Image Details

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/Art Resource, New York, N.Y.

Ecclesia and Synagogue. This pair of contrasting statues decorates the facade of the 13th-century cathedral of Strasbourg, France. In this slide stands a personification of the rejected Synagogue, depicted as a blindfolded wanton carrying a broken staff and broken Tablets of the Law. (Compare with the image of the Church triumphant.)

Judaism and Christianity, notes author Gabriele Boccaccini, have long been seen as two distinct and fixed religions; a more recent view sees Christianity as having evolved from Judaism. In the accompanying article, Boccaccini describes the emergence of a more nuanced understanding of these two great faiths: that modern Judaism and Christianity emerged from ancient Judaism—fraternal twins born of the same womb.