Chapter 2: Justin's Dialogue with the Jews, part 1
Throughout the Dialogue, Justin is very concerned to define the Jews as those who do not believe in the Logos ... Belief in the Logos of God as a second devine person is taken by most authorities, ancient and modern, as a virtual touchstone of the theological difference of Christianity from Judaism. In contrast to this consensus, a major part of the argument of this book is that prior (and even well into) the rabbinic period, most (or at any rate many) non-Christian Jews did see the Logos (or his female alter ego, Sophia) as a central part of their doctrines about God. (38)
Significantly, the Rabbis themselves, as Shaye Cohen has emphasized, never understand themselves to be Pharisees, which explains how for them, too [i.e. for the Rabbis as well as for Justin, an early Church Father], "Pharisees" could designate a sect or even heresy ... Indeed...in the Tosefta, a rabbinic text approximately a century later than Justin, "Pharisees" are associated with minim, as precisely heretics to be anathematized. Those whom we (and other Jewish texts, such as Josephus and Acts) call Pharisees, were, for the Rabbis, simply Rabbis ... It is not that the Rabbis would deny the legitimacy of "historical" Pharisees such as Rabban Gamaliel. Nothing could be more implausible. Rather--I suggest, following Cohen--that they would not use the name Pharisees for their legitimated ancestors. (42)
It is not so much that one group has won, as that something in their own discourse and perhaps in the circumstances allows them to shift from representing themselves as the embattled group that has the truth (sect) to the always/already there possessors of the truth that others are attempting to suborn (orthodoxy/"church"). One way to think of this is that a sect describes itself as having left the larger group, owing to the corruption of that larger group, while a church, as it were, describes the others as having left (or been pushed out of) the larger group owing to their defalcation from the true way and concomitant corruption, or even as representing a contaminating force that comes from the outside ... One consequence of this observation, that the difference between church and sect is a matter of self-representation and mode of self-legitimation and not an absolute and objective one, is that the distinctions are not essentialistic, and the same group can be at one and the same time a sect with respect to one group and a church, or orthodoxy, with respect to a different group. (50-51)
Significantly, the Rabbis themselves, as Shaye Cohen has emphasized, never understand themselves to be Pharisees, which explains how for them, too [i.e. for the Rabbis as well as for Justin, an early Church Father], "Pharisees" could designate a sect or even heresy ... Indeed...in the Tosefta, a rabbinic text approximately a century later than Justin, "Pharisees" are associated with minim, as precisely heretics to be anathematized. Those whom we (and other Jewish texts, such as Josephus and Acts) call Pharisees, were, for the Rabbis, simply Rabbis ... It is not that the Rabbis would deny the legitimacy of "historical" Pharisees such as Rabban Gamaliel. Nothing could be more implausible. Rather--I suggest, following Cohen--that they would not use the name Pharisees for their legitimated ancestors. (42)
It is not so much that one group has won, as that something in their own discourse and perhaps in the circumstances allows them to shift from representing themselves as the embattled group that has the truth (sect) to the always/already there possessors of the truth that others are attempting to suborn (orthodoxy/"church"). One way to think of this is that a sect describes itself as having left the larger group, owing to the corruption of that larger group, while a church, as it were, describes the others as having left (or been pushed out of) the larger group owing to their defalcation from the true way and concomitant corruption, or even as representing a contaminating force that comes from the outside ... One consequence of this observation, that the difference between church and sect is a matter of self-representation and mode of self-legitimation and not an absolute and objective one, is that the distinctions are not essentialistic, and the same group can be at one and the same time a sect with respect to one group and a church, or orthodoxy, with respect to a different group. (50-51)