In this erudite book, Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner provide a study of the comparisons and contrasts between formative Christianity and Judaism.

Two well-known scholars, in New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism respectively, ask the question: what does it mean to translate a theory of God's presence in the social order into a concrete doctrine of everyday authority? What sort of politics, what theory of ongoing and everyday religious encounter, and what modes of persuasive intellectual exchange embody the conviction that God is present among us and that our community is made holy by obedient response to that Presence? The holy community, the presence of God's representatives on earth, and the compelling power of certain kinds of evidence and arguments - these provide the outlines of an answer to that question. Politics come first. But both communities also looked to the authority of God embodied in persons, validated by miraculous events, or otherwise certified by gifts of the spirit. And, finally, both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism deemed Christ and the Torah respectively to embody the logos of reason or the rules of right thought. Both maintained that well-expounded, probative evidence and compelling argument formed the best source of authority - compulsion exercised from within, by intellect.

'The book is full of detail and stimulating judgement (and very clearly written). It not only juxtaposes ... two modes of thought, but also highlights the tensions within each community that accompanied their definitions of authority. It does so in an additionally useful way, by reversing some customary perspectives, placing in the foregorund ... what too often lurks in the shadow of historical study.' - Philip Rousseau, Heythrop Journal