Even if its precise historical contours remain unknown, the exclusion of Johannine communities by the Synagogue contributed significantly to the construction of their identity as believers. This process can be examined from two perspectives. First, it unfolded through a transformation of the relationship to the Jewish tradition. The Hebrew Bible’s authority was not questioned, but the Synagogue’s identity markers (e.g. the Temple, prescriptions related to ritual purity, Sabbath observance, circumcision) were either profoundly reinterpreted or abrogated. Second, new identity markers emerged alongside this redefining of the relationship to the Old Testament/Jewish tradition, for instance with baptism and the eucharist. To this we may add the birth of a theological school and of a corpus of normative writings with Scripture status, a new definition of apostleship and the creation of new forms of ecclesial structures.