apostolic succession reaching back to the original disciples of Jesus. Maccoby also conjectured that the Jewish-Christian sect of Ebionites may have been an authentic offshoot of the original Jerusalem community. The Disputation Maccoby's play The Disputation is a re-enactment of the Disputation of Barcelona, a dramatic confrontation between the Spanish Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, better known as Nachmanides, and a Spanish convert from Judaism to Christianity, Pablo Christiani, before King James I of Aragon in 1263. Much of the play is drawn from Nachmanides's account of the disputation, and much is inferred from the king's affection for the rabbi and considerable generosity to him following Christiani's formal victory. The play centres about King James, who is portrayed as a complex, troubled soul who comes to accept the rabbi's ideas. The play has been widely performed, and was broadcast by Channel 4 starring Christopher Lee and Toyah Willcox. Reception Reception of Maccoby's view of Paul has generally been negative. John Gager of Princeton University reviewed The Mythmaker (1986) in the Jewish Quarterly Review (1988) describing part of Maccoby's thesis as "perverse misreading" and concluded "Thus I must conclude that Maccoby's book is not good history, not even history at all." Skarsaune (2002), referencing Maccoby's work and the theory that Paul represents a Christianity totally different from that of the early community in Jerusalem, writes that "Acts provides no evidence to substantiate this theory." James D. G. Dunn (2006) describes Maccoby's revival of Graetz' accusations that Paul was a Gentile as "a regrettable reversion to older polemics". The continuity with Graetz is also noted by Langton (2009), who contrasts Maccoby's approach with adherents of a "building bridges" view, such as Isaac Mayer Wise, Joseph Krauskopf, and Claude Montefiore, even if they shared some details of the polemic critique of Paul. Bibliography The Day God Laughed: Sayings, Fables and Entertainments of the Jewish Sages (with Wolf Mankowitz, 1973) Revolution in Judea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance (1973) Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages (1981) The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt (1983) The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1987) Early rabbinic writings (1988) Judaism in the First Century (1989) Paul and Hellenism (1991) Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil (1992) A Pariah People: Anthropology of Anti-Semitism (1996) Ritual and morality: the ritual purity system and its place in Judaism (1999) The Philosophy of