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Summary This is the second part of a larger study on the significance of ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’ in the ancient period. In the previous part, we reviewed the early history of the name Jew and studied the use made of both names in three categories of ancient Jewish texts: archeological documents (papyri, coins and inscriptions), literary writings related to the Bible (Hagiographa, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha) and writings of well-identified authors (Qumran, Philo and Josephus). The present article analyses the use made of these names in another large body of ancient Jewish texts: rabbinic literature. It consists of texts with an inner-Jewish character: the use of Hebrew predominates as well as the inner-Jewish self-appellation Yisrael. It is the exceptions to this rule which deserve our close attention. We then draw conclusions, not only for rabbinic literature but for the whole spectrum of Jewish texts we covered. The use made of both names, ‘Israel’ as the inner-Jewish name and ‘Jew’ as the outside self-designation, turns out to be a good indicator of the socio-religious identification of each author. This enables us to make a general division of the various categories of ancient Jewish texts into texts with an inner-Jewish framework and those written in a non—Jewish perspective. Finally, we turn to the New Testament. The New Testament writings were largely created by Jews or Jewish Christians. This makes us hypothesize that the Jewish speech duality, i. e. the socially distinct use of both names, operates in the New Testament as it does in the Jewish writings were reviewed. Our analysis of the texts will in fact either verify or falsify this hypothesis. The result is mixed, which is indicative of the complicated relation of early Christianity to Judaism. This leaves the scholar who is also a Christian with mixed feelings and these are reflected on in an epilogue.
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