuses to offer a communal or theological solution to the problems he raises. He does not try to build a bridge or repair a tradition. He explains the mechanics of how a religion hardens into a system. This focus on explanation over repair makes him an outsider to religious coalitions. He provides the data that demystifies the origin of the group, leaving the group to figure out how to survive the loss of its myths.<\/p>\n

In alliance terms, Cohen is a master of the contingency move. He shows that things could have been different. By proving that Judaism emerged through struggle and competition, he weakens the claim that current norms are self-evident. He offers a clarity that cannot be easily reversed. Once a student sees the human hands that shaped the tradition, the sense of inevitable divine structure begins to fade.<\/p>\n

Shaye J. D. Cohen is a category breaker.<\/p>\n

His core alliance move is to dissolve the idea that \u201cJudaism\u201d was ever a single, stable thing in antiquity. He shows that Jewish identity, belief, and practice were contested, porous, and often undefined. That shifts authority away from timeless essence and toward historical process.<\/p>\n

He undermines retrospective certainty. Rabbinic Judaism, in his account, is not the natural or inevitable form of Judaism. It is the winner of a long competition among Jewish options. That framing quietly destabilizes claims that today\u2019s Orthodoxy is simply continuity rather than outcome.<\/p>\n

His most alliance disruptive contribution is on boundaries. He shows that who counted as a Jew in antiquity was far less rigid than later halakhic systems insist. Conversion, lineage, practice, and belief varied widely. That creates problems for any coalition that relies on sharp identity enforcement.<\/p>\n

He is not hostile. He does not sneer at tradition. He historicizes it calmly. That makes his work more dangerous to boundary maintenance than polemic, because it invites assent rather than defensive rejection.<\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s authority comes from clarity and restraint. He writes cleanly. He avoids jargon. He does not overclaim. That makes his conclusions hard to dismiss as ideology. He looks like someone simply describing what happened.<\/p>\n

Inside Orthodox discourse, he functions as an invisible constraint. Educators often shape lessons to avoid the questions his work raises. Students who encounter him later often experience a delayed shock because nothing they were taught prepared them for how contingent things once were.<\/p>\n

He does not offer theology. He offers history. But in alliance terms, history is never neutral. By showing that norms emerged through struggle, he weakens the sense that current boundaries are divinely self evident.<\/p>\n

His strength is explanatory power. His weakness is communal irrelevance. He does not try to build or repair religious coalitions. He explains how they formed.<\/p>\n

In alliance terms, Cohen is a demystifier of origins. He does not tell anyone what to believe. He shows how belief systems harden. Once seen, that knowledge cannot be unseen, which is why institutions dependent on inevitability treat him cautiously even when they assign him.<\/p>\n

Cohen argues that the matrilineal principle represents a historical pivot rather than a timeless decree. He identifies a profound shift in how the Jewish people defined membership. In the biblical period, the system appears patrilineal. The children of Joseph and Moses by non-Israelite women remained within the community without question. Cohen argues that the transition to the matrilineal standard only solidified in the second century of the Common Era, likely under the influence of Roman legal concepts or as a rabbinic response to the chaos of the revolts against Rome.<\/p>\n

This findings-based approach directly challenges the traditional Orthodox alliance. The classical claim maintains that the matrilineal rule was revealed to Moses at Sinai. Cohen uses the silence of the earlier texts and the contradictions in the historical record to show that this rule emerged much later. He treats the rabbinic assertion of its antiquity as a retrospective legitimation. By placing the origin of the rule in the Roman era, he strips it of its claim to primordial status.<\/p>\n

His work on the matrilineal principle disrupts modern boundary maintenance. For contemporary Jewish institutions, this rule is a primary gatekeeping mechanism. Cohen shows that for much of Jewish history, the gate was in a different place. He demonstrates that the rabbis were innovators who reshaped the identity of the group to ensure its survival in a Greco-Roman world. This makes the rule look like a brilliant survival strategy rather than a fixed metaphysical reality.<\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s clarity on this issue makes him a quiet threat to communal certainty. He does not argue for a return to patrilineality. He simply explains that the current system is a historical development. This explanation is difficult for educators to handle because it introduces the idea of radical change into a system that prizes continuity. It suggests that if the rabbis could change the fundamental rule of identity once, the system is not as immutable as it claims.<\/p>\n

For the Orthodox educator, Cohen is the scholar who cannot be named but must be answered. His evidence is too specific to ignore. When he points out that Ezra does not explicitly invoke a matrilineal law even when dealing with foreign wives, he creates a problem for the narrative of unbroken tradition. He shows that even the most “traditional” rules have a beginning, a middle, and an evolutionary arc.<\/p>\n

Cohen situates the modern debate in Israel within a long history of identity shifts. He shows that the current political and legal struggle over “Who is a Jew” is the latest chapter in a process that began when the word Ioudaios first shifted from a geographic label to an ethnic or religious one. His research demonstrates that in antiquity, the boundary between Jew and Gentile was a blurred zone rather than a sharp line.<\/p>\n

He identifies multiple ways a person could “become” Jewish or associate with the community without a formal, uniform conversion process. Some individuals adopted Jewish customs, others supported synagogues, and some were considered Jews by their neighbors but not by the Jerusalem elite. Cohen\u2019s work suggests that the “Who is a Jew” question was never settled by a single authority in the ancient world. This historical perspective undermines the claim of the modern Israeli Chief Rabbinate that there is one ancient, authentic standard for Jewish identity that must be enforced by the state.<\/p>\n

In the context of modern Zionism, Cohen\u2019s findings act as a demystifier. The State of Israel relies on the Law of Return, which uses a definition of Jewishness that is broader than strict Halakha but narrower than some Diaspora definitions. Cohen argues that this tension is not a modern failure but a structural feature of Jewish history. He shows that the “legal” definition of a Jew has always been in tension with the “social” or “political” definition.<\/p>\n

For the Israeli secular-religious alliance, Cohen is a source of profound discomfort. Secular Israelis often use historical arguments to push for a more pluralistic definition of identity. Cohen provides them with the academic data to show that the Rabbinate\u2019s standards are a specific historical development rather than a timeless essence. Conversely, the religious establishment must contend with the fact that their “eternal” rules for conversion and lineage were once fluid and subject to the very historical pressures they now claim to resist.<\/p>\n

Cohen shows that the struggle over identity in Israel is not a departure from tradition but a continuation of it. By proving that the definition of a Jew has always been a site of competition between different alliances\u2014priests, rabbis, Hellenizers, and sectarians\u2014he makes the modern conflict look like a natural state of affairs. He replaces the myth of a lost consensus with the reality of a persistent argument.<\/p>\n

Cohen treats the Second Temple period as the laboratory where Judaism as we know it was synthesized. He rejects the traditional narrative that Rabbinic Judaism is the simple, direct heir to Biblical religion. Instead, he views the era between the return from Babylon and the destruction of the Temple as a time of radical pluralism. In his account, “Biblical religion”\u2014centered on the Temple, the land, and the monarchy\u2014dissolved into a variety of “Judaisms.”<\/p>\n

His core move is to show that the transition to the Rabbis was a historical accident rather than a theological necessity. He argues that before 70 CE, the Pharisees were just one sect among many, competing for influence alongside Sadducees, Essenes, and various messianic movements. When the Temple fell, the sacrificial system of the Bible became impossible. Cohen shows that the Rabbis succeeded because they were the alliance best suited to survive without a physical center. They turned the “religion of the place” into a “religion of the book.”<\/p>\n

This framing creates a problem for the idea of an unbroken chain of tradition. If the Rabbis were innovators who won a competition, then their system is a specific interpretation of the Bible, not the only possible one. Cohen argues that other groups, like the followers of Jesus or the community at Qumran, had their own coherent ways of reading the same scriptures. He strips the Rabbinic movement of its claim to be the “original” Judaism and rebrands it as the “surviving” Judaism.<\/p>\n

Inside the academic guild, this approach shifted the focus away from looking for the “essence” of Judaism. Cohen looks instead at the “boundaries” of the community. He shows how the definition of a Jew shifted from a person who lived in a certain land to a person who performed certain rituals or held certain beliefs. He explains that “Judaism” as an abstract noun\u2014an “ism”\u2014is a product of this period. It was a way for Jews to define themselves in the Greek-speaking world as a philosophy or a culture.<\/p>\n

For religious alliances, Cohen\u2019s read on this transition is a demystifier. He shows that the move from priests to rabbis involved a massive loss of diversity. By highlighting the sects that disappeared, he reminds the modern reader that the “normative” path was once contested. He offers a history of what was lost as much as a history of what survived. He argues that the transition was a struggle, not a smooth evolution.<\/p>\n

Cohen treats the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians as a messy, centuries-long divorce rather than a sudden break. He challenges the traditional church and synagogue narratives that claim a clear separation occurred immediately after the death of Jesus or the destruction of the Temple. Cohen demonstrates that for a long time, many people lived in the blurred space between the two groups. He uses the term “Jewish-Christian” to describe those who maintained Jewish practices while professing faith in Christ, showing that the boundary remained porous well into the fourth century.<\/p>\n

His analysis focuses on how the leaders of both alliances worked to create the separation. He argues that the Rabbis and the Church Fathers were “boundary makers” who shared a common goal: they both wanted to eliminate the middle ground. The Rabbis needed to define who was “inside” the covenant to preserve national identity, while the Church Fathers needed to define “orthodoxy” to distinguish themselves from their Jewish roots. Cohen shows that the separation was an elite project of definition that often ignored the reality of people on the ground who continued to share festivals, space, and ideas.<\/p>\n

Cohen identifies the specific “markers” used to drive the groups apart. He points to circumcision, Sabbath observance, and dietary laws as the primary tools of distinction. While some early followers of Jesus believed these laws remained mandatory, the Pauline alliance eventually won out by arguing that faith rendered these physical markers obsolete. Cohen argues that the “Parting of the Ways” was not just a theological dispute about the Messiah; it was a social struggle over the definition of the “True Israel.”<\/p>\n

This framing disrupts the idea of a clean, divinely ordained split. By showing that the two groups remained entangled for so long, Cohen weakens the claim that they were always fundamentally incompatible. He argues that “Judaism” and “Christianity” were co-constitutive\u2014they defined themselves in opposition to one another. For Cohen, you cannot understand the development of the Rabbinic system without seeing it as a response to the growing threat of the Church, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

In alliance terms, Cohen acts as a demystifier of the “Great Separation.” He shows that the hard lines we see today were the result of a long process of exclusion and polemic. He suggests that the “purity” of each tradition is a historical construct. Once he shows the shared origins and the lingering overlaps, the sense of inevitable and total difference begins to dissolve. He offers a history where the “losing” options\u2014the Jewish-Christians who refused to choose\u2014are just as important as the winners for understanding the past.<\/p>\n

Cohen treats the historical entanglement of Jews and Christians as a resource for modern dialogue that replaces polemics with shared history. By proving that the two groups did not split cleanly or quickly, he undermines the “replacement” theology that long dominated Christian thought. He shows that the church did not simply succeed a dead religion. Instead, he presents two sibling movements that grew up in the same house and defined themselves through a long, often painful argument.<\/p>\n

In interfaith settings, Cohen functions as a neutralizer of ancient grudges. He demonstrates that early Christian vitriol against Jews and Rabbinic denunciations of “heretics” were part of an active boundary-making process. When modern participants see these attacks as strategic tools used to separate overlapping communities, the theological stings lose some of their bite. He moves the conversation away from “who is right” toward “how did we become separate.” This shifts the alliance from one of competition to one of mutual historical investigation.<\/p>\n

His work on the “Jewishness of Jesus” and his followers provides a common ground that is textually and historically grounded. Cohen argues that the earliest followers of Jesus lived within the world of the synagogue and the Temple. For Reform and Conservative alliances, this historical reality supports a more inclusive view of the relationship between the two faiths. It allows for a dialogue where Jews and Christians can acknowledge their shared roots without feeling that their distinct identities are threatened.<\/p>\n

However, Cohen\u2019s restraint remains a constraint. He does not provide a new theology for interfaith relations. He does not tell rabbis or priests how to pray together. He simply shows that the walls they have built were once low and permeable. For some religious leaders, this is not enough. They want a “bridge,” while Cohen offers a “map” of the ruins. His strength lies in showing that the separation was a choice made by men in specific historical contexts, which implies that modern people can choose how to relate to those boundaries today.<\/p>\n

By demystifying the origins of the split, Cohen makes it harder for extremists on either side to claim that God demands total isolation. He shows that the history of the two religions is a history of interaction. He argues that even at the height of their separation, Jews and Christians were looking at each other, arguing with each other, and influencing each other\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

Cohen views the God-fearers as the ultimate evidence of the porous nature of ancient Jewish identity. In his analysis, these individuals occupied a middle space that modern categories struggle to contain. They were Gentiles who abandoned paganism and adopted Jewish practices, such as the Sabbath or dietary laws, yet they did not undergo circumcision or formal conversion. Cohen argues that these people were not fringe anomalies but a widespread and recognized group within the synagogues of the Diaspora.<\/p>\n

He identifies the God-fearers as a category of “affiliation without assimilation.” They represent a historical precedent for the idea that one can participate in a religious system without accepting its full legal or tribal identity. For Cohen, the existence of this group shows that the ancient Jewish community was willing to tolerate and even welcome a “semi-Jewish” status. This disrupts the narrative that ancient Judaism was always an exclusive, closed-off ethnic enclave.<\/p>\n

This historical model provides a mirror for the modern “spiritual but not religious” or “non-denominational” seeker. Cohen shows that the desire to access the moral and liturgical depth of a tradition without the “all-or-nothing” commitment of institutional membership is an ancient phenomenon. He demonstrates that the “God-fearer” was the original seeker of a universalized Judaism. This group eventually became the primary recruitment ground for the early Jesus movement, as Paul offered them a way to be fully “in” the covenant without the physical and legal requirements of the Torah.<\/p>\n

In modern terms, Cohen\u2019s work on the God-fearer validates the experience of those who live on the margins of religious institutions. He argues that the “blur” is a natural part of religious history. By documenting a time when one could be “Jewish-adjacent” with social and communal approval, he complicates the efforts of modern gatekeepers to enforce binary definitions of belonging. He shows that the strict “Jew vs. Gentile” divide was a later rabbinic and ecclesiastical imposition on a much more fluid reality.<\/p>\n

His strength as a demystifier is clear here. He does not claim that the God-fearers were a “better” version of Judaism. He simply documents their presence to show that the boundaries were once negotiable. He provides a history for the unaffiliated, showing that the space between the inside and the outside has always been occupied.<\/p>\n

Orthodox scholars have responded to Shaye J. D. Cohen in four distinct ways: rebuttal, reframing, selective incorporation, and quiet avoidance. Below are specific names, positions, and citations.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Dr. Marc B. Shapiro
\nShapiro is the most direct Orthodox interlocutor with Cohen. He accepts Cohen\u2019s historical findings on matrilineality, sectarian diversity, and rabbinic consolidation, but reframes them theologically. Shapiro argues that historical development does not negate revelation. It shows how Torah was applied over time. He explicitly cites Cohen\u2019s work on lineage and identity and treats it as serious scholarship rather than heresy.
\nSee Marc B. Shapiro, The Limits of Orthodox Theology, and multiple essays on matrilineality and historical change. Shapiro accepts Cohen\u2019s data while rejecting the inference that contingency undermines normativity.
\nCohen is treated as right on facts, wrong on metaphysics. <\/p>\n

Rabbi Dr. Hayyim Angel
\nAngel engages Cohen indirectly through Tanakh pedagogy. He does not argue with Cohen head-on. Instead, he structures Orthodox Bible education to preempt the shock Cohen causes. Angel concedes diversity and development in the biblical period but insists on internal literary continuity and religious meaning. Cohen\u2019s conclusions are absorbed quietly, without naming him, and neutralized through a religious reading strategy.
\nSee Hayyim Angel, A Synagogue Companion to the Bible and Vision from the Prophet and Counsel from the Elders. Cohen\u2019s questions are answered without granting his frame authority.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Dr. James Kugel
\nKugel represents an Orthodox adjacent strategy of compartmentalization. He accepts Cohen\u2019s historical conclusions almost wholesale but insists that academic truth and religious truth operate in separate registers. Cohen describes what happened. Faith answers what it means.
\nSee Kugel, How to Read the Bible. Kugel\u2019s approach protects Orthodoxy by conceding the battlefield. Cohen wins history. Tradition retreats to meaning. <\/p>\n

Rabbi Dr. David Weiss Halivni
\nHalivni independently arrived at conclusions similar to Cohen regarding rabbinic creativity and rupture. Orthodox institutions tolerated Halivni because he framed historical discontinuity as loss rather than exposure. Where Cohen demystifies, Halivni mourns.
\nThis emotional framing made similar claims survivable inside Orthodoxy. Cohen is resisted because he offers no theology of loss or repair. <\/p>\n

Rabbi Dr. Isadore Twersky
\nTwersky acknowledged academic history but sharply limited its jurisdiction. He treated Cohen\u2019s work as descriptive but religiously irrelevant. For Twersky, halakhic authority rests on acceptance and practice, not origins. Cohen is sidelined by redefining what counts as authoritative knowledge. <\/p>\n

Rabbinic Silence and Curriculum Design
\nIn yeshivot and Orthodox high schools, Cohen is almost never assigned directly. His arguments are instead deflected through carefully curated alternatives or ignored entirely. This is not accidental. Cohen destabilizes lineage, conversion, rabbinic authority, and Jewish continuity without offering a religious replacement.
\nOrthodoxy has largely decided not to fight him publicly but to route around him institutionally. <\/p>\n

Cohen is treated as too accurate to dismiss and too corrosive to teach. Orthodox scholars either rebut his conclusions theologically, absorb his data silently, redirect students to safer historians, or avoid him altogether. No major Orthodox figure has produced a sustained public refutation of Cohen\u2019s core historical claims. The response has been strategic containment, not intellectual defeat.<\/p>\n

Orthodox scholars generally treat Shaye J. D. Cohen as a scholar whose historical evidence is too grounded to be dismissed but whose conclusions fundamentally clash with the traditionalist narrative of an unbroken tradition from Sinai. While they frequently engage with his research on the matrilineal principle and the status of converts, they do so through a lens of defensive maintenance or by providing alternative traditional interpretations.<\/p>\n

Key Scholars and Responses<\/p>\n

Rabbi Lawrence Schiffman: A prominent Orthodox scholar and historian, Schiffman has engaged directly with Cohen’s work, particularly regarding the rabbinic conversion ceremony. While acknowledging Cohen’s contributions, Schiffman’s work generally emphasizes the continuity and internal development of Jewish law within the rabbinic framework, contrasting with Cohen\u2019s focus on radical historical contingency. In his essay Jewish Identity and Jewish Descent, Schiffman welcomes the academic discussion while explicitly rejecting Cohen’s conclusion that the matrilineal principle was a legal innovation of the first or second century. Schiffman argues that instead of viewing the Mishnah as the point of origin for the rule, it should be seen as the codification of a long-standing regulation that goes back far beyond the tannaitic period. He asserts that while historians like Cohen view history and halakhah as autonomous disciplines, this separation is naive because such research is used by modern movements to justify changes in Jewish law.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Michael Broyde: As a dayan (rabbinic judge) and law professor, Broyde has addressed the modern implications of conversion and identity that Cohen\u2019s work complicates. In Orthodox discourse, the focus shifts toward “integrity” and “standards” of conversion\u2014using the rabbinic system to solve the very identity crises Cohen describes as historical developments.<\/p>\n

Avrohom Gordimer: Responding to modern halakhic debates, Gordimer emphasizes the necessity of “unimpeachable” standards for conversion. This reflects the “boundary maintenance” that Cohen identifies; where Cohen sees a historical pivot in the second century, Orthodox scholars like Gordimer assert the metaphysical reality of these rules to ensure communal survival.<\/p>\n

The most significant confrontation involves Cohen’s argument that the matrilineal principle represents a historical pivot from the second century rather than a timeless decree. Orthodox scholars such as those writing for Jew in the City argue that the Torah source for matrilineal descent is found in Deuteronomy 7:3-4. They contend that the prohibition against intermarriage implies the daughter’s son from a non-Jewish man remains Jewish, while a son’s child with a non-Jewish woman does not.<\/p>\n

David Zalkin, an Orthodox commentator, notes that Cohen likely does not view this as a sudden rabbinic enactment but as an evolved practice that the Rabbis later anchored in biblical sources. This contrasts with the traditional Orthodox view that these rules were revealed at Sinai and have always been the practice of Israel. Other critics point to the book of Ezra, chapter 10, where non-Jewish wives and their children are sent away, as evidence that the matrilineal rule existed centuries before the Hasmonean or Roman periods.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Lawrence Schiffman, a prominent Orthodox historian, has edited major volumes alongside Cohen, such as Outside the Bible. While Schiffman and other editors seek to reclaim ancient Jewish writings for Jewish culture, they acknowledge that traditionalist Jews, often beholden to a suspicion of external literature, remain largely uninterested in such academic reclamation. This tension reflects Cohen’s status as a category breaker who dissolves the idea of a single, stable Judaism in antiquity.<\/p>\n

Orthodox scholars often address the historical data Cohen highlights\u2014such as the patrilineal nature of biblical genealogies\u2014without naming him directly in educational settings. They argue that while biblical society appeared patrilineal in tribal identity, the core Jewish status remained matrilineal. This strategy serves as an invisible constraint to manage the crisis for boundary maintenance that Cohen’s scholarship creates for modern religious institutions.<\/p>\n

Scholars within the Orthodox tradition also address Cohen\u2019s findings on the Book of Ezra, where Cohen observes that Ezra does not explicitly invoke a matrilineal law when expelling foreign wives. Traditionalist responses often interpret this silence not as an absence of the rule, but as evidence that the law was so well understood by the people that it did not require explicit mention in the text. They maintain that the law of matrilineal descent dates at least to the covenant at Sinai, directly contradicting Cohen\u2019s timeline.<\/p>\n

Within Orthodox institutions, Cohen functions as an “invisible constraint”. Scholars often shape lessons to address the historical contradictions he highlights\u2014such as the patrilineal nature of biblical genealogies\u2014without naming him directly. They argue that while biblical society appeared patrilineal in tribal identity, the core “Jewish status” was always matrilineal. By doing so, they attempt to neutralize the “delayed shock” students might feel when they eventually encounter the historical record Cohen has mapped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written with AI: Per Alliance Theory: Shaye J.D. Cohen is a chronicler of Jewish ambiguity. He moves the origin of Judaism from the realm of legend to the realm of history. His work argues that the boundaries of Jewish identity … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alliance-theory"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171591"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171683,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171591\/revisions\/171683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}