Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Jewish apologists are working only to prevent other Jews from being swayed by the arguments made by other religions (primarily those from Christian missionaries, who often target Jews specifically). The Judaism when the Talmud was written was a fanatically proselytizing sect, as is clear if you read the talmud. They created seed outposts all over the Roman empire of new converts, as they sought (and obtained) speci…
Proselytizing is not forbidden. It is also not required, and for all that proselytizing activity of the ancient rabbis there is very little in the Talmud that actually discusses seeking out converts and Jews are not actually required to do so. The New Testament makes proselytizing a requirement for every Christian (the Great Commission). Likewise, Christians are called on by the New Testament to engage in apologetics…
Very few religions require proselytizing. I think Mormons are expected to go on missionary trips, but that's all I'm familiar with. In most religions, missionaries are selected from the group and sent out, so the job of proselytizing is a corporate, not personal job, and the role of "missionary" can mean anything from establishing universities and hospitals in Africa to preaching on a street corner in Atlanta. But no churches I'm aware of require some type of missionary effort from all of their members - maybe I missed one.
> In any case, what difference does it make if Jews in the first and second centuries were proselytizing?
It continued up through the middle ages, so this is over 1000 years. Pope Gregory famously complained about jews proselytizing, but perhaps he was making it all up. See https://www.jstor.org/stable/24659643 and also https://repository.yu.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12202/6076...
In terms of what difference does it make, it's up to you to decide how much you care, I was only pointing out that rabbinical judaism, at least in the past, had similar missionary efforts to Christianity today. You can take that for whatever you want - I don't want to get into a debate as to whether judaism in the 20th Century is the "true" judaism versus judaism in the 10th Century or 5th Century. There are different sects with different beliefs as to what is authentic and what is not.
> The New Testament makes proselytizing a requirement for every Christian (the Great Commission).
Woah. Even in evangelical churches, the commission applies to corporate bodies and the verb "go" is passive, not active. "Make disciples" is active, e.g. . E.g. "make disciples as you go into the world". Now there are many passages where Paul asks for help to be bold and open his mouth, so it depends on how you define missionary efforts or proselytization. In the early church, would be converts were turned away three times before being admitted in some places, even as there was public preaching and mass baptisms in other places. But there was no general requirement that everyone do these things, rather there were special roles of evangelists who do them, again modelled on the Pharisees and their system. The notion of being "born again" and water baptism - john the baptist for example, these all came from jewish practices.
Now today, some evangelical churches have come to interpret a casual relationship in the great commission, in the sense that once there are Christians in every tribe, the end will come, and so to hasten that end they are trying to convert some from every tribe, but I don't think this is a mainstream view or a view that was part of historical Christianity.
But I agree there is certainly a practical difference in that there are evangelical churches that actively proselytize and send missionaries out which are funded by church members, but for example Orthodox churches don't do this and they don't interpret the Matthew in the same way as evangelical churches.
> There was no Jewish Calendar at that time and there was no canon of scripture
There was absolutely a jewish calendar that predates the Babylonian captivity. Most of the content of the book of leviticus is concerned with special feast days and observances, and these must occur at certain times of the year. That requires a calendar. Now regardless of whether you believe the law dates to Jeremiah or Moses, at whatever point in time the law was observed a calendar needed to exist before then.