The Birth of the Messiah, or Why Did Baby Messiah Disappear?

This chapter discusses the emergence of “Christianity” from “Judaism,” examining a famous midrash in the Jerusalem Talmud about the disappearance of the newborn Messiah. Instead of tracking the more elaborate efforts of differentiation and demarcation, one witnesses an early and archaic attempt to excrete “Christianity” from “Judaism”—yet this is a Christianity that is still regarded as part and parcel of Judaism and at the same time recognized as something that will become Judaism's worst enemy. Hence, this Baby Messiah is simultaneously the Jewish and Christian Messiah, caught at that tragic moment when Judaism was desperately trying to retain the Messiah within its fold but was also vaguely sensing that it would ultimately fail and that a new religion had already been born.