Brief History of Disputations
The history of Jewish Christian contacts included confrontations and disputations almost from the very beginning of Christianity. This was inevitable for a religion, Christianity, that considered itself not only a "continuation" of Jewish tradition but indeed a replacement of it. Christianity thus is not so much a "branch" grafted onto the root as a new growth that entirely takes over the "rotten" branches of the original tree. Disputations took place already between Paul and Jews to whom he preached in his travels, and for that matter between Paul and the still Jewish disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, before they acquiesced in his new religion.
Early written Christian disputations, such as that of Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho), were often a literary fiction, serving merely as a vehicle for the author to express his anti Jewish views and Christian doctrines. Church "Fathers" such as Origen and Jerome were personally acquainted with Jews, and......
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