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against which Steven Katz argues.42 Katz examines the traditional views espoused by authors on the topic and identifies the primary evidence for their conclusions: official anti-Christian letters, the Birkhat ha-Minim and the ban against the Jewish-Christians, and the prohibition by Jews against heretical books.43 Katz concludes that there was no official anti-Christian policy at Yavneh or elsewhere before Bar Kochba, and no total separation between Jews and Christians before this date.44
At the end of the second millennium, the Birkhat ha-Minim is still being used by many writers as a mainstay of the argument for first century separation. Further studies that have revised the theory popularised by Elbogen in the early 1900s have failed to solve the controversy.45 This question will be addressed in the chapter on Jewish-Christianity.
In 1991 the Oxford scholar Miriam Taylor challenged on historical, hermeneutical, and theological grounds the conflict theory of Jewish-Christian relations adopted by modern writers. She opposed the assumption underlying the consensus view that in the early centuries of the church's existence, Christians and Jews were involved in a rivalry for converts and political supremacy in the Roman Empire, arguing that this theory is based on Christianising preconceptions about ancient Judaism.46
Other studies include the reactions to the problem from the Second Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (Durham, September, 1989).47 Philip Alexander speaks of the question from the perspective of rabbinic Judaism, whereas the other studies in the volume relate to Christian literature. James Dunn also wrote an overview, where he points out the value of the literary study of the New Testament as a supplement to historical study rather than a form of isolated examination as an alternative to historical study.48 Another work on the topic by Hayim Goren Perelmuter states in the introduction: