Jewish-christian Disputations in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fictions and Realities (Late Antique History and Religion) 9789042938571, 9789042938588, 9042938579

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
FOREWORD
JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS: THE REMAKING OF THEIR STUDY, 1930-1950
ACTUAL ENCOUNTER OR
A CATECHETICAL HANDBOOK?
THE NINE TEXTUAL FORMS OF THE
THE JEWISH BIBLE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA
IN LIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY JEWISH SOURCES
SHAMING AN OPPONENT IN DEBATE: THE POLEMICAL USE OF EMOTIONS IN SOME ANTI-JEWISH DIALOGUES*
READING PETRUS ALFONSI BEFORE THE TALMUD TRIALS THE MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
THE PLACE OF PETRUS ALFONSI IN THE MEDIEVAL CULTURE OF DISPUTATION
SPOKEN AND UNSPOKEN IN PETRUS ALFONSI’S DIALOGUE
TYPES OF JEWISH ANTI-CHRISTIAN POLEMIC IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES, AND THEIR HISTORICAL-SOCIAL SETTING
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLICAL INDEX
INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL NAMES
THEMATIC INDEX

Citation preview

LATE ANTIQUE HISTORY AND RELIGION 21

JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES Fictions and Realities edited by

Sébastien Morlet

PEETERS

JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES

Late Antique History and Religion General Editor Hagit Amirav (Oxford) Series Editors Bas ter Haar Romeny (Amsterdam), Emiliano Fiori (Venice), James Carleton Paget (Cambridge), Gavin Kelly (Edinburgh) Advisory Board Averil Cameron (Oxford), Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony (Jerusalem), Evangelos Chrysos (Athens), Christoph Markschies (Berlin), Susanna Elm (Berkeley)

LAHR Volume 21

Late Antique History and Religion is a peer-reviewed series.

JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES Fictions and Realities

edited by

Sébastien Morlet

PEETERS leuven – paris – bristol, ct 2020

ISBN 978-90-429-3857-1 eISBN 978-90-429-3858-8 D/2020/0602/117 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. © 2020, Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval devices or systems, without prior written permission from the publisher, except the quotation of brief passages for review purposes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations............................................................................................. VII Foreword..................................................................................................... IX Introduction Jewish-Christian Disputations: The Remaking of their Study, 19301950....................................................................................................... 3 William Horbury 1. The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila Timothy and Aquila: Actual Encounter or Scheinpolemik?............... 39 James Carleton Paget The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: a Catechetical Handbook?... 63 Sébastien Morlet The Nine Textual Forms of the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila. A Reminder......................................................................................... 97 Patrick Andrist The Jewish Bible of Timothy and Aquila.............................................. 103 Jim Aitken The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila in Light of Contemporary Jewish Sources.................................................................................... 125 Hillel I. Newman Shaming an Opponent in Debate: The Polemical Use of Emotions in Some Anti-Jewish Dialogues....................................................... 143 Yannis Papadogiannakis 2.  Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus Contra Iudaeos Reading Petrus Alfonsi before the Talmud Trials. The Manuscript Evidence............................................................................................... 159 Carmen Cardelle De Hartmann – Darko Senekovic The Place of Petrus Alfonsi in the Medieval Culture of Disputation.181 Alex J. Novikoff Spoken and Unspoken in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogue.......................... 199 Claire Soussen

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table of contents

3.  Jewish Polemical Writings against the Christians Types of Jewish Anti-Christian Polemic in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and their Historical-Social Setting......................... 215 Philip Alexander Jewish-Christian Dialogues and Polemics Written by Medieval Jews....................................................................................................... 229 Marc Saperstein Bibliography............................................................................................... 245 Indexes Biblical Index............................................................................................. 271 Index of Ancient and Medieval Names................................................ 273 Thematic Index.......................................................................................... 275

ABBREVIATIONS AJ AJS ANF BZ CBET CCO CCSG CCSL CSCO CHR DACL DTC GCS GQ HJB HTR HUCA JBL JEH JJS JNES JPS JQR JSQ JTS MAev ME MGWJ MS NT NTS PG PL PO REJ RHPhR

Archives juives Association for Jewish studies Ante-Nicene Fathers Byzantinische Zeitschrift Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology Collectanea Christiana Orientalia Corpus Christianorum series Graeca Corpus Christianorum series Latina Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium Catholic Historical Review Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie Dictionnaire de théologie catholique Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller Ginzei qedem: Genizah research annual Hispania Judaica Bulletin Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Near Eastern Studies Jewish Publication Society Jewish Quarterly Review Jewish Studies Quarterly Journal of Theological Studies Medium aevum Medieval Encounters Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums Mediaeval studies Novum Testamentum New Testament Studies Patrologie Graeca (J.P. Migne) Patrologia Latina (J.P. Migne) Patrologia Orientalis Revue des études juives Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses

VIII

abbreviations

RHT Revue d’histoire des textes RML Revue du Moyen-Âge latin RSBN Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici RSPT Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques SC Scrittura et Civiltà ThQ Theologische Quartalschrift TM Travaux et mémoires TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur TZ Theologische Zeitschrift WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

FOREWORD A few scholars recently have called into question the reality of a dialogical culture at the End of Antiquity. These scholars have contended that the last days of Antiquity were characterized by an increasing control of free-thinking and the demise of any real debate with the other.1 In opposition to this view, other scholars have defended a more optimistic interpretation of Late Antiquity, emphasizing the importance of debate in the new Christian society, illustrated by private or public disputations on the one hand, and dialogical texts on the other hand.2 No other period of Greek or Latin Antiquity, indeed, has preserved so many allusions to debates and so many literary texts taking the form of a dialogue. However, the connection between these two types of documents is sometimes unclear. We know that Pagans, Jews and Christians could engage in private or public disputations.3 We know, on the other hand, that Christians wrote dialogues against Pagans, Jews, and heretics. But how these literary dialogues reflect the concrete practice of disputation remains an open question. And this is all the more true in the case of anti-Jewish Christian dialogues. Two competing views have been defended concerning these dialogues. The most critical one, from Adolf Harnack to Myriam Taylor, comprises the denial of any true polemical intention in these texts. According to Harnack, they were primarily expositions of Christian faith for a pagan audience.4 According to Taylor, they engaged in a merely symbolical opposition with the Jewish adversary, and basically represent attempts at  self-definition.5 Another view, defended for instance by A. Lukyn 1.  See for instance R. Lim, Public Disputations, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley–Los Angeles–London, 1995); S. Goldhill (ed.), The End of Dialogue in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008); P. Athanassiadi, Vers la pensée unique. La montée de l’intolérance dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris, 2010). 2.  See A. Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (Harvard, 2014). 3.  A complete list of all the testimonies still needs to be made. About the conversations between Jews ans Christians, see for instance Origen, Letter to Africanus 9; Contra Celsum 1.55; Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 1.3.2. 4.  Die Altercatio Simonis Judaei et Theophili Christiani nebst Untersuchungen über die antijüdische Polemik in der alten Kirche (TU 1,3; Leipzig, 1883). 5.  M.S. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity. A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus (Leiden, 1995).

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­Williams6 and others,7 tended to interpret these dialogues as testimonies of a real polemical situation between Jews and Christians, and thus, to use them as documents about real encounters between Jews and Christians.8 This book is a contribution to this question. The editor’s basic idea was to invite a few scholars to analyse an under-estimated ancient dialogue against the Jews, the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, which is also the longest anti-Jewish dialogue of Late Antiquity which has survived. The case of Timothy and Aquila is then compared to that of a late twelfthcentury text, Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus contra Iudaeos. The third part of the book is devoted to the other side, that is to say, Jewish polemics against the Christians, from Antiquity to the Middle Age. The collection of essays is preceded by a historiographical survey by William Horbury. This volume contains the proceedings of a conference organized on the 2nd–3rd April 2014 at Lucy Cavendish College (Cambridge), under the auspices of the Woolf Institute (Cambridge) and the University of Paris-Sorbonne, during the editor’s visiting fellowship at the Woolf Institute (March-May 2014).9 Simultaneously, he worked on a French translation of the dialogue, in its longest form, which recently came out.10 The editor wishes to thank Dr. Edward Kessler, founder director of the Woolf Institute and all his team for helping organizing this conference, and Prof. Anna Sapir Abulafia, who offered the possibility to host this conference at Lucy Cavendish College. Sébastien Morlet 6.  A. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos: a Bird’s Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1935). 7.  A.B. Hulen, ‘The “Dialogues with the Jews” as Sources for the Early Jewish Argument against Christianity’, JBL 51 (1932), pp. 58-70.  8.  In his seminal book, Marcel Simon (Verus Israel. Études sur les relations entre Chrétiens et Juifs dans l’Empire romain [135–425] [Paris, 1964]) expressed a balanced view: he argued against Harnack that the anti-Jewish works were really written against the Jews, but admitted that the texts may contain real arguments used by Jews and Christians or fictitious arguments, depending on the case: ‘Un travail de discrimination serrée y révèlerait sans doute, je le répète, des éléments de valeur et d’intérêt très divers. Il serait aventureux par exemple d’affirmer que la forme dialoguée d’un écrit anti-juif constitue nécessairement l’indice d’une discussion verbale préalable. Inversement, on retrouve les traces parfaitement nettes des controverses même dans des ouvrages qui ne se classent pas à proprement parler sous la rubrique Aduersus Judaeos’ (p. 212). 9.  This conference was a second step in a project on anti-Jewish dialogues in Antiquity and Middle Age, initiated with the conference ‘Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos. Permanence et mutations d’une tradition polémique’ (Paris, 7th-8th Dec. 2011). The proceedings of this conference were published by S. Morlet, O. Munnich, and B. Pouderon (eds.), Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos. Permanence et mutations d’une tradition polémique (Paris, 2013). 10.  Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila. Dispute entre un juif et un chrétien (Paris, 2017).

Introduction

JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS: THE REMAKING OF THEIR STUDY, 1930-1950 William Horbury Abstract:  The twentieth-century blossoming of scholarship on Jewish-Christian disputation can readily be associated with the years after the Second World War, but its first abundance was pre-war. With the appearance of a cluster of new books, beginning in the 1930s, the subject can be said to have been remade. In this essay the process of remaking in the period 1930-50 is viewed, with a note of early twentieth-century antecedents, through the work of five scholars who took part in it: James Parkes and Arthur Lukyn Williams (whose books in 1934-35 can be said to have reopened the large-scale study of disputational writing), Marcel Simon and Bernhard Blumenkranz, and Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps.

The twentieth-century blossoming of scholarship on Jewish-Christian debate and the literature of disputation is sometimes associated with the years after the Second World War, but its first abundance belongs to the 1930s.1 In this decade the problem of evaluating literary disputations was familiar and alive. A. von Harnack had argued that from the second century onwards most Christian polemic which on the surface seems anti-Jewish is feebly theoretical and ‘cannot possibly arise from a heated conflict with a real opponent’.2 After the destruction of the temple by Titus, he suggested, the strong Jewish missionary tendency which was inherited by the Christians was soon overtaken among Jews by exclusivity and withdrawal from contact with outsiders, first in Judaea, then in the diaspora.3 Christians for their part, he  judged, were now both 1.  So the work of J. Parkes and H.-J. ­Schoeps, which indeed continued after the war, is simply placed in the post-war period by Gilbert Dahan, ‘Préface’, in the reissue of Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430-1096 (Paris–­ Louvain–Dudley MA, 2006; originally issued Paris, 1960), p. II, n. 5. 2.  Adolf Harnack, Die Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani nebst Untersuchungen über die antijüdische Polemik in der alten Kirche (TU 1,3; Leipzig, 1883), p. 63 (‘man sich ... bei so blassen, unhistorischen und theoretisirenden Widerlegungen beruhigt, dass diese ganze Polemik unmöglich aus einem brennenden Kampfe mit einem wirklichen Gegner hervorgegangen sein kann’). 3.  Adolf Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahr­ hunderten, 2 vols. (4th ed.; Leipzig, 1924), I, pp. 18-23. Subsequent discussion of the diaspora aspect of this question is reviewed, with a qualified affirmation of Jewish proselytism, by James Carleton Paget, ‘Hellenistic and Early Roman Period Jewish Missionary Efforts in the Diaspora’, in Clare K. Rothschild and Jens Schröter (eds.), The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era (Tübingen, 2013), pp. 11-49.

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s­ eparated and predominantly gentile, and Jews became on the whole of little concern to them. Thus Harnack held that Jews at first opposed Christianity by action, speech and writing, as Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Origen affirm, and Jewish polemic also provided material for pagan opponents of Christianity.4 After the second century, however, writings issued professedly adversus Judaeos had for the most part, he urged, no connection with Jewish-Christian controversy; they were intended, rather, for Christian self-education and response to paganism.5 Harnack himself allowed considerable exceptions, for post-second century continuation of Jewish argument and for reflection of it in Christian writing.6 The mainly negative tendency of his suggestion was influential, however, in the 1920s and 1930s, and has remained so. Different views of disputational literature, however, had been taken in connection with other conceptions of early Jewish-Christian relations, as reached especially by Jewish historians. Jewish anti-Christian argument was envisaged as continuing into the fourth century and beyond, with some Christian literary attestation of it. This view was reasserted before the First World War, notably by S.  Krauss, I.  Ziegler, J.  Bergmann, L. Lucas, M. Freimann and J. Juster.7 So Lucas wrote that ‘one can hardly accept Harnack’s claim that from the middle of the second century Jewish propaganda among the Greeks and Romans came progressively to a halt ... in many cases the historical documents even of the fourth century 4. A.  Harnack, Juden und Judenchristentum in Justins Dialog mit Trypho (TU  39; Leipzig, 1913), pp. 79-80; id., Mission und Ausbreitung, I, pp. 63-67, 77. 5. Harnack, Die Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani, pp.  63-64, 73-74, followed by George F. Moore, ‘Christian Writers on Judaism’, HTR 14 (1921), pp. 197-254 (198). 6. Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, I, p.  77, n.  3 (allowing effective later Jewish propaganda down to the early Middle Ages in certain places, and including a reference to L. Lucas, cited in nn. 7-8, below). 7.  Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin, 1902); id., ‘The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers’, JQR 5 (1892-93), pp. 122-57; 6 (1893-94), pp. 82-99; Ignaz Ziegler, Der Kampf zwischen Judentum und Christentum in den ersten drei christlichen Jahrhunderten (Berlin, 1907); Judah Bergmann, Jüdische Apologetik im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (Berlin, 1908), pp. 4-5 (Christian disputations are not a good source for Jewish apologetic, but do sometimes reflect genuinely Jewish argument); Leopold Lucas, Zur Geschichte der Juden im vierten Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1910), translated into English as The Conflict between Judaism and Christianity: a Contribution to the History of the Jews in the Fourth Century (Warminster, 1993), pp. vi, 29-30, 54, 93 (against Harnack, asserts vigorous Jewish propaganda from the second to the fourth century); M. Freimann, ‘Die Wortführer des Judentums in den ältesten Kontroversen zwischen Juden und Christen’, MGWJ 55 (1911), pp. 555-85; 56 (1912), pp. 49-64, 164-80 (debate did not go on in Judaea, but disputations genuinely reflect Hellenistic Jewish argument in the diaspora); J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire romain, 2 vols. (Paris, 1914), I, pp. 53-54.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS5

can only be understood on the assumption that it was still vigorous’.8 Bergmann sketched from rabbinic literature a lively Jewish apologetic down to the fourth century. Distinguishing its concern with Hellenism and Gnosticism as well as Christianity, he still matched rabbinic texts with Christian writings, including disputations, to portray ongoing ­Jewish-Christian conflict; this would have been especially bitter in the diaspora, where Jews had won proselytes but were now being disinherited by Christian mission.9 This series of works from Krauss to Freimann culminated in Jean Juster’s encyclopaedic evaluation of sources illustrating the legal, social and economic position of Jews in the Roman empire. He judged that Jews under Roman rule had vigorously commended Judaism while retaining, despite disadvantages imposed under Christian emperors, recognition of the legitimacy of their ancestral way of life.10 He connected anti-Jewish literature with Jewish-Christian debate and rivalry. Thus in presenting a critically annotated list of over thirty anti-Jewish writers he stressed, noting many independent ancient references to Christian discussion with Jews, that ‘on a vraiment exagéré en prétendant que les polémiques antijuives ne sont pas du tout sorties de discussions réelles entre Juifs et Chrétiens’.11 Juster went on to note the need for anti-Jewish polemic in the attempts to bring Jewish candidates to baptism attested in liturgical and catechetical texts.12 He understood Jewish proselytism to have involved ‘ardeur propagandiste’ and the use of missionaries, and envisaged a ‘struggle for preponderance between Christianity and Judaism’ throughout the period down to Justinian which he surveyed. The struggle was manifest, he suggested, in ways including a missionary rivalry, ‘la concurrence propagandiste entre Juifs et Chrétiens’, to which Christian anti-Jewish writings should be related.13 Juster’s interpretation of adversus Judaeos literature and Jewish-Christian relationships developed the work of Lucas and Freimann (without stressing the rabbinic polemic discussed by Bergmann and others), and linked disputational literature 8. Lucas, The Conflict, pp. 29-30. 9. Bergmann, Jüdische Apologetik, pp.  4-6, 31 (following Harnack’s picture of the displacement of Jewish proselytism by Christian mission, but noting Christian claims to a potentially Jewish field as a sore point). 10. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire romain, I, pp. 246-51; his enthusiasm for the liberties accorded to Jews in France, by contrast with his native Rumania, is presented as the background of his view by Martin Goodman, ‘Jean Juster and the Study of the Jews under Roman Rule’, in Geoffrey Khan (ed.), Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff (Leiden, 2005), pp. 309-22. 11. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire romain, I, p. 53, n. 4. 12. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire romain, I, pp. 102-106. 13. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire romain, I, pp. 253, n. 11, 290-97, 505.

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clearly not just with long-term conflict, as in Lucas, but also with longterm rivalry in propaganda and mission. This interpretation would now itself begin, above all through development in the 1930s and 1940s, a long-term rivalry with that of Harnack. Behind the work of the Jewish historians just cited lay a general conception of an active ‘struggle’ or ‘conflict’ (Kampf, lutte) long continued in antiquity between Jews and Judaism on the one hand, and Christian opposition to Jewish religion and influence on the other.14 This historical approach was perhaps encouraged by currents favouring self-defence and the re-assertion of Jewish tradition within Jewish life in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Comparable points of view appeared, however, within Christian Hebrew scholarship at the same time. Renewed attention was given to rabbinic and other ancient Jewish comment on Christianity, including the statements attributed to a Jew by Celsus, as reported by Origen. This study was carried on partly against a missionary background (as by G. Dalman and H.L. Strack).15 Like the work of Bergmann, Lucas, and Juster, it highlighted continuing ancient attestations of Jewish anti-Christian polemic. The history of disputation thus came to be a focus of study by Christian and Jewish scholars of differing outlooks. In the light of Lucas’s work and further source-material Harnack himself, when revising his Mission und Ausbreitung, made increased allowance for the long-term continuance of effective Jewish propaganda, into the early Middle Ages (see n. 6, above). In 1932 the currency of such propaganda was envisaged in discussion of the dialogues by A.B. Hulen.16 Thereafter, with the appearance of a cluster of new books in the 1930s and 1940s, the subject can be said to have been remade. This new departure had strong antecedents in scholarship, as just noted, but Marcel Simon indicated its immediate background as the rise and unleashing of antisemitism in the Third Reich and in a Europe which was influenced and then briefly dominated 14.  See Ziegler, Kampf; Bergmann, Jüdische Apologetik, pp. v, 25-38 (a defensive Jewish Kampf against Christianity, in Judaea stretching over four centuries); Lucas, The Conflict, p. 95 ‘the struggle between Jews and Christians was conducted with passionate intensity’ and ‘Jews sought to take the offensive’; compare Krauss, Leben Jesu, pp. 237-38 (the Toledoth Jeshu and the Talmud represent the views of Christianity which had formed within Judaism). 15.  Gustav Dalman, Heinrich Laible and A.W.  Streane, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar and the Liturgy of the Synagogue (Cambridge, 1893); Robert Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London, 1903) (a sympathetic discussion from a Unitarian standpoint); Hermann L. Strack, Jesus, die Häretiker und die Christen nach den ältesten jüdischen Angaben (Leipzig, 1910). 16.  A.B. Hulen, ‘The “Dialogues with the Jews” as Sources for the Early Jewish Argument against Christianity’, JBL 51 (1932), pp. 58-70.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS7

by Nazi Germany.17 Disputations were now viewed more comprehensively, in the light of Harnack and of dissent from him, and within a broader historical and theological setting. This process of remaking is outlined below through comment on the work of five scholars who took part in it. They comprise a Christian author who became an historian in the course of humanitarian work (James Parkes); two academic historians (one Christian, Marcel Simon, and one Jewish, Bernhard Blumenkranz); and two scholars in the field of theology (one Christian, one Jewish) who themselves engaged in modern Jewish-Christian debate (A.  Lukyn Williams and Hans-Joachim ­­Schoeps). Williams and Parkes are viewed together as a beginning, for they knew one another, and their books can be said to have opened, in 1934-35, the large-scale fresh study of disputational writing. A. Lukyn Williams and James Parkes In 1935 A. Lukyn Williams published Adversus Judaeos: a Bird’s Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance, now happily once again available from the Cambridge University Press.18 This history of literature was flanked by a two-volume political history from James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue. A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism and The Jew in the Medieval Community. A Study of his Political and Economic Situation (London, 1934 and 1938, respectively).19 Parkes interpreted much literary polemic within his broader study of the church in relation with the synagogue. Williams and Parkes both used the writings of Harnack and Juster, but judged that literary disputations gave some genuine reflections of the presentation of Christianity to Jews, and also, in a number of cases, of Jewish attitudes to Christianity. The two scholars shared in different ways the presupposition of an ongoing ‘struggle’. In Parkes the weight of his ‘conflict of the church and the synagogue’ lies on the side of the church and especially the clergy, for although Jewish proselytism continues Christians are not, after the 17.  Marcel Simon, ‘Préface’, in the reissue of Bernhard Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der jüdisch-christlichen Beziehungen in den ersten Jahrhunderten (Paris, 1973; originally published in Basel, 1946), p. VII. 18.  Arthur Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos: a Bird’s Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1935; digitally printed version, Cambridge, 2012). 19.  A planned third volume, to be entitled The Medieval Church and the Jews, was never written; see James Parkes, Voyage of Discoveries (London, 1969), p. 150.

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early second century, a significant body for the leaders of Judaism, there is considerable Jewish anti-Christian polemic but no systematic literature of it in antiquity, and at a popular level Jewish-Christian relations, despite disturbances from time to time, are relatively good.20 In Williams, on the other hand, the literature rather than the overall history is central; he offers historico-critical introduction to adversus Iudaeos texts without seeking to situate them in a continuous historical narrative, but he too envisages a conflict, now between a constant Christian effort to win over Jews to the gospel, and an equally constant Jewish argument of attack as well as defence.21 The works of Parkes and Williams emerged within a long-standing but now widening British concern with these subjects. Thus the same years 1934-38 saw the publication of the symposium In Spirit and in Truth edited for the Society of Jews and Christians by G.A.  Yates (London, 1934)—offering, in place of disputation, parallel Jewish and Christian treatments of topics in religion—and the three-volume historical series Judaism and Christianity edited by W.O.E.  Oesterley, H.  Loewe and E.I.J. Rosenthal (London, 1937-38).22 In Berlin in 1937 H.J. ­Schoeps comparably issued his Jüdisch-christliches Religionsgespräch in 19 Jahrhunderten. A movement towards ‘dialogue’ or ‘discussion’ (Gespräch) rather than ‘disputation’ was accompanied, as all these titles suggest, by increased interest in the history of Jewish-Christian relationships. Yet, despite events in Europe and the Middle East, in the British setting even those studying the bible and theology might still be slow to sense the significance of the history of Jewish-Christian controversy.23 Williams (1853-1943) and Parkes (1896-1981) were over forty years apart in age, and differed considerably, but in some ways they were alike. Both were clergymen, and they both put down roots in the country a few miles south-west of Cambridge; Williams was vicar of Guilden Morden for twenty-four years (1895-1919) before settling finally in Cambridge, and Parkes in 1935 brought his library to Barley, where he lived 20.  James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue. A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (London, 1934), pp. XVIII, 106-15, 190-91, 374-75. 21. Williams, Adversus Judaeos, p. XVI. 22.  These works all appeared from the publishing house of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.), or its associated imprint the Sheldon Press (W.K. Lowther Clarke was Editorial Secretary, 1915-44); S.P.C.K. also issued most of the further books by Lukyn Williams cited below. This voluntary Society within the Church of England had supported catechetical and missionary work since 1698. 23.  ‘My education was always a lap behind the conditions to which I had come’, wrote one who did become engaged in this subject during theological study in the 1930s, Alan Ecclestone, The Night Sky of the Lord (London, 1980), pp. 28-33.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS9

until 1965 not as rector of the parish, but simply as a scholar and writer. In 1939 Williams could write warmly both of Parkes and of Parkes’s younger friend W.W.  Simpson as ‘my friend’.24 Simpson, a Methodist scholar, became the first Secretary of the Council of Christians and Jews, in which Parkes’s views played a considerable part, when it was founded in 1942.25 Contrasts between Williams and Parkes, however, are also striking. Williams was a trained Hebraist who had studied rabbinic texts at Cambridge under S.M. Schiller-Szinessy, and admired Talmudic spirituality and the Jewish Prayer-book; he published an annotated translation of the Mishnah and Tosefta of Berakhoth.26 He regarded lack of sympathy with Jewish learning and spirituality as one of the greatest defects of writings intended to present Christianity to Jews.27 Among the pre-First World War writers mentioned already, his kinship was with Dalman, Streane and Strack, who coupled loyalty to mission with Hebrew study. Stephen Neill, in his survey of New Testament interpretation from 1861 to 1961, recalls how in 1922 ‘Dr. A. Lukyn Williams put into my hands a book with the remark: “I think this would interest you.” It was the first volume of Strack-Billerbeck’s ... Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch.’28 Parkes on the other hand, primarily concerned with Jews in Europe when he began to work on Jewish history, made a deliberate decision not to learn Hebrew, but to use his limited time instead in meeting Jews—although he was an admirer of the seventeenth-century Christian Hebraists and wrote appreciatively about them.29 To go on with the points of contrast, Williams was a devoted supporter of mission to the Jews, Parkes was a pioneer within the church of 24.  Arthur Lukyn Williams, The Doctrines of Modern Judaism Considered (London, 1939), pp. XII, 114.  25.  On Parkes’s rôle in the emergence of the Council, partly from the existing Society of Jews and Christians, see Anne Summers, ‘False Start or Brave Beginning? The Society of Jews and Christians, 1924-44’, JEH 65 (2014), pp. 827-51. 26.  Arthur Lukyn Williams, Tractate Berakoth (Benedictions): Mishnah and Tosephta (London, 1921). 27.  Arthur Lukyn Williams, ‘Literature as a Means of Winning Jews to Christ’, in [James Black et al.], The Christian Approach to the Jew, being a Report of Conferences held at Budapest and Warsaw in April 1927 (London, 1927), pp. 177-82. 28.  Stephen Neill, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1961 (London, 1966), p.  292; S.  Neill and T.  Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1986 (Oxford, 1988), p. 313. 29. Parkes, Voyage of Discoveries, p. 114; id., The Parkes Library: Its Formation and Transfer to the University of Southampton (Southampton, 1965), pp. 7-8; id., ‘Early Christian Hebraists’, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 4 (1959), pp.  61-68; 5 (1962), pp. 11-28.

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the view that such missionary approaches were out of place.30 Williams was an orthodox lover of the bible with a respect for reason and ecclesiastical tradition, a position indicated when he called himself ‘not a Low Churchman, still less a Modernist, but an Evangelical churchman who believes that Richard Hooker is the greatest of Anglican divines’.31 Parkes, however, was a liberal for whom, as for many of his contemporaries, including in this field Travers Herford and Martin Buber, personality and personal relations were central in interpretation of religion; he sympathized with those called Modernists, he could voice impatience with ‘theologians’, he strove for restatement of the doctrine of the Trinity, he looked for enlargement of Christian views of political involvement, ecumenism and the status of Judaism, and he abominated the influence of Karl Barth.32 Williams’s Adversus Judaeos came out in 1935, when he was over eighty. It had been conceived originally in the 1890s, at the time ‘long ago’, says the author, when he was lecturing on these texts to students preparing for missionary work; ‘it was desirable’, he adds wryly, ‘that they should … learn the mistakes of their predecessors, and also perhaps find some hints as to the best method of approach’.33 Williams had served for four years (1891-95) as principal of the missionary college of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. After his move from this post, however, he remained keenly alive to the situation in eastern and central Europe, and in a popular book published in the same year as Adversus Judaeos (1935) he declared Hitler to be as doomed by his treatment of the Jews as the Czars seemed to have been by their responsibility for the pogroms.34 Adversus Judaeos is a big book, but it mirrors only one part of the author’s concern with the whole disputational literature, New Testament as well as later, Jewish as well as Christian, and modern as well as ancient and mediaeval. Among his other writings, Christian Evidences for Jewish People (two volumes, Cambridge, 1911; London, 1919) is perhaps the last 30.  James Parkes, Judaism and Christianity (London, 1948), pp. 167-81. On this aspect of Parkes see Tony Kushner, ‘James Parkes, the Jews, and Conversionism: a Model for Multi-Cultural Britain?’, in Diana Wood (ed.), Christianity and Judaism (SCH 29; Oxford, 1992), pp. 451-61. 31.  Lukyn Williams, The Doctrines of Modern Judaism Considered, p. XI. Hooker is quoted to illustrate biblical allusion in the pseudo-Augustinian Altercatio Ecclesiae et Synagogae by Williams, Adversus Judaeos, p. 330, n. 3. 32. Parkes, Conflict, pp. 190-91, 200 (ancient ‘theologians’, Christian and Jewish); id., Voyage of Discoveries, pp. 101-104, 223-27 (Barth and the Trinity). 33. Williams, Adversus Judaeos, pp. XV-XVI. 34.  Arthur Lukyn Williams, The Foundation of the Christian Faith (Cambridge, 1935), p. 3.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS11

Christian attempt to respond point by point to the most popular of all Hebrew defences of Judaism against Christianity, the sixteenth-century Hizzuq Emunah of the Lithuanian Karaite Isaac Troki. When the first volume of Christian Evidences was complete Williams began to deliver in Lincoln’s Inn Chapel the Warburton Lectures (1911-15) published as The Hebrew-Christian Messiah, or The Presentation of the Messiah to the Jews in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (London, 1916). This substantial volume blends what would later be called a ‘redactional’ approach to Matthew with discussion of Jewish messianism and ancient and modern Jewish reactions to Christianity; those reviewed include attempts to form a ‘Hebrew-Christian Church’, a precursor of more recent ‘Messianic Judaism’ (Williams thought the aim misguided, at least in the diaspora; he deprecated any Christian-Jewish observance of ritual and dietary laws).35 Then Williams translated from Greek Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, with a still-valuable commentary (London, 1930); his small book Talmudic Judaism and Christianity (London, 1933) treats the questions how far rabbinic literature reflects the religion of New Testament times, and whether the New Testament genuinely reflects aspects of ancient Judaism (the book also gives charming character-sketches of P.H. Mason, Schiller-Szinessy and Israel Abrahams); and finally contemporary thought is central in The Doctrines of Modern Judaism Considered (London, 1938), which includes review of the treatment of election and Torah in the then new dialectical Jewish theology of Hans-Joachim ­­Schoeps.36 Adversus Judaeos is still notable for its concentration on Byzantine and oriental as well as western Christianity. After a treatment of ante-Nicene 35.  Arthur Lukyn Williams, The Hebrew-Christian Messiah, Or The Presentation of the Messiah to the Jews in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (London, 1916), pp. 205-13, allowing an exception for Christians settled as members of a Jewish nation in Palestine (a view noted by Israel Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, II [Cambridge, 1924], p.  57); within the Church of England contemporary advocates of a diaspora Hebrew-Christian Church included Williams’s friend G.H. Box, and P.P. Levertoff. See Lev Gillet, Communion in the Messiah (London, 1942), pp. 202-205 (opposing Williams); Jakób Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ (London, 1949), pp.  238-39 (following Williams); on the contemporary (1913-15) founding of the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Messianic Judaism (London–New York, 2000), pp. 27-30. Williams restated his view, now noting ‘Sir Leon Levison’s experiment of a HebrewChristian Colony near Gaza’, in The Foundation of the Christian Faith, pp. 130-31. 36. Williams, The Doctrines of Modern Judaism Considered, pp.  99-104, citing Jüdisch-christliches Religionsgespräch in 19 Jahrhunderten (Berlin, 1937), and also Jüdi­ scher Glaube in dieser Zeit: Prolegomena zur Grundlegung einer systematischen Theologie des Judentums (Berlin, 1932); Williams rejects the presentation of Abrahamic descent as assurance of divine favour (rejecting likewise, from his Evangelical standpoint, comparable Christian views of baptism), but he welcomes S­ choeps’s treatment of Torah as revelation of the divine will.

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texts it proceeds to Syriac writers, from Aphrahat down to Dionysius bar Salibi in the twelfth century, and then to ‘Greek Writers, A.D. 325-1455’; the series of disputations treated here which may be termed Byzantine run from Herbanus and Gregentius (late fifth century)37 and the Doctrina Jacobi (early seventh century) down to the treatise of Gennadius written in the years following the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Latin writings are divided into those connected with Spain, from Prudentius and Isidore of Seville down to Alphonso de Spina (1459), and others, in a series from late antiquity to Nicholas de Lyra. Fuller surveys have since been written, notably by Bernhard Blumenkranz, on the west from the fifth to the twelfth century, and, most comprehensively, by Heinz Schreckenberg, who reviews not just disputations, Jewish as well as Christian, but a range of relevant texts and images found in other literary genres, from ancient to modern times.38 Blumenkranz, followed by Schreckenberg and others, also initiated the concomitant gathering of depictions of Jews in Christian art.39 Yet Williams’s book has at least two distinctive features of abiding value. First, although critical detachment is needed in this study, Williams’s practical missionary engagement with the questions at issue is paradoxically an asset; he does indeed aim at the necessary detachment, but he also knows what discussion is like, he shows sympathetic and critical insight into the positions taken on both sides, and above all he thinks that the argument really matters; he never shows the impatience of the ‘cultured despiser’.40 A second and allied merit is his willingness to commit himself to a judg37.  The disputation between Herbanus and Gregentius is now dated to the seventh century (see D.M. Olster, Roman Defeat, Christian Response, and the Literary Construction of the Jew [Philadelphia, 1994], 140). 38.  Bernhard Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens latins du moyen âge sur les juifs et le judaïsme (Paris, 1963); Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.-11. Jh.) (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Theologie, 172; 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main, 1990); id., Die christlichen Adversus-JudaeosTexte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (11.-13.  Jh.). Mit einer Ikonographie des Judenthemas bis zum 4. Laterankonzil (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Theologie, 335; Frankfurt am Main, 1988); id., Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr ­literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13.-20.  Jh.) (Europäische Hochschulschriften, ­Theologie, 497; Frankfurt am Main, 1994). 39. Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juden und Judentum in der mittelalterlichen Kunst. Franz Delitzsch-Vorlesungen 1963 (Stuttgart, 1965); id., Le Juif mediéval au miroir de l’art chrétien (Paris, 1966). Kathleen Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge, 1992) did not discuss these interpretations of later western material. 40.  The whole story is not told in Parkes’s characteristic dictum ‘the Adversus Judaeos of Lukyn Williams, a work … in which the admirable scholarship of its author is continually compromised by his point of view’; see Parkes, Judaism and Christianity, p. 207.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS13

ment on each text discussed. Here he is influenced by his background as a Hebraist and his conviction that Hebrew knowledge is essential for serious discussion of Judaism—although he allows that knowledge of Judaism may occasionally appear in writers who do not know Hebrew. At any rate, he gives what is still a stimulating aid to reflection, through what amounts to an old-fashioned examiner’s class-list of the Christian disputations. The best entries are marked in brackets with (H) or (J), or sometimes both, indicating knowledge of Hebrew and of Judaism, respectively. Petrus Alphonsi receives both distinctions. Then there is another category, marked by a star which signifies ‘of special interest’. Timothy and Aquila misses the star, but is nevertheless called ‘a rather strange and very interesting document’, and the view that its content comes essentially from towards the end of the second century is discussed and accepted. Williams could perhaps be considered a learned compiler rather than a creative scholar; C.F.D. Moule once made a remark on these lines. Such a verdict should not, however, obscure the value of his assembly and discussion of studies of texts in Greek, Syriac, and Latin, sometimes neglected and often untranslated, giving due and uncommon prominence to Byzantium and the orient as well as the west. This achievement of what he modestly called ‘a bird’s-eye view’ was itself a form of creativity and an enablement of further study. His effort to assess and distinguish, based on missionary experience of Jewish-Christian discussion and a knowledge of Jewish tradition and apologetic preserved in Hebrew, was governed by a spirit of fair-minded engagement. Without arguing expressly with Harnack, he shows cumulatively that literary disputations may often seem feeble, but can still be understood in the main as genuine attempts to argue for Christianity with Jews in mind. These works then represent an intellectual, and sometimes also devout, interest on the part of the church in the spiritual welfare of Jews—something which for Williams was an important though often neglected part of the church’s calling, but which he knew to be perceived very differently in the Jewish community. This conclusion, reached originally probably long before 1935, ultimately seemed to Williams to complement Parkes’s conclusion from his own inquiry, which in the 1930s was very much of the moment, and moved the study of disputations into a new context. Parkes looked not for aid in discussion with Jews, but for the origins of antisemitism. He concluded, as Williams put it, that antisemitism was almost entirely the fault of the church.41 41. Williams, Adversus Judaeos, p. XIII.

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James Parkes was a man of action as well as a scholar. After army service (1916-19) in the First World War he read classics and theology at Oxford.42 There, however, he also entered the world of youth and student movements which was so powerful internationally in the 1920s. On ordination in 1925 he combined a London curacy with work for the Student Christian Movement, and in 1928 he joined the staff of the International Student Service and moved to Geneva; from the following year he became involved in the Jewish question, which, as he puts it, ‘was undoubtedly the most widespread cause of disorder’ in student life in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Rumania and Poland.43 The question soon turned into urgent calls on his Service to help ‘non-Aryan’ refugees, and turned Parkes himself to historical work in the midst of humanitarian action; for it was found a practical hindrance that few Christian student leaders had any knowledge of Jewish history and religion. This commitment to history led Parkes to work for an Oxford D.Phil.—and there was also the point that to be taken seriously in continental Europe he needed to become Herr Doktor.44 His writing was shaped by the fact that he sought to explain the background of the massacres of the First Crusade. Working back from this point, he inquired into the origins of antisemitism, and his thesis became his two volumes on The Conflict and The Jew in the Medieval Community. Meanwhile Parkes had been building up through booksellers in Paris, Geneva and Berlin what became the famous Parkes Library, and his 1935 move with his books to Barley corresponded to his decision, financially supported by I.M. Sieff, to devote himself to scholarly work on Jewishgentile relations. In the event he also published, beside his series of historical studies, short and widely-read theological books on reinterpretation of Christian doctrines of God. These included Judaism and Christianity (London, 1948), on the two religions envisaged, following in outline Franz Rosenzweig, as stemming from two different fundamental experiences, symbolized by Sinai and Calvary, respectively, and as two divine revelations of related and complementary validity; ‘their separation is not a divine intention’, but the church should relinquish organized missionary work among Jews, and recognize ‘the equality of the Synagogue as the vehicle of a divine purpose still in process of fulfilment, the recipient of a still valid divine revelation’.45 42.  See his autobiography Voyage of Discoveries, pp. 14-22, 31-58. 43. Parkes, Voyage of Discoveries, p. 111. 44. Parkes, Voyage of Discoveries, pp. 114, 120. 45. Parkes, Judaism and Christianity, pp. 30-31, 174.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS15

The conclusion of The Conflict was of course that antisemitism in its mediaeval and later European forms arose within the early Christian church, as a result of what Parkes called ‘the caricature of the Jew with which patristic literature is filled’—formed, he thought, not by deliberate misrepresentation, but by the belief of leading ecclesiastics that charges levelled against Israel in the Old Testament, and the threat therein voiced of abandonment by God, all applied to the contemporary Jewish community. Mediaeval anti-Jewish accusations then readily fitted this existing image. ‘Ritual murder’ (Parkes wrote), ‘the poisoning of wells, the profanation of the Host, all these are natural growths from the picture created by a Chrysostom or a Cyril’.46 Parkes differentiated antisemitism, to which he held that Christian teachers contributed essentially, from the anti-Jewish feeling sometimes evinced in Greek and Roman literature. Williams by contrast linked antisemitism with jealousy arising from justified but still unpalatable Jewish attitudes of superiority; this invocation of a debatable external cause was to some extent shared by Parkes.47 More broadly, Williams associated antisemitism with popular feeling rather than higher clerical teaching, and doubted any total differentiation, like that proposed by Parkes, between classical and patristic anti-Jewish accusations. Disputational literature was here set expressly within the framework not only of the conflict of religions, the study of which was primary in Williams, but also of debate on the origins of antisemitism. The interplay of the two concerns in the springs of research was later illustrated autobiographically from a Jewish standpoint by Bernhard Blumenkranz. Associating himself with an age-old Jewish experience of minority life, and a corresponding desire to find in history an answer to the problems of relationship with the majority, he wrote that he had begun study of the church fathers with the hope of finding friendship between the mother and daughter religions, but had of course met a documentation of hostility and bitterness on both sides. He then, however, found reasons for this opposition in the active Jewish proselytism which formed one side of a Jewish-Christian missionary rivalry, and also in the Christian identification with the Roman empire.48 His description of his personal quest may perhaps illuminate aspects of the writings from Krauss to Juster discussed above, in which, as noted, protection of the religious tradition of Judaism from assimilation to a Christian majority ethos was 46. Parkes, The Conflict, pp. 157-58, 374-76. 47. Williams, The Doctrines of Modern Judaism, pp. 116-17; Summers, ‘False Start or Brave Beginning?’, p. 851. 48. Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, pp. IX-X (1960), III-IV (reissue, 2006).

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also a concern. In any case, however, the work of Parkes seems to mark the point from which the kind of characteristically minority concern described by Blumenkranz was also regularly considered in Christian discussion of the New Testament and the church fathers on Judaism, a discussion which had sometimes been marked rather by anti-Jewish hostility. Debate on the origins of an antisemitism which was viewed with condemnation was now incorporated into Christian discussion of the literature of disputation on religious difference. In the course of his argument Parkes reconsidered many adversus Iudaeos texts, and related material in the acts of the martyrs and New Testament apocrypha, within a broad range of sources including laws. He took Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Cyprian to attest the development of Christian anti-Jewish polemic.49 He envisaged, with Juster but without citation of him in this connection, that in the second and third centuries Jews and Christians ‘were still rivals for the conversion of the pagan world around them’, that ‘the Church never really ceased to fear the rival influence of Judaism’, and that Jews would have been ready with answers to the Christian approach to gentiles.50 He judged that Lucas was ‘certainly justified’ in insisting on the importance of Jewish propaganda in the fourth century.51 Particularly interested in attestation of Jewish argument, Parkes agreed that in many literary dialogues the Jew was ‘little more than a dummy figure’, but he stressed that a lifelike depiction of Jewish polemic was found not only in Justin but also in many later eastern disputations.52 Following Harnack on Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Origen, he envisaged the early formation of an ‘official’ Jewish negative assessment of Christianity, corresponding Jewish argument with Christians, and considerable mutual hostility.53 He endeavoured to piece together themes of second-century and later Jewish anti-Christian polemic from Christian and Jewish sources.54 Yet, especially on the basis of a fresh review of martyr-acts, he combated Harnack’s suggestion of a Jewish hostility to Christianity which, though not reflected in most

49. Parkes, The Conflict, pp. 95-101. 50. Parkes, The Conflict, pp. 106-15, 120. 51. Parkes, The Conflict, p. 151. 52. Parkes, The Conflict, pp. 276, 280-91. 53. Parkes, The Conflict, pp. 80-85; the statement on Jewish anti-Christian action and propaganda in the late first century is summarized in id., Jesus, Paul and the Jews (London, 1936), p. 148. 54. Parkes, The Conflict, pp.  108-17; id., ‘Rome, Pagan and Christian’, in H.  Loewe (ed.), Judaism and Christianity, II, The Contact of Pharisaism with other Cultures (London, 1937), pp. 115-44 (131-33).



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS17

Christian disputational literature, emerged in connection with civic or imperial efforts to repress Christians.55 Like Williams, however, Parkes had silently but definitely qualified Harnack’s view that after the second century adversus Iudaeos texts, with one or two exceptions, bore no witness to genuine argument with Jews. Williams and Parkes were both convinced that Jews did regularly argue against Christianity, and that this argument was reflected at least sometimes in disputational literature. Here, despite their difference of perspective, they were at one. They will have presupposed the responses to Harnack on this count already given in the work of scholars including Lucas and Juster. For Parkes, however, the argument on the Christian side involved the formation of a ‘caricature’ of Jews which was a major step in antisemitism. This suggestion is an antecedent of more recent debate on the relation between the ‘image’ of Judaism in adversus Iudaeos texts, and other attestations of Jewish life.56 Marcel Simon and Bernhard Blumenkranz Williams and Parkes both represent pensée engagée. Two further notable authors of the period, Marcel Simon (1907-86) and Bernhard Blumenkranz (1913-89), rooted the study of disputations deeply in unsentimental historical work. Christian and Jewish respectively, they both developed the existing interpretation of adversus Iudaeos literature in the context of conflict and Jewish activism, and both followed Juster in envisaging a missionary rivalry between Jews and Christians. Simon, unlike Parkes, incorporated into his history a discussion of Harnack on disputations. Simon set before himself the ideal of the objective historian, whose personal convictions could not be discovered from his writing. Over ten years younger than Parkes, known as an historian of Alsace and a pillar of post-war reconstruction of the university of Strasbourg, he is famous above all for his work on early Christianity in its broader religious context, Jewish, Greek and Roman.57 In this field he admired the reticence 55. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, pp. 121-50. 56.  On discussion by Miriam S.  Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: a Critique of the Consensus (Studia Postbiblica 46; Leiden, 1995), sympathetically criticized by Judith Lieu, see my Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 22-25; see further n. 61, below. 57.  Georges Livet and Marc Philonenko, ‘Simon, Marcel Alexandre’, Nouveau dictionnaire de biographie alsacienne, XXXV (Strasbourg, 2000), pp. 3651-52.

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of his own Paris teachers, C. Guignebert the freethinker and M. Goguel the attached Protestant; their positions could not necessarily have been guessed from their scholarship. Simon’s own religious perspective was Roman Catholic, later on Anglican.58 In retrospect, however detached, he judged that events of the 1930s had played a part in leading him, like Parkes, to the history of Jewish-Christian relations.59 Simon’s Verus Israel, begun in the 1930s and eventually published in 1948, interprets one vital period in their development, the years between Bar Kokhba and the Theodosian Code.60 This many-sided book includes a critique of Harnack which develops and systematizes much in Juster. Simon has been, despite dissent, perhaps the most influential of all writers on this subject from the 1930s and 1940s, as was back-handedly recognized by Miriam Taylor when she took Verus Israel as a paradigm of error.61 Simon rejects Harnack’s view that the imagined Jew of Christian-Jewish dialogues is really a pagan. Unlike Williams and Parkes, however, he fully discusses both parts of Harnack’s argument, on the dialogues and on mission. He states in this connection that Juster’s treatment of JewishChristian relations is fundamental for his own.62 Noting the variety and extent of the adversus Iudaeos literature, and, in discussion of Hulen, its combinations of defence, refutation and denunciation, he interprets it as indeed mainly composed with Jews in mind. He argues that Jews in the second-century and later Roman empire formed a strong community 58.  Livet and Philonenko, ‘Simon, Marcel Alexandre’. 59.  Marcel Simon, ‘Avant-Propos’, in id., Le Christianisme antique et son contexte religieux: Scripta Varia, 2 vols. (Tübingen, 1981), I, pp. V-XV (VII, XI); id., ‘Les origines chrétiennes d’après l’œuvre scientifique de Maurice Goguel’, RH 202 (1949), pp. 221-31, repr. in Simon, Le Christianisme antique, I, pp. 142-52. 60.  Marcel Simon, Verus Israel (Paris, 1948; reprinted with new postscript, 1964; English translation, Oxford, 1986). 61. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity, discussed by F.  Blanchetière, ‘La vitalité et le prosélytisme juifs, causes ou non de l’anti-judaïsme chrétien ancien? Que penser de la thèse du Verus Israel de M. Simon?’, in François Blanchetière, Aux sources de l’antijudaïsme chrétien, IIe-IIIe siècles (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 169-83; Guy G. Stroumsa, ‘From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism in Early Christianity?’, in Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews (Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 10; Tübingen, 1996), pp. 1-26 (11, 14-15); Judith M. Lieu, Image and Reality (Edinburgh, 1996); James Carleton Paget, ‘Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum I (1997), pp.  195-225, repr. in id., Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (WUNT 251; Tübingen, 2010), pp. 43-76; Albert I. Baumgarten, ‘Marcel Simon’s Verus Israel as a Contribution to Jewish History’, HTR 92 (1999), pp.  465-78; on Taylor and S. Goldhill, Sébastien Morlet, ‘Les dialogues adversus Iudaeos: origine, caractéristiques, referentialité’, in Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich, and Bernard Pouderon (eds.), Les dialogues adversus Iudaeos. Permanence et mutations d’une tradition polémique (Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 196; Paris, 2013), pp. 21-45 (25-27). 62. Simon, Verus Israel, p. XI.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS19

which, like the growing Christian groups, shared contemporary Greek culture.63 He endorses W. Bousset’s argument that Jewish Greek literary composition (including anti-pagan polemic) and synagogue prayer in Greek continued after the time of Josephus.64 Discussing Freimann, he notes indications that dialogues may reflect genuine Jewish-Christian contact (he thinks that Williams might have carried his classification and analysis much further). He sets the dialogues alongside rabbinic passages on Minim, discussed with the conclusion that Christians are often in view.65 He then presents ancient Christian antisemitism as seen especially in those biblically-based strictures on contemporary Jews which Parkes had emphasized. Simon, referring to the anti-Jewish homilies preached by Chrysostom to discourage Judaizing in the Antiochene church, attributes this Christian attitude, like Lucas and Juster, above all to fear of the religious vitality of the Jewish community. Coming now to Harnack on mission, Simon argues in detail against him for the view that Jewish proselytism continued throughout the ancient period, with an impetus which was not wholly lost in the Middle Ages (here one recalls Harnack’s readiness to admit exceptions to his own view over the same long period).66 Simon also takes the presence of Judaizers within the church partly as a sign of Jewish influence, and judges that they were viewed sympathetically by Jews.67 Thus Simon sponsors overall what Miriam Taylor called the conflict theory of Jewish-Christian relations, including the suggestion, in which Simon followed Juster, that Jews and Christians vied with each other for adherents from the pagan world. Her point that Simon’s view was widely accepted inevitably presents his book as a post-war phenomenon, peculiarly suited to post-Holocaust reflection on antisemitism. This impression can be balanced, however, by recognition of the early twentiethcentury antecedents of Simon’s argument in the Jewish historians discussed above. Thus for Bergmann Jewish propaganda was mainly defensive, but the displacement of Jewish proselytism by Christians would have been a root of Jewish bitterness; Lucas pictured a Jewish propaganda which could take the offensive, working together with the attractive power of the synagogue service, Jewish messianism and the study of the law; and Freimann found Hellenistic Jewish argument in the disputations. Finally, Juster linked adversus Judaeos literature with 63. Simon, Verus Israel, pp. 135-78. 64. Simon, Verus Israel, pp. 49-60. 65. Simon, Verus Israel, pp. 179-201. 66. Simon, Verus Israel, pp. X-XI, 271-305. 67. Simon, Verus Israel, pp. 306-38.

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­ roselytism as well as controversy, a point echoed by Parkes and by p Simon’s teacher Guignebert; Simon drew especially on Juster, but knew all these writers.68 By the end of the preparation of his book Simon also knew the briefer defence of the conception of continuing Jewish antiChristian argument and missionary rivalry, with an appeal to Ziegler, Bergmann, Freimann and Juster, in Blumenkranz’s Judenpredigt (1946).69 Simon’s rejection of Harnack’s picture of the weakness of disputation and the end of Jewish propaganda was not an innovation; but the scholarly care and range of his cumulative argument, and its integration into a total historical picture of Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman empire, did indeed betoken a new start. Within that argument, the assertion of missionary rivalry made by Juster and Simon has been doubted by Miriam Taylor as a ‘Christianizing’ interpretation of Jewish history, used in the interest of explaining antisemitism. Understandings of what is implied by ‘mission’ differ, and attitudes to mission change. Juster was glad, in a way which might now be less expected, to suggest that Judaism was perhaps the first religion to understand how to make profitable use of the activity of missionaries.70 Taylor rightly modified her focus on Simon by noting that Jewish historians had felt the need to counter the historically questionable assumption that Judaism in the Roman period was passive and withdrawn.71 Blumenkranz’s recollection of his own quest in the 1940s, noted above, confirms that a depiction of ancient Jewish mission could be acceptable among Jews as well as Christians. It is clear at any rate that Jewish and Christian communities in antiquity were both attracting non-Jews (including some who adhered first to the Christians and then to the Jews), and that oral and written commendation of Judaism and Christianity and controversy between them were current; contact included Christian consultation of Jews on biblical interpretation.72 The use of 68. Parkes, The Conflict, p. 120; Charles Guignebert, The Jewish World in the Time of Jesus (Le Monde juif vers le temps de Jésus [Paris, 1935], E.T. by S.H.  Hooke, London, 1939), pp. 231-32; Simon, Verus Israel, pp. IX-X and n. 7, 466, n. 8, 468, n. 57. 69. Simon, Verus Israel, p. X and n. 8; Blumenkranz, Judenpredigt, pp. 3, 85. 70. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire romain, I, p. 254, continuation of p. 253, n. 11. 71. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity, p.  11, n.  4, following Scot Mc­K night, A Light among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (Minneapolis, 1991). 72.  See Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians, and Jewish Christians in Antiquity, pp. 66-71; id., ‘Hellenistic and Early Roman Period Jewish Missionary Efforts in the Diaspora’ (n. 3, above), and literature cited there; Horbury, Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy, pp. 24, 98-99; id., ‘Rabbinic Perceptions of Christianity and the History of Roman Palestine’, in Martin Goodman and Philip Alexander (eds.), Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine (Proceedings of the British Academy 165; Oxford, 2010), pp. 353-76.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS21

Jewish-Christian f­ riction to help explain anti-Jewish writing was in any case questioned by Miriam Taylor as part of an undue invocation of external causes for antisemitism, whereas attention should focus on inner-Christian needs for a symbolic negative image of Judaism; but recognition of these needs does not cancel the significance of external circumstances also, as Judith Lieu showed (see nn. 56 and 61, above). For assessment of disputational literature the strength of the general case for Jewish influence and propaganda remains important. This can be presented, as it was by Lucas, without invoking missionary rivalry, but some conflict in connection with the attraction of both the Jewish and the Christian communities for non-Jews seems likely. Simon’s view of the disputations as witness to conflict and missionary rivalry was paralleled, both before and after the appearance of Verus Israel in 1948, by a slightly younger Jewish historian, Bernhard Blumenkranz (1913-89). Born in Vienna, at about the time of the Anschluss he went to France, and later escaped from internment there into Switzerland. In Basel he wrote Die Judenpredigt Augustins (1946), a translation and study of Augustine’s Tractatus adversus Iudaeos, with an initial discussion of earlier Latin works in this genre; Blumenkranz urged that, although their authors might sometimes have had internal catechetical aims rather than mission in view, Christians would in fact draw on these writings in discussion with Jews.73 He took up, as already noted, the arguments of Bergmann and others, including Juster, for Jewish propaganda in a setting which included competition for converts. Parkes’s unguarded remark that Augustine showed no special interest in Jews was a gift for Blumenkranz’s argument that even recent scholarship had neglected or overlooked the concern with Judaism found in Augustine himself.74 Blumenkranz’s Judenpredigt was justly hailed in retrospect by Simon as the first scholarly monograph in the field.75 It was followed from the 1970s onwards by a series of works by others on the Jews in particular church fathers. The study of Augustine and his predecessors in this regard has been continued with a different outlook by Paula Fredriksen. After the debate on image just noted she envisages adversus Iudaeos texts, here recalling Harnack, as playing an important inner-Christian function as rhetoric against disapproved forms of Christianity, and she 73. Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins, pp. 2-3. 74. Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins, p. 8, citing Parkes, Conflict, p. 171. 75.  Simon, ‘Préface’, in Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins (reissued Paris, 1973), p. VII.

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judges that the Jewish communal attitude to non-Jewish inquirers was typically one of welcome rather than mission.76 Returning to France after the war, Blumenkranz wrote his great work Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430-1096 (Paris, 1960), as a thesis under the direction of H.-I.  Marrou. During the war Marrou, teaching at Lyon, had himself taken part in efforts to aid the escape of Jews from France to Switzerland.77 This book takes up the story of ­Jewish-Christian relations at the death of Augustine, and carries it down to the First Crusade. By comparison with Judenpredigt, this is a full-scale historical work. The treatment of literature is integrated with discussion of the social and legal position of Jews among western Christians; ­sections on ‘La concurrence missionnaire’ and ‘La polémique judéo-­ chrétienne’ are introduced by a study of ‘Les rapports de bon voisinage’ and concluded by the more sombre ‘La déchéance légale’ (a heading with echoes of Juster’s treatment of the Theodosian Code).78 Here Christian apologiae are again linked with real argument, but Jewish anti-Christian writing is also picked out, and associated not only with defence but with a still-continuing ‘concurrence missionnaire’. The view that JewishChristian relations involved missionary rivalry was now so strongly associated with Simon that Blumenkranz had to stress that he had reached it for the ancient period independently and before the publication of Verus Israel, as Judenpredigt shows.79 The abiding importance of this view for Blumenkranz, evident in his autobiographical notice discussed above in connection with Parkes, was underlined when, collecting many of his articles, he gave a major section of the book the heading ‘Mission juive— mission chrétienne’.80 The continuance in the later mediaeval west of an active desire to commend Judaism and to controvert Christianity was comparably detected through Hebrew-language sources by Jacob Katz, in work carried out at the same time as the preparation for Juifs et 76.  Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York, 2008), pp. XV-XX, 78-102. 77.  Pierre Riché, Henri Irénée Marrou, historien engagé (Paris, 2003), pp. 78-79. 78.  For critique of Blumenkranz’s view that Jews were being reduced to the status of aliens see Capucine Nemo-Pekelman, ‘The Ambiguous Notions of Jewish Legal “Statutes” and “Status” in Blumenkranz’s Work’, in Philippe Buc, Martha Keil, and John Tolan (eds.), Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe: the Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz (Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies 7; Turnhout, 2016), pp. 23-34. 79.  Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘Die jüdisch-christliche Missionskonkurrenz (3. bis 6. Jahrhundert)’, Klio 39 (1961), pp.  227-33, reprinted in Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens: patristique et moyen âge (London, 1977); cf. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental, p. X (1960), IV (reissue, 2006). 80. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens: patristique et moyen âge, Table des matières.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS23

­ hrétiens dans le monde occidental.81 Here later historians have tended C to diverge from Blumenkranz, as seen above for antiquity in Fredriksen on Augustine; for the Middle Ages R. Chazan similarly dissents, but Blumenkranz’s pupil Gilbert Dahan maintains the view, not without justification.82 A companion volume to Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental was formed by Les auteurs chrétiens latins du Moyen Âge sur les juifs et le judaïsme (Paris, 1963; reissued, with a preface by Gilbert Dahan, Paris–Louvain–Dudley MA, 2007). Based on a series of articles (194958), this is a guide to western disputational literature and other references to Jews down to the beginning of the twelfth century. These books were heralded by a stream of publications in the late 1940s and the 1950s, many of them focused on disputational literature.83 Thus Blumenkranz edited the tenth-century Altercatio Ecclesiae contra Synagogam and the late eleventh-century disputation of Gilbert Crispin, and discussed the traces of Jewish polemic in the proofs attributed to Jews in disputations and in the quoted arguments of Bodo-Eleazar, the ninth-century convert to Judaism.84 As in Judenpredigt, he sought to relate Christian disputational literature to attested Jewish history and demography, and noted that, where literary polemic could be connected with a place, there was commonly other evidence for a Jewish population in that locality.85 81.  Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (Oxford, 1961), pp. 90-92, 96-97. 82.  Gilbert Dahan, ‘Préface’, in the reissue of Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, pp. III-IV; William Horbury, ‘Hebrew Apologetic and Polemical Literature’, in Nicholas de Lange (ed.), Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 189-209 (190-92); Robert Chazan, ‘Medieval Christian-Jewish Relations in the Writings of Bernhard Blumenkranz’, in Buc, Keil and Tolan (eds.), Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe, pp. 11-20 (16-17). Chazan regards Blumenkranz as deeply influenced here by Marcel Simon, but does not note that Blumenkranz stressed his own independent arrival at this view before Verus Israel was published; see n. 79, above. 83.  See ‘Bibliographie des travaux de Bernhard Blumenkranz’, in Gilbert Dahan (ed.), Les Juifs au regard de l’histoire. Mélanges en l’honneur de Bernhard Blumenkranz (Paris, 1985), pp. 9-19. 84.  Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘Die jüdischen Beweisgründe im Religionsgespräch mit den Christen in den christlich-lateinischen Sonderschriften des 5. bis 11. Jahrhunderts’, TZ 4 (1948), pp. 119-47, reprinted in Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens: patristique et moyen âge; id., ‘Altercatio Ecclesie contra Synagogam, texte inédit du xe siècle’, Revue du Moyen Age Latin 10 (1954), pp. 5-159; id., ‘Un pamphlet juif médio-latin de polémique antichrétienne’, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 34 (1954), pp. 401-13, reprinted in Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens: patristique et moyen âge; id. (ed.), Gisleberti Crispini Disputatio Iudei et Christiani et anonymi auctoris disputationis Iudei et Christiani continuatio (Stromata patristica et mediaevalia 3; Utrecht–Antwerp, 1956). 85.  Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘Vie et survie de la polémique antijuive’, Studia Patristica I, 1 (TU 63; Berlin, 1957), pp. 460-76; id., ‘Anti-Jewish Polemics and Legislation in the Middle Ages: Literary Fiction or Reality?’, JJS 15 (1964), pp.  125-40; both articles are reproduced in Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens: patristique et moyen âge.

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He  finally stressed the value of the uncollected archival indications which, as far as he had been able to use them, enabled him to contest commonly accepted pictures of Jewish life in the high Middle Ages as increasingly confined to cities and Jewish quarters.86 Blumenkranz was now, from the 1960s onwards, also to become famous as an historian of the Jews of France. The archivist and historian R.-H. Bautier later wrote of the transition made by Blumenkranz from specialism in one of the aspects of Geistesgeschichte to an enlarged horizon, not just that of the texts of theologians, philosophers and thinkers, but that of original archival documents attesting the Jewish presence in mediaeval France.87 It might also be said that, already in his work on ancient and mediaeval Jewish-Christian relations, he was integrating the study of disputation on religion with the topography and demography of Jewish history. He, and Simon too, are examples of what might truly be called historical theology, enabling documents of Jewish and Christian thought to be interpreted in the fullest awareness of their historical circumstances, as well as of Jewish and ecclesiastical history, tracing the history of the communities with due attention to the manifestations of their thought. Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps A fifth historian of Jewish-Christian controversy, Hans-Joachim Schoeps ­­ (1909-80), cited by both Simon and Blumenkranz, once more represents pensée engagée. His lively political engagement in Germany ‘in opposition to the Zeitgeist’ both before and after the Second World War can indeed distract attention from his equally lively literary work, carried out both at a more popular and at a solidly theological and historical level.88 As he put it, he was seeking to make clear to himself and others the nature of the two ruling elements in his own personal inheritance, Prussia and Judaism.89 He saw this as a theological as well as historical enterprise. He believed that the Jewish theology which he pursued (he accepted the term ‘Theologie’) 86. Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, p.  XIII (1960), p.  VII (reissue, 2006). 87.  Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘Bernhard Blumenkranz. Hommage rendu devant la Commission française des Archives juives, le 25 novembre 1990’, AJ 28 (1989 [issued 1991]), pp. 3-6 (4). 88.  The quoted phrase echoes the title of G. Botsch, J.H. Knoll, and A.-D. Ludewig (eds.), Wider den Zeitgeist. Studien zum Leben und Werk von Hans-Joachim S­ choeps (1909-1980) (Haskala 39; Zürich–New York, 2009). 89.  Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre: Rückblicke (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 9.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS25

should fully participate in biblical criticism, but should recognize its dependence on faith.90 His task involved an ongoing dialogue with Christianity.91 In his youth, already, he found his own way into his ancestral Judaism through discussions of church history with his Lutheran friend Eberhard Beyer. ‘I took’, he says, ‘the positions of Arius on Christology, Pelagius on grace and Erasmus on free-will’, and Beyer cried ‘you’re always representing a Jewish standpoint’.92 Like Parkes, but in a younger generation, ­Schoeps was a man of action involved in youth movements, in his case the Freideutsche Jugend, now undergoing post-First World War changes. ­Schoeps notes a shift from the ‘revolutionary’ mood of the pre-war and immediately post-war period towards a new concern with statehood and service.93 Eventually he embodied his own ideals in a ‘Freideutsche Kameradschaft’ which he led.94 When all non-Nazi youth groups were compulsorily dissolved in 1933 ­Schoeps became the leader of a patriotic and non-Zionist Jewish group, the Deutscher Vortrupp—permitted for a time under the new laws because it was restricted to Jews. He sought to replace the old liberal assimilation of Jews with Germans not by Zionist dissimilation of the two, which after 1933 received some government favour, but rather by a renewed GermanJewish conservatism, uniting adherence to Judaism with old Prussian ideals; these views were epitomized in the title of ­Schoeps’s 1934 manifesto, Wir deutschen Juden.95 Public support for this position was soon made impracticable.96 ­Schoeps escaped to Sweden in 1938. His immersion in 90.  Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, pp. 63-64. 91. ­Schoeps is viewed with Franz Rosenzweig and other representatives of such a dialogue in Marc A. Krell, Intersecting Pathways: Modern Jewish Theologians in Conversation with Christianity (New York, 2003), pp. 43-67. 92. ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, pp. 72-73; in 1937 ­Schoeps had already noted the significance which these discussions had for him, in the foreword of Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps, trans. D.E.  Green, The Jewish-Christian Argument: a History of Theologies in Conflict (London, 1965), pp. XI-XII. 93. ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, pp. 50-52, on the new mood as represented in the Deutsche Freischar, founded in 1926, to which he moved willingly but without complete assent to its ideal; see H.  Siefert, ‘Politische Vorstellungen und Versuche der Deutschen Freischar’, in Hellmut Diwald (ed.), Lebendiger Geist: Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps zum 50. Geburtstag von Schülern dargebracht (Beihefte der Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 4; Leiden–Köln, 1959), pp. 177-99. 94. ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, pp. 53-54. 95.  On this response to Joachim Prinz’s Wir Juden (1934) see Annegret Ehmann in Juden in Berlin 1671-1945. Ein Lesebuch (Berlin, 1988), pp.  246, 275-76; Dominique Bourel, ‘Hans-Joachim ­Schoeps und seine Gegner’, in Botsch, Knoll and Ludewig (eds.), Wider den Zeitgeist, pp. 139-58 (143-46); on the context in current events, ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, pp. 95-101. 96.  On ­Schoeps’s movement in its setting see D.  Vital, A People Apart. The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe; Oxford, 1999), pp. 814-15.

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youth movements was important, however, not only for his political philosophy, but also for his development of Jewish faith in connection with Christianity. He himself picked out in this regard his encounter in the ‘Freideutsche’ movement, beginning when he was sixteen in the mid-1920s, with Eberhard Arnold, the radical Christian founder of a new brotherhood of common life; Arnold, he wrote, made ‘Spirit’ and ‘Church’ almost palpable as events rather than names, so that ­Schoeps for the first time perceived Christianity as a ‘spiritual reality’.97 Amid his manifold activity his preoccupation with Judaism in relation with Christianity continued to be central. Soon he was figuring as a shared bête noire in the 1930s correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem.98 At the age of twenty S­ choeps had been invited by Max Brod to collaborate with him in editing Kafka’s unpublished writings.99 In 1931 Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer appeared, with a concluding Nachwort by the two editors. ­Schoeps there presented Kafka as a religious figure comparable with Pascal and Kierkegaard, displaying what ­Schoeps called the tragic position of the modern Jew, distanced by secularization from a forgotten God.100 In recognizing a ‘crisis’ for Judaism as well as Christianity S­ choeps was close to a contemporary Jewish thinker like Ignaz Maybaum.101 The stumbling-block for Scholem and Benjamin was S­ choeps’s suggestion that by signifying crisis Kafka helped to show the need for 97. ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, pp. 43-48. 98. ­Schoeps, as the object of their shared objurgation, indirectly helped to rekindle their friendship, as noted by Anson Rabinbach, ‘Introduction’, in Gershom Scholem (ed.), The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940 (New York, 1989), pp. VII-XXXVIII (XXV). 99.  On their collaboration in the light of their correspondence see Julius H. ­Schoeps (ed.), Im Streit um Kafka und das Judentum: Max Brod, Hans-Joachim S­ choeps: Briefwechsel (Königstein, 1985), pp. 7-30. 100.  For a probable echo of this see Edwin Muir, ‘Introductory Note’, in Franz Kafka, The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reflections, translated from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir (London, 1933, repr. New York, 1946), pp. XV-XVI, XVIII (the problem addressed by Kafka is that of finding one’s true place in the community, and of acting in accordance with the will of heavenly powers—‘a problem that has become crucial in our time, where we see tradition after tradition crumbling, and society itself a chaos where it is hard to find one’s way, still less a vocation that has a transcendent sanction’). Muir acknowledges a debt to both Brod and ­Schoeps. 101.  Alexander Altmann, ‘Theology in Twentieth-Century German Jewry’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 1 (1956), pp. 193-216 (209). Maybaum was arrested and held for six weeks after addressing a private meeting in Berlin, held in the house of ­Schoeps’s parents in December 1935. A warder indicated S­ choeps as the informant who precipitated the arrest; see Alisa Jaffa, ‘Ignaz Maybaum: Memories of my Father’, in N. de Lange (ed.), Ignaz Maybaum: a Reader (New York–Oxford, 2001), pp. X-XI; F. Lotter, Rabbiner Ignaz Maybaum – Leben und Lehre (Berlin, 2010), p. 15. ­Schoeps himself, however, describes this meeting as one at which a then unidentified Gestapo agent was present; see ­Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, pp. 101-105.



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a Jewish ‘theology of crisis’ or ‘dialectical theology’, comparable with that being developed by Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and others.102 Benjamin was planning to write on Kafka.103 Scholem himself was coming to regard Kafka as a great exemplar of Jewish impulses towards mysticism.104 With regard to the dividing line constituted by the First World War, however, ­Schoeps can be considered a ‘post-war’ figure, younger than the ‘pre-war’ Benjamin (1892-1940) and Scholem (1897-1982), and divided from them by politics as well as differences over Judaism.105 In Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit (1932) S­ choeps presented prolegomena to his own Jewish dialectical theology, in what was also at times a Jewish-Christian argument; Karl Barth had recently published his own Prolegomena zur christlichen Dogmatik (Munich, 1928). ­Schoeps’s hero among Jewish thinkers was S.L. Steinheim (great-uncle of L. Lucas, cited above), who (anticipating for ­Schoeps the renewed insistence on revelation in the ‘theology of crisis’) held that the Torah was first of all revelation, and only in the second place law; rather than forming a religious philosophy, we should place ourselves under this revelation in the fear of God, and take note of the associated ‘struggle of revelation with paganism’, including the paganism incorporated into Christian doctrine.106 ­Schoeps began accordingly with a critique of Protestant Old Testament theology as an attempt to make the revelation theologically fruitful, but added that a Jewish theologian could never accept the Christian understanding of the scriptures evident in this work.107 102.  Andreas Krause Landt in Hans-Joachim S­ choeps, Der vergessene Gott: Franz Kafka und die tragische Position des modernen Juden, ed. Andreas Krause Landt (Berlin, 2006), pp. IX-XIV; ­Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, p. 84, n. 239. 103. Scholem (ed.), The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, pp.  17-18, 28-29, 31-32, 36, 40, 45, 126, 138-39; ‘theological’ interpretation of Kafka by ­Schoeps and others is rejected in Walter Benjamin, ‘Franz Kafka’ (1934), reprinted in Michael Opitz (ed.), Walter Benjamin. Ein Lesebuch (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), pp. 221-51 (238-39). 104.  Gershom Scholem, ‘Ein offenes Wort über die wahren Absichten meines Kabbalastudiums’ (written but not published in 1937), published and translated in David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cambridge MA–London, 1979), pp. 75, 215; id., On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New York, 1965), pp. 12-13. 105. ­Schoeps’s response to their charges in his review of their published correspondence is described by Julius H. ­Schoeps, Im Streit um Kafka und das Judentum, p. 21. 106. ­Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, pp. 6-7, 45-50; id., The Jewish-Christian Argument, pp. 116-23; id. (ed.), Salomon Ludwig Steinheim zum Gedenken (Leiden, 1966), pp. VIII-IX. The third volume (Leipzig, 1863) of Steinheim’s Die Offenbarung nach dem Lehrbegriff der Synagoge, entitled Der Kampf der Offenbarung mit dem Heidentum, was cited for the history of polemic by S. Krauss, ed. William Horbury, The Jewish-Christian Controversy from Earliest Times to 1789, I (Tübingen, 1996), p. 1. 107. ­Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, pp.  24-25 (also noting appreciatively W. Vischer’s view that the Old Testament could as justifiably be interpreted from a Jewish as from a New Testament standpoint).

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In his book biblical revelation was summed up in a group of principles or fundamental teachings, above all creation ex nihilo, on lines sketched by Philo and mediaeval and modern Jewish philosophers.108 ­Schoeps urged that such systematic theology should be linked with tradition, including, for the purposes of biblical interpretation, earlier portions of rabbinic literature.109 He held, however, that scripture itself, rather than ‘oral law’ embodied in Talmudic tradition, was the one source for teaching on matters of belief.110 ‘Belief in the authority of the divine origin of the oral teaching is now over.’111 The revelation is apprehended in a recovery of the humility and reverence of the ‘fear of God’.112 Schoeps thus looked, as he knew, not only non-traditional in Jewish terms, but also critically Protestant.113 Scholem in reply urged that revelation could not be apprehended apart from tradition (understood in a non-traditional way).114 Altmann found Schoeps ‘un-Jewish’ in his Barthian discipleship.115 Altmann’s verdict has been both echoed and questioned.116 Schoeps might seem Christianized to Jewish critics, but in this book he confronted Christian biblical interpretation, in a manner recalling ancient disputation, with a passionate assertion of biblically-grounded 108. ­Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, pp. 33-40, 67-83. 109. ­Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, pp. 69-70. 110. Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, p. 42 (endorsing a view expressed in the 1830s by M. Creizenach). 111. Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit, p. 53, in a critique of Moritz Duschak, Biblisch-Talmudische Glaubenslehre (Vienna, 1873). 112.  The need to perceive Torah as revelation in a ‘post-Jewish situation’ was restated by Schoeps, ‘Faith and the Jewish Law To-day’, in Gote Hedenquist (ed.), The Church and the Jewish People (London, 1954), pp. 63-76. 113.  Walter Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, 28.ii.1933, on ‘those hideous pacesetters of Protestant theologoumena within Judaism’ (after he had read Scholem, ‘Offener Brief an den Verfasser der Schrift “Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit”’, Bayerische Israelitische Gemeindezeitung, 15th August 1932, pp.  241-44 [not seen by me]), in Scholem (ed.), The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, p. 28. 114. Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, pp. 94-97, on Scholem, ‘Offener Brief an den Verfasser der Schrift “Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit”’. 115.  Alexander Altmann, ‘Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der “dialektischen Theologie”’, MGWJ 79 (1935), pp. 349-61 (358-59), quoted by Gosta Lindeskog, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum (Uppsala, 1938), pp. 60-61 (‘unjüdisch’); Altmann, ‘Theology in Twentieth-Century German Jewry’, pp. 209-10. 116.  Thus Rosenzweig and Schoeps attach too much significance to the historical dominance of Christianity for their theologies to be called Jewish, according to Jacob Taubes, ‘Die Streitfrage zwischen Judentum und Christentum: ein Blick auf ihre unauf­ lösliche Differenz’, reprinted from id., Vom Kult zur Kultur, Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (Munich, 1996) in id., Der Preis des Messianismus (Würzburg, 2006), pp. 11-23 (11-12). By contrast, Krell, Intersecting Pathways, pp. 56-63 shows Schoeps’s divergence from Barth, probable dependence on Karl Holl’s interpretation of Luther, and retention of his own Jewish identity.



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS29

Judaism. While Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit was being prepared ­Schoeps was himself engaged in a Jewish-Christian debate with Hans Blüher. This interpreter of the Jugendbewegung was admired for his insight into the movement by Schoeps, and his influence extended to Jewish youth groups in eastern Europe.117 The debate, conducted through conversations and letters, was published as ein jüdisch-christliches Gespräch.118 It was natural that Schoeps should now become, in a modest but influential way, an historian of Jewish-Christian controversy, and that the defender of Judaism suspected of too much love for Christianity should lay his emphasis on the Jewish side of the argument. Keeping mainly to Jewish sources, he produced a short popular complement to the presentations of Christian sources which Parkes and Williams had issued in 1934-35. Unlike them, however, he carried the story on from the renaissance down to the 1930s. The foreword of his Jüdisch-christliches Religionsgespräch in 19 Jahrhunderten is dated 1st January 1937. The book was twice revised and reissued after the war; the third edition (1961), now entitled Israel und Christenheit, was translated into English as The Jewish-Christian Argument: a History of Theologies in Conflict.119 This subtitle conveys the predominantly doctrinal interest of the history. Antisemitism and Jewish reaction to it are feelingly described, but the origins of a Christian antisemitism are not an issue; the background is that of the crisis of secularization, and the aim is to bring out sharply a conflict of doctrines which is held to be there from the beginning of Christianity. Teachings are made to stand out from the polemic which embodies them. The story of Jewish disputation is told through a selection of significant stages and scenes, but it is prefaced by the suggestion that each religion is ‘absolute’ for its adherents, who can mutually recognize this point. The book returns historically to the notion of ‘struggle’; it paints a broad picture of Jewish-Christian rivalry for religious supremacy, including Jewish missionary propaganda, continuing down to the fourth and 117. Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, p. 77; R. Peled, ‘Die Jugendbewegung “HaShomer HaZair” in Palästina: Vom nietzscheschen Individualismus zum leninistisch-stalinischen Kollektivismus’, in Yotam Hotam (ed.), Deutsch-Jüdische Jugendliche im “Zeitalter der Jugend” (Formen der Erinnerung 43; Göttingen, 2009), pp. 213-39 (216-18). 118.  Hans Blüher and Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Streit um Israel, ein jüdisch-christliches Gespräch (Hamburg, 1933); see Schoeps, Die letzten dreissig Jahre, 77-83; Taubes, ‘Die Streitfrage zwischen Judentum und Christentum’, pp. 11-12; Krell, Intersecting Pathways, pp. 48-49, 63-65. 119.  Schoeps, trans. Green, The Jewish-Christian Argument (New York, 1963; London [with an introduction by Hugh Montefiore], 1965). The original was reissued with a Nachwort by Edna Brocke (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). The book was still judged to be ‘von besonderem Wert’ by Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13.-20. Jh.), p. 28.

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fifth centuries, and the first reference is to Lucas on fourth-century ­Jewish resistance to Christianity. Following Bergmann and others, rabbinic responses to Christian claims are sketched under the headings of the messiah, the election of Israel, the destruction of the temple, and the abrogation of Jewish law (here with special notice of Paul).120 For the mediaeval period, treatments of authors who were prominent in Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit—Saadia, Judah ha-Levi, and Joseph Albo—are supplemented by a brief notice of the disputations of Paris, Barcelona and Tortosa and a fuller account of Isaac Troki’s Hizzuq Emunah, as representative of mediaeval polemic. Notes mention other polemical works, but this does not pretend to be a first-hand investigation of these texts.121 Finally, early modern and modern thought is illustrated from Orobio de Castro’s discussion with Philipp van Limborch, the presentations of Judaism by Moses Mendelssohn, Salomon Formstecher, and S.L.  Steinheim (here again recalling Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit), and the ‘existential dialogues’ (differing from the old disputations with their often predictable outcome) between Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (letters of 1913 and 1916), and Martin Buber and Karl Ludwig Schmidt (1933). The last pages recur to what Schoeps has called (pp.  144-45) ‘the  mysterious conflict and alliance between Israel and Christianity’, noting that the mutual recognition which he advocates would take place  in a context of unbelief and lack of interest—the ‘crisis’ to which the theology of revelation may speak—but with a shared conviction that the truth, in the messianic kingdom or the Lord’s return, is yet to come. The book thus sets the history of controversy within its own theological interpretation of the Jewish-Christian relationship. As a refugee in Sweden Schoeps undertook the further historical study which gave rise to his big books on the theology and history of Jewish Christianity in antiquity, and on the theology of Paul in the light of Jewish religious history.122 He thereby worked out his own historical view of two 120. Schoeps, The Jewish-Christian Argument, pp. 9-52. 121.  Thus Schoeps like a number of other authors confuses the Nizzahon of Lipmann Mühlhausen, edited by T.  Hackspan in 1644, with the Nizzahon Vetus edited by J.C. Wagenseil in 1681; similarly, the name of the polemist Simeon Duran slips in when the polemical work of his near-namesake Profiat Duran is being mentioned; see Schoeps, The Jewish-Christian Argument, pp. 70 and n. 57, 76. 122.  Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums (Tübingen, 1949), discussed by Simon, Verus Israel, pp. 410-11 (part of the 1964 Post-Scriptum); id., Aus frühchristlicher Zeit (Tübingen, 1950), reviewed with Theologie und Geschichte by T.W. Manson, JTS N.S. 2 (1951), pp. 96-99; id., Das Judenchristentum (Berne–Munich, 1964); id., Paulus: die Theologie des Apostels im Lichte der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1959), translated into English by H.  Knight as Paul: the Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (London, 1961). For the appreciative reception of Paul, especially



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS31

positions, ‘Jewish-Christian’ and ‘Pauline’, which manifested a kind of Jewish-Christian disputation within Christianity. The first book presented with depth and fullness what he judged to be ancient approaches by JewishChristians to his own view that Judaism and Christianity are two valid divine covenants, and that Christianity could develop without ascribing divine status to Christ. His Jewish-Christians, living on the margin of both religions, also represent opposition to sacrifice and devotion to a Torah purged of what they judge to be accretions. The second book, on Paul, is almost a further work on Jewish polemic. Paul is seen here as primarily though not exclusively indebted to Jewish teaching, and his development of it is illuminated in turn by Jewish opposition to Paul’s conclusions.123 ­Schoeps found in Paul the origins of those Christian claims for a new messianic age, a divine Christ and abrogation of law which in antiquity, as later, were vigorously opposed by Jews—as had been noted in The Jewish-Christian Argument. Paul developed these claims, Schoeps held, from Jewish theological teachings (in the cases of Christ and the law affected and distorted by Hellenism), and in this book they are presented side by side with negative responses to them found in rabbinic literature.124 The polemical to-and-fro of Pauline claims and Jewish answers is followed, however, by a final contrast, in which differences seem less a matter of polemic, between Pauline and Jewish approaches to truth yet to come. Paul’s view of history as developed in Romans 9-11 on the future of Israel is interpreted within the framework provided by Jewish universalist hope, on the one hand, and JewishChristian and Jewish ideas of the course of Heilsgeschichte, on the other.125 For Paul the dictum of Jewish theology that ‘all Israel shall be saved’ (Rom. 11:26; Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10 1) will be fulfilled for the whole of Israel, including those who at present seem to have been ‘cut off’ (Rom. 11:23).126 among English-speaking scholars, see the reviews by C.K.  Barrett, JTS N.S. 12 (1960), pp. 324-27, and, with fuller note of the element of Jewish-Christian discussion, E. Bammel, ‘Paul and Judaism’, The Modern Churchman 6 (1962-63), pp. 279-85, reprinted in E. Bammel, Judaica et Paulina (WUNT 91; Tübingen, 1997), pp. 327-33; W.D. Davies, New Testament Studies 10 (1964), pp. 295-303. Paul is compared with later Pauline work by E.W. Stegemann, ‘Hans-Joachim Schoeps als Interpret frühchristlicher und frühjüdischer Religionsgeschichte’, in Botsch, Knoll, and Ludewig (eds.), Wider den Zeitgeist, pp. 31-62 (36-40). 123.  Schoeps finds a ‘fundamental Jewish/anti-Jewish conception in Pauline thought’, to quote the expression chosen by Bammel, ‘Paul and Judaism’, p. 328. 124.  See especially the sections ‘The Jewish Protest and the Problem of the Delay in the Parousia’, ‘The Jewish Protest against Christology’, and ‘Further Jewish CounterPositions’ in Schoeps, Paul, pp. 118-25, 160-67, 193-200. 125.  See ‘The Picture of Saving History in Jewish Christianity’ and ‘Jewish Ideas of the Course of Saving History’, in Schoeps, Paul, pp. 245-58. 126. Schoeps Paul, pp. 242-44, 258 envisages that the coming Jewish messiah and the returning Christian saviour might have one and the same countenance, by contrast with Paul’s own expectation of a final conversion of Jews. Rom. 11:26 has sometimes been

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Like Williams, then, Schoeps was an historian of controversy who had himself engaged in dialogue. He wrote, however, following Rosenzweig, of Judaism and Christianity in terms of alliance as well as conflict. Parkes also followed Rosenzweig in this direction, and it is ironical that the contemporary parallel to Parkes on the Jewish side provided by Schoeps was emerging from precisely the theological outlook for which Parkes had no time. It was Williams rather than Parkes who responded to ­Schoeps’s restatements of Jewish teaching.127 Schoeps was fascinated by figures who lived in the worlds of what are now two religions at once, not only the early Jewish-Christians but also the early modern dévots studied in his Philosemitismus im Barock (1952) or contemporaries like the ‘Noachide’ proselyte Aimé Pallière.128 Here and in his own religious development, more perhaps than the four other scholars considered here, he reflected what may be called a characteristic aspect of twentieth-century Jewish and Christian experience, symbolized by but by no means confined to the efforts towards a ‘Hebrew-Christian church’ noted above. This aspect of Schoeps’s work is linked with his fellow-feeling for ‘outsiders’, but also perhaps, once more, with his sense for alliance, as well as difference, between Judaism and Christianity.129 A Re-making of the Study of Disputation It has been urged here that the renewal of the subject which can readily be associated with reflection on the Holocaust had begun well before the Second World War. Simon’s critic Miriam Taylor was writing not a history of scholarship, but a critique of the ‘model’ of conflict presented in the work of Simon and many others who cite him, with special reference to the use of conflict as an explanation for early Christian ­antisemitism. taken, as by K.  Stendahl, to show that Paul himself envisaged salvation for Jews apart from belief in Christ; but for doubt on this see E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 195-98; Richard H. Bell, The Irrevocable Call of God: an Inquiry into Paul’s Theology of Israel (WUNT 184; Tübingen, 2005), pp.  414-17; N.T.  Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2  vols. (London, 2013), II, pp.  1241-52, 1413-14 (citing Schoeps among those who have not anachronistically envisaged Paul as thinking of two religions). 127.  See n. 36, above. 128. Schoeps, Paul, 255; Marion Schwarze-Nordmann, ‘Aimé Pallière — das Leben eines Noachiden. Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Judentum und Christentum’, in Diwald (ed.), Lebendiger Geist, pp. 75-90. 129. Schoeps, Paul, 243; H.J. Hillerbrand, ‘Hans-Joachim Schoeps als Religionswissenschaftler’, in Botsch, Knoll, and Ludewig (eds.), Wider den Zeitgeist, pp. 45-62 (52-53, 60).



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS33

Parkes, Simon and Blumenkranz gave this question a prominence in connection with adversus Iudaeos literature which has been abidingly influential. Yet Miriam Taylor’s emphasis on new post-Holocaust reflection has perhaps tended incidentally to obscure the pre-war renewal of study within which Simon began his work, and the importance of a conception of conflict as it was developed before that, in different circumstances, and among Jewish as well as Christian historians. The strength of pagan, patristic and rabbinic indications of a continuing conflict had been recognized from varying viewpoints over a long period when renewal of the subject began in the mid-1930s. The prominence which this renewal gave, following Juster, to mission in ancient and mediaeval Judaism as well as Christianity has been debated with regard to both religions, but has served to draw attention to polemic as well as defence in Jewish literature referring to Christianity and in Jewish argument as envisaged by Christian apologists. At the heart of this new movement in study from the 1930s onwards was indeed a fresh attempt to gain a general view of disputational literature, both Christian and also Jewish.130 This aim is clearest in the detailed surveys by Williams and Blumenkranz, but also marks the sketch of both ancient and modern Jewish arguments by Schoeps. Fuller study of mediaeval Jewish polemical literature transmitted in Hebrew was carried on in the same period by scholars including Samuel Krauss, E.E.  Urbach, and O.S. Rankin.131 The work of Williams, Parkes, Simon and Blumenkranz made it possible to view many Christian disputations in their setting. Ever since, the ongoing study of texts and authors has had a broad provisional outline within which to view particular writings, an outline which can itself be enlarged, as by Schreckenberg, or discussed, as in debate arising from critique of Simon. In this work from the 1930s and 1940s Jewish and Christian apologetic was as far as possible viewed together. This was seen as a necessity for 130.  Notable among earlier comprehensive studies had been two books on the history of interpretation of crucial texts: Adolf Neubauer, Samuel R.  Driver, and Edward B.  Pusey, The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters, 2  vols. (Oxford, 1876, reprinted with a Prolegomenon by R.  Loewe, New York, 1969); Adolf Posnanski, Schiloh, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Messiaslehre, Erster Teil, Die Auslegung von Genesis  49, 10 im Altertume bis zu Ende des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1904) (bringing together Christian and Jewish interpretation). 131.  Alexander Marx, ‘The Polemical Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America’, in Studies in Jewish Bibliography and Related Subjects in Memoy of A.S. Freidus (New York, 1929), pp. 247-78; Krauss, The Jewish-Christian Controversy, I, pp. 201-61 (bibliography of mediaeval Jewish polemists); Ephraim E. Urbach, ‘Étude sur la littérature polémique au moyen-âge’, REJ 100 (1935), pp.  49-77; Oliver S. Rankin, Jewish Religious Polemic of Early and Later Centuries, a Study of Documents here rendered in English (Edinburgh, 1956).

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both scholarship and mission by Williams, whose Adversus Judaeos stands together with his less-known response to Isaac Troki. The same conviction emerges, however, in Parkes’s attempt to reconstruct early Jewish responses to Christianity, in Simon’s care for rabbinic material on Jesus and the minim, in Blumenkranz on early mediaeval Jewish vestiges of mission, and in Schoeps not only on Religionsgespräch, but also on Paul. Since the period of remaking it has been harder to forget the importance of this synoptic view. Lastly, the remaking was a theological as well as historical enterprise. The massive historical treatments by Simon and Blumenkranz, following in the footsteps of Juster, integrated work on Jewish-Christian relations with the study of law, epigraphy, archaeology, art, and archival documents (compare the self-deprecating reference by the learned Lukyn Williams to his ignorance of ‘what every schoolboy knows’ in necessary subjects such as these); yet the histories by Simon and Blumenkranz were also penetrated by perceptive concern with the content of Jewish and Christian apologetic and polemic.132 The texts of their nature invite a theologically-informed historical treatment, and the consideration with regard to Jewish and Christian theology which is evident in Williams and Schoeps. A fruitful combination of these interests has continued to be evident in much historical work on individual texts and authors, for instance in N. de Lange and G. Sgherri on Origen and David Berger on the Nizzahon Vetus.133 There has also naturally been divergence; the remaking has led towards separate development of theologies of JewishChristian relationship on the one hand, and historical treatments of disputation on the other. The link in principle between the two is none the less abidingly symbolized by the work of the 1930s and 1940s, and it reappears for instance in renewed study of the exegetical encounters between Jews and Christians in antiquity.134 To conclude, the remaking began when a ‘crisis’ brought by secularization was being recognized for both Christianity and Judaism in western Europe. This recognition was sharpened, to combine the insights of ­­Schoeps and Simon, by the urgency of response to antisemitism. The time was seen as one for Jewish-Christian alliance. By the 1960s this 132.  Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos, pp. XVI-XVII. 133.  Nicholas de Lange, Origen and the Jews (Cambridge, 1976); Giuseppe Sgherri, Chiesa e sinagoga nelle opere di Origene (Milan, 1982); David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages. A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus, with an introduction, translation and commentary (Philadelphia, 1979). 134.  Study in this area since the 1940s is documented in Emmanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling, The Book of Genesis in Late Antiquity: Encounters between Jewish and Christian Exegesis (Jewish and Christian Perspectives 24; Leiden–Boston, 2013).



JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISPUTATIONS35

­ erception had come to mark historical as well as theological work, for p instance in the intertwining of study of persecution suffered by Jews and Christians in antiquity.135 The contemporary context included the experience, underlined by ­Schoeps, of those who felt in some way at home in both Judaism and Christianity. Yet the remaking undertaken in this increasingly perceived context of similarity and potential alliance was necessarily marked by emphasis on the significance of difference as well as co-operation. Both were rightly held to need attention. The remaking emphasized this point through its many-sided development, especially prominent in answer to Harnack by Simon and Blumenkranz but also found in Williams, Parkes and S­ choeps, of the inherited concept of a struggle between Judaism and Christianity. ­Schoeps’s phrase from the 1930s, ‘the mysterious conflict and alliance between Judaism and Christianity’, finds correspondence in the 1940s in H. de Lubac on ‘the mystery of our opposition’ (both phrases seem to be inspired by the Pauline ‘mystery’ of Rom. 11:25) and in David Daube, generously commending a work by a Christian Jew with the words ‘Synagogue and Church must go on questioning one another—and they must learn to help one another’.136 This insistence on the study of points of difference, pointing to theological inquiry, can perhaps be set beside the enhanced perceptions of the value of disputational literature for historical work which emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. Part of the mutual help envisaged by Daube might be a continued cooperation of scholars from both traditions in study of the historical and theological dimensions of the literature of Jewish-Christian disputation.

135.  Yitzhaq F.  Baer, ‘Israel, the Christian Church and the Roman Empire from the time of Septimius Severus to the Edict of Toleration of A.D. 313’, Scripta Hierosolymitana: Publications of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, VII (1961), pp.  79-149; W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, a Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford, 1965). 136. ­Schoeps, The Jewish-Christian Argument, 144-45; Henri de Lubac, Affrontements mystiques (Paris, 1949), p.  11 (Jews and Christians need ‘une attention commune au mystère de notre opposition’); D. Daube, ‘Preface’, in Jocz, The Jewish People, p. X.

1. The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila

TIMOTHY AND AQUILA: ACTUAL ENCOUNTER OR SCHEINPOLEMIK? James Carleton Paget Abstract: The article begins by asking why there is a perennial interest in the question of the reality of the Jew behind adversus Judaeos literature, especially dialogues. The answer lies in issues of morality and in the complexity of the subject, attributable to the character of the sources available to us. After discussing these difficulties, the article addresses the case of The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, showing how the complexities connected with this source, some of which are particular to it, also reflect problems inherent in Christian adversus Judaeos literature, making possible only a murky view of its purpose and the ‘reality’ behind the text.1

Introduction The question of the extent to which ancient literature devoted to Jewish-Christian dispute, including dialogues, reflects actual encounter is an old one. As early as the third century, Origen, in his Contra Celsum, argues negatively that the Jew employed by Celsus to attack Christianity in the latter’s second century anti-Christian work, The True Word, has a character inconsistent with that of a Jew.2 But why should the question be a perennial one, continuing to engage Jewish and especially Christian scholars, as it engaged Origen in the midst of the third century? Why should scholars go on debating whether, to use a graphic image coined by Samuel Krauss, Jews and Christians literally tore the biblical scrolls which bought them together in a form of viva voce combat, 3 or whether, on the contrary, they only did so in 1.  In this respect the article broadly reflects the conclusions of the most recent contribution to the subject of the adversus Judaeos dialogues. See Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich and Bernard Pouderon (eds.), Les Dialogues adversus Judaeos. Permanences et mutations d’une tradition polémique (Paris, 2013). 2.  See Origen, c. Cels. 1.28; 1.67 and 2.34. At c. Cels. 4.45, Origen argues positively that the opinions ascribed to the Jew in the early Christian Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus are authentic. 3.  ‘The bible lay, as it were, between Judaism and Christianity as they argued, to be torn by both.’ (Samuel Krauss, The Jewish-Christian Controversy from the Earliest Times to 1789. Vol. 1, ed. and rev. by William Horbury [Tübingen, 1996], p. 3).

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abstracto as it were, as responses to theological tendencies, particularly tendencies within Christianity? Ethics and Actual Encounter The answer to this question has both an ethical/personal and a scholarly element, the two often combining in unpredictable and interesting ways. I will not dwell too long on the former reason, in part because William Horbury covers this matter in the opening essay of this volume. Many interested in discussing this matter emphasize the role of the Holocaust and the ongoing question of Christian responsibility for this event; or at least the role of Christian anti-Judaism in creating fertile ground for the activities of the Nazis and their co-workers,4 though the importance of this event can, as Horbury emphasizes, be over-estimated. For Marcel Simon, Adolf von Harnack’s view that the Christian adversus Judaeos tradition, whether contained within dialogues, or in other forms of Christian literature, betrays little evidence of real encounter because in fact there was none between Christians and Jews in antiquity (almost all such polemic had to do with internal need, ‘the Jew’, as Harnack put it, comporting more with the Jew ‘whom the Christians feared’),5 is partially based upon a view of post-70 Judaism as solipsistic and decayed, a spent religious force, captured in the word Spätjudentum. Simon’s attempt to create what one scholar has dubbed his conflict theory of Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity,6 which asserts that Christians and Jews were engaged in a genuine encounter in antiquity, seen primarily in a battle for converts, partially arose from a desire to show that Harnack’s view of ancient Judaism withering on the vine was wrong—Judaism was a vigorous, proselytizing religion in late antiquity, a force which Christianity could not ignore.7 Simon’s case possibly had 4.  Marcel Simon, Verus Israel; étude sur les relations entre chrétiens et juifs dans l’Empire romain, 135-425 (Paris, 1948), p.  5, mentions the issue of Nazi anti-Semitism but this part of his work was not translated in the English edition. On this see Albert I.  Baumgarten, ‘Marcel Simon’s “Verus Israel” as a Contribution to Jewish History’, HTR 92 (1999), pp. 465-66. It should be noted that Parkes, Williams and others wrote before the rise of Nazism, at least in part, and that motivation for writing such books arose for a variety of reasons. 5.  A. von Harnack, Die Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani nebst Untersuchungen über die antijüdische Polemik in der alten Kirche (TU  1.3; Leipzig, 1883), pp. 56-74. 6.  Miriam S. Taylor, Anti-Judaism & Early Christian Identity. A Critique of the Consensus (Leiden, 1995). 7.  Note Simon’s own words: ‘The most compelling reason for ant-Semitism was the religious vitality of the Jews.’ (Simon, Verus Israel [Oxford, 1986], p. 232).



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another side to it, a desire to show that Christian anti-Judaism had a purpose, that is, it was not some ingrained tendency, but one specifically related to a set of circumstances. The argument that behind Simon’s work lies a motive more complex than an attempt to provide the first comprehensive account of Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity, is argued by Miriam Taylor.8 Aside from attacking what she sees as the anti-Jewish conclusions of Simon’s study (Christians won the battle for converts in antiquity), Taylor sees his argument that ancient Christian adversus Judaeos material relates to real discussions with Jews, or at least betrays a strong sense of the threat of Judaism, is precisely an attempt, however tacit or unconscious, to excuse Christian anti-Jewish literature. In Simon’s view, Taylor claims, Christians are right to respond to a threat.9 But for Taylor, following Rosemary Radford Ruether and others,10 Christian anti-Judaism is not a response to a supposed threat but little more than the inevitable result of theological tendencies within Christianity, which necessitate anti-Jewish opprobrium. What is an adventitious phenomenon for Simon is an inherent and necessary part of Christian theology for Taylor.11 Taylor’s book is more obviously a polemic against Christian anti-­ Jewish sentiment than Simon’s is an apologetic explanation of Christian anti-Judaism. Indeed, Simon is keener than many of his generation to accept the fact of Christian anti-Judaism and seek to explain it rather than to excuse it. If his argument is against anybody, it is against H ­ arnack (with whom Taylor has a complex relationship), and all that he implies. However, what the example of these two authors shows, and Professor Horbury has given us other examples, including James Parkes and ­Bernard Blumenkranz as well as Simon, is that the subject has repercussions beyond its immediate scholarly context.12

8. Taylor, Anti-Judaism. 9. Taylor, Anti-Judaism, pp. 192-96. 10.  Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide. The Theological Roots of AntiSemitism (London–New York, 1974). 11.  See Baumgarten, ‘Simon’, p.  466: ‘Simon’s argument relativizes Christian antiJudaism by historicizing it, moving it from the realm of eternal denunciation of the Jews, which can never be avoided or overcome, into a conflict bound up in a certain time and place, which need not obligate Jews and Christians of other eras, when circumstances might be different.’ Baumgarten does not take such a negative view of Simon’s work as Taylor, however. 12.  For the interaction between historical and ethical claims in the study of the relationship between ancient Jews and Christians see Andrew S.  Jacobs, ‘Jews and Christians’, in Susan A.  Harvey and David G.  Hunter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2008), pp. 171-72.

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The complexity of the issue The matter remains of perennial concern, too, because the scholarly issues it raises are so complex and it is this aspect of the subject, which will be the focus of my paper and will lead to a discussion of the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila. First, there is an imbalance in the relevant sources. As is often repeated, these are considerably more numerous amongst Christians than Jews. Indeed for the ancient period, there are no Jewish polemical sources leveled against Christians, either in the form of dialogues, or any other genre (that is, aside from what is reported to us by Origen about Celsus’ Jew at c.  Cels. 1.28-2.79); and Jewish sources in Greek dry up, at least ostensibly, in the early part of the second century and so there is very little evidence for the thinking of so-called Diaspora Jews from this period.13 Rabbinic literature, which constitutes our major Jewish source from the late second century onwards, but whose importance as a witness to general Jewish opinion and whose influence upon that community are disputed,14 at least until the fourth and fifth centuries, refers to Christians intermittently; and widely variant positions are taken on the question of whether certain parts of rabbinic exegesis can be taken to be a response to known Christian positions.15 Not only does this mean that our witness to an apparent Jewish-Christian encounter is one-sided, but without reliable Jewish evidence on this subject, it is difficult to do what Simon referred to as ‘fact check’,16 see whether a Christian author when he ascribes an opinion or idea to a Jew, is reflecting actual opinion held by the latter. Secondly, not only are the relevant Christian sources repetitive in content and stereotyping in the manner in which they present the Jew (though both of these observations can be overdone), but they are also highly rhetorical. All these features may not be surprising characteristics 13.  Pierluigi Lanfranchi, ‘L’image du judaïsme dans les dialogues aduersus Judaeos’, in Morlet et al. (eds.), Adversus Judaeos, p. 228, discusses this point making it plain, on the basis of work by Edrei and Mendels, that the representation of Jews as biblical Jews in adversus Judaeos literature might bear a closer relationship to the reality of Diaspora Jews than some have thought. Whether we accept this view or not, the absence of literature from Diasporan Jews from the second century means that we have a very partial understanding of Judaism in this period. 14.  For a summary of this debate see Moshe Lavee, ‘Rabbinic Literature and the History of Judaism in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Methodologies and New Approaches’, in Martin Goodman and Philip Alexander (eds.), Rabbinic Texts and the History of LateRoman Palestine (Oxford, 2011), pp. 319-52. 15.  See Philip Alexander in this volume. 16. Simon, Verus Israel, p. 146.



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of polemical literature, but it makes devising methods to go beneath these texts, to look through them to some mooted reality, difficult. Related to this point, some scholars have come to see these texts as involved in an identity-forming process against the background of more blurred and fissiparous identities in the real world of Jewish-Christian interaction, where Judaism and Christianity are at best fluid concepts in the process of being created.17 Here Jewish-Christian contact is assumed but the adversus Judaeos texts are seen as constructivist, creating rather than reflecting reality. In a dialogue, perhaps more than any other genre, we can see ‘Christianity and Judaism rhetorically enact their difference with the “other’” in order to produce something like an imagined homogeneity. The process of “conversation”, which assumes some level of identification between those engaged in the dialogue, is precisely the place in which differentiation will take place.’18 Third, while many would agree that the view that all texts adversus Judaeos cannot be accounted for exclusively by reference to the inner need of Christian preaching and paraenesis, many would concede that there is some kind of relationship between the two precisely because Jews and Christians are at a fundamental level related and this leads to the latter being relevant to the former in a number of contexts, as Harnack rightly, if exaggeratedly, noted.19 There is something telling about the similarities between Tertullian’s adversus Judaeos and his adversus Marcionem, or Justin’s First Apology, addressed probably to gentiles, and his Dialogue with Trypho (though there may equally be in the fact that they differ, too), or about the fact that Augustine, though acquainted with Jews, formed his own position on the role of Jews within a Christian society through the pressures of his own theological agenda.20 This is not to advocate a return to Harnack, or an adoption of Taylor’s position, but it is to acknowledge an important point, namely that there is, on occasion at least, a relationship between anti-Jewish discourse and early Christian identity; or put another way, Christians were often forced to argue adversus Judaeos in contexts other than those directly connected with Jews. The fourth point relates to the question of context. While it is true that there is much more evidence than some have suggested for J­ ewish-­Christian 17.  On this see J. Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (Tübingen, 2010), pp. 9-11 and bibliography cited there. 18.  Andrew S.  Jacobs, Christ Circumcised. A Study in Early Christian History and Difference (Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 42-43. 19.  See Morlet in this volume. 20.  See Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York–London, 2008).

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interaction in the ancient period, ranging from evidence found in Origen of actual disputes or discussions to the evidence of the canons of certain church councils (for example Laodicea and Elvira), from Chrysostom’s infamous 8 homilies against the Judaizing Christians, from a range of known incidents (the burning of the Jewish synagogue at Callinicum; and the treatment of the Jews of Minorca at Magona, incidents from the fourth and fifth centuries respectively),21 such evidence only allows us generally to affirm such encounter but rarely to speak about it in detail. Put differently, when it comes to Christian adversus Judaeos literature, it is often difficult to reconstruct a precise context out of which it emerges.22 As a rule we cannot be certain of the provenance of such a text, their date, and sometimes (as in the case of Timothy and Aquila) their authorship. If we assume that encounters differed from place to place, then our lack of knowledge of place and setting becomes more important, and our ability to judge the contents of a dialogue or any other piece of adversus Judaeos literature, to comment upon the real character of what is being depicted, becomes more complicated. We may want to follow Blumenkranz23 in asserting that where there is anti-Jewish literature there is invariably a Jewish population, but often engaging in any fine-grained account of that population or its interaction with the wider Christian community, will depend upon the text we are examining rather than detailed and independent evidence about the context. A fifth point emerges, namely the relationship between text and context. If it is often the case that the scholar is unable to know the precise context in which an adversus Judaeos text has been written, then how does he or she discern its purpose and so begin to answer the question about its relationship to actual encounter? A.B.  Hulen argued for the existence of three types of adversus Judaeos text: expository, argumentative and denunciatory, each aligned to different and distinct purposes— proselytic, defensive and vituperative, with Hulen assuming that one could plot the changing tone of Christian dialogues against the Jews along broadly chronological lines.24 But it is probably the case, contra Hulen, that the evidence is incompatible with such neat category d ­ istinctions, 21.  On the Magona incident see Scott Bradbury, Severus of Minorca: Letter on the Conversion of the Jews (Oxford, 1998); and on the Callinicum incident see Ambrose, Letter 40. 22.  See James Carleton Paget, ‘Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity’, in id., Jews, Christians, pp. 69-71. 23.  Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘Anti-Jewish Polemics and Legislation in the Middle Ages. Literary Fiction or Reality?’, JJS 15 (1964), pp. 125-40. 24.  A.B. Hulen, ‘The Dialogues with the Jews as Sources for the Early Jewish Arguments against Christianity’, JBL 51 (1932), pp. 58-70.



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and that one’s judgment about the purpose of an adversus Judaeos text will be partially determined by wider assumptions relating to JewishChristian interaction. Discerning a purpose and an audience for a particular text simply on the basis of its content is never going to be easy. Matters become more complex when we consider that in many instances little is known about the reception of adversus Judaeos literature, that is how it was used.25 Responses to difficulties One approach to these difficulties is to reject the idea of getting beneath the text to some mooted reality. So, as already stated, some see Christian anti-Jewish literature as artificial attempts to distinguish between Christianity and Judaism in a time when these concepts were in the process of being constructed. The texts in this view witness to a set of strategies aimed at creating boundaries where they may not exist and it is the aim of the interpreter to show what these are and how they are employed.26 This view assumes that the texts concerned do not reflect reality but seek to create it. There may be some truth in this, even for later (post-Constantinian) periods in Jewish-Christian interaction, but the case can too easily assume a neat division between the ideal the author is seeking to create and the reality he is addressing.27 A variant on this hypothesis lies in examining the ‘afterlife’ of adversus Judaeos texts. As Andrew Jacobs has written: (H)ow could Christians, instructed by their adversarial accounts of Jews, potentially interact with ‘real’ Jews the next time they left their house? 25.  One of the few places where evidence of the usage of an anti-Jewish dialogue may be found is in Celsus’ letter to the Bishop Vigilius (falsely attributed to Cyprian) in which the former introduces the latter to his Latin translation of the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus. As Laetitia Ciccolini has argued, the letter (see ad Vig. 8) would seem to imply a broadly proselytic purpose for the text, though we should not extrapolate more generally from this particular example. See Laetitia Ciccolini, ‘La Controverse de Jason et Papiscus: le témoignage de l’Ad Viglium episcopum de Iudiace incredulitate faussement attribuée à Cyprien de Carthage’, in Morlet et al. (eds.), Adversus Judaeos, pp.  168-70. Also cited in this context is John Moschus’ reference in his Spiritual Garden 172 to the hermit Cosmas who writes works against the Jews and sends Moschus to some Hebrews to debate from scripture with them, implying their use in dialogue with Jews. On this passage see below; and for an early discussion of its importance, see V.  Déroche, ‘La polémique anti-judaïque au VIe et au VIIe siècle, un mémento inédit, les Kephalaia’, TM 11 (1991), pp. 285-86. 26.  See Daniel Boyarin, ‘Semantic Differences; or “Judaism”/“Christianity”’, in Adam H. Beker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (eds.), The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Tübingen, 2003), pp. 65-86. 27.  See Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians, pp. 12-14.

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­ atterned on real conflicts, or concocted from a stew of unfair stereotypes, P the adversarial and apologetic literature of the first Christian centuries constituted formative texts, scripting world-views and even future interactions and, in this sense, they can tell us something historically ‘real’ about Jewish-Christian relations.28

In this view these texts provide a window onto how Jews were perceived by their Christian neighbours and give us evidence of developing and, therefore, real opinions about Jews, however close they may be to some mooted reality out there, that is, the Jewish community.29 A related approach is one that talks about the texts in terms of image and reality. The claim here is that when anti-Jewish literature ‘speaks of Jews and Judaism there is a contemporary reality, one of which, in differing degrees, its authors are aware. Yet their own needs, the logic of their own argument, and the tradition they draw on, especially the Old Testament, help create and mould the terms in which they speak—to create an “image”.’30 In such a view there is a complex relationship between image and reality and the two cannot be entirely separated—the image, after all, can, as suggested by Jacobs, help to create the reality, and vice-versa. Such an approach is still beholden to the idea of the primacy of uncovering the strategy of the author in using Jews and Judaism—the investigation of the historical reality can only follow such work. But there is a commitment to a reality poking through. Judith Lieu, in her investigation of Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, is clear that in spite of the stereotyping of the Jew by Justin, a real sense both of Judaism and of the character of Christian and Jewish competition emerges from this text. This may to some extent be impressionistic but it is real nonetheless.31 Lieu’s work endorses to some extent the viability of criteria in assessing the presence of real Jews (how else is one able to distinguish between image and reality), though she does not explicitly discuss these. I want now to turn to this issue taking Timothy and Aquila as an example.

28.  Jacobs, ‘Jews’, p. 175. 29.  See also Andrew Jacobs, Remains of the Jews. The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford, 2004); and J.M.  Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 279, who speaks of the image of the Jew in this literature impinging upon the way in which the reality was encountered. Note also Averil Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (Washington DC, 2014), p. 38, where, in the context of a discussion of Dialogues and their relation to reality, she notes the shift in study of late antiquity to ‘awareness of Christian texts as shaping historical development.’ 30. Lieu, Image, p. 12. 31. Lieu, Image, pp. 177-98.



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Timothy and Aquila, Criteria and Context Preliminary Remarks First, we should note that the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (from now on TA), which has a complex manuscript tradition, exists in a shorter and longer recension.32 While some hold the shorter to be an abbreviation of the longer, others argue that both recensions are dependent upon an older original, itself dependent upon sources,33 a thesis encouraged by similarities between TA and other dialogues, especially the Dialogue of Athanasius and Zaccheus and Simon and Theophilus.34 Some assert that one of the principal sources accounting for these similarities is the second-century Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus.35 Others, however, think that there is too little known about this work to support such a hypothesis, and argue instead that the original TA is dependent upon an unknown thirdcentury source to which additions have been made by two different redactors.36 Shared material with Epiphanius in particular and also Eusebius further encourages a view of the dialogue as dependent upon sources.37 The fact of the existence of different recensions of the work, that it is dependent upon sources and may well be a composite document, or at least one that has evolved over time, c­ omplicate any discussion of the text 32.  All citations are from the longer recension unless otherwise noted. 33.  See Lawrence Lahey, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Critical Greek Text and English Translation of the Short Recension with an Introduction including a Source-­critical Study (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Cambridge, 2000), pp. 19-90. 34.  See Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 18-61; and Lawrence Lahey, ‘Evidence for Jewish Believers in Christian-Jewish Dialogues through the Sixth Century (excluding Justin)’, in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody MA, 2007), pp. 603-606. 35.  See Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 74-89; and Lahey ‘Evidence’, pp. 585-91. Lahey’s suggestion is not original—Harnack and Conybeare had argued such a case—but he adds substantially to it. 36.  See Jacqueline Pastis, ‘Dating the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Revisiting the Earlier Vorlage Hypothesis’, HTR 95 (2002), pp.  169-95. That the text shows internal strains is seen in doctrinal matters, especially relating to the use of technical Christological terms (see esp. TA 25), in the fact that the main text from 3.3-5.16 no longer refers by name to Timothy and Aquila, the author preferring simply to describe the dialogue partners as a Jew and a Christian; and by the fact that in so far as any emperors are mentioned these begin with Augustus and end with Hadrian (40.7) and yet the events recorded in the prologue and epilogue of the dialogue relate to the fifth century (that is, to the time when Cyril was Bishop of Alexandria). 37.  Most scholars agree that this shared material (found at 3.11a-18; 39.7-34; 40.4-8; 40.9-20), especially notable in the section discussing Aquila and the origins of different translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (39.7-34), cannot be accounted for by reference to a direct literary relationship. On this see Pastis, ‘Dating’, pp. 183-86; and Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 63-73.

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as a witness to real discussions between Jews and Christians, requiring that we distinguish between the source and the work of the final editor(s) in any assessment of the text’s context, which is probably an unattainable desideratum. Secondly, although the dialogue purports to emerge from the time when Cyril was bishop of Alexandria (in the early part of the fifth century),38 most think that it should be dated later than this, possibly to the sixth century, though arriving at precision on this point is impossible (to some the dialogue may in fact be based upon an event in Cyril’s own episcopate, subsequently updated).39 While an Alexandrian provenance is generally accepted, this is mainly on the basis of the explicit setting which the text has been given. The complexities surrounding date and provenance add still further to the problem of discovering how far the texts represents a ‘real’ encounter. Thirdly, the dialogue discusses subjects, which are well attested in other dialogues and related adversus Judaeos literature: the justification for calling Jesus God and the extent to which Christian affirmations about Jesus defy the oneness of God; the issue of Christ’s origins, engendering discussion of his parentage and the virgin birth; the rejection of the Jews and the ending of their covenant. The discussion is exclusively scriptural but, interestingly, involves both Old Testament and New Testament, the latter of which Aquila shows good knowledge of. The Problem of Realia In his discussion of TA and the extent to which it reflects actual engagement with Jews, Lahey introduces a number of criteria, all of which could be described as standard.40 These are: similar material reflected in Jewish contra Christianos material; well argued objections from the Jewish side; the use or knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic; the presence of Jewish tradition not well known in other Christian writers; claims that the actual disputation took place. Lahey alludes to the fact that the disputation has a setting but does not develop that as a criterion, that is, he does not say how that setting might be deemed realistic (in contradistinction to other dialogues, there is no attempt in the text to state that the dialogue is a record of what was said). Of course, the presence of a particular setting in an inherently dramatic genre such as a 38.  Both shorter and longer recensions agree on this. 39.  See Pastis, ‘Dating’; and Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 94-98. 40.  Lawrence Lahey, ‘Jewish Biblical Interpretation and genuine Jewish-Christian Debate in The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, JJS 51 (2000), pp. 281-96.



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dialogue should not be accorded value in itself and the presentation of that setting is tendentious in a number of ways.41 Lahey goes on to show how a setting within Alexandria in the sixth century would seem plausible on the basis of other evidence which we shall return to below. The presence of Hebrew words in the dialogue is also referred to by Lahey; but the evidence in this respect is hardly compelling.42 Of the criteria mentioned by Lahey, he places most emphasis upon the presence of what he terms good arguments contra Christianos, which are held to reflect concerns which we find in known Jewish literature. One of these relates to a passage early on in the dialogue (4.7-20) in which Aquila and Timothy are arguing about the extent to which Gen. 1:1 and 1:26 prove that the son was involved in creation. Lahey, following many others, sees clear evidence in Rabbinic literature for a refutation of the view that there was more than one creator of the world,43 but concentrates on Aquila’s attempt at arguing that ‘en arche’ at Gen. 1:1, does not refer to a single son, as Christians had claimed, but by reference to Psalm 101:26, where ‘kat’ archas’, the plural, is used in a context of creation and hence supports a reference to angels, not a singular son, a point further supported by reference to Job 38:7. The argument is not only good, Lahey claims, but unattested elsewhere. Lahey discusses two more passages in support of his view, 47:2-8 and 5:12-17. In the former Timothy cleverly shows, with possible knowledge of Jewish sources, that Isa. 45:14-15 refers to the nations coming to Jerusalem and supports his point against the Christian one; and in the latter Aquila refutes the Christian view that Isa. 9:6 refers 41. See TA 2 and the association of Judaism with demonological sources. Although in addition to this the Jew is accused of ignorance (52.1, 7) and obstinacy (20.4), by and large the tone is less vituperative than some adversus Judaeos texts. 42.  The relevant passages are: 3.11a-13; 8.6; 8.7; 20.14-15; 22.8; 23.4-5; 32.1-2. For a full discussion see Lawrence Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, in William Horbury (ed.), Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben Yehuda (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 106-21. Lahey’s conclusion is broadly positive, noting that all but one of TA’s seven passages are dependent upon previous Christian tradition and that therefore ‘This suggests that TA’s author had some familiarity with Hebrew and Aramaic or used lost material reflecting such familiarity.’ (Lahey, ibid., p. 118), positing that such a source might have been Africanus’ Chronographies, at least in the case of two of the etymologies. More generally he thinks that the information may have had an originally Jewish Christian provenance. Pastis is more dismissive of the evidence and sees it as largely supporting a conclusion that TA knows little of Hebrew or Aramaic, though she misconstrues at least one passage (34.16) claiming that Timothy asserts that ‘neanis’ is a Hebrew word. But that is not what the Greek says. See Jacqueline Pastis, Representations of Jews and Judaism in “The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila”: Construct or Social Reality? (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1994), p. 140. 43.  See Philip Alexander, ‘“In the beginning”: Rabbinic and Patristic Exegesis of Genesis 1.1’, in Emmanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling (eds.), The Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2009), pp. 1-30.

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to Jesus by showing that Jesus’ life cannot possibly conform with such a claim. Lahey has made a good case here, for he is able to show that there is a confluence between known discussion of this matter amongst Jewish authorities in a possibly contra Christianos context and the presence of a singular argument. But we have to ask to what extent these arguments reflect the source from which the author of TA is borrowing. And if it is culled from a source, then what power does it have in proving Lahey’s point? Lahey partially concedes this, especially in his discussion of the argument about Isa.  9:6, where, through a comparison of the passage concerned with two passages in Origen’s c. Cels., he expresses the view that the argument comes from an earlier source, possibly the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus.44 But recognition of the traditional character of the argument is not a problem because Lahey associates the writing of TA (or at least its longer recension) with the work of a known Christian scholar who was interested in refuting Jews through the use of traditional arguments45 (on this see our discussion of Cosmas below). Lahey does not discuss the literary dynamics of the text, that is, the extent to which its presentation as a dialogue appears convincing. In this context Jacqueline Pastis notes the modulating tone of the debate, the way in which it is often self-consciously digressive,46 its strongly dialogical character,47 as well as its references to the reaction of the crowd,48 arguing that these characteristics give TA the aura, on occasion, of a genuine conversation,49 though she sees this as reflecting the earlier source from which the relevant passages are taken. Attention should also be drawn to places where Aquila requests that Timothy answer the question (cf.  7.2, 4; 12.1; 19.1; 30.5-7; 35.3; 56.1) and to Aquila’s accusations that Timothy is being insulting, which are accepted by Timothy (24.9; 54.15, 16, 25); and more generally to the ­cumbersome 44.  Lahey, ‘Dialogue’, p. 294. 45.  One of the problems with Lahey’s discussion is that he is never clear at what literary level he locates evidence of genuine contact of Jew and Christian—the original document from which the authors of the longer and shorter recension have copied, at the level of the source from which that text has been copied, or at the level of the received shorter and longer recension. 46.  See Pastis, Representations. See inter alia 10.1; 21.1-2; 30.6. 47.  In this respect note should be taken not only of the digressive aspects referred to above, but also places where there are references back to what the participants promised to discuss, e.g. 7.2; 12.1; 19.1; 56.1. 48.  See esp. 4.8; 23.6; 57.9. 49.  ‘The extent to which the discussants are self-conscious on the dialogue process is remarkable, but not unique. It gives credence to the hypothesis that TA represents some form of social interaction.’ (Pastis, Representations, p. 208).



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character of the dialogue, that is, its failure, in spite of its apparently pedagogic character and its insistence upon order, 50 to create the sense of a clear progression of themes. 51 But judgments in this regard will inevitably be subjective (the cumbrous quality of the work, for instance, may have as much to do with the inadequacies of its author, or final redactor, than with the fact that it reflects the ghost of a genuine discussion), and, as already noted, many of the features outlined may be attributable to the earlier source of TA. Lahey’s claim that TA deals with real Jews is also supported by the criterion of social location. Having argued for the text’s Alexandrian provenance,52 Lahey draws attention to a number of sources which present the reader with a believable context for the source. He draws attention to Cyril of Alexandria’s contemporary, Isidore of Pelusium, who on a number of occasions wrote letters on the subject of how to respond to ‘the Jew who disputes with you’,53 showing how some of the scriptural texts Isidore mentions in this context cohere with texts discussed in TA.54 Closer to his mooted date for TA (early sixth century), he cites Eusebius of Alexandria, who knew many baptized Christians who observed Sabbaths, moons, and Judaic practices.55 But for him the most important evidence for assuming the text has a believable setting is John Moschus’ assertion, in the sixth century, that he knew a man called Cosmas, in whose house was a great collection of books. Moschus then notes that each day he would visit Cosmas where he would always find him reading or writing against Jews, ‘for it was his fervent desire to convert the Hebrews.’ ‘For this reason he would often send me to some Hebrews to 50.  Cf. 4.2-4; 7.3; 17.4; 45.5. 51.  ‘This lack of distinct progression may actually be an indication of the dialogue as it originally took place, rather than exemplify a planned treatise on the Messiahship of Jesus contra Judaeos.’ (William Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues. Athanasius and Zaccheus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila [Lewiston, 2004], p. 138). 52. Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 94-98. 53. See Ep. 1.141; 3.193.94 [4.17]. Lahey ‘Dialogue’, pp. 282-83, notes that Isidore refers on a number of occasions to ‘Jewish’ arguments found in TA. Note the issue of the impossibility of Christ’s birth from a virgin (Isidore, Ep. 1.141 and TA 8.5-6; 17.1-18.11; 26.1-6; 34.14-20; 36.1-2; 47.1-2); the perpetuity of Mary’s virginity (Isidore, Ep. 1.18 and TA 18.1-6), and Jesus’ fulfillment of Deut. 18.15 (Isidore, Ep. 3.94 and TA 32.5) and the greater glory of the Christian dispensation based upon Haggai 2.8-9 (Isidore, Ep. 4.17 and TA 12.13). For a recent discussion of Isidore’s refrences to Jewish arguments in his letters, see Lanfranchi, ‘L’image’, pp. 228-35, arguing that Isidore gives us access to the real voices of Jews in fifth century Egypt. He notes the failure of scholars to look more closely at Isidore but does not mention the work of Lahey, despite making reference to similarities between Isidore’s Jews and the Jew of TA. 54.  Lahey, ‘Dialogue’, pp. 283-84. 55. Eusebius, Sermon 7 (PG 86, 353-56).

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discuss some point of scripture with them, for he would not readily leave the house himself.’56 For Lahey, following Robertson,57 Cosmas, a known composer of adversus Judaeos literature, is a likely candidate for the authorship of the longer recension of TA, accounting for the fact that the latter utilized sources.58 Lahey’s arguments about the social reality beneath the text of TA stand in stark relief to the arguments of Jacqueline Pastis. In her unpublished thesis, she accepts that some elements of the work reflect encounter but attributes these to the source upon which the final redaction of the work has been based. 59 For her the final text shows no knowledge of real Jews; and is broadly catechetical in purpose, the Jews appearing as heuristic devices. At best what we have is ‘imagined encounter’.60 Her arguments arise from negative criteria, that is, criteria which would point to evidence that we are not dealing with a real encounter. She emphasizes what she calls the disembodied character of Aquila and of the Jews more generally. Aside from the introduction we learn very little about the former,61 and as to the latter there is no attempt to differentiate between the Jews of the Old Testament period and the present—in fact the text tells us nothing about the Jewish world of the mooted time of the dialogue, save what Pastis takes to be its artificial introduction and conclusion. The fact that, in her opinion, TA is largely a revamped source from the third century and that it engages in so many 56.  John Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 172 (PG 87C, 3040-41). 57. R.G. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1986), pp. 385-86. 58.  ‘(Cosmas) had access to books which could well have included an original TA, and to others which he could have used to revise it.’ (Lahey, Dialogue, p. 97). Lahey, who argues that the shorter and longer versions were produced in the sixth century from an original written in the earlier part of the same century, thinks that some of the changes he envisages being made in the longer version can best be explained if Cosmas is the author, listing the omission of a passage about the anti-christ found in the shorter version (SR 15.1-7), which culminates in the destruction of the Byzantine Empire. Cosmas, for Lahey, is a conservative figure aligned with the government and so his omission of this material makes sense if he is the author of the long recension (Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 21-31). For objections to the view that Cosmas is the author, based mainly upon lack of evidence and the failure of Moschus explicitly to attribute a dialogue to Cosmas, see Pastis, Representations, p. 113. 59.  She writes of ‘glimpses of Jewish concerns that at some point were cogent enough to become fixed in anti-Jewish polemic.’ (Pastis, Representations, p. 260). 60. Pastis, Representations, p. 219. 61.  Pastis emphasizes that we learn nothing about his age, place of birth, teachers, circumstances and even how he learnt about Christianity. ‘It is this metaphorically disembodied characterization of Aquila which suggests real Jews are not a concern.’ (Pastis, Representations, p. 135).



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traditional arguments shows that ‘the final edition implicitly represents Judaism as frozen in the same kinds of controversies that engaged Trypho and Justin in the mid 2nd-century.’62 Moreover, there are inconcinnities in the text. So, the author makes Timothy assert that Jews and Christians share the same Bible, which is not true, and does not make Aquila object to the presence of Judith in the list of accepted books of the Old Testament (3.17a). Furthermore, there is no objection from Aquila when Timothy quotes from the Testament of Solomon (9.11-13), or Sirach and Wisdom as if they are scripture. Although the Jew objects to the use of Baruch (10.5), he is silent in the face of Timothy’s attempt to justify its use. Indeed Aquila does not object to Timothy when he misattributes a text, as the latter does on a number of occasions.63 On the question of the text of scripture, there are oddities. On one occasion Aquila asserts that Timothy’s case is dependent upon a Greek translation of scripture (the LXX), which differs from the Hebrew precisely at points critical for the Christian’s argument. But this matter is not consistently pursued, and the only occasion when it is raised by Timothy, Aquila cites a passage from Isaiah (Isa. 62:1) where no substantive difference exists between the MT and the LXX.64 In fact, the Jew and the Christian appear to be using the same biblical text and that is the LXX.65 Similarly, much is made by TA of the anti-Christian character of the second-century Aquila’s translation, through a negative account of his life, in which Aquila is portrayed as a former Christian, expelled from the church and reaping revenge through his ‘anti-Christian’ translation.66 While there is no reason to think that the issue of Aquila’s translation would not have been relevant at the time of the writing of TA,67 TA does not cite a single 62. Pastis, Representations, pp. 259-60. 63.  At 38.13 he cites a text as from Hosea when it is from Habbakuk 1:2; at 8.4 he attributes a passage to Micah when it is from Joel 5:2. 64.  See 39.1-3: ‘As you willed, you Christians perverted the scriptures for you cited many points from the different books which are not contained within the Hebrew but in the Greek only; and with respect to this matter I wanted to know why this was so. Is it not that you Christians truly perverted the scriptures?’ 65.  In this volume Morlet notes a number of Old Testament citations where Timothy and Aquila appear to agree on the wording of the text, where the difference between the LXX and the MT or another Greek version is of significance for the text’s interpretation. See in this regard 4.16 and the quotation of Gen. 1:31; 5.10 and the quotation of Deut.  6:4; 24.5 and the quotation of Deut.  21:23, and 37:4 and the quotation of Exod. 24:8. 66. 40.4-19. 67.  See Justinian’s Novella 146 and its acceptance of Jews reading Aquila. For ongoing Jewish citation of Aquila see Nicholas de Lange, Japheth in the Tents of Shem (Tübingen, 2015), pp. 143-44. There is no need to think that such acceptance was new and so somehow the cause of the writing of TA. See Pastis, ‘Dating’, p. 186.

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example of Aquila’s ‘anti-Christian’ translation,68 though there are a number of occasions where effective examples could have been given.69 One of the most important datum for Pastis lies in the failure of TA to discuss the question of Jewish practice, understood specifically in terms of the Torah, an omission which is striking in relation to other adversus Judaeos literature. Striking, too, in this context is the fact that there are references to circumcision, and Sabbath observance in TA, but only in scriptural citations,70 the subjects forming no part of the author’s discussion. Where other Jewish practices are mentioned these are often presented in a garbled form.71 It is Jews, then, as they are conveyed to him in the Bible and through Christian sources, which interest the author of TA, not Jews with whom he has any acquaintance. In the end the dialogue is at one remove from ‘real’ Jews, a work of catechesis, whose general, non-specific characteristics render it amenable to such use. ‘The representations of Jews and Judaism in TA suggest that the text was written for Christians about Christian issues, couched in the language of Jewish and Christian conflict.’72 Pastis has made some powerful points. At times the author of TA seems to demonstrate inadequate knowledge of some of the issues he is describing, hinting at partial knowledge of what his source may in fact have known in greater detail. So insofar as the text discusses issues related to a conflict over the biblical text and the contents of a mooted Old Testament canon, we only appear to have evidence of the issue at one remove, matters like the difference between the Hebrew and the Greek of individual books, the problem of Aquila’s translation and so on, ­mentioned but not consistently pursued. Similar points could be made 68.  For a cautious approach to TA’s knowledge of Aquila, see Aitken in this volume, who notes our ignorance about the state of that version at the time of TA and about the kind of Greek Bible Jews were using. Nicholas de Lange has argued that what Novella 146 probably proves more than anything else is that the LXX was read quite widely among Jews. See de Lange, Japheth, pp. 60-67, esp. 66. 69.  See Pastis, Representations, p.  161. She notes the absence of any reference to Aquila in TA’s discussion of Isa.  7:14 (34.16), where Aquila, but also Symmachus and Theodotion, read ‘neanis’ (a reading referred to in the discussion in TA); and Ps.  2:2 (11.2), where Aquila’s reading of ‘eleimmenos’ for ‘christos’ is not referred to. Pastis contrasts this absence of specific examples with what we find in Epiphanius, where at Mens. Pond. 2.33-36, Aquila’s reading of Gen.  5:5 is contrasted with that of the LXX (Pastis, ‘Dating’, p. 185). For further discussion along similar lines, see Aitken in this volume. 70.  At 15.8 circumcision is mentioned as part of a quotation from Gen. 15:12; and at 12.11 and 51.12, the sabbath is mentioned as part of quotations from Isa. 1:10 and 66:23. 71.  Other practices referred to are the placement of Deuteronomy in an ark at 3.12 and to the saying of the Shema at 4.8, both discussed skeptically by Pastis, Representations, pp. 126-27 and 129-31. 72. Pastis, Representations, p. 260.



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about the author’s knowledge of Hebrew and related matters. And yet as Pastis concedes, ‘It is just as possible for a polemical work to have accurate information about Judaism, and yet not to have had contact with Jews, as it is for a polemical work, whose author has contact with real Jews to distort and misunderstand information about Judaism.’73 And we should be wary of being too hasty to make claims about ignorance when we know so little about the Judaism contemporary with the author of TA and its recensions. The related point about the homogenized picture of the Jews, entirely derived from the Bible rather than from Jews known to the author, is overdone—there is always a tendency in polemical literature towards the flattening of one’s opponent’s views, in part because the texts upon which discussion is based are Old Testament sources, and in part because the image of a particular opponent, mediated through sources and prejudices, will always to some extent supplant the reality. Cosmas (whether we regard him as the author of a recension of TA or not) is pictured by Moschus as writing texts against Jews in a situation, which could appear isolated (after all, he does not want to debate with Jews himself), but he was doubtless responding to what he thought was a real danger (he sends Moschus out to debate with Jews, for whatever purpose). The question of the implication of the use of sources, of the fact that TA repeats well known, historical Christian attacks upon the Jews, is similarly less compelling. While it certainly raises complicated questions about where to locate the reality of an actual encounter—for Pastis many of the places in TA which might give evidence of a genuine encounter between a Jew and a Christian have their origins in a mooted original third-century Vorlage—the repetition of material may have to do with the conservative character of adversus Judaeos literature, which tended to repetition because the arguments remained similar over time.74 The purpose of making such a point is not to defend the idea that the document gives evidence of viva voce contact but rather to argue that it does not prove the opposite, that the document does not have a Jewish presence in mind, at whatever distance, and however distorted.75 73. Pastis, Representations, p. 23. 74.  The implication of Moschus’ account of the work of Cosmas is that he composed his anti-Jewish works on the basis of hos knowledge of other anti-Jewish works. ‘And each day I used to go to him (Cosmas) and so in truth I never entered and did not find him either reading or composing against the Jews.’ (Moschus, Spiritual Meadow, p. 172). 75.  Lahey, ‘Dialogue’, pp. 281-82. Simon, Verus Israel, p. 145, argues that the repetitive character of such works indicate their verisimilitude: ‘ … this lack of variation may either be a sign of the slavish dependence of each treatise on its forebears, or equally readily be explicable by the simple persistence of the same objections and the same methods of attack on the part of the adversary.’

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The absence of any detailed reference to Jewish practices or to any discussion of the Jewish law, is striking, especially when we note how standard such discussion is in adversus Judaeos literature. In tentative mitigation as it were, Pastis suggests that the matter was not an issue of disputation in TA, because both disputants agreed on the importance of the law. While such a suggestion is unlikely, as Pastis in fact concedes (there is nothing in the dialogue which implies that Timothy is a Christian who observes the law), it could be argued that the absence of references to practices reflects the contours of the source upon which TA is based.76 This aspect of the source, it might be argued, suited the context in which it was reused where Jewish arguments against Christian assertions about Jesus’ messianic and divine identity were of major importance as the evidence from Isidore of Pelusium, cited earlier, implies, as does the evidence from the Rabbis more generally.77 Perhaps there is a tendency to exaggerate the importance of questions of praxis and to forget that arguments of a Christological kind may have been more prominent between Jews and Christians.78 Before concluding, it is necessary to consider the view of Pastis, which has been adopted by Sébastien Morlet in this volume, that TA is an internally addressed piece of catechesis.79 The argument can seem a strong one. After all, the pedagogic character of the text has already been emphasized, seen in its insistence upon order, in its somewhat repetitive character, in its questions and answers style, and in its concern with producing proofs of arguments. Moreover, Aquila addresses Timothy as a teacher (56.1-3), and the themes with which he deals (the oneness of God, Jesus’ sonship, 76.  Note that Origen reports that the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus was entitled ‘The Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus about Christ’, implying that there was no discussion of the law. Interestingly, the shorter recension of TA contains a passage not found in the longer recension (SR 19.3-8) in which the author quotes Gal. 3:13 and Paul’s reference to Christ redeeming us from the curse of the law. ‘And about which law does he speak? Not about that of Moses. In no way! But about something of Adam.’ A quotation then follows from Gen. 3:17-19 (the curse of Adam). The fact that the author is at pains not to attack the Mosaic law may indicate that the source from which the passage was taken was written by a converted Jew, who continued to adhere to the Jewish law (see Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 31-33), though whether this source was the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus is uncertain, even if we are told that Jason was a ‘Hebrew Christian’ (ad Vig. 8). 77.  As does the introduction to TA where we read (1.5) that Aquila is going round the synagogues ‘teaching the divine scriptures, saying. this: The one whom the Christians now worship is not the Messiah, but he was a man even as we are. He was condemned to be crucified as a blasphemer because he said that he was God.’ 78.  Celsus, according to Origen, characterized the argument between Jews and Christians as centred upon the issue of Jesus’ messianic status (see c. Cels. 3.1). 79.  Pastis is vague about the kind of catechesis involved, noting: ‘Such texts would require no historical anchor since their purpose would be to offer instruction on basic Christian doctrines and beliefs.’ (Representations, p. 260).



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the virgin birth and so on) converge with central Christian doctrinal issues pertinent to catechesis. Indeed sometimes the subjects are set out almost as if part of a creed.80 Finally, it can be shown, that anti-Jewish sentiments play a role in some Christian catechetical literature. So Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures, delivered in the middle of the fourth century, refer more than intermittently to objections raised by Jews and engage in forms of anti-Jewish polemic which focus on subjects covered in TA.81 This argument, at least as used by Pastis, reflects a broadly Harnackian view in that it claims that a text which ostensibly deals with issues to do with Jews and Christians is really dealing with other issues altogether— Jews are a cypher, a heuristic device, to advance Christian teaching in another area and to another audience.82 The difficulty with the theory lies in the fact that (a) the setting of TA, however one conceives its historicity, places the debate within the context of Jewish-Christian disputation, an important point because such a context appears to be an addition to an earlier source;83 and (b) though there is a convergence between some of the subjects discussed and those of Christian catechetical texts, there is enough in the text, however its content is considered, to be construed as specific to Jewish-Christian exchange, or at least matters which would have concerned Jews and Christians rather than catechists (for example the laboured 80.  This is especially the case in ch. 10 which is dominated by an attempt to show how different elements of Jesus’ life, beginning with his birth and moving forward, were predicted in scripture. In this context it is worth noting the use of ‘peri de’ to introduce many of the subjects, as well as 10.46-58 which is strongly creedal in its content. 81. E.g. Procat. 10: ‘For you are receiving armour against the adverse power, against heresies, against Jews…’; Cat. 4.12: ‘And if the Jews ever worry you, meet them at once by asking this…’; Cat. 7.2 which refers to Jewish belief in one God; Cat. 10.14 which refers to Jewish unbelief in Jesus as Messiah; Cat. 12.2 which refers to Jewish unbelief in Jesus’ virgin birth, here citing Isa. 7:14, repeated at Cat. 12.27. A number of anti-Jewish references appear in Cat. 13 and 14 on the death and resurrection of Christ. For a detailed discussion of these and other refrences see P. Andrist, ‘Polémique religieuse et dialogue aduersus Iudaeos au service de catéchese, l’exemple de Cyrille de Jérusalem’, in Morlet et al. (eds.), Adversus Judaeos, pp. 199-23. 82.  In his much more thorough attempt to argue for a catechetical background for TA, Morlet, while clear that TA does not represent an actual dialogue between a Christian and Jew (its artificiality in a number of areas is proof of that), does not want to go on to argue from this observation that the Jew is simply a cypher or heuristic device. As he writes in his conclusion: ‘As a catechetical handbook, or more broadly as a text concerned with Christian instruction, TA evidences a concrete concern for polemic against Judaism. The fact that this dialogue was obviously badly informed about Judaism and could certainly not be effective as a weapon against Judaism is another question.’ In this view, then, the author’s opposition to Judaism is real, however ill-informed he may be about Judaism, and the existence of debates between Jews and Christians is not denied (even if TA cannot be used to reconstruct these), though the precise relationship of TA as catechesis to this question is left unexamined. 83.  This is the view of Pastis, ‘Dating’.

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interest in evidence of the Jews’ rejection (37-38), in matters pertaining to the Christian and Jewish canon and biblical text [LXX and Aquila], and in Hebrew words, to name a few. That there is a similarity between subjects of a catechetical character and anti-Jewish literature is unsurprising— Christian assertions which Jews found difficult to understand or accept did sometimes converge with problems of belief experienced within the Christian community, especially given the scriptural character of such catechesis where proving the prophetic origin of Christianity was so important. Moreover, it is understandable to think that Christians writing texts adversus Judaeos might adopt a pedagogic approach similar to that found in catechetical literature (e.g. a questions and answers approach). Yet insofar as Christian catechesis is anti-Jewish, it is that haphazardly, as a brief survey of Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechesis shows. Furthermore, it is unclear why a writer, supposedly distant from the Jews, writing in a community with little contact with Jews, as Pastis but not Morlet, claims, would use a Jew as a heuristic device to teach his congregation rather than simply writing a catechetical text, which was more comprehensive in its coverage of Christian catechesis?84 Or put another way: Why might a writer interested in creating a Christian catechetical work write it in the form of a JewishChristian dialogue, not least in the face of the absence of any known Christian catechetical work in this form?85 To some the answer to this question might lie in noting the strongly biblical character of such catechesis and the way in which it concentrates on the question of prophetic fulfilment. Jews were obviously formidable opponents of Christian arguments of this kind and in such a context a Christian anti-Jewish dialogue can appear appropriate. But while I might accept that such a dialogue could form a part of such catechesis (as it is in the work of Cyril), would it be thought appropriate to have it as the whole part of such catechesis?86 Finally, it is striking that in the detailed reference to the audience of the work found at SR 1.1, which looks like an editorial addition, no reference is made to catechumens.87 84.  One assumes that the presence of anti-Jewish references in Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures reflects the presence of Jews in Palestine. For a subtle answer to this question, see Andrist, ‘Polémique’, pp. 219-21, who does not exclude encounter between Cyril and Jews, ascribing a ‘prophylactic’ role to the anti-Judaism of his catechesis, that is, a role allied to preventing the newly baptized from being persuaded by Jewish arguments. 85.  See further the essay by Morlet in this volume. 86.  One could imagine that such a genre of writing would be appropriate for Jewish converts to Christianity but does the TA look like such a work? Neither in its introduction nor in the absence of some discussions (e.g. that relating to the Law) does it seem as if it assumes such an audience. On this see Morlet in this volume. 87.  Mentioned are ‘Jews’, ‘priests’, ‘worshippers of the new covenant’ and ‘those who deny Christ’. See Lahey, ‘Evidence’, p. 623.



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A rejection of the catechetical theory does not mean that there can be certainty about an alternative purpose for TA, or the degree to which it reflects contact with actual Jews. Lahey’s attempt to argue for the scholarly Cosmas as its author, at least of the LR, and to suggest a proselytic purpose on the basis of what Moschus tells us about Cosmas’ aims in ‘writing and reading against the Jews’, is suggestive. Certainly the text ends abruptly with the conversion of Aquila, leading one to assume that the author saw this as a possible, even the desired, outcome of what he wrote. But it is notable, too, that the text begins with Timothy responding to an attack upon the Christians launched by Aquila and that it is Aquila who is often presented as the initiator of conversation. Here a defensive purpose, similar to that implied in the already mentioned passages in Isidore, looks more likely.88 The fact that the shorter recension is addressed to both Jews and Christians (see SR 1.1) might account for what can be seen as both a potentially proselytic and defensive purpose.89 But as with the canonical Gospels and many other ancient sources, deprived of an assured context, the reader must infer everything from the source itself with all the difficulties that implies.90 On the other hand, knowledge of the context might illuminate much, bringing sense to the text as adversus Judaeos.91 Against this, however, we have to weigh up the effect of Pastis’ observations about the level of knowledge of Judaism evinced in the text and the extent to which Jewish opinion and practice contemporary with the author of TA intrudes into it.92 Some of these arguments are strong, however we understand the role of repetition and tradition in adversus Judaeos texts. Insofar as the author is acquainted with Jews, there are 88. Pastis, Representations, p. 219, supplements this view (without appearing to adopt it) by arguing that TA may have been seeking to show why it is that Christians are different from Jews as well as marking out boundaries between Judaism and Christianity. 89.  See Lahey, ‘Evidence’, p. 623. However we understand their precise purpose, they must be keen, in whatever way, to form opinions. See Cameron, Dialogue, p. 51. 90.  That there is interest in the setting on the part of the redactors of the source is seen in the fact that they differ. In the longer recension, the Jewish protagonist, Aquila, is presented as going around the synagogues of Alexandria preaching to the Jews that Jesus is not the Christ and that Christian teachings about Jesus compromise the unity of God (1.5), while in the shorter recension (4.3) the audience of Aquila are both Jews and the Christians in the synagogue, though in each recension Jews and Christians appear to witness the dialogue. Lahey, Dialogue, p.  93, suggests that this is because the SR is directed at Judaizing Christians. Again this is speculative, though it may explain the absence of an interest in questions of legal practice. 91.  A point implied by Pastis, Representations, p. 258. 92.  This would contrast, for instance with that found in Justin’s Dialogue where recent events in Jewish history are referred to (the Bar Kokhba revolt), where cursing of Christians appears a reality and where there is more consistent evidence of knowledge of Jewish traditions. On this see Lieu, Image, pp. 103-53.

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enough hints that this is at a distance, which may be compatible with a defensive role for his work, one for internal, not external consumption. But this need not mean that the TA is written in a context where Jews play no role.93 As Lieu has made clear, ‘real’ Jews, however conceived, could be argued with, through the mouths of constructed ones, who may have comported more with an image than a reality, however real the presence of Jews out there might have been.94 Conclusion The persistence of the discussion about the relationship between rhetoric and reality in Christian adversus Judaeos literature, not least dialogues, is best explained on the basis of ethical import and historical complexity. The latter has led some to reject the pursuit of the real Jew and Christian in this literature and to plough different furrows. Those, however, who seek to move behind the rhetoric to a mooted reality do so in part because they remain convinced of the ongoing contact between Christians and Jews in the ancient period, and in part because they feel that the persistence of material adversus Judaeos among Christians needs an explanation beyond the theological/ideological. The difficulty with the literature lies, however, not just in its rhetorical character, but also in the fact that, as we have it, and with some notable exceptions (Chrysostom and Aphrahat), it is very difficult to reconstruct the context of the text and so the character of Jewish-Christian interaction in the place where the text originated. In other words, establishing a social reality to which the text is addressed remains elusive, however nuanced the criteria used.95 The TA has demonstrated this point—anonymous, of unknown date and provenance, preserved in two recensions of a source which is probably dependent upon older source(s), it cannot be contextualized with any precision. Simon wrote: ‘It is not necessary to decide whether the anti-Jewish polemical writings in every case have face-to-face discussions lying behind them … Primarily, it is not even a matter of deciding whether these were 93.  Andrist, ‘Polémique’, p. 220, for a call not to adopt absolute conclusions on the issue of the reality behind adversus Judaeos dialogues in general. 94. Lieu, Image. See also Déroche, ‘Polémique’, pp. 288-89. 95.  The fact that it is so difficult to reconstruct the context to which the text is addressed leads Averil Cameron to ask whether the question about the reality beneath the dialogue is the right one: ‘I am tempted to say that the question is misguided: we rarely have evidence outside the dialogue in question that would allow us to know the answer, and arguments drawn from the supposed plausibility of an internal scenario are dangerous indeed.’ (Cameron, Dialoguing, p. 37).



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actually addressed to Jews. Put in this way the question is almost unanswerable. The real question is whether or not the Judaism with which these works come to grips represents a real threat to the church.’96 We may not agree with Simon’s idea about Judaism as a threat, but we should agree with his implied conclusion, that the quest for a fine-grained account of Jewish-Christian interaction on the basis of the extant texts, not least the dialogues, is often an empty quest and that we must accept a more generalized and varied interpretation of their purpose and of the reality at which they hint.97 Cosmas clearly felt the need to produce such texts, and was keen that they should be addressed to Jews but it is difficult to know why. These texts could be defensive or aggressive, internally or externally directed. That Cosmas thought that he could write such texts without meeting ‘real’ Jews himself is striking. Jews remained important in the world of Christians, whether in dialogues98 or elsewhere, however constructed their presentation might be, a point, tentative as it is, which has been demonstrated by our investigation of TA.

96. Simon, Verus Israel, p. 145. 97.  Note the comment of Pastis: ‘This literature reflects the fact of ongoing relations but does a poor job of revealing how these interactions transpired.’ (Pastis, Representations, p. 170). 98.  The proliferation of dialogues adversus Judaeos from the fifth century onwards is striking. Whether we should simply regard this as a manifestation of the ongoing importance of dialogue as a means of arguing in the Byzantine world and see them as similar to other examples of the dialogue form in this period is a question. On all of this see Cameron, Dialogue, esp. pp. 50-54.

THE DIALOGUE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA: A CATECHETICAL HANDBOOK? Sébastien Morlet Abstract: The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila has sometimes been seen as a reflection of an actual debate. A close analysis of the text, however, contradicts this view. The dependence of the text on several sources, the biblical text used by the Jew and the functioning of the dialogue indicate that the latter is an artificial construct. This fact raises the question of the function of the text. The paper collects several arguments which may indicate a catechetical function, either in the strict or the broader sense.

Like other anti-Jewish dialogues, the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (= TA) is presented as relating an actual debate supposed to have taken place in Alexandria, at the time of Cyril of Alexandria: ‘A dialogue between a Christian and a Jew whose names are Timothy the Christian and Aquila the Jew, which took place in Alexandria in the days of Cyril, the most holy Archbishop of Alexandria’ (long recension).1 This indication does not appear in the short recension’s title,2 but an explicit allusion to Cyril, at the beginning of the dialogue,3 situates the debate at the time of his episcopacy. According to Lawrence L. Lahey’s, this indication of time would be an argument to sustain the view that it could transmit real arguments used by the Jews and the Christians during their debates: Nevertheless, TA at times reflects genuine Christian-Jewish controversy, probably even that connected with Alexandria. Perhaps TA was suggested by or based in part on debate in Cyril’s time. For SR [short recension], quite 1.  Ed. Robert G.  Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships (Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1986). This edition is reproduced, with an English translation in William Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues. Athanasius and Zacchaeus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila (Lewiston NY, 2004). Another translation, made by Robert Kraft, is available on the internet (ccat.sas.upenn.edu). The translation quoted in this paper is that of Kraft. For a French translation of the long recension, see Sébastien Morlet (tr.), Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila. Dispute entre un juif et un chrétien (Paris, 2017). 2.  Ed. Lawrence L. Lahey, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Critical Greek Text and English Translation of the Short Recension with an Introduction including a Sourcecritical Study (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge, 2000). 3.  TA 2.9.

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unusually for contra Iudaeos literature, gives an exact day the debate is supposed to have occurred: January 25. Although the year is not given, a possibility might be between 412-414, when, according to the Universal History of Agapius (c. 940), bishop of Hieropolis (Mabbug) in north-west Mesopotamia (Osrhoene), a group of Jews at Alexandria were baptized.4

If, indeed, the dialogue reproduces the proceedings of an actual debate, it is all the more plausible that it reflects echoes of genuine controversy.5 J. Pastis’ analysis, on the other hand, leads to the opposite view that the author is not well informed about Jews and Judaism, and that the debate between the Jew and the Christian is only the pretext of an exposition of Christian doctrine: On the other hand, however, as a text concerned with Christian catechesis TA is quite adequate for the less sophisticated reader. Such texts would require an historical anchor since their purpose would be to offer introduction on basic Christian doctrine and beliefs. Such texts could be easily reused by subsequent authors in a variety of contexts. As such, the ‘Jew’, ‘Jews’, and ‘Judaism’ function as heuristic devices in TA and reveal no direct interest in the conversion of the Jews, unlike what the text superficially presents. The attempt to use TA as a source of information about Jewish and Christian relations is thus problematic. The representation of Jews and Judaism in TA suggests that the text was written for Christians about Christian issues, couched in the language of Jewish and Christian conflict. This would suggest that further studies on adversus Judaeos dialogues, and reconstructions generally of Jewish and Christian relations, should treat very cautiously the prima facie ‘evidence’ of the social interaction texts such as this purport to provide.6

According to this analysis, then, the narrative framework would give no indication about the original setting of the dialogue (a conclusion which J. Pastis encourages all the more as she assumes the existence of a third-century Vorlage for the dialogue).7 It would be part of the fictitious devices serving to hide under the superficial form of the dialogue the fundamentally catechetical purpose of the text. 4.  Lawrence L.  Lahey, ‘Evidence for Jewish Believers in Christian-Jewish Dialogues through the Sixth Century (excluding Justin)’, in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody MA, 2007), pp. 581-639 (p. 604). 5.  Arthur Lukyn Williams was already convinced that the dialogue reflects an actual debate, but the basis of this assumption is strangely weak—the laughter of the audience (Adversus Judaeos. A Bird’-Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance [Cambridge, 1935], p. 67). 6.  Jacqueline Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism in the “Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila”: Construct or Social Reality? (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1994), p. 260. 7.  See also her article ‘Dating the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Revisiting the Earlier Vorlage Hypothesis’, HTR 95 (2002), pp. 169-295.

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It is doubtful whether we should interpret this catechetical purpose as automatically contradictory with a real anti-Jewish intention in the text. J.  Pastis’ radical analysis leads her to espouse, in her study of TA, an opinion similar to Miriam Taylor’s view that Christian anti-Judaism would be fundamentally a “symbolic anti-Judaism”, viz. a fictitious opposition to Judaism which would have been basically, for the Christians of Antiquity, a way of defining their faith.8 Nevertheless, the idea of a catechetical purpose merits attention and raises the question of the setting of the text. If, indeed, we speak about a “catechesis”, does that mean that the text has simply a pedagogical intention, or also that it was designed to be used concretely as a handbook in a catechetical school? Completing Pastis’ observations, I will first show that the discussion in TA is often artificial and cannot reflect a genuine debate. I will then illustrate the pedagogical intention of the text. Eventually, I will ask in what respect we could connect this dialogue to a real catechetical setting. TA: An Artificial Construct The artificial character of TA may be observed by an analysis of its sources, the Jew’s attitude towards the Bible, and finally the functioning of the dialogue between the two speakers. A Text Based on Several Written Sources Previous scholarship on TA has already shown that this text has many literary sources. Research has focused primarily on the relationships between TA and other dialogues (especially Athanasius and Zacchaeus =  AZ), and on the parallels between TA an Epiphanius’ treatise On Weights and Measures. Conybeare already pointed out several parallels between TA and AZ.9 These parallels led him to the assumption that both dialogues (along with the dialogue of Simon and Theophilus) may have a common source. Since he thought that the core of the dialogue, except a few Trinitarian passages, reflects a pre-Nicene, second-century Christology, focused on the problem of the relations between the Father and the Son, he tended 8.  Miriam Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus (Leiden, 1995). 9. F.C. Conybeare, The Dialogues of Athanasius and Zacchaeus and of Timothy and Aquila (Oxford, 1898).

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to identify this source with the lost Controversy of Jason and Papiscus. Both dialogues would have been a reworking of this possibly secondcentury work. Against this view, Robertson has reasonably argued that the existence of a traditional material in the dialogue does not contradict a later date10 and criticized Conybeare’s analysis, which, according to him, was exaggerated: TA and ZA do contain similar developments, but the similarity is not so clear that they could be thought to reflect a common source, and besides, their biblical text is not the same.11 More recently, however, J. Pastis has tried to sustain the view that TA may have a third-century Vorlage, and Lawrence Lahey, who agrees with Robertson that the text, in its present form, should date to the sixth century, tried to defend the view that it could stem from Jason and Papiscus.12 Patrick Andrist made a reassessment of Conybeare’s analysis, by reducing the extent of the significant parallels between TA and AZ, and by stressing the speculative character of the assumption that a common source could be Jason and Papiscus. He concluded that TA and AZ did have a common source, which he cautiously does not try to identify, and which he places before the end of the fourth century.13 The parallels with Epiphanius concern both the preliminary discussion on the canon (TA 1-3), and Aquila’s story (39.4-40.20), in which the Christian presents the translator as a former Christian who would have sought to distort the Scripture in order to hide its messianic meaning. Conybeare suggested that TA and Epiphanius, along with other texts, may have a common source. Robertson accepted this view, designating this source as a ‘handbook’.14 The importance of patristic sources in TA (see below) should however lead us to reassess this issue and to check if Epiphanius could not be its source. More generally, the dialogue contains common arguments with many texts of Antiquity. The fact that it often contains parallel developments with other testimony collections or anti-Jewish works of Antiquity is, once again, not necessarily significant and can always be explained by assuming shared traditions, even if commons sources may also be assumed. In some cases, however, more significant parallels may more 10. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, p. 329. Indeed, the fact that most arguments are repeated in the anti-Jewish works throughout Antiquity is more an indication of the conservative character of this tradition than a sufficient proof that these works are rewritings of earlier works. 11. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, pp. 349-50. 12.  See his edition of the short recension, and the article mentioned in n. 4. 13.  Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée. Étude des sources et du contexte littéraire (Ph.D. diss., Geneva, 2001). The thesis is available at the following address: http://www.unige. ch/cyberdocuments/theses2001/AndristP/these.pdf). See pp. 170-291. 14. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, p. 146.

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clearly indicate the use of patristic authors. Among the few scholars who studied TA in any detail, Robertson was probably the most aware of the patristic influence on TA. His thorough analysis of the biblical text used in the dialogue led him to the following conclusion: The exegetical arguments which are found in TA infer the use of a variety of literary sources which the author had at his disposal. Whether these sources were available to the author in their original literary context, or only secondhand (e.g., through oral tradition or in other literary works), cannot always be determined. TA shares much in common with the Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem and reflects occasional dependence on exegetical traditions which are found in Hippolytus of Rome.15

In my study on Eusebius’ Demonstratio evangelica (= DE), composed c. 313-25, I also detected many parallels between this work and TA.16 The DE appears to have been, generally speaking, very influential on subsequent polemic with Judaism.17 In the case of TA, most of the parallels are not so significant as to lead us to think, with certainty, that the DE was indeed one of TA’s sources. A few parallels, however, deserve a special attention. In 11.5-10, TA contains two short passages about the prophecies of the names ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’. Before TA, such a combination can be found only in the DE (4.16-17).18 In 29.7-15, TA contains a combination of Exod. 33:18 and 34:5 as prophecies of a second divine person. Once again, such an association seems to be found only in the DE (5.17) and in the Letter of the six ­bishops against Paul of Samosata, §5.19 In 49.14, TA quotes Mic. 3:12 as a prophecy of the siege of Jerusalem. This exegesis does not seem to occur before Eusebius (DE 2.3.7-8). 15. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, pp. 346-47. 16.  La Démonstration évangélique d’Eusèbe de Césarée. Étude sur l’apologétique chrétienne à l’époque de Constantin (Paris, 2009). 17. See La Démonstration évangélique d’Eusèbe, especially pp. 624-28. I tried to sustain this view in other publications as well: ‘La source principale du Quod Christus sit Deus attribué à Jean Chrysostome: la Démonstration évangélique d’Eusèbe de Césarée’, Revue des études augustiniennes 58 (2012), pp. 261-85; ‘L’utilisation des révisions juives de la Septante dans la première littérature chrétienne: philologie, exégèse et polémique’, in Rémi Gounelle and Jan Joosten (eds.), La Bible juive dans l’Antiquité (Prahins, 2014), pp. 117-40. 18.  See my analysis, La Démonstration évangélique d’Eusèbe, pp. 369-74. 19.  Text in P. de Navascués, Pablo de Samosata y sus adversarios. Estudio históricoteológico del cristianismo antioqueno en el s. III (Roma, 2004), pp. 67-70. If the letter is authentic, it should have been written between 264/65 and 268/69. The text contains many parallels with Eusebius’ Demonstratio. They obviously belong to the same exegetical tradition. The possibility remains, however, that this Letter is a forgery, and that it was inspired by Eusebius (about the first assumption, see E.  Schwartz, Ein fingierte Korrespondenz mit Paulus dem Samosatener [Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse, 1927, 3. Abhandlung; München, 1927], pp. 1-58).

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It also remains possible that a few objections put in the mouth of the Jew may stem from the DE,20 even if other sources are possible (especially Cyril of Jerusalem). Despite the speculative character of the identification of TA’s sources, the amount of passages, in the dialogue, which are parallel to other texts tends to sustain Robertson’s view that the author had at his disposal a variety of written sources. This observation already leads to the conclusion that TA is basically a literary construct, which means that it cannot be, at the same time, the reflection of an actual debate. It remains theoretically possible, however, that it transmits real arguments used during the debates. The following analysis will tend, however, to reduce this possibility to a minimum. The Biblical Text Used by the Jew The traditional view is that the Jews, from the second century onwards, tended to reject the Septuagint and to go back to the Hebrew text or to use Greek revisions of the Septuagint, the most famous being Aquila’s revision. The Septuagint may have continued to be used in Jewish communities, but it seems to have been, generally speaking, marginalized.21 Moreover, there is evidence that these revisions were used during the debates with the Christians, or at least that they could be opposed to the Christians. Origen, in his Letter to Africanus (§ 5), explains that he composed the Hexapla in order to enable the polemists to quote the same form of the text as that which is in the Jewish manuscripts, that is to say the Hebrew text and the revisions: This, if it be not arrogant to say it, I have already to a great extent done to the best of my ability, labouring hard to get at the meaning in all the editions and various readings; while I paid particular attention to the interpretation of the Seventy, lest I might be found to accredit any forgery to the 20.  See for instance the application of Ps. 88 to David (TA 45): cf. DE 7.3. The way the Christian refutes this exegesis is similar to Eusebius. The same kind of parallel (Jewish exegesis and Christian refutation) occurs concerning Isa. 7:14 (see below). 21.  Nicholas de Lange has shown several times that the Jews of Antiquity and Byzantium continued to use Greek versions of the Bible, notably Aquila’s version, though there are a few traces of their use of the Septuagint (‘La tradition de «révisions juives» au MoyenÂge. Les fragments hébraïques de la Geniza du Caire’, in Gilles Dorival and Olivier Munnich [eds.], Κατὰ τοὺς Ο΄. Selon les Septante [Paris, 1995], pp. 133-43; ‘The Greek Bible in the Medieval Synagogue’, in Robert Bonfil et al. [eds.], Jews in Byzantium. Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures [Leiden, 2012], pp. 371-84). See N. De Lange, Japheth in the Tents of Shem (Tübingen, 2015), for a sharper defence of the ongoing importance of the Septuagint among the Jews. In particular, see his interpretation of Justinian’s Novella 146.

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Churches which are under heaven, and give an occasion to those who seek such a starting-point for gratifying their desire to slander the common brethren, and to bring some accusation against those who shine forth in our community. And I make it my endeavour not to be ignorant of their various readings, lest in my controversies with the Jews I should quote to them what is not found in their copies, and that I may make some use of what is found there, even although it should not be in our Scriptures. For if we are so prepared for them in our discussions, they will not, as is their manner, scornfully laugh at Gentile believers for their ignorance of the true reading as they have them. So far as to the History of Susanna not being found in the Hebrew.22

Eusebius, in the DE, explains that he will base his demonstration on the Septuagint, but also on the revisions of the Septuagint because these are the texts used by the Jews: And we must recognize that the sacred oracles include in the Hebrew much that is obscure both in expression and in meaning, and are capable of various interpretations in Greek because of their difficulty. The Seventy Hebrews in concert have translated them together, and I shall pay the greatest attention to them, because it is the custom of the Christian Church to use their work. But wherever necessary, I shall call in the help of the editions of the later translators, which the Jews are accustomed to use today, so that my proof may have stronger support from all sources. With this introduction, it now remains for me to treat of the inspired words.23

Such a reference to the Hebrew or to the revisions is attested twice in the dialogue: in 39.1-2, the Jew accuses the Christian to quote texts which are absent from the Bible; in 34.15, the argues that Isa. 7:14 has not ‘virgin’ (parthenos) but ‘young girl’ (neanis). The problem is that, throughout the dialogue, the Jew never reacts to the Biblical text quoted by the Christian. Moreover, he constantly quotes the Septuagint.24 A few remarks will suffice to illustrate this point. 22. Origen, Letter to Africanus § 9 (tr. ANF, vol. 4). In another text, Origen mentions rather the necessity of editing a correct text of the Septuagint (Commentary on Matthew, 15,14). 23. Eusebius, DE 5.Prol.35-36 (tr. W.J. Ferrar). 24.  This issue has already been investigated by P. Andrist (‘The Greek Bible used by the Jews in the dialogues Contra Iudaeos [fourth-tenth centuries CE]’, in Nicholas de Lange, Julia G. Krivoruchko, and Cameron Boyd-Taylor [eds.], Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions [Tübingen, 2009], pp. 235-62), who writes, concerning TA: ‘Interestingly, for the Christian author, the Bible of the Jewish character was primarily a Hebrew one, even though the latter was supposed to know the Greek one too. The Christian character argues that his Jewish opponent was in contact with a Greek Bible influenced by Aquila. However, when the author puts a quotation in the mouth of the Jewish character (whose name is also Aquila, which cannot be unintentional) it is not the version of Aquila but the Septuagint. Such is also the case with the other dialogues.’ (p. 236) And: ‘Most of the time in polemical dialogues Contra Iudaeos the Bible of the Jewish characters matches

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4.15: The Jews states that about the creation of the heaven, the earth, and everything else, Scripture says ‘let there be’ (γενηθήτω). This is the LXX reading (Gen. 1:3 and 6: γενηθήτω; Gen. 1:14: γενηθήτωσαν). The traces of the revisions are as follows: Gen. 1:3: γενηθήτω α´ (912) γενέσθω α´ ἔστω σ´ γενηθήτω θ´ (Philop.) Gen. 1:6: γενηθήτω α´ σ´ θ´ (Philop.) Gen. 1:14: γενέσθωσαν α´ (Field) As is sometimes the case, the testimonies about the revisions are, here, not totally consistent. The only thing which can be said is that the Jew does not use γενέσθω / γενέσθωσαν, which seems to be specific to the revisions. 4.16: The Jew quotes Gen. 1:31 according to the Septuagint (καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησεν, καὶ ἰδοὺ καλὰ λίαν). καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς σὺν πᾶν ὅσα ἐποίησεν · καὶ ἰδοὺ ἀγαθὸν σφόρδρα α´ (Philop.) καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησεν · καὶ ἦν καλὰ σφόδρα σ´ (Philop.) Once again, the Jew does not use the revisions. 44.1: The Jews quote Isa. 51:2 according to the Septuagint: ἐμβλέψατε εἰς Ἀβραὰμ τὸν πατέρα ὑμῶν καὶ εἰς Σάρραν τὴν ὠδίνουσαν ὑμᾶς · ὅτι εἷς ἦν, καὶ εὐλόγησα αὐτὸν καὶ ἐπλήθυνα αὐτὸν καὶ ἠγάπησα αὐτόν. εἷς ἦν: ἕνα α´ θ´ (86 Chr.) In the three previous examples, it is possible to argue that the differences between the Septuagint and the revisions are not significant, and that, for this reason, there is no reason to think that a Jew, here, could not use the Septuagint. The following examples however are of a different kind: 5.10: The Jew quotes Deut. 6:4 (the Shema): ἄκουε Ἰσραήλ, κύριος ὁ θεός σου κύριος εἷς ἐστιν, καὶ οὐ προσκυνήσεις θεῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ. Here, the text of the revisions is not known. However, this quotation raises at least two problems. First, this is a LXX reading. Wevers’ text gives ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν, but the reading ὁ θεός σου is attested in a few ­manuscripts the Christian Bible of the author. The surprise is that, in spite of this fact and of the many technical difficulties, the basket of the researcher is not totally empty: very rarely we have found some material that can reasonably be considered to have a good chance of genuinely reflecting a Jewish biblical text of the time, even possibly a Jewish Greek Bible.’ (p. 261) My conclusions are of the same kind as Andrist’s aporetic and critical view about the possibility of using the dialogues to reconstruct the Jewish arguments with the Christians. I already dealt with these issues in ‘L’utilisation des révisions de la Septante’.

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and Fathers (especially AZ, 1). Second, strikingly, this quotation does not correspond to the Shema or the MT of Deut. 6:1) the second part is not in the Shema but stems from Ps.  80:10-11 and the Shema / MT gives ‘our God’, not ‘your God’. The Shema was known by heart by the Jews of Antiquity and according to the Rabbis it should be recited twice every day.25 The suspicion here does not only arise from the use of the LXX or from the use of a conflated text as such, but from the fact that it is supposed to be the Shema. Even more strikingly, the Jew’s Bible often shows specific Christian features. In the previous example, one could already wonder if the quotation from Ps.  80 was not influenced by Luke 4:8-10 (Γέγραπται, Κύριον τὸν θεόν σου προσκυνήσεις καὶ αὐτῷ μόνῳ λατρεύσεις). But other passages show clearer and undoubted connections with the NT: 24.5: The Jew quotes Deut.  21:23 according to the Septuagint (ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου). More precisely, this is the Septuagint text as quoted in Gal. 3:13 (the correct text gives: κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ). κατάρα θεοῦ κρεμάμενος α´ θ´ (Procop.) quia maledictio dei est suspensus α´ θ´ (Hi.) quia maledictio dei θ´ α´ (Syh) ὅτι κατάρα θεοῦ κρεμάμενος καὶ α´ θ´ (344) ὅτι διὰ βλασφημίαν θεοῦ ἐκρεμάσθη s´ (344) ὅτι θ´ (344) 37.4: The Jew quotes Exod. 24:8 according to the Septuagint (τοῦτο το αἵμα τῆς διαθήκης ἧς διέθετο κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν πρὸς ἡμᾶς). Wevers: ἰδοὺ τὸ αἷμα τῆς διαθήκης ἧς διέθετο κύριος πρὸς ὑμᾶς. Τοῦτο comes from Heb. 9:20. The rendering κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν is to be found only in TA, according to Wevers, but ὁ θεὸς may once again stem from Heb. 9:20. It does not correspond to the MT. A final example will provide another clue about the artificial character of the arguments put in the mouth of the Jew. In 43.1, the Jew quotes Isa. 1:26-27 according to the Septuagint: μετὰ ταῦτα κληθήση πόλις δικαιοσύνης, μητρόπολις πιστὴ Σιών. μετὰ γὰρ κρίματος σωθήσεται ἡ αἰχμαλωσία αὐτῆς καὶ μετὰ ἐλεημοσύνης. 25.  TB Berakhot 1.1.

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σωθήσεται: λυτρωθήσεται α´ σ´ θ´ (710) ἡ αιχμαλωσία – fin.: καὶ οἱ ἐπιστρέφοντες αὐτὴν ἐν διακοσύνῃ (710) [καὶ μετὰ] δικαιοσύνη[ς] οἱ λ´ Eus. What emerges from the fact that the Jew makes no use of the revisions? One could observe that Eusebius, for instance, attributes to the Jews the exegesis according to which the text would allude to those from the Diaspora who would convert to Jerusalem.26 Such a tradition presupposes the use of the Hebrew text or of the revisions. On the other hand, this remark is not sufficient to discredit the possibility that Isa. 1:26-27 could have been used, in the Septuagint version, as an anti-Christian argument since the revisions could encourage the Christian exegesis of TA, which consists in saying that God’s promise to Jerusalem is intended to the Nations who would convert. The most interesting observation to make here, however, is that the Jew and the Christian are obviously quoting the same text: 43.1 The Jew said: How then again through Isaiah did the Lord say to Jerusalem: ‘Afterward you will be called city of righteousness, faithful mother-city Zion. For her captivity will be redeemed with judgment and with mercy.’ [Isa. 1:26-27] 43.2 The Christian said: Read a little before and you will find the truth. For it is written thus: 43.3 How has Zion, faithful city, and filled with justice, become a whore? Righteousness has fallen asleep in her, and now (there are) murderers. 43.4 Your silver is debased; your sellers dilute the wine with water. 43.5 Your rulers are disobedient, partners of thieves, loving gifts, pursuers of reward, not judging orphans and not giving heed to a widow’s cause. 43.6 Therefore the Lord Sabaoth says this: ‘Woe to the powerful of Israel; for my wrath will not cease among (my) enemies, and I shall pass judgment among the nations. 43.7 And I will bring my hand upon you, and I will burn you to purity. 43.8 I will destroy the disobedient, and I will remove all the lawless from the earth; I will humble the arrogant, and I will establish your judges as before, and your counsellors as from the beginning. 43.9 And afterward you will be called city of righteousness, faithful mothercity Zion; for her captivity will be redeemed with judgment and with mercy.’ [Isa. 1:21-27]

The fact that the Christian asks the Jews to read ‘a little before’ (προανάγνωθι ὀλίγον), and that the Christian quotation of Isa.  1:26-27 exactly corresponds to that of the Jew is a clear indication that they are using the same biblical text. It is not problematic only because it suggests 26. Eusebius, Commentary on Isaiah 1.22.

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that the Bible attributed to the Jew is in fact the Bible of the Christian writer of the dialogue, but also because it conveys an absurd situation— the Jew and the Christian reading, not only the same biblical text, but the same biblical manuscript (like the disciple Philip showing to the Ethiopian the meaning of Scripture in Acts 8:27-36, a scene which was sometimes seen in Christian tradition as a prototype of every explanation of text [Theodoret, Eranistes 223] and which is probably at the background of the dialogue here). In the end, it is hard to believe that such a long quotation of Isaiah made by the Christian could have been made impromptly to react to the Jew’s argument. It seems to smack more of the scholarly and bookish context which is obviously that of the writer. Let us summarize the results of the discussion so far: the Bible used by the Jew is the Septuagint; this use of the Septuagint is not consistent with the external evidence that the Jews preferred to use the revisions, even in their debates with the Christians; if we cannot discard the possibility that they could use the Septuagint, it remains the case that this use of the Septuagint, in the dialogue, is inconsistent with the Jew’s criticism of the Septuagint in the two passages already mentioned. Finally, the biblical text of the Jew reveals Christian influence and appears to be the same text as that of the Christian. The assumption that a scribe may have christianized the Jew’s biblical quotation would not be sufficient to undermine this general picture. It is, thus, not necessary to account for the Christian character of some of his quotations. The conclusion of this analysis is that we cannot use the dialogue to sustain the view that the Jews of Antiquity did continue to use the Septuagint in the same proportions as the revisions. Even the two passages in which the Jew criticizes the quotations made by the Christian are problematic. A closer examination shows once again the artificial character of the debate: In 34.15, the Jew says that Isa.  7:14 has not ‘virgin’ but ‘young woman’. The Christian answers that ‘young woman’ is used for ‘virgin’, and sustains his demonstration by quoting Deut. 22:22-26. This pattern (Jewish objection and Christian answer, based on Deut.  22) recurs in at least three authors: Origen, Cels. 1.34; Eus., DE 7.1.36; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 12.21. It is difficult to know if TA has a direct connection with any of these texts, since it gives a quotation of Deut. 22 which is different from the one quoted by Origen and the one quoted by Cyril, and Eusebius simply alludes to this biblical text, probably drawing on Origen. If TA did have a second- or third-century Vorlage, this Vorlage could well be Origen’s (and perhaps) Cyril’s source. But I think there are good reasons to think that the argument based on Deut.  22 is

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Origen’s invention. Until Origen, the Christians’s answer to the ‘Jewish’ objection consists in disparaging Aquila’s translation as an erroneous translation. This is not Origen’s approach. On the contrary, the Alexandrian does not try to contradict the value of this translation here, but seeks to undermine the argument by showing that ‘neanis’ is the equivalent of ‘parthenos’, by quoting another parallel passage. This is consistent with Origen’s practice (concession towards the revisions and appeal to biblical parallels). On the other hand, the way TA quotes Deut.  22 does not automatically contradict the fact that it could be inspired by at least one of the three authors already mentioned, since TA’s author may draw from them the general argument while having a special way of quoting Deut. 22. I would thus tend to think that the argument, in TA, is inspired by the patristic tradition (Origen? Eusebius? Cyril?). The exegetical discussion between the Jew and the Christian, here, is a Christian topos. It conveys rather the ignorance of the author concerning the other Greek Bible versions than any real and direct knowledge of them.27 In 39.1-2, the Jews accuses the Christian of having quoted many passages which are not in the Hebrew, but as he says, ‘in the Greek alone’. This objection may recall what Origen says, in the Letter to Africanus, about the objections of the Jews during the debates.28 But two facts show that the Jewish objection, here, is purely artificial. First, the Jewish objection is both vague and erroneous: ‘you have made many points from the books you have brought forth, but these are not contained in the Hebrew, but in the Greek only.’ The Jew is not very precise about the passages he has in mind. More interestingly, we can easily check that absolutely no text quoted by the Christian before is absent from the Massoretic text! Second, the author does not seem very sure about the Biblical text considered by the Jew as an authority. In this objection, the Jew opposes what he calls the “Hebrew” and the “Greek”, which would mean that he refuses any Greek version. But the Christian seeks to undermine the value, not only of the Hebrew text, but also and primarily of Aquila’s version! In other words, there is a clear inconsistency between the Jew’s objection, as it is expressed, and the “real” objection which gives raise to the Christian’s answer. 27.  R. Ceulemans recently argued that the Christians of Antiquity, between 250 and 600, had no direct knowledge of the other versions independently from the Hexapla (‘Greek Christian Access to ‘the Three’, 250-600 CE’, in Timothy M.  Law and Alison Salvesen [eds.], Greek Scripture and the Rabbis [Leuven–Paris–Walpole MA, 2012], pp. 165-91). 28.  See footnote 22.

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My assumption is that the author of the text knew that the Jews were inclined to criticize the texts quoted by the Christians, probably thanks to the Letter to Africanus. The irrelevant character of his objection, at this stage of the dialogue, tends to show, however, that the author has artificially integrated into the discussion what appears to be a general exposition about the Septuagint and Aquila’s version, which has its justification more in itself than in relation to what precedes.29 It is an indication of the way the dialogue was composed, and probably also, the way it was used and read. But we will come back to this. What is important to stress, here, is that what appears at first sight as a particular discussion raised by a certain attitude of the Jew is, in fact, a general development artificially and awkwardly integrated into the discussion. The nature of the Christian’s answer to the Jew’s objection is also striking. In his Letter to Africanus, Origen acknowledged the existence of quantitative discrepancies between the Septuagint, and the Hebrew and the revisions. He presented this problem as a fact and encouraged the polemists to quote to the Jews the texts which were most fitting to their Bible. Surprisingly in a debate with a Jew, the Christian’s answer, in TA, consists, on the contrary, in disparaging Aquila and turning to the “conspiracy theory”: ‘So whenever you find something, whether in the Hebrew (for even there he removed it) or in the Greek that covers up the testimonies to the Messiah, know that such was the scheme of Aquila’ (40.20). This answer does not only show that the author was far more narrowminded than Origen. In the context of a debate with a Jew, that was probably the worst answer that could be opposed to the Jew’s objection and it is very doubtful that such an answer could have been effective. This is another indication of the fictitious character of the whole discussion (not because the Christian’s argument is ineffective as such, but because this ineffectiveness reveals the fact that his demonstration is disconnected from any concrete contact with the adversary). As we will see, the Christian’s answer makes more sense when situated within another enunciation context. Besides, his attack against Aquila is, once again, a patristic topos.30 29.  We will meet other similar cases. J.  Pastis (Representation of Jews, pp.  156-57) already noticed that a few passages, in the dialogue, are disconnected from their immediate context (about the Jew’s objections in TA 18.1 and 25.1). 30.  Apart from Epiphanius’ Weights and measures, see Hilarius, On the Psalms 2.3; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 5.2; Theodoret, Commentary on Isaiah  7.14. ­Justin already blames the Jews for suppressing some passages from Scripture, but does not clearly accuses Aquila or any translator (Dialogue with Trypho 71.1-2).

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The functioning of the dialogue A stylistic analysis of the text shows the impossibility of aligning the dialogue to the proceedings of any real argument. The Christian leads the discussion. He speaks at much greater length than the Jew, who sometimes disappears for quite a long time. This is particularly obvious in § 10, which constitutes a complete collection of testimonia about Christ, from his birth to his Ascension, which, stylistically, has almost nothing to do with a dialogue, except one objection of the Jew about the fact that Baruch is not Jeremiah—which is a common place31 and which was probably, in the author’s mind, the only way for him to introduce a bit of life in this long exposition.32 In four passages, the Christian alludes to the necessity of not cutting the exposition. Each time, he uses the same phrase, μὴ ἐκκοπὴν δοῦναι τῷ λόγῳ: 6.1 It was necessary that I not cut short the argument (μὴ ἐκκοπὴν δοῦναι τῷ λόγῳ) until I had shown you concerning the Advisor both for your satisfaction and for those who are listening. 10.1 But so that we may not cut this discussion (ἐκκοπὴν δῶμεν τῷ λόγῳ), let us turn to the following. 11.7 Lest we cut short the discourse (ἐκκοπὴν δῶμεν τῷ λόγῳ), as you requested about the naming of Jesus and Christ and the cross, receive these proofs and then I will put more together about this. 50.2 Let us not cut this discourse (ἐκκοπὴν δῶμεν τῷ λόγω) until I tell you all these things.

The phrase ἐκκοπὴν δοῦναι τῷ λόγῳ appears to be an hapax in Greek literature. It may have been influenced by 1 Cor. 9:12 (ἵνα μή τινα ἐγκοπὴν δῶμεν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ), but the only author who uses similar phrases in all greek literature is Theophylact Simocatta (end 6th  c.  – 7th c.).33 This parallel would tend to sustain the view that the dialogue, in its present form, probably dates to the sixth century (or the beginning of the seventh century?). This kind of long exposition is not in itself contradictory with the existence of a debate—both speakers may allow the other one to speak at length. What is more striking is the fact that this feature is specific to the Christian. This observation encourages another way of understanding these passages, as we will see. 31. Cf. AZ 24-25; Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, PG 26, 1437A10-11; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses, 4,35. 32.  We could, the same way, be struck by the long quotation of Gen. 18 in § 28. 33.  ἐγκοπήν τε τῷ λόγῳ διὰ τὸ δάκρυον ποιησάμενος (Histories 8.7.4, éd. C. de Boor, Theophylacti Simocattae historiae [Leipzig, 1887]); ἐγκοπὴν τοῖς ἀφηγήμασιν ἐμβαλὼν (Histories 8.12.4).

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The non-reactiveness of the Jew is particularly surprising in a few instances in which one can imagine that a Jew would have made an objection: in 8.6, the Christian explains the name ‘Immanuel’ as coming from the Syriac ‘imma’, which he glosses ‘with us’, and from the Hebrew ‘nuel’, which would mean ‘God’. The Jew does not raise the slightest objection towards this absurd explanation, though, on the other hand, he elsewhere accuses the Christian for quoting texts which are not ‘in the Hebrew’...; in 19.5, the Christian alludes to the burning bush as a symbol of the virgin. This typological interpretation, obviously unsustainable for a Jew, raises however but a very shy opposition: ‘The Christian: “Is this also a symbol of the virgin birth or no?” The Jew said: “Tell me what you think is certain.”’ Of course, the Jew sometimes makes objections against the Christian. J.  Pastis already showed that these few objections can stem from the antecedent Christian literature, and that they could be part of the construction of Judaism which is at work in the dialogue.34 Clearly, the existence of such objections is not a valid criterion to support the view that the author could have had real contacts with the Jews. More generally, TA’s Jew does not so much appear as objecting as posing questions: – What – Who? 22.1 In what way did we oppose him or disobey him? 33.1 In whom of each of the ones blessed do you understand them to be fulfilled, or in reference to whom else? 41.16 I request that you show me what subtle thing he said while he was judging and also what was the judgement and the condemnation he expressed.

– Why? 16.4 Tell us why Abraham asked Jeblaem to put his hand under his thigh, and make Jeblaem swear this way.

– How? 17.1 How was he born? 31.1 This one who appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, how do you make it so evident that it is Jesus? 35.1 How then do all the scriptures want to call this Jesus the son of David?’ 35.3 How is he then the son of God? 38.1 How did he speak these things in secret?

34. Pastis, Representation of Jews, pp. 222-57.

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In other words, the Jew acts as a pupil. This does not seem very consistent with the context of a real religious debate. We may suspect, on the contrary, that these recurring questions are only artificial ways of justifying new topics of discussion. More precisely, the form of these questions is characteristic of the style of the κεφάλαια, the chapter headings, but also the chapters themselves, which are at the basis of most of the literary works in Christian Antiquity, and which may be introduced by τί, διὰ τί, πῶς.35 This is particularly obvious in the testimonia collections, but also in other works such as the questions and answers (erôtapokriseis). Some of the questions expressed by the Jew even correspond precisely to very well known and traditional κεφάλαια.36 It is thus reasonable to think that these questions reflect pre-existent expositions or κεφάλαια, and that they serve to connect these κεφάλαια in the artificial form of a dialogue. It happens that the word κεφάλαιον is used five times in the dialogue, always in the mouth of the Jew: 5.7 ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπεν· εἰς τὸ μὲν πρῶτον κεφάλαιον, παρέστησας δύο προσώπων δύναμιν, ἀλλ’ ὅμως τοῦ παντοκράτορος καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος· 21.2 ἀλλὰ νῦν, ἐξ ὧν κεφαλαίων ἐπηγγείλω μοι ἀποδείξεις διδόναι αὐτὰς δώσας, τὰ νῦν περὶ τῆς Ἱερουσαλὴμ παρεάσωμεν. 39.2 πολλὰ γὰρ κεφάλαια ἐκ διαφόρων βιβλίων ὠνόμασας ἃ οὐ περιέχει ἐν τῷ Ἑβραικῷ, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ μόνον. 40.1 ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπεν· τίς οὖν ὁ νοθεύσας τὰς θείας γραφὰς ἐν αἷς οὐχ εὑρίσκομεν τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν κεφαλαίων ὧν εἴρηκας; 53.1 ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπε· μνημονεύων καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἔχειν, μέλλεις γὰρ ὑπάρξεις περὶ τῶν δύο κεφαλαίων τούτων σύστασιν διδόναι.

In these texts, the word κεφάλαιον refers explicitly to biblical passages. But it may indirectly allude to the themes of these passages, and to the “dossiers” in which they were collected. These passages give an indication of the author’s method and tend to confirm my assumption that the dialogue is based on pre-existent dossiers. 35.  On Pagan and Christian kephalaia, see Simone Deléani, ‘La syntaxe des titres dans les recueils scripturaires de saint Cyprien’, Recherches augustiniennes 29 (1996), pp. 91-112; Jean Irigoin, ‘Titres, sous-titres et sommaires dans les œuvres des historiens grecs du Ier siècle avant J.-C. au Ve siècle après J.-C.’, in Jean-Claude Fredouille et al. (eds.), Titres et articulations du texte dans les œuvres antiques. Actes du Colloque International de Chantilly, 13-15 décembre 1994 (Paris, 1997), pp. 127-34; Pierre Petitmengin, ‘Capitula païens et chrétiens’, ibid., pp. 491-507; Denis M. Searby, ‘The Intertitles in Stobaeus: Condensing a Culture’, in Gretchen Reydams-Schils (ed.), Deciding Culture: Stobaeus’ Collection of Excerpts of Ancient Greek Authors (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 23-70. 36. The kephalaion πῶς ἐγεννήθη (TA 17.1) corresponds to the “dossier” on the prophecies of the virginal birth. See Eusebius, DE 7.Pin.1 (τίς ὁ τρόπος τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἐπιδημίας); Ps.-Epiphanius, Testimonies 8 (ὅτι ἐκ παρθένου).

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Other passages reveal a clear allusion to thematical κεφάλαια. After the long exposition of the Gospel from the prophecies (§ 10), the Jew raises the following objection: ‘All the things written you have interpreted, you have spoken about the one who is yet to come. But concerning this Jesus, neither his name is brought intro scripture at any time, nor is the cross mentioned, nor Jesus, nor Christ’ (11.1-2). This passage is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it clearly alludes to three distinct thematical units, which happens to be well known κεφάλαια: the cross, the name ‘Jesus’, the name ‘Christ’. Second, it is—like TA 39, already analysed—irrelevant at this stage of the discussion. The Jew accuses the Christian of having quoted texts which apply to a Messiah who is yet to come. In other words, he acknowledges the messianic character of all the texts quoted in § 10. This is very surprising, because in other passages of the dialogue, the Jew explicitly refuses the messianic interpretation of some of these texts.37 This new inconsistency reveals once again the artificial character of the debate. The Jew’s objection obviously serves, like in 39, to introduce artificial connections between independent thematical units. The following passage gives another illustration of this literary technique. When the Christian quotes Zech. 3 as a prophecy about the name ‘Jesus’ (11.5), the Jews objects that this Jesus is the son of Iosedek. This objection is well attested in other texts:38 it could well correspond to a real objection possibly used by the Jews, but it can also stem from the author’s literary sources. But what follows is stunning. The Christian answers: It cannot be the son of Iosedek, because he did not wear filthy garments, as the prophecy indicates, and until Jesus, there was no priest in Israel wearing filthy garments. And the Jew objects: ‘Did the Lord take away the priesthood from Israel?’ This objection is quite irrelevant to the discussion about Zech. 3. The question of knowing if God has taken away the priesthood from Israel cannot help to understand why the ‘Jesus’ of the prophecy should be Jesus of Nazareth. We may thus reasonably assume that the objection of the Jew is, once again, an artificial objection whose function is to introduce and to justify a new discussion on two important themes in the polemic against Judaism: the rejection of the Jews and the calling of the nations. The author decided to connect this discussion with the one on Zech. 3 because of 37.  For instance: Ps.  2, quoted in 10.2 and 10.22, and rejected by the Jew in 9.1; Isa. 8:4, quoted in 10.3, Isa. 7:14 (which is part of the same prophecy) being rejected in 34.15. 38. Tertullian, Against the Jews 14.8; Lactantius, Divines Institutes 4.7.2.

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the loose thematical connection between the two (the only common point being the priesthood). Sometimes, the Jew asks the Christian to fulfil his promise: 19.1 You also promised to give indications from the Law. Give them to us. 50.1 You have not yet mentioned Jerusalem as said by David and Isaias, as you have announced. 56.1 You promised that you would prove from the divine Scriptures that he is the one who will judge the living and the dead. Now fulfil your promise.

Such a demand could be interpreted at first sight as reflecting a real polemical context. But, once again, it may also appear as a way of introducing life into what is primarily an exposition of the faith, based on preexistent dossiers. The same way, the Jew very often asks the Christian to sustain his opinion on more proofs: 19.1 You also promised to give indications from the law. Give them to us. 20.1 Can you give us answer from somewhere else about this? 53.1 I remind you that you still need to provide proofs about the nature of each of these two points. 54.1 Are you giving proofs of these things?

The Christian often echoes or even anticipates this recurring demand: 23.1 Since you have rejected the indication of the cross from Genesis, I will give you a second from the book of Exodus, which you will not be able to oppose. 24.1 Do you wish to have any other testimonies about this? 30.2 If you have hidden the truth, you will be convicted again by further proofs spoken from the Divine Scriptures.

At the beginning of the dialogue, this method is justified by what is presented as a general principle expressed by the Jew: ‘What is the Law? No single testimony is acceptable’ (5.8). Once again, we should not be misled by the apparent polemical character of such a demand. The Jew is very probably alluding to three biblical passages in which it is stated that no one, in a criminal case, must be condemned to die on the testimony of a single witness: Num. 35:30: Anyone who kills a person, you shall put to death the murderer on the testimony of witnesses. And no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. Deut. 17:6: On the testimony of two or three witnesses a person shall be put to death, but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. Deut.  19:15: One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

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The last passage could encourage a broad interpretation of the biblical precept (‘every matter’). But in the context of these passages, it is obvious that the texts refer only to trials. In the Talmud, these texts are always interpreted literally, as referring to a rule which must be followed whenever a man is being judged.39 At the time of TA, on the contrary, the Christians had developed a very different interpretation of these texts. Already alluded to in the NT and the first Fathers,40 the biblical rule started to be considered, from Origen onwards, as a fundamental principle of Christian exposition. In Origen’s mind, the rule should apply to biblical interpretation itself: ‘The rule “A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” applies more aptly to the interpretations than to men.’41 The two witnesses would be the Old and the New Testament, he explains, the three witnesses would be a gospel, a prophet and an apostle. In other words, the biblical rule would refer to the principle ‘to read the Bible from the Bible’. This exegesis opened the way to a metaphorical interpretation of the Biblical rule which was very influential in Late Antiquity. Eusebius, Origen’s spiritual disciple, appears to be the first author to interpret the biblical rule as a general principle for every kind of demonstration. In the DE, for instance, after quoting Gen. 49 and Num. 24 as prophecies of Christ, he writes: ‘I have set these passages side by side, so that the proof concerning our Saviour may rest on a firmer foundation, established on the agreement of the mouth of two witnesses.’ This justification is all the more interesting as it is expressed within the context of an anti-Jewish polemic, that is to say, the same context as TA. After Eusebius, the theological controversies encouraged, within the Church, a cumulative way of establishing the truth already obvious in Eusebius’ work. In this typically Christian context, the biblical rule became a common place to justify the accumulation of proofs. In what is often considered as the first preserved collection of patristic authorities (On the Holy Spirit, chapter 29), Basil of Caesarea states for instance: ‘If, as in a Court of Law, we were at a loss for documentary evidence, but were able to bring before you a large number of witnesses, would you not 39.  On Num. 35:30: TB San. 34a; On Deut. 17:6, see TB Ber. 18b; Yeb. 31b; San 37b; 41a; Sheb. 34a; Mak. 5b; 6b-7a; Ket. 17; On Deut. 19:15, see TB Pes. 113b; Yom. 83a; RH 22a; Yeb. 101b; 116b-117a; Ket. 87b; Sot. 2a-b; 3b; 31a-b; Git. 2a sqq.; 71a; 89a; 90a; Kid. 65b; BK 69b-70a; 74b; 105b; 111a; BB 31b; 56b; 160b; 165b; San. 8b sqq.; 30a; 60a; 86a; Sheb. 30a; 32a; 40a; Mak. 6a. 40.  See Matt. 18:16; 2 Cor. 13:1; Tert., Against Marcion 4.22.7; 43.2. 41. Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah 1.7 (personal translation). See also his Commentary on Matthew 10.5.

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give your vote for our acquittal? I think so; for at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be established.’ In the fifth century, Theodoret, in what is another dialogue (Eranistes), opposing a synousiast and an “Orthodox”, puts in the mouth of the s­y nousiast the very principle expressed by the Jew in TA: ‘One witness is not enough to solve the dispute.’ (§ 221). These parallels offer sufficient evidence that the principle used by the Jew, in TA, contains nothing Jewish, but stems from a typically Christian exegesis of the biblical rule as well as from the specifically Christian cumulative method which was familiar to the theologians at the time when TA was composed. This observation also shows that, once again, the Jew’s recurring demand of providing more proofs is just a literary device which serves to introduce a bit of life in what appears to be basically an exposition of the Christian faith. In the passage in which the Jew states that no single testimony is acceptable, the author reveals his Christian culture. It has sometimes been argued that the Jews, in the dialogues, were straw Jews, or Biblical Jews. Timothy’s Jew, here, is clearly a patristic Jew. We could connect this last remark to the fact that twice, the Jew raises problems which seem to be more relevant in the context of internal Christian controversies than in the context of a polemic between Judaism and Christianity: in 25.1, he raises a question about the nature of the Trinity, and in 18.1, he asks if Mary remained a virgin after giving birth…42 A final striking feature of the Jew’s attitude consists in the fact that he regularly expresses his satisfaction to the Christian’s answers: 5.3 If you will give me reasons or suitable demonstrations, I am persuaded by you. 29.1 Concerning the two persons, as I said previously, I confess to be fully satisfied. 57.5 Truly you have persuaded me in every way that he is God of Gods and Lord of Lords and King of Kings and that our fathers sinned greatly when they laid hands on him.

Once again, the Jew is not an objector, but an adjuvant of Christian exposition. He is here to serve Christian demonstration.43

42.  See Pastis, Representation of Jews, p. 157. 43.  Anna Abulafia has pointed out a same use of the Jewish character in the twelfth century disputations (‘The Service of Jews in Jewish-Christian Disputations’, in Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich, and Bernard Pouderon [eds.], Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos. Permanences et mutations d’une tradition polémique [Paris, 2013], pp. 339-49).

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The Pedagogical Setting of the Dialogue These remarks tend to show that the dialogue does not reflect a real polemical discussion. It is primarily an exposition of faith. Now, I think we could and probably should go further. Apart from the obvious fact that the dialogue is an exposition, it sometimes exhibits a clear pedagogical intention. We already noticed that the Jew is often presented as a pupil asking for clarification, which automatically gives the Christian the role of a master. In one passage, the Christian is even explicitly referred to as a teacher: 56.1 The Jew said: You promised me you would prove from the divine scriptures that he is the one who is going to judge the living and the dead; and now fulfil your promise. 56.2 The Christian said: What use is it for us to work hard? For it is written for the ear of those who hear, not of those without understanding. 56.3 The Jew said: In the letter of Paul, whose book you also consider counted in the new covenant, he himself writing says, ‘Let the teacher not be reluctant in teaching.’ [Phil. 3:1]

The pedagogical setting of the dialogue is also conveyed by the constant metadiscursive or methodological comments made by the Christian: 4.22 I will now speak to you about the creation ... 5.19 If you listen patiently, you will learn that the Law and the Prophets proclaimed all these things beforehand. And I will show you them from the divine Scriptures. 6.3 Now I will bring forth demonstrations about Jesus Christ the son of God and also about some things you did not remember to mention, so that I will bring forward and provide true demonstrations in the midst. 7.3 Whatever you wish to ask, you will hear in its order (κατα τάξιν).

The allusion to the τάξις, the order, may be seen as another indication of a teaching context and recurs several times (9.4; 17.4; 45.5). The Jew can also give similar comments by asking the Christian what he is about to do: 26.3 The Jew said: Will you say this to me by showing some example, or how else will you demonstrate it?

I would tend to interpret this kind of metadiscursive comments as another clue of the pedagogical intention of the text. The author does not simply argue. He is often eager to explain what he is going to do. This is typically a teacher’s reflex. Now, is it possible to go beyond these remarks, and to connect the text to a concrete teaching context?

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At the beginning of the dialogue, the Christian announces his general intention: ‘I want you to be taught (κατηχηθέντα) from the first book, and then to proceed to the rest.’ (4.4) The use of the verb κατηχεῖν—the only one in TA and any other anti-Jewish dialogue of Antiquity—is here intriguing. A.  Turck studied the uses of κατηχεῖν and κατήχησις in patristic literature up to Jerome and noticed that the technical sense, referring to the institutional catechesis, appears at the end of the second century. The broader meaning (“to teach”) is already used in the NT and continues to exist, along with the technical sense, until the time of Jerome. Turck noticed that it is often connected with faith and baptism, even in the broader sense.44 The difficulty, here, is not to identify the meaning of the word, but to know if it can be an indirect indication of a catechetical background. In the fictitious context of the dialogue, it has the broad meaning “to teach”. The scenario of TA is similar to the fictitious scenario alluded to in a few apocryphal texts quoted by Turck: a character teaches (κατηχεῖ) another one, who receives faith and baptism. As Turck observed, this scenario does not imply an institutional catechesis, but simply an informal instruction. However, we should ask whether this scenario, in TA, also suggests a real catechetical setting for the whole dialogue.45 The strong connection of κατηχεῖν with the fact that the Jew converts and receives baptism at the end makes this assumption legitimate. The conversion and baptism of the Jew, as a literary topos of the anti-Jewish dialogues, has usually been considered as a pure literary device aiming at confirming the truth of Christianity. What is never seen, however, is that it could encourage us, conversely, to interpret the whole discussion as a pre-baptismal instruction. In other words, we could read the dialogue not as a debate ending on a baptism, but leading to it. Christian catechesis in Antiquity consisted in two parts: a pre-baptismal instruction, which lasted usually two or three years,46 reserved to the listeners (οἱ ἀκούοντες), also called catechumens (οἱ κατηχούμενοι), and a baptismal catechesis, reserved to the Illuminated (οἱ φωτιζόμενοι), which was given during the forty days before Baptism, which occurred 44. A.  Turck, ‘Catéchein et catéchésis chez les premiers pères’, RSPT  47 (1963), pp. 361-72. 45.  V. Grossi refers to a similar passage in Justin’s Dialogue 23.3. He glosses the passage as referring to the catechumens coming from Judaism (La catechesi battesimale agli inizi del V secolo. Le fonti agostiniane [Roma, 1993], pp. 16-17). 46.  Two or three according to the council of Elvira (309); three years according to the Constitutiones apostolicae (8.32).

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during the night of the Passover.47 Can we connect TA to any aspect of this catechesis? The method described in the passage just mentioned (4.4) would provide a first element in favour of this hypothesis. Exposing the faith by taking passages in the Bible, from Genesis to the last book, was a specific method used during the Christian catechesis. Egeria, around 400, describes thus the Jerusalem baptismal catechesis: Cathecuminus autem ibi non intrat tunc qua episcopus docet illos legem, id est sic: inchoans a genese per illos dies quadraginta percurret omnes scripturas, primum exponens carnaliter et sic illud soluens spiritualiter. Nec non etiam et de resurrectione, similiter et de fide omnia docentur per illos dies; hoc autem cathecisis appellatur.48

Egeria is here describing the last moment of the catechesis. She clearly describes a teaching method based on a linear (and of course selective) reading of the Bible, from Genesis. This is exactly the method referred to in TA. This method is sometimes also reflected in Cyril’s Catecheses, which were delivered in 348 as baptismal instruction (10.6-9; 11.23). Before Cyril, it is also the method followed by Eusebius in his Prophetical Extracts, which constituted books 6 to 9 of his General elementary introduction.49 Augustine clearly describes the same method in his De catechizandis rudibus, written in 400: ab eo quod scriptum est, In principio fecit Deus coelum et terram, usque ad praesentia tempora ecclesiae (3.5). This is then quite certain that this method was also used during the prebatismal phase of the catechesis. In the passage mentioned, Egeria also describes another aspect of the catechesis: the baptismal instruction in Jerusalem was based on three main topics: the “law”, the Resurrection, and the “faith”. It is not easy to say precisely what lies behind the reference to the law and to the faith, but Egeria’s description clearly indicates a succession of thematical instructions. Likewise, Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Fourth Catechesis, announces an exposition which will be made κεφαλαιωδῶς, viz. kephalaia by kephalaia (4.3). In another passage (4.8), he announces κεφαλαιώδεις εἰσαγωγὰς, viz. 47.  Concerning catechesis, see C. Mayer, Geschichte des Katechumenats und der Kate­ chese in der ersten sechs Jahrhunderten (Kempten, 1868); F.X. Funk, ‘Die Katechumentasklassen des christlichen Altertums’, ThQ 65 (1888), pp. 41-77; G. Bareille, ‘Catéchèse’, DTC II (1923), pp. 1877-95; id., ‘Catéchuménat’, DTC, II, 1923, pp. 1968-87; P. de Puniet, ‘Catéchuménat’, DACL II (1910), pp.  2579-621; A.  Paulin, Saint Cyrille de Jérusalem catéchète (Paris, 1959); A. Turck, Essai sur la catéchèse primitive (Thèse Institut catholique, Paris, 1961). 48.  Itinerarium Egeriae 46 (ed. E. Franceschini and R. Weber [CCSL 175; Turnhout, 1958]). 49. Eusebius, Eclogae propheticae, ed. T. Gaisford (Oxford, 1842).

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“summary” introductions, but the word κεφαλαιώδεις refers to the same method, based on kephalaia: ‘And on these points, should God permit, we will speak more at large in due season; for we do not forget our present purpose to give summary introductions to the Faith (κεφαλαιώδεις εἰσαγωγὰς πίστεως).’ More generally, each of Cyril’s catecheses has a thematical coherence. His allusion to several κεφάλαια echoes the method displayed in TA. The Constitutiones apostolicae also enumerates several themes, some of which being dealt with in TA: the unbegotten God, the Son, the Spirit, the creation.50 Obviously, the instruction given during the catechesis, either in the two or three year preliminary teaching or before the Passover, was based on a twofold exposition: by kephalaia, and, under each kephalaion, from Scripture. This conjunction of thematical logic and biblical logic can be observed also in the testimonia collections of Antiquity, which probably also illustrate, directly or indirectly, the method displayed during the catechesis.51 The numerous metadiscursive remarks in TA have many parallels in Cyril’s Catecheses:52 Cat. 2.11: But if concerning us men you will have other examples also set before you, come on to the blessed David, and take him for an example of repentance. Cat. 7.9: And that you may learn more exactly that in the Divine Scriptures it is not by any means the natural father only that is called father, hear what Paul says… Cat. 16.11: Let then thus much suffice concerning those outcasts; and now let us return to the divine Scriptures, and let us drink waters out of our own cisterns [that is, the holy Fathers ], and out of our own springing wells.

The use of examples, which is displayed in TA (see 23,10; 26,3-5), is constant in Cyril’s exposition. A few passages will suffice to illustrate this: Cat. 11.22: I wish to give also a certain illustration of what I am saying, but I know that it is feeble; for of things visible what can be an exact illustration of the Divine Power? But nevertheless as feeble be it spoken by the feeble to the feeble. Cat. 17.14: And wherefore do you wonder? Take an example from matter; poor indeed and common, yet useful for the simpler sort. If the fire passing 50.  Constitutiones apostolicae 7.39.1-3. 51.  On the testimony collections, see M.C. Albl, ‘And Scripture cannot be broken’. The Form and Function of the Early Christian Testimonia Collections (Leiden, 1999). 52.  The translations of the Catechetical orations are taken from Ph. Shaff and R. Wallace, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second series (New York, 2007).

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in through the mass of the iron makes the whole of it fire, so that what was cold becomes burning and what was black is made bright—if fire which is a body thus penetrates and works without hindrance in iron which is also a body, why wonder that the Holy Ghost enters into the very inmost recesses of the soul? Cat. 18.3: Imagine a mixture of seeds of different plants (for as you are weak concerning the faith, the examples which I allege are weak also), and that these different seeds are contained in your single hand; is it then to you, who art a man, a difficult or an easy matter to separate what is in your hand, and to collect each seed according to its nature, and restore it to its own kind? Can you then separate the things in your hand, and cannot God separate the things contained in His hand, and restore them to their proper place?

The interesting thing about these passages is that the use of examples is explicitly presented by Cyril as an inadequate way of exposing the faith, but apt to the beginners. This is a precious indication of the audience presupposed by TA. In TA, the Christian uses the example of the pearl to account for the possibility of a virginal birth (26.5). Even if this very example is not used by Cyril, it is striking that his Catecheses contains a similar discussion about the examples which could help us to admit the possibility of the virginal birth.53 The cumulative method which was also typical of the exposition in TA is a recurring feature in Cyril’s lectures: Cat. 13.8: σὺ δέ μοι δεξάμενος τὰς μαρτυρίας ἐνσφράγισαι τῇ καρδίᾳ ταύτας. Πολλῶν δὲ οὐσῶν καὶ τοῦ χρόνου λοιπὸν τῆς ὥρας εἰς ὀλίγον περιγραφομένου ὀλίγας, ὡς ἐγχωρεῖ, τὰς κυριωτέρας ἄκουσον νῦν. Cat. 2.9: καὶ εἰ θέλεις δέξασθαι τοῦ σωθῆναι ταύτην μαρτυρίαν ἔγγραφον, ἔχεις ἀνάγραπτον, ἐν ψαλμοῖς· Cat. 10.7: Καὶ ἵνα γνῷς, ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τῷ Μωϋσεῖ ὀφθεὶς, δέξαι μαρτυρίαν τοῦ Παύλου λέγοντος· Ἔπινον γὰρ ἐκ πνευματικῆς ἀκολουθούσης πέτρας Cat. 11.15: Δέξαι καὶ δευτέραν μαρτυρίαν τῆς Χριστοῦ θεότητος, τὴν ἀρτίως ἀνεγωσμένην. Ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος. Cat. 11.16: Θέλεις δέξασθαι καὶ τρίτην μαρτυρίαν τῆς Χριστοῦ θεότητος; Ἄκοε Ἡσαΐου λέγοντος· Ἐκοπίασεν Αἴγυπτος καὶ ἐμπορία Αἰθιόπων. Cat. 12.5: ἀλλ’ ἐὰν μὴ προφητῶν περὶ ἑκάστου πράγματος δέξῃ μαρτυρίαν, μὴ πίστευε τοῖς λεγομένοις. Cat. 17.19: Εἰ δὲ βούλεσθε δέξασθαι καὶ μαρτυρίαν, ἀκούσατε, φησίν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ εἰρημένον διὰ τοῦ προφήτου Ἰωήλ· καὶ ἔσται μετὰ ταῦτα, λέγει ὁ θεός, ἐκχεῶ ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός μου.

As is obvious, the style of these passages clearly recalls that of TA (constant use of the phrase δέξασθαι μαρτυρίαν). The last passage even 53.  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 12.28 (Moses’s rod changed in a serpent); 12.29 (Eve born without a mother); 12.30 (the clay which forms man).

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directly echoes TA 24.1: Πάλιν οὖν εἶπεν ὁ Χριστιανός· βούλεσαι καὶ ἄλλας μαρτυρίας δέξασθαι περὶ τούτου; These parallels tend to confirm that the constant appeal, in TA, to several proofs, though polemical in itself, may also indicate a catechetical background. Sometimes in TA, the Christian decides to leave aside the examination of a question: 6.11 It is possible to find more witnesses of these things, but since the time is short, I will come back to which you asked me and I will answer and give explanations to you. 34.2 It is not yet time for you to hear freely. You will hear when God wills.

This also echoes a constant feature of Christian catechesis, as illustrated in Cyril’s Catecheses: Cat. 9.16: These points my discourse has now treated at large, having left out many, yea, ten thousand other things, and especially things incorporeal and invisible... Cat. 14.30: And though there are many other texts concerning the session of the Only-begotten on the right hand of God, yet these may suffice us at present. Cat. 15.33: And though I have many more testimonies out of the divine Scriptures, concerning the kingdom of Christ which has no end for ever, I will be content at present with those above mentioned, because the day is far spent. Cat. 16.32: And indeed it were easy to collect very many texts out of the Old Testament, and to discourse more largely concerning the Holy Ghost. But the time is short; and we must be careful of the proper length of the lecture. Wherefore, being for the present content awhile with passages from the Old Testament, we will, if it be God’s pleasure, proceed in the next Lecture to the remaining texts out of the New Testament.

All these remarks, in Cyril, are expressed at the end of his homilies. The reason for leaving a few texts or questions aside are twofold according to Cyril: either these questions are too profound, or time is lacking: these are also the two reasons why, in TA, quotations or explanations may be left aside. Augustine also alludes to these two reasons (quod nec tempus capit nec ulla necessitas postulat).54 Two final observations will support the idea that TA may have a catechetical background. The first one concerns the way the Christian intends to provide a solid knowledge to the Jew (24.3: τοῦ γνῶναί σε ἀσφαλῶς περὶ πάντων). This “programme” is an allusion to Luke 1:4 54. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus 3.5 (ed.  J.B.  Bauer [CCSL 66; Turnhout, 1969]).

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(ἵνα ἐπιγνῷς περὶ ὧν κατηχήθης λόγων τὴν ἀσφάλειαν). TA contains two others allusions to ἀσφάλεια: 19.5: ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπεν· ὅσα ἔχεις ἀσφαλῆ, ἀνάγγειλον ἡμῖν; 55.3: ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπεν· ἀσφαλὲς τοῦτο ἐστίν. Now, in at least three texts of Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium, Luke 1:4 is alluded to as if it were referring to an institutional catechesis: 1) Eusebius, Eclogae Propheticae p.  3. 6 ed.  Gaisford: ὡς ἂν ἀκριβοῦν ἐξ αὐτῆς δύναιντο τὴν περὶ ὧν κατηχήθησαν λόγων ἀσφάλειαν. 2) Athanasius, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae 4.9 eds. Hansen – Metzler – Savvidis: ὁ μὲν οὖν πιστὸς καὶ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου μαθητὴς ἔχων χάριν τοῦ “διακρίνειν τὰ πνευματικὰ” καὶ “ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν οἰκοδομήσας ἑαυτοῦ τὴν τῆς πίστεως οἰκίαν” ἕστηκεν ἑδραῖος καὶ ἀσφαλὴς ἀπὸ τῆς τούτων ἀπάτης διαμένων· ὁ δὲ ἁπλοῦς, ὡς προεῖπον, καὶ μὴ κατηχηθεὶς ἀσφαλῶς, ὁ τοιοῦτος τὰ λεγόμενα μόνον σκοπῶν καὶ μὴ τὴν διάνοιαν θεωρῶν εὐθὺς ὑποσύρεται ταῖς ἐκείνων μεθοδείαις. 3) Theodore Studite, Cat. 29 p. 208, l. 16-17 ed. Papadopoulos-Kerameus: Ταῦτα δὲ προκατηχῶ ὑμῖν, ἵνα ἀσφαλίσησθε.

In other words, Luke 1:4 comes to the mind of these three writers when they are referring to an institutional catechesis. It is thus legitimate to wonder if this allusion to this text might not, also in TA, reveal a catechetical background. A last clue of the possibly catechetical setting of the dialogue is the recurring allusion to the listeners (οἱ ἀκούοντες): 6.1 It was necessary that I not cut short the argument until I had shown you concerning the Advisor both for your satisfaction and for those who are listening. 56.4 But so that we may fulfil this request, we will speak by the command of God—especially because of the listeners—about the one you are asking now, o man of God. 57.8 May you, along with those who are listening, hear from the sacred king and prophet and patriarch David as he says...

Of course, in the fictitious context of TA, these ἀκούοντες refer to the audience which is attending the debate. Once again, however, we may wonder if the term does not also refer, suggestingly, to those who are listening to the catechesis (the “listeners”, in the technical sense of the word). What is surprising is that the listeners, in TA, are not only an audience attending the debate. The Christian, in the three texts quoted, designates them as the receivers of his exposition, along with the Jew. In the second passage, the Christian even accepts to speak, especially because of the listeners. It suggests the situation in which the Christian is actually speaking to the listeners, his discussion with the Jew being only the pretext of his exposition. If TA was used as a handbook during Christian catechesis, that was precisely the case. If I am correct, then, these passages might reveal a kind of

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“­double enunciation” in the dialogue. In the fictitious enunciation context, the Christian is speaking to the Jew and an audience composed of listeners. In the “real” enunciation context in which this text was read, either by the master, or by the new converts, the Christian character would actually be addressing the candidates for baptism. Of course, none of these remarks is definitely conclusive and this hypothesis must remain a proposal. They show that the discussion is oriented around a catechetical scenario; that this scenario very probably reflects the form and the content of a Christian catechesis, hidden under the literary and often disorganised and digressive form of a lively dialogue. But they cannot demonstrate that the text was actually used as a catechetical handbook, though this assumption seems reasonable. A confirmation of this hypothesis might come from a similar analysis of other anti-Jewish dialogues. I. Aulisa and C. Schiano, for instance, showed, thanks to an analysis of the textual tradition of the so-called ‘Dialogue of Philo and Papiscus’, that the dialogue was the product of the agglomeration of several preexistent dossiers which were added to the original text from the seventh to the tenth century.55 They reconstruct nine different sections, which are to be found in the manuscripts, but in a different order. They speak of the ‘carattere manualistico’ of the dialogues which circulated at the time of Philo and Papiscus.56 In a recent article, P. Andrist has shown that the ‘Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo’, originally, was probably the title of one or several pieces of this construction, but cannot be used to designate the whole, which he prefers to call Anastasiana antiiudaica.57 In the same article, he also indicated a new witness of TA (Lavra K 113) which seems to show significant variants from the text edited by Robertson. He concluded that TA might have had the same kind of textual history as Philo and Papiscus. He also noticed that, in four manuscripts, TA appears along with Papiscus and Philo, and sometimes, that the former is copied along with Quaestiones on Scripture. This could be an indication a) that TA and Philo and Papiscus, once again, were used in a similar way, and that b) antiJewish dialogues and Questions on Scripture were closely-related literary genres, used and probably written with the same purpose. Concerning the accumulation of pre-existent dossiers, which I choose to call ‘kephalaia’, two 55.  I. Aulisa and C. Schiano, Dialogo di Papisco e Filone Giudei con un monaco (Bari, 2005), p. 300. 56.  Aulisa and Schiano, Dialogo di Papisco e Filone, p. 339. 57.  P. Andrist, ‘Trois témoins athonites mal connus des Anastasiana antiiudaica (et du Dialogus Timothei et Aquilae): Lavra K 113; Vatopedi 555; Karakallou 60. Essai sur la tradition des Anastasiana antiiudaica, notamment du Dialogus Papisci et Philonis cum monacho’, Byzantion 76 (2006) pp. 402-22.

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further remarks may be made: in the Sin. Gr. 399 also noticed by P. Andrist,58 TA, along with Papiscus and Philo, is copied with Maximus the Confessor’s Capita de caritate (κεφάλαια περὶ ἀγάπης), and another, apparently inedited, series of theological kephalaia (ἕτερα κεφάλαια κατὰ ἀλφάβητον). This would tend to support the thesis that, in the view of the copyist, all these texts belong to the same literary genre of the kephalaia. And the composition by agglomeration of kephalaia is probably not specific to Late Antiquity or Byzantium. Olivier Munnich has recently made the assumption that already Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, as well as the Apology, were based on the connection of pre-existent dossiers,59 which exactly corresponds to my hypothesis concerning TA. He speaks about the Apology as a ‘collection’ which he describes as a ‘catéchèse raisonnée’.60 If this hypothesis is correct, there is probably no way of going further. The way this text could be used as a catechetical handbook remains obscure. Was it read by the catechist to his audience? Did he make comments after each reading? Did he engage in a discussion with his pupils after the reading? Was the text divided and read along different sessions? Did it serve as a handbook owned by each pupil, which could also be used and meditated at home, like the nowadays handbooks? An objection to this proposal could be: why using an anti-Jewish dialogue rather than simply exposing the faith? The answer is probably not difficult to give and may even provide further elements supporting the assumption which has been made. First, the dialogue was often defined in Antiquity as a text composed of questions and answers. As we have seen, TA largely corresponds to this definition, since the Jews has more of an interrogative role than that of an adversary. Now, we know that questions and answers were at the basis of ancient teaching.61 In Christian tradition, for instance, we know, 58.  P. Andrist, ‘Un témoin oublié du Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila et des Anastasiana antiiudaica (Sinaiticus gr. 399)’, Byzantion 75 (2005), pp. 9-24.  59.  O.  Munnich, ‘La place de l’hellénisme dans l’autodéfinition du christianisme. L’Apologie de Justin’, in A. Perrot (ed.), Les chrétiens et l’hellénisme. Identités religieuses et culture grecque dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris, 2012), pp. 61-122. 60.  Munnich, ‘La place de l’hellénisme’, p. 122. 61.  See for instance Porphyry’s testimony about Plotinus’ school in Rome: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 13: ‘He was always as ready to entertain objections as he was powerful in meeting them. At one time I myself kept interrogating him during three days as to how the soul is associated with the body, and he continued explaining; a man called Thaumasius entered in the midst of our discussions; the visitor was more interested in the general drift of the system than in particular points, and said he wished to hear Plotinus expounding some theory as he would in a set treatise, but that he could not endure Porphyry’s questions and answers: Plotinus asked, “But if we cannot first solve the difficulties Porphyry raises what could go into the treatise?”’ (tr. S. MacKenna).

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thanks to Gregory’s Panegyric to Origen, than the latter, in Caesarea, did use questions and answers in his teaching.62 His school at Caesarea was not a catechetical school like that in Alexandria, in which he also taught, but I would be very surprised if the preliminary instruction of the candidates to baptism, about which we know almost nothing, had not been based on such a method. The meaning “teach” of the verb κατηχεῖν, which etymologically means “resound with somebody/something, make something/somebody resound”, is usually explained in the sense that the master’s speech serves as an echo of the pupil’s answer, and the pupil’s answer, as an echo to the master’s speech.63 As such, it would suggest a teaching based on questions and answers. This dialogical relation between the master and the pupil does not stop after the baptismal instruction: Cyril’s Catecheses exhibit many features which show that the homily as such remains a dialogue of a certain kind: he constantly addresses his audience,64 and also often engages in a fictitious discussion with Jews, pagans or heretics.65 We should also keep in mind that, in the Neoplatonic schools, Plato’s dialogues were part of the pupils’ curriculum. They had to be read and were commented by the master. In other words, there is an obvious relation between ancient teaching and literary genres such as dialogues or collections of questions and answers. It would not be surprising then that TA, as a dialogue, could have been used in a catechesis, and the fact that it is a dialogue might also be seen as an indication of its possibly catechetical setting.66 Now, why use a debate against a Jew? Two reasons may be advanced. First, it is obvious that the polemic against Judaism was an important part of the catechesis, both in its pre-baptismal and its baptismal phases. Cyril of Jerusalem, for instance, is often eager to answer the objections of the Jews, not only to convince the new converts, but also to provide them with weapons to use in their possible encounters with Jews.67 Eusebius, in his Prophetical Extracts, has a similar concern for the objections of the Jews. 62.  Gregory Thaumaturgus, Oration addressed to Origen 7: ‘he put us to the question, and made propositions to us, and listened to us in our replies.’ (tr. ANF, vol. 6). 63.  See G. Bareille: ‘la parole du maître servant d’écho à l’interrogation du disciple, et la réponse du disciple à la question du maître’ (‘Catéchèse’, pp. 1877-78). 64.  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 2.15. 65.  For instance, he addresses the audience (2.15) or the Jews (10.16). 66.  See O. Weijers, In Search of the Truth. A History of Disputation Techniques from Antiquity to Early Modern Times (Turnhout, 2013), p. 52 (about the “didactic dialogue”): ‘The genre of the dialogue has always been thought useful for the transfer of knowledge by teachers’. The same author remarks that ‘most of the time they (= the ancient dialogues in general) are fictional’ (p. 47). 67.  See the study of P. Andrist in this volume.

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Now, we may ask what could have been the exact purpose of a dialogue such as TA. Was it addressed to all the listeners, or just to the new converts from Judaism? The latter hypothesis is interesting and merits attention. The absence of any lengthy discussion on the Jewish Law in the dialogue could appear at first sight contradictory to this hypothesis, but we should be careful, since we do not know at which stage of the catechesis such a text may have been used—if it was used at all—and for which purpose. The polemic against the Jewish Law may have been presented at another moment, or differently, and besides, it is not totally absent from the dialogue (see ch. 37). Now, the case of Cyril’s Catechetical homilies tends to show that the polemic with Judaism was not restricted to converts from Judaism. It was a central part of Christian exposition, for any type of audience. Eusebius, at the beginning of his Praeparatio evangelica, explains that it is reserved to the beginners, those coming from paganism, whereas the continuation, the Demonstratio evangelica, which is concerned with the polemic against Judaism, is addressed to the more advanced pupils.68 Eusebius’ diptych is probably not a catechetical handbook, but it may reflect, in one way or another, the form and the content of the catechesis which was given in Caesarea in his time. His testimony tends to show that the polemic with Judaism was not restricted to converts from Judaism, but was, more generally, part of the teaching given to those who had already abjured paganism.69 For the converts from ­Hellenism, the kind of teaching which is given in TA was not delivered at once, but after a preliminary exposition against paganism.70 The second reason which can be advanced to account for the use of an anti-Jewish dialogue within a catechesis relates to what has just been said, but concerns itself with a more fundamental issue. Once again, Eusebius gives us an important clue. At the beginning of the Demonstratio evangelica, he writes: ‘Now I am quite well aware, that it is usual in the case of all who have been properly taught that our Lord and Saviour Jesus is truly the Christ of God to persuade themselves in the first place that their belief is strictly in agreement with what the prophets witness about Him.’ (1.1.10) And a little further: ‘For the Christian doctrine is established on the basis of the antecedent prophecies, and their doctrine 68.  This way of distinguishing between two sets of pupils recalls Historia Ecclesiastica 6.15, where Eusebius explains that Origen, in Alexandria, decided to teach the most advanced, while Heraclas had to teach the beginners. But nothing allows us to say that, in the Didascaleion, the anti-Jewish polemic was reserved to the most advanced. 69.  See the complementary presentation of Gregory of Nyssa, in his Catechetical Discourse. 70.  We may have an indirect allusion to this principle in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 1.1.12.

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is established on the complete fulfilment of their prophecies.’ (1.1.11) (tr. J.W. Ferrar). In other words, according to Eusebius, there was no other way of expounding Christianity than in showing the accomplishment of prophecies, that is to say by refuting Judaism (and at the same time those Christians who rejected the Old Testament). Eusebius thus illustrates the fundamental connection between Christian catechesis and anti-Jewish polemic. This connection also explains why anti-Jewish polemic was so important to the Christians, whereas anti-Christian polemic was not central to Jewish identity. In his De catechizandis rudibus, Augustine devotes an important part of his teaching to the accomplishment of the prophecies.71 This is not to say that anti-Judaism had only a symbolic value for the Christians. Quite the contrary. The Christians had a concrete interest in refuting Judaism, either because they could engage in disputations with the Jews, or because objections attributed to the Jews were known and needed to be refuted, or because Christian doctrine, more generally, was taught from the prophecies, which often implied a refutation of Jewish exegeses of the texts. There existed symbolic expressions of anti-Judaism, but this symbolic anti-Judaism was not as fundamental as the concrete refutation of the Jews which was part of the catechesis. A dialogue such as TA may even have been designed, not so much as a general exposition of Christian faith, but as a tool aimed at giving students weapons against the Jewish (or supposedly Jewish) objections. D. Bertaina gives an interesting parallel in Arabic tradition: a pedagogical dialogue between a Muslim and a Christian composed by Theodore Bar Koni (8th century), in which the student was supposed to represent the Muslim, and the teacher responded to him as the Christian character.72 This parallel may give us one of the possible uses of a dialogue such as TA. If this catechetical interpretation of TA is correct, it could commend another interpretation of the dialogue. If we accept the possibility that the real audience of the dialogue is Christian—which is obviously the case, even if we do not accept the connection with a catechetical background—, we do not have to interpret TA within the direct context of a polemic with the Jews. For example, the preliminary discussion about the biblical text should probably not be understood as reflecting the possibility of such an exchange between the Christians and the Jews. More 71. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus 53. 72. D.  Bertaina, Christian and Muslim Dialogues. The Religious Uses of a Literary Form in the Early Islamic Middle East (Piscataway, 2011), pp. 133-34 (in chapter 5: Dialogue as Theological Education and Dialectic).

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obviously, it appears as an artificial exposition aimed at expounding to the Christian reader or listener which are the inspired Scriptures. There is a parallel exposition in Cyril’s homilies.73 As a consequence, this discussion must not be used as reflecting the methodology of the debates. The fact that the Jew promises to use the NT against the Christian is only a way of justifying the fact that he will quote it in the discussion. It is doubtful that the Jews used the NT during their debates with Christians. We would tend, on the contrary, to see this use of the NT, in TA, as another indication of the artificial character of the debate. Likewise, the section about Aquila is far more an artificial way of showing the superiority of the Septuagint to the texts used by the Jews, than a reflection of a real possible dialogue about the biblical text. Once again, there is a parallel passage in Cyril’s homilies.74 Even if the attack against Aquila is lacking in Cyril, his defence of the Septuagint is of the same kind as that of TA. This defence was obviously one of the κεφάλαια which had to be dealt with during the catecheses. A last consideration could give us an insight into the possible connection between anti-Jewish dialogues and catechesis: the ancient judgements on these texts. Unfortunately, we do not have many judgements of this kind. Origen, in the Contra Celsum, treats Jason and Papiscus as a text fitted for the most simple, which could indicate that for Origen such a text was adapted for beginners and that it could be used as a preliminary instruction. Conversely, it is interesting to see which kinds of texts Eusebius considers as “catechetical”, “elementary” or “introductory” in his History of the Church. He writes, for instance, that Theophilus of Antioch had written κατηχητικὰ βιβλία, but does not identify these books.75 It is therefore hard to say if they were actual catechetical handbooks or if they were just, in Eusebius’ view, appropriate sources of teaching. Likewise, he describes the three books to Autolycus as elementary writings, στοιχειώδη συγγράμματα. Once again, Eusebius does not explicitly say that this text was a catechetical handbook, but the interesting thing about this judgement is that it gives us an insight into what could appear as “elementary” to Eusebius. Obviously, the content, but also probably the form of the book corresponded, in a way or another, to what was taught to the pagans who converted to Christianity. Now, the books To Autolycus show many dialogical features. The author often addresses his reader and recalls discussions he had with him. The setting 73.  Cat. 4.33-36. 74.  Cat. 4.34. 75.  Cat. 4.24.

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is roughly the same as that of the anti-Jewish dialogues. Eusebius’ judgement about this (sometimes) dialogical text gives then another indication of the link between dialogue and catechesis.76 My conclusion is threefold: 1. The discussion between Timothy and Aquila is artificial. It cannot reflect a real debate and even the possibility that it could transmit real arguments used by the Christians or the Jews is problematic, though this idea cannot be totally discarded. 2. The function of the dialogue is to give an exposition of the faith. The dialogue is primarily a literary device serving to connect preexistent dossiers. 3. We have good reasons to think that the concrete setting of this dialogue was Christian catechesis. I want to stress the fact, finally, that such an analysis does not contradict the existence of real debates between Jews and Christians of Antiquity. There is sufficient external evidence that such discussions existed. However, I tend to think that it is almost impossible to use a dialogue such as TA to reconstruct the form and the content of these debates and that, if we want to do so, we must turn to other kinds of texts. Eventually, though I accept J. Pastis’ view that TA is an artificial dialogue, I am not inclined to reduce its opposition to Judaism to a mere symbolic anti-Judaism. As a catechetical handbook, or more broadly as a text concerned with Christian instruction, TA evidences a concrete concern for polemic against Judaism. The fact that this dialogue was obviously badly informed about Judaism and could certainly not be very much effective as a weapon against Judaism is another question.

76.  Likewise, Eusebius writes (Historia Ecclesiastica 3.3.6) that Hermas’ Shepherd was considered ‘very necessary’ for those who needs a elementary instruction (στοιχείωσις εἰσαγωγική).

THE NINE TEXTUAL FORMS OF THE DIALOGUE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA. A REMINDER Patrick Andrist Abstract:  This short article draws one’s attention on the fact that, in spite of the beautiful works by Robertson and Lahey, our textual knowledge of TA is based on shaky grounds. There are at least nine different textual forms of it, whose relations are difficult to precise until a new critical edition, based on all witnesses and the Slavonic tradition, is done. This is the aim of a recently launched project by the IRSB of Lausanne.

Since the seminal thesis of Robert Robinson in 1986, it is well known that there is more than one manuscript recension of the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila.1 In his Ph.D. dissertation Robertson prepared a critical edition of the Versio Longior (TA Long),2 whose resulting Greek text was published by William Warner in 2004,3 as well as a first transcription of the Versio Brevior (TA Brev).4 A further major step in our knowledge of TA Brev was done thanks to the critical edition prepared by Lawrence Lahey in his 2000 Ph.D. dissertation.5

1.  Robert G. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships (Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1986); see also Robert Gerald Robertson, ‘The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila – The Need for a New Edition’, Vigiliae Christianae 32 (1978), pp. 276-88. 2. Robertson, The Dialogue, pp. 140-280. 3.  Without the critical apparatus, but with a translation, William Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues: Athanasius and Zacchaeus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila: Introductions, Texts and Translations (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 58; Lewiston NY, 2004), pp. i-cxxix. Now also available in a French translation by Sébastien Morlet, Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila. Dispute entre un juif et un chrétien (Bibliothèque de l’Orient chrétien; Paris, 2017). 4. Robertson, The Dialogue, pp. 394-422. 5.  Lawrence L. Lahey, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Critical text and English Translation of the Short Recension with an Introduction including a Source-critical Study (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge, 2000), pp. 106-86. Unfortunately Lahey uses a different system to number the chapters and the verses, which we indicate in the footnotes. See also Lawrence Lanzi Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, in William Horbury (ed.), Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 106-21.

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TA Brev is much shorter than TA Long, and Lahey counted more than 80 sections absent or not reflected in TA Brev.6 But the differences are deeper, for example in the literary setting of the pictured discussion: in TA Brev, Timothy, already a priest, is sent by pope Cyril to stop Aquila, whom he finds in the Sanhedrin ‘sitting in a high place and wearing priestly garments with the ephod’.7 In TA Long, by contrast, Timothy is a lay person who spontaneously reacts against Aquila’s discourse, and ends up in the dialogue’s final chapter being ordained deacon and priest. There is also some supplementary material in TA Brev, including two important passages: a “cosmological section”, roughly located after chap. 5.6 and comprising 58 verses,8 describes the heavens and the creation of the world, including the fall or the devil; and an “Antichrist section”, located after chap. 14.2-9, where the discussion about Dan gives Timothy the opportunity to describe the eschatological victory over the Antichrist.9 Another interesting but less known difference has to do with the manuscripts both versions are witnessed by:10 TA Long is transmitted in the older manuscripts, from the ninth century (ms. R)11 to the thirteenth century (E), while the two main witnesses of TA Brev are from the twelfth (Z) and the fourteenth century12 (M).13 In reality, the situation is more complex than that. The contrast is even more striking if one recalls that ms. E is a much abridged version of TA Long, which Robertson considered a separated recension,14 while ms. O, 6. Lahey, The Dialogue, p. 18. 7.  Translation Lahey, The Dialogue, pp. 109, 111; see also p. 15. 8.  Unfortunately the chapter and verse numbers are different in Lahey’s edition. Here, 8.7-24, 9.1-39 in Lahey, The Dialogue, pp. 118-31, see also pp. 15, 40-56. 9.  Extending on 10 verses, numbered 15.8-16, 16.1 by Lahey, The Dialogue, pp. 148-53, see also pp. 15, 21-40. 10.  See Patrick Andrist, ‘The Physiognomy of Greek contra Iudaeos Manuscript Books in the Byzantine Era. A Preliminary Survey’, in Robert Bonfil et al. (eds.), Jews in Byzantium. Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 14; Leiden, 2012), pp. 549-85, cf. p. 582. 11.  Date according to Maria Luisa Agati and Paul Canart, ‘Le palimpseste du Vaticanus graecus 770 et du Cryptensis A.δ.VI (gr. 368)’, Νέα Ῥώμη / Nea Rhome 3 (2006), pp. 131-56. For a list of the witnesses and their sigla, see the Appendix below. 12.  Date according to Maria Teresa Rodriquez, ‘Manoscritti cartacei del fondo del S. Salvatore. Proposte di datazione’, RSBN n.s. 43 (2006), pp. 177-259, see pp. 185-87, who follows the datation of Guglielmo Cavallo, ‘La trasmissione scritta della cultura greca antica in Calabria e in Sicilia tra i secoli X-XV. Consistenza, tipologia, funzione’, SC 4 (1980), pp. 157-245, see p. 232. 13.  It must be noted that M is somewhat shorter than Z, including three important lacunas, in Lahey’s chap. 11, 16, and 20-22; from 27.5-39.22. Besides, the end of the dialogue is lost in M starting in Lahey’s chap. 23.2; cf. Lahey, The Dialogue, pp. 134, 154, 170-74 and 180; see also the introduction, pp. 6-7. 14. Robertson, The Dialogue, pp. 21-26; see also the stemma p. 47. Summary in Jacqueline Zacarie Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism in ‘The Dialogue of Timothy



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which agrees sometimes with E, but is not as much abridged, and diverges from it in other places, is considered another “branch” of TA.15 Still according to Robertson, the collection of extracts of TA in ms.  A ­represents also an indirect witness to another recension of it.16 Now, if one sets aside these three witnesses, the published version of TA Long relies mainly on three witnesses, from the ninth (R), eleventh (P) and twelfth (V) century. It is important to notice that these five branches cannot be just considered as a result of a mechanical downgrading of an original text, but that they are rather witnesses to a well-known process in Byzantium, of re-­editing an old text for a new reading context. The overall tendency appears to move toward a shortening of an original text, but this does not exclude some possible additions. Since the publication of Robertson, other witnesses have surfaced and represent other forms. Such is the case of the Greek original of the Slavonic version, which, according to Moshé Traube, was translated in Bulgaria in the tenth century, while Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, more prudently, noticed it surely circulated in Rus’ in the second half of the fourteenth century.17 It can be called TA-Slav.18 Not enough is currently known about the underlying text to judge how it relates to the other witnesses. Inversely, the first analysis of the “new” witnesses S19 and L20 tends to show that they also represent two more different forms of the text; but a complete analysis against all the other branches is still wanting. and Aquila’: Construct or Social Reality (Ph.D. diss., Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 43-45; see also p. 58, ‘Table of contents of TA Manuscripts’. 15. Robertson, The Dialogue, pp.  14-19; p.  19, ‘PV and O represent the two polar extremes of the manuscript tradition of TA’; Pastis, Representation, pp. 45-58. 16. Robertson, The Dialogue, pp. 34-47; Pastis, Representation, pp. 53-56. Also used in Lahey, The Dialogue, see p. 8. 17.  Moshé Taube, ‘Une source inconnue de la chronographie russe: le dialogue de Timothée et Aquila’, Revue des études slaves 63.1 (1991), pp. 113-22; Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, A Grin without a Cat. 1: ‘Adversus Judaeos’ Texts in the Literature of Medieval Russia (988-1504) (Department of East and Central European Studies, Lund Slavonic Monographs 4; Lund, 2002), pp. 153-56. 18.  One must of course distinguish between the original Slavonic manuscript and its Greek antigraph. But this does not play any role here. 19.  Sinaï, Mon. Ste Cath., gr.  399, f.  103v-204v, 12th  c.; see Patrick Andrist, ‘Un témoin oublié du Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila et des Anastasiana antiiudaica (Sinai­ ticus gr. 399)’, Byzantion 75 (2005), pp. 9-24. 20.  Hagios Horos, Lavra Κ 113, f.  343v-357v, 15th  c.; see Patrick Andrist, ‘Trois témoins athonites mal connus des Anastasiana antiiudaica (et du Dialogus Timothei et Aquilae): Lavra Κ 113; Vatopedi 555; Karakallou 60 – Essai sur la tradition des Anastasiana antiiudaica, notamment du Dialogus Papisci et Philonis cum monacho’, Byzantion 76 (2006), pp. 402-22, see pp. 406-10.

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Another now lost form is clearly perceivable, though indirectly, by comparing the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila with the Dialogue of Athanasius and Zacchaei (AZ).21 Admittedly, both texts share a source in common, which was probably also a dialogue adversus iudaeos, and can be called TAZ. This source was used mainly (but not only) in the chap. 1-13, and 130 of AZ and the chap. 1, 4-7 and 57 of TA.22 For example, one finds a series of biblical verses, quoted in the same order, sometimes with the same textual peculiarities and the same demonstrative aim, sometimes even with very similar expressions.23 Independently from the question of the identity of the dialogue TAZ, about which the specialists disagree,24 it can easily be shown that there are at least seven strong parallel places between AZ and TA Long “against” TA Brev, mostly because TA Brev does not exist at these places. For example, the following passage is remarkably similar in AZ and TA Long, but absent from TA Brev: AZ 3a (=3.1) Ἀθανάσιος· Βούλομαί σε ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης βίβλου ὁδηγῆσαι, καὶ οὕτως ἐφεξῆς ἐπὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀγαγεῖν.

TA 4.4 ὁ Χριστιανὸς εἶπεν· βούλομαί σε ἐκ τῆς πρώτης βίβλου κατηχηθέντα οὕτως ἐπὶ τὰς λοιπὰς ἐπανελθεῖν.

21.  CPG 2301. Temporary edition in Patrick Andrist, Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée. Étude des sources et du contexte littéraire (Ph.D. diss., Geneva, 2001). Available at http:// www.unige.ch/cyberdocuments/theses2001/AndristP/these.pdf, pp.  27-61. Ancient edition by Frederick C.  Conybeare republished, with an English translation, by Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues, pp.  22-85. About its dating around 380-420, see also Patrick Andrist, ‘Les protagonistes égyptiens du débat apollinariste. Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée et les dialogues pseudoathanasiens. Intertextualité et polémique religieuse en Égypte vers la fin du IVe siècle’, Recherches Augustiniennes 34 (2005), pp. 63-141. About this text, Patrick Andrist, ‘Literary Distance and Complexity in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Greek Dialogues Adversus Iudaeos’, in Averil Cameron and Niels Gaul (eds.), Dialogues and Debate from Late Antique to Late Byzantium (London, 2017), pp. 43-64. 22. Lahey, The Dialogue, pp.  75-80; Andrist, Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée, pp. 179-84, 251-52, 274-79 (summary). 23.  See bibliography in the previous note. 24. Lahey, The Dialogue, pp.  74-89; Andrist, Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée, pp.  289-91; Lawrence Lanzi Lahey, ‘Evidence for Jewish Believers in Christian-Jewish Dialogues Through the Sixth century (Excluding Justin)’, in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvic (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody MA, 2007), pp. 581639, cf.  pp.  585-97, 603-606; Patrick Andrist, ‘Les testimonia de l’Ad Quirinum de Cyprien et leur influence sur la polémique antijudaïque latine postérieure: proposition de méthode autour de Dt 28,66 et Nm 23,19’, in Alberto D’Anna and Claudio Zamagni (eds.), Elena Jurissevich (collab.), Cristianesimi nell’antichità: Fonti, istituzioni, ideologie a confronto (Spudasmata 117; Hildesheim–Zürich–New York, 2007), pp.  175-98, cf. pp. 175-80; William Varner, ‘In the Wake of Trypho: Jewish-Christian Dialogues in the Third to the Sixth Centuries’, Evangelical Quarterly 80 (2008), pp. 219-36, cf. pp. 22022; Sébastien Morlet, La Démonstration évangélique d’Eusèbe de Césarée: étude sur l’apologétique chrétienne à l’époque de Constantin (Collection des études Augustiniennes, Série antiquité 187; Paris, 2009), pp. 313-14, 317-21.



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One finds again a similar example about learning the Alphabet in a place of AZ and TA Long, which is not reflected in TA Brev: AZ 13e (=13.6) Ἀθανάσιος· Ἐὰν μὴ μάθῃ τίς τὰ στοιχεῖα, συλλαβὰς ἀναγνῶναι οὐ δύναται. Ἀνάγκη οὖν σε στοιχειωθῆναι καὶ οὕτως νοῆσαι τὰ λεγόμενα καὶ σημαινόμενα διὰ τῶν στοιχείων.

TA  5.1 ὁ Χριστιανὸς εἶπε· πᾶς τις εἰσερχόμενος εἰς τὴν σχολὴν τῶν γραμμάτων, πρῶτον τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ ἄλφα μανθάνει, καὶ τότε τοῦ βῆτα τὴν προσωνυμίαν ἀκούει·

However, in two places at least the agreement between AZ and TA Brev seems to be stronger: – In AZ 1a, the use of Ps. 80:9-10 (LXX) in the parallel series of biblical verses, between Isa.  44:6 and Gen.  1:26, recalls TA  1.6 Brev,25 even though TA Brev mixes it with elements from Deut. 6:4, Isa. 44:6, and Exod. 3:6, and TA Long uses Ps. 80 in AZ 5.10-1126. – More interpretative in AZ 61d, preserved in Armenian only, the answer of Athanasius seems closer to TA 54.15-16 Brev27 than in TA Long. Which conclusions can be drawn from this situation? If one rules out the possibility of a later contamination of a branch of TA by TAZ—this means, the highly improbable second use of TAZ by someone responsible for a branch of TA—one cannot escape the three following conclusions: – Whenever a comparison between AZ and TA is possible, the original text of TA (TA-o) is most probably the text which agrees with AZ (or is closer to it); – The fact that AZ more frequently agrees with TA Long than TA Brev shows that TA Long is generally closer to TA-o than TA Brev. In particular, it confirms that TA Brev is the result of a bold shortening of TA-o. – The indication that there are at least two places where TA Brev seems to be closer to AZ than TA Long would imply that TA Long is also the result of a reworking of TA-o. Is thus TA-o (or a form of text very close to it) the common direct ancestor of TA Long and TA Brev? It is not impossible but, more realistically, there is a great amount of chances one must count with another intermediary form, which could be named TA-BL. At least, m ­ ethodologically, a

25.  Numbered 2.6 by Lahey, The Dialogue, pp. 106, 108. 26. Lahey, The Dialogue, p. 20; Andrist, Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée, p. 179. 27.  Numbered 16.4-5 by Lahey, The Dialogue, p. 152.

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reconstructed common ancestor of TA Long and TA Brev should not a priori be considered TA-o. As a temporary conclusion, in spite of the beautiful works by Robertson and Lahey, our knowledge of the text of TA is based on shaky grounds. Until further studies on the relation between the nine known forms are done, and a new larger critical edition is available, one should remain cautious while speaking or thinking of what the original author of TA wrote. Filling in this gap is the aim of a recently launched project by the IRSB of Lausanne sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which will provide a full synoptic on-line open access critical edition of all the known forms of TA.28 Appendix Below is the list of the remaining witnesses of TA with their sigla and their Diktyon number (cf. http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/): A

Athînai, Ethnikî Vivliothîkî tîs Ellados, cod. 2492 (D 4524), f. 137r inf.– 140r sup., 12th c. O Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. gr.  414 (D 65657), f. 181r–226r, 10th/11th c. V — Reg. gr. Pii II 47 (D 66406), f. 75v sup.–138v inf., 11th c. R — Vat. gr. 770 (D 67401), f. 39 sqq passim, palimps. scrit. inf. (cf. Grotaf. Α δ VI), 9th c. Z — Vat. gr. 1871 (D 68500), f. 4r–11v, 18-42v sup., 12th c. E El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, cod. Ω.III.7 (de Andrés, 540; D 15089), f. 110va sup.–122vb sup., 13th c. R Grottaferrata, Badia greca, cod. Α δ VI (gr.  389; D 17496), passim, ­palimps. scrit. inf. (cf. Vat. gr. 770), 9th c. (L) Hagion Oros, Monî tîs Megistîs Lavras, K 113 (1400, Lauriotes; D 28421), f. 343v–357v, 15th c. M Messina, Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria, S.  Salv. gr.  132 (D 40793), f. 189r–201v, 15th c. (N)  Moskva, Gosudarstvennyj Istoriçeskij Muzej, Synod. gr.  314 (Vladimir, 325; Matthaei, 301; D 43939), f. 135r inf.–136r sup., 13th c. P Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Coisl. 299 (D 49338), f. 69r–122r, 11th c. S Sinaï, Monastère de Sainte-Catherine, gr.  399 (D 58774), f.  103v–204v, 12th c. (W) Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, phil. gr.  286 (D 71400), ­palimps. scrit. inf., f. 30rv, 44rv, 11th c. 28.  TA is one of four ancient Christian texts that, following a promising initiative or Prof. Frederic Amsler, should be edited on a new electronic editorial platform.

THE JEWISH BIBLE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA James K. Aitken Abstract:  Biblical citations in Timothy and Aquila play their part in the scholarly debate regarding the possible traces of genuine dialogue behind the literary fiction. The fact, however, that textual differences between the Jewish versions, principally Aquila, and the Septuagint are not raised by the Jewish interlocutor casts doubt on the authenticity of the debate. While we do need to be cautious about what the Jewish Bible looked like in this time, occasional opportunities for a Jewish repost are missed. Nevertheless in the more than 100 citations of the Pentateuch in the Dialogue, only six would have provided textual variants for debate, and of these only two of substantive significance. The biblical citations are weak evidence to depend upon, but the contrast between this Dialogue and other near contemporaries is notable.

It need hardly be said that the Bible is a prominent source in the dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (TA) as in all the other Jewish–Christian dialogues persevered. Scriptural citations serve as the main artillery in the defence of each interlocutor’s position and are quoted liberally, if not ad infinitum, usually in the manner of proof-texts without much justification. Varner estimates that there are well over three hundred references to Old Testament passages in Timothy and Aquila alone.1 The most frequently cited books are Isaiah and Psalms, accounting for more than half of all the citations,2 two biblical books that were both very popular in ancient Judaism and cited regularly in the New Testament.3 The Pentateuch follows closely behind with some 100 quotations, primarily from Genesis and Deuteronomy. The role these biblical quotations play in locating the setting and time period of the dialogues is central. For Timothy and Aquila the New Testament quotations are fewer than the Old Testament ones but have themselves generated some debate. Birdsall argued that the form of New Testament text used is a c­ ompilation in 1.  William Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues: Athanasius and Zacchaeus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila. Introductions, Texts, and Translations (Lewiston NY, 2004), p. 283. 2. Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues, p. 284. 3.  See, e.g., George A. Brooke, ‘Biblical Interpretation in the Qumran Scrolls and the New Testament’, in Lawrence H.  Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C.  VanderKam (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20-25, 1997 (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 60-73.

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the manner of Tatian’s Diatessaron, but it is not dependent on Tatian.4 This could therefore represent an early period for the dialogue, although the question does need further investigation. My focus will be on the Old Testament text that is quoted, which itself has the potential to offer many clues to the setting and specifically to possible Jewish connections behind the dialogues. There is an essential conundrum that can be easily spelt out. The text of the Old Testament quoted is almost always that of the Septuagint, and the Jewish interlocutor accepts the text and rarely raises textual variants or questions the possible meaning of the Hebrew lying behind the quotation. If the character is based on a real Jewish dispute, why does he not either point to the meaning of the Hebrew or refer to the version of Aquila, said in many traditions to be that preferred by Jews? The testimony of church fathers that indicated Aquila was the version used by the Jews, on the one hand, and the apparent scenarios of the dialogues in which Aquila is rarely called upon, on the other, are therefore in conflict with each other. The biblical text used in the Dialogue has been explored extensively by Robertson, and more recently in discussions by Andrist and Morlet, to which I will refer below.5 Robertson focuses on the manuscript variants witnessed by the quotations to determine the text type used in TA. His attention therefore is on the nature of the Septuagint version used by the author or editor, the possible provenance of the Bible he had at hand. This is an admittedly difficult task for a text that has been copied and passed down overtime but for which we have few exemplars to confirm the textual history of the quotations. There are few manuscripts surviving, and these have been divided into a longer recension (LR) attested in six accessible manuscripts, and a shorter recension (SR), represented primarily in two manuscripts alone.6 Although both perhaps derive in their current 4.  J. Neville Birdsall, ‘The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila and the Early Harmonistic Traditions’, NT 22 (1980), pp. 66-76. 5. R.G. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986); Patrick Andrist, ‘The Greek Bible Used by the Jews in the Dialogues Contra Iudaeos (4th–10th centuries CE)’, in N. de Lange, J.  Krivoruchko, and C.  Boyd-Taylor (eds.), Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions: Studies in their Use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Text and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 23; Tübingen, 2009), pp. 235-62; Sébastien Morlet, ‘L’utilisation des révisions juives de la Septante dans la première littérature chrétienne: philologie, exégèse et polémique’, in Rémi Gounelle and Jan Joosten (eds), La Bible juive dans l’Antiquité (Prahins, 2014), pp. 117-40. 6.  The LR has been published by Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues, pp. 140280 (taken from Robertson, The Dialogue). The SR can be found in Lawrence Lahey, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Critical Greek text and English Translation of the Short Recension with an Introduction Including a Source-Critical Study (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2001), who discusses the witnesses for the SR (pp. 6-8).



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forms from the same time period of the fifth or sixth century,7 they both either go back to an original source earlier or LR derives from an earlier TA, reworked in the fifth century.8 Other versions of the text have been identified by Andrist. A Sinaiticus codex (S) corresponds to the LR and yet contains many variants and attests to errors in transmission, enough differences to warrant the conclusion that it for the most part represents an independent textual tradition.9 A version from Athos represents yet another different form of the text.10 To add to the complexity of our discussion, the SR, while lacking some elements from the LR, contains some original material and a number of biblical quotations not found in the LR. Furthermore, if the TA is a compilation, based on the lost dialogue Jason and Papiscus or some other source, and expanded over time, it will not necessarily represent one text type of the Septuagint.11 It is no surprise, therefore, that after an extraordinarily detailed study Robertson in the end concludes it is a mixed text, showing some Hexaplaric influence and some readings from the Byzantine text. One further difficulty is that there is the possibility of harmonisation towards the standard text at the time of the copyist of the particular text that was in the Vorlage of the copies being produced. Nevertheless, Roberston is at least confident that we have enough manuscript witnesses to circumvent this problem. One particular difficulty should be noted regarding some biblical quotations in TA. There is a tendency to offer composite citations that do not match any one particular biblical passage but seem to be a harmonisation of more disparate texts. Thus we find this example: TA 37.2 καὶ εἶπεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὃς ἂν διασκεδάσει τὴν διαθήκην μου ταύτην, θανάτῳ ἀποθανεῖται, ὅτι τὴν διαθήκην μου διεσκέδασεν. For the textual witnesses of LR, see Robertson, Dialogue, pp. 1-49; Jacqueline Z. Pastis, Representations of Jews and Judaism in the “Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila”: Construct or Social Reality? (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1994), pp. 29-67. 7.  See Lahey, The Dialogue, pp.  97-99. On the problems of sources and dating, see Jacqueline Z. Pastis, ‘Dating the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Revisiting the Earlier Vorlage Hypothesis’, HTR 95 (2002), pp. 169-95. 8.  That both LR and SR preserve portions of an original TA, see Lahey, The Dialogue, pp. 19-59. 9.  For S, see Patrick Andrist, ‘Un témoin oublié du Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila et des Anastasiana Antiiudaica (Sinaiticus Gr. 399)’, Byzantion 75 (2005), pp. 9-24, and his conclusions on page 17. 10.  For Athos: Patrick Andrist, ‘Trois témoins athonites mal connus des Anastasiana antiiudaica: Lavra K 113, Vatopedi 555, Karakallou 60. Essai sur la tradition des Anastasiana antiiudaica, notamment du Dialogus Papisci et Philonis cum monacho’, Byzantion 76 (2006), pp. 402-22. 11.  The suggestion of the reliance on the lost Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus goes back to F.C.  Conybeare, The Dialogues of Athanasius and Zacchaeus and of Timothy and Aquila (Oxford, 1898), pp. li-lvii.

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The Lord God said: Whoever breaks this my covenant will certainly die, for he has broken my covenant.12

This sentence, which reads well as it is, is a combination of a phrase from Lev. 26:15 followed by one from Gen. 17:14: Lev. 26:15 LXX: ... ὥστε διασκεδάσαι τὴν διαθήκην μου; Gen. 17:14 LXX: ... ὅτι τὴν διαθήκην μου διεσκέδασεν. Notably this quotation is not to be found in the Shorter Recension (SR), and there is a minor difference in S,13 indicating there is some compositional history. One problem with the passage is the content itself. While a punishment is forewarned for those who break the covenant, nowhere in the Bible is that punishment stipulated to be the death penalty (θανάτῳ ἀποθανεῖται). In Leviticus 26 illness and sterility are threatened (26:16), and this is then followed by the threat of being struck down by the enemies (26:17, πεσεῖσθε ἐναντίον τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑμῶν). Thus, although the specification of the quotation in TA is not found in the Bible,14 the concept could have been inferred from the biblical text, and then expressed using a common biblical expression (e.g., 1Sam. [1Kgdms] 14:39; cf. Gen. 2:17). The grammatical change of Lev. 26:15 in TA is also not as problematic as it might seem. The Septuagint has a result clause in the infinitive, while TA has the future, although Andrist does note that the same expression is found in twelve different tenses or moods in the Septuagint.15 However, this is not a sign of inexact quotation as such, since we need to be alive to changes in Greek grammar of the Byzantine era when the text was composed or copied. Greek vernacular language began as early as Greco-Roman times to substitute for the infinitive equivalent abstract nouns (with such productive endings as -μα, -ιον, -μος, -σις, -σια) or finite moods (ἵνα with primary subjunctive, ὅτι with indicative).16 This is what we find here. It is a possible sign of oral transmission or adjustment of the quotation to the norms of grammar at the time. A similar phenomenon can be seen in a scriptural quotation attested in a late-Roman period Samaritan inscription from Thessalonica where the verbs have been modernized. This has sometimes led to unnecessary speculation on whether the text preserves a unique Samaritan

12.  Translations of the LR are taken from Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues. 13.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 257. 14.  As rightly noted by Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 257. 15.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 257. 16.  Brian D. Joseph, The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive: A Study in Areal, General and Historical Linguistics (Cambridge, 1983); Antonius N.  Jannarus, An Historical Greek Grammar Chiefly of the Attic Dialect (Hildesheim, 1987), p. 480.



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recension of the Septuagint.17 In the case of TA 37.2 Andrist concludes that there is no evidence that it is a Jewish quotation, but that it should be considered a forged quotation by a Christian.18 He may well be right on this, not least because the rabbis became highly reticent over capital punishment (cf. b.Sanh. 41a; 52b). However, the form itself does not permit any conclusions as to its origins. If it is part of oral tradition or has been adapted when placed into context, this is not an indicator of origins. Our source does have a tendency to abbreviate and collate, as Birdsall has observed in the case of the New Testament quotations, but this composite quotation could be going back to a tradition that already associated these verses. A further example of composite citation comes from a central verse in Jewish tradition, the Shema from Deuteronomy 6. TA  1.6 καὶ γὰρ αἱ θεῖαι γραφαὶ διδάσκουσιν ἡμᾶς ἕνα θεὸν μόνον προσκυνεῖν·γέγραπται γὰρ οὕτως· ἄκουε, Ἰσραήλ· κύριος ὁ θεός σου εἷς ἐστιν, καὶ πλὴν ἐμοῦ θεὸς οὐκ ἔστιν. For the Divine scriptures teach us to worship one God only. For it is written: Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one and there is no god besides me (Deut. 6:4; Isa. 44:6).

Later the verse is again quoted and once more coupled with a citation from another part of the Bible: TA  5.10 καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ λέγει διὰ Μωυσέως, ἄκουε Ἰσραήλ, κύριος ὁ θεός σου κύριος εἷς ἐστίν, καὶ οὐ προσκυνήσεις θεῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ· For the Almighty himself says through Moses: Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you shall not worship another god.

In this second example, Deut. 6:4 is paired with the prohibition against idolatry, which could be an allusion to Exod. 20:5, although the precise wording is that of Ps. 80:10-11.19 These two passages differ from the earlier example of composite quotation from TA 37.2, where the two scriptural citations are joined by ‘for’ so that the second part is dependent on the first. Here the join is merely by καί ‘and’, which is ambiguous as to whether it is intended as part of the quotation or to be seen as joining two separate quotations. Varner’s translation reproduced here is equally ambiguous, one time placing ‘and’ in italics and one time not. Therefore, while it might seem odd to misquote such a famous verse in Jewish 17.  Trevor V. Evans, ‘Greek Numbers 6, 22-27 on Vellum and Stone: A Note on the Verbal Forms in the Thessalonica Inscription’, in R. Pierri (ed.), Grammatica Intellectio Scripturae: Saggi filologici di Greco biblico in onore di Lino Cignelli OFM (Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 109-16. 18.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 258. 19.  The SR (2.6) combines Ps 80:11 with the quotation of Deut. 6:4 and Isa. 44:6.

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t­radition, it need not be intended as a quotation of one verse but an abbreviated summary of two. The fact that harmonization of biblical verses appears elsewhere in the Dialogue means that we can see this as either intentional harmonization or abbreviation. Indeed we know that in ancient Judaism the Shema from Deuteronomy was paired with a wide variety of biblical verses including Exodus 20, a variety reflected in the Qumran tefillin.20 The combination or partial quotation of biblical texts therefore cannot be easily used as a criterion of reliability in this Dialogue. Instead the text type used or invoked by the Jewish interlocutor may be a better option. The Jewish Bible in Late Antiquity The topic of the biblical text used by the Jewish interlocutor is central to determining the origins and background of the Dialogue. It can be argued that these quotations by the Jewish figure could be proof of the Jewish use of Greek versions, a rarely discussed area; however, Andrist admits there is little evidence of Jewish versions at all in TA.21 If then there is no recourse to a Jewish version, it would question the social reality behind the dialogues.22 An essential question is that of identifying what the Greek version of Jewish Bible would have been in antiquity. Soon after the appearance of the first Greek translations of biblical books, later forming the Septuagint, variant versions began to appear. It is understandable in any process of copying in antiquity that errors are introduced and scribal corrections or revisions are made. Our earliest fragments of Septuagint Deuteronomy, for example, PRyl 458 (second century bce) and PFouad Inv. 226b (mid-first century bce) already show signs of deviation from the majority text.23 However, true revisions, as opposed to copying errors or modifications, begin as early as the first century bce when we have the first manuscript attestation of the kaige version.24 This was a scholarly version whose style in Greek conformed most closely to the Hebrew, applying lexical equivalents and consistency 20.  Yehudah B.  Cohn, Tangled up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World (Brown Judaic studies 351; Providence RI, 2008), pp. 55-102, esp. pp. 65-67. 21.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 251. 22.  So Morlet, ‘L’utilisation des révisions’. 23.  See comments of Sylvie Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London, 2003), pp. 123-24. 24.  Emanuel Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Naḥal Ḥever: 8 ḤevXIIgr, with the collaboration of R.A.  Kraft and a contribution by P.J.  Parsons (Discoveries in the Judaean desert 8; Oxford, 1990).



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throughout. It is important to note that the kaige tradition can now be seen as an ongoing process rather than a single recension, since each witness to or example of a kaige translation differs from another.25 From the early stages therefore we should speak of multiple versions within the tradition rather than portray a monolithic version. The traditions of kaige ultimately culminated in the full scale revisions of the second century ce, attributed to Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion. We do not know much about these revisers, not even their religious affiliation for certain, but their translations indicate that that they were refining and perfecting earlier traditions. Historically they have been thought to be evidence of Jewish rejection of the Septuagint once adopted by Christians, but as they are the culmination of a tradition they should better be seen as part of a long process of development in translation methods. After the second century one might have the impression that the Greek versions used by Jews and by Christians were crystallized to the extent that there was a clear demarcation between the two groups. Aquila is presented in sources as the version used by Jews (see below) and the Septuagint as the version of Christians. However, recent research has shown how there is a lively ongoing engagement with Greek versions in Jewish tradition,26 seen in manuscripts that contain new editions and modernizations of Greek biblical books.27 Translations were modified over time and could introduce new interpretations and translation equivalents so that by the early Byzantine period we find a variety of Jewish versions; some might even be using the actual Septuagint as its source.28 De Crom has traced some of the variation in the case of one book (Codex Graecus Venetus 7 of Song of songs) where there is the curious variation between citations and mere distant resemblances of Symmachus and Aquila, as well as reworkings of the Septuagint.29 He concludes from the 25.  See, e.g., T. Janz, ‘The Second Book of Ezra and the “καίγε Group”’, in B.A. Taylor (ed.), IX International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies. Cambridge, 1995 (Atlanta GA, 1997), pp.  153-70; T.M.  Law, ‘Kaige, Aquila, and Jewish Revision’, in T.M. Law and A. Salvesen (ed.), Greek Scripture and the Rabbis: Studies from the European Association of Jewish Studies Seminar, 2010 (CBET 66; Leuven, 2012), pp. 39-64. 26.  The continuous Jewish engagement with Greek versions has been outlined by Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible (Leiden, 2000); see also the essays in de Lange et al. (eds.), Jewish Reception; Law and Salvesen (eds.), Greek Scripture and the Rabbis. 27.  E.g., Nicholas de Lange, Jewish Greek Texts from the Cairo Genizah (Tübingen, 1996). 28.  Peter J. Gentry, ‘The Greek Genizah Fragment of Ecclesiastes and its Relation to Earlier Greek Versions’, in James K.  Aitken and T.V.  Evans, Biblical Greek in Context (Leuven, 2015), pp. 91-116. 29.  Dries De Crom, ‘The Book of Canticles in Codex Graecus Venetus 7’, in N. de Lange, et al. (eds.), Jewish Reception, pp. 287-301.

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evidence that Greek versions were transmitted in Jewish circles throughout late antiquity and the middle ages. It is therefore difficult to speak of a single Jewish version in Greek or to rule out the possibility that the Septuagint might have been used by Jews. Nonetheless, the tradition ascribed to Aquila as the Jewish version does play a role in the dialogues. Aquila in Jewish Tradition Ancient attestation makes clear that Aquila came out preeminent as the Jewish version of the Greek Bible. Origen’s Letter to Africanus is the locus classicus for this identification: For so Aquila, following the Hebrew reading, gives it, who has obtained the credit among the Jews of having interpreted the Scriptures with no ordinary care, and whose version is most commonly used by those who do not know Hebrew, as the one which has been most successful. (Letter to Africanus 526)30

That Aquila’s translation was preferred by Jews is a point recognized too in the Anonymous Dialogue with a Jew, edited by Declerck (sixth century, Egypt): ‘Aquila that is much liked by Jews.’31 The acceptance of Aquila among Jews is confirmed by Justinian’s Novella 146 (553 ce) that seems to legislate that either the Septuagint may be read in synagogues or the version of Aquila, chosen especially to please those favouring the Hebrew version. Nicholas de Lange’s work has also shown how later Greek versions used by Jews in the Byzantine Empire were influenced by Aquila, among others.32 Accordingly we would expect in the dialogues the Jewish interlocutor to draw upon this version, and indeed some dialogues do indeed explicitly discuss it. So in Tertullian (Adv. Her. 3.21.1) there is an attempt to refute both Theodotion and Aquila readings. The TA is surprisingly free of Aquila readings, except in one case preserved only in the SR. In the long cosmological section (SR 8.7-9.39; ed. Lahey) Timothy quotes the opening of Gen. 1:2 in its Septuagint version (ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος) and then ascribes to the Sibyl another interpretation: κένωμα καὶ οὐδέν ‘a void and nothing’ (SR  9.2). The translation κένωμα καὶ οὐδέν is normally attributed to Aquila (Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in hexaemeron 80.18; John Philoponus, De  opificio 59.8) but curiously here is attributed to the Sibyl. An 30.  Translation by Frederick Crombie, in ANF 4, p. 386. 31.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 247. 32.  de Lange, Jewish Greek Texts, passim.



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­ pportunity to cite a Jewish version is missed, possibly because it is used o with approval. As this is only attested in the SR we cannot be sure if it is original to the TA tradition or not. Indeed, while the Dialogue is attributed to a debate but Timothy and Aquila, the names of the interlocutors are not present in the LR except in the superscription and opening. The interlocutors are merely introduced as the Jew and the Christian. It is the SR that adds the name at each point of their debate.33 A further complication is the role of Origen’s Hexapla. This would have made Christian authors aware of the Jewish text and provided them with a tool for debate. It would therefore have been natural for the Christian authors of the dialogues to take an interest in such textual differences. They could have derived evidence from the Hexapla if not from genuine encounter with Jewish interlocutors. It therefore remains odd that citations from Aquila are not drawn upon, especially when in the dialogue tradition they are used, cited and discussed. In addition, we have a lengthy and sustained polemic against Aquila in this very dialogue (LR 39.4-40.21). For Robertson polemic against Aquila reflects a negative response to Justinian’s Novella (553 ce), but such precise location of the polemic ignores the long tradition behind it.34 Justin Martyr already had recognized that the rabbis had a distorted uncorrected text (Trypho 71-72).35 The polemic against Aquila could account for the non-use of Aquila in the dialogue, since the Jew is forced to admit that the Septuagint is the preferred text (TA 40.21-22). However, this polemic appears some twothirds of the way through the dialogue, after many of the biblical texts have already been discussed. It reflects the disorder of the work that has been discussed by Varner (and see Carleton Paget in this volume) but does not provide an adequate explanation.36 Knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic A related issue to the use of Jewish texts is the apparent knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, on which we might say that Pastis is a minimalist, 33.  See Lahey, ‘Dialogue’, pp.  58-59; Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues, pp. 136-37. 34.  Cf. Giuseppe Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and ‘Canonic’ Texts: the Septuagint, Aquila, and Ben Sira in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (Leiden, 2006), pp. 163-68. 35.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p.  245. See too Trypho, 43, 8; 68, 7; Ireneaus, Against ­Heresies, 3, 21, 1. 36. Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues, pp. 137-38.

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seeing the author as relying on second hand information, and Lahey is a maximalist.37 There are a number of places where Hebrew or Aramaic words are used or meanings explained through the languages: TA 3.12 (explaining ἀρῶνα), 8.6 (Ἐμμανουήλ), 9.3 (διδιχ from 2Sam./4Rgns. 12:25), 20.15 (νεχωθα from 4 Kgdms 20:13), 22.8 (μάννα/μαάν), 23.4-5 (Ἀμαλήκ), and 32.2 (σαβέκ from Gen. 22:13). The evidence is slim, but Lahey shows well how in six out of the seven instances the discussions are largely independent of Christian tradition (the exception being 32.2 on σαβέκ). While it is possible that the author of TA included these Hebrew elements to give his arguments greater authority before Jews, Lahey suggests they should be seen as genuine material that originally circulated in Jewish-Christian communities.38 It remains possible that TA’s source for these discussions is a biblical handbook such as that used by Epiphanius,39 or a book on etymology such as that incorporated into the work of Africanus.40 As the majority of the words explained via Hebrew or Aramaic are already extant as transliterations in the Septuagint and all the examples are focused on the exegesis of a particular biblical verse, a book of etymologies or biblical word lists still seem the most likely source. Lahey notes how in four cases there is no trace of them in other sources, which might have been expected if they came from an existing source.41 However, two illustrative examples will show the problems involved. In a discussion of Nebuchadnezzar’s plundering the Temple, the Christian explains the loan-word νεχωθά from 4 Kgdms 20:13 and Isa. 39:2 (where it forms a phrase τὸν οἶκον τοῦ νεχωθα). TA  20.15 εἰ οὖν τοὺς θησαυροὺς οἴκου κυρίου ἠρεύνησεν, ἕως καὶ τὰ νεχωθά, ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται κρυπτήρ, καὶ εἰς τοὺς κρυπτῆρας εἰσελθόντες ἠρεύνησαν, ποία πύλη λέγεις διέλαθεν αὐτούς, εἰς ἣν οὐκ εἰσῆλθον; Then he searched out all the treasures of the Lord’s house, including the ‘nechotha’ which is the crypt. They then entered into the crypts and searched them out. What gate escaped their notice into which they did not enter?

Lahey deals with this example briefly as the explanation of νεχωθά as a crypt is not attested in patristic or onomastic tradition.42 Aquila and 37. Pastis, Representations of Jews, pp.  136-46; Lawrence Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, in William Horbury (ed.), Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 106-21. 38.  Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, p. 121. 39. Robertson, The Dialogue, p. 146. 40.  Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, p. 119. 41.  Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, p. 119. 42.  Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, p. 114.



THE JEWISH BIBLE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA113

Symmachus preferred the translation οἶκον ἀρωμάτων ‘house of spices’ in these two verses and this is followed in most traditions (for example, Eusebius, Commentary on Isaiah 2.15). However, there is some evidence for TA’s understanding and it need not be merely a conjecture from the context. Procopius of Gaza suggests that Symmachus actually translates νεχωθά by γάζα ‘storeroom’ (Commentary on Isaiah 2328), and this is indeed the reading of Targum Jonathan (‫נזֹוהי‬ ִ ִ‫‘ ֵבּית ג‬storehouse’) in both biblical verses. This is then possibly a Jewish tradition known to Procopius and to TA. It does not prove direct Jewish contact, but does show a lesser-known tradition was accessed by the author of the TA. Indeed its presence in Procopius and in the Peshitta (‫ )ܒܝܬ ܓܙܗ‬on both biblical verses might suggest it is an Eastern Christian tradition. My second example is a negative one, where the opportunity for a sound play on Hebrew was missed. At TA 10.50 the Christian quotes a verse from Isaiah: καὶ ἄλλος προφήτης ὅτι καὶ ἀπέρριψάν με τὸν ἀγαπητὸν ὡσεὶ νεκρὸν ἐβδελυγμένον. Another prophet adds: He threw me, the beloved one, aside as a loathsome corpse (Isa. 14:19).

Apostolic Constitutions 5.19 cites the quotation from Isaiah 14 as referring to Jesus. It seems to have been popular in dialogues as it is also alluded to in the Toledoth Yeshu in anti-Christian polemic. The basis of the interpretation lies in the use in the Hebrew of Isaiah of the word ‘carrion’ (‫)נצר‬. This is spelled out in the Talmud in a discussion of the treatment of criminals (b.Sanh. 43a): [When] they brought Netzer [before the judges], he said to them, ‘Shall a Netzer be killed? For it is written, “[And a shoot shall spring forth from the stem of Yishai,] and a branch [netzer] shall grow from his roots.”’ (Isa. 11:1) They replied, ‘Yes, Netzer shall be killed, for it is written: “But you were cast out from your grave like a discarded branch [Isa. 14:19]”’

From the Jewish perspective, while Jesus claimed to be a netser, a root from Jesse (Isa. 11:1), this passage implies he was removed from his tomb like a netser, here interpreted as a corpse that is abominable.43 This might be assisted by a word play on the name notzri ‘Nazarean’.44 The tradition clearly began as an anti-Christian polemic but then was adopted in positive terms by Christians in reference to the slain Christ. In TA the 43.  See M.  Kister, ‘A Common Heritage: Biblical Interpretation at Qumran and Its Implications’, in M.E. Stone and E.G. Chazon (ed.), Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden, 1998), p. 105 n. 15. 44.  R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London, 1903), p. 93.

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­ ositive Christian interpretation is presented, but no Jewish repost is p offered, which might have been expected had the Dialogue a basis in genuine Jewish-Christian disputation. Textual Variants recognized in TA It is notable that textual variants are rarely recognized at all in the TA. Morlet distinguished between quantitative and qualitative, the former referring to the inclusion or exclusion of passages within the biblical canon and the latter the minor textual differences in individual verses.45 Only Justin’s Trypho and the TA (39.1-3) deal with quantitative differences, while in all dialogues only Isa. 7:14 generates a regular qualitative debate. The TA provides a unique listing of biblical books and cites as scriptural both Wisdom of Solomon and Baruch.46 In the shorter recension Judith and Tobit are also included.47 These discussions are clearly seen from a Christian viewpoint and will not assist us in establishing any possible Jewish context for the dialogue. The polemic against Aquila in itself represents awareness of textual variants, namely that the Jews had a text that read differently. It is more surprising given the traditions of the dialogue literature that contain discussions of variants, that there are not more such discussions in the TA. The few variants we do seem to have are standard examples found in other dialogues and therefore cannot be claimed as independent Jewish witnesses. The dialogue itself recognizes that there are dialogue traditions in which it participates and that its discussion of variants is in its way trite. Thus, when the classic problem of Isa. 7:14 is first introduced it is almost in a parody of the standard tradition. The Jew introduces it first: 18.6 And I know that you will bring up the section of Isaiah which says: Behold the virgin will conceive and will bear a son (Isa. 7:14). But it is clear that after the birth he would not say that such a thing is so.

This implies familiarity with the tradition and the debates on this very verse. The Christian responds with mock surprise and speaks of it only because, he says, the Jew has mentioned it first (18.7). The interpretation 45.  Morlet, ‘L’utilisation des révisions’, p. 125. 46.  See too TA 10.5-10. On the books in TA, see Robert A. Kraft, ‘The “Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila” and its echoes of Judaism’, in id., Exploring the Scripturesque: Jewish Texts and Their Christian Contexts (Leiden, 2009), pp. 173-95; Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, pp. 247-48. 47. Lahey, Dialogue, pp. 59-60; Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 248.



THE JEWISH BIBLE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA115

of Isa. 7:14 is in fact brought up many times in TA, but it is only at LR 34.15-16 that the textual variant is mentioned: 15. ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπεν· ἰδού, ἡ νεᾶνις εἶπεν Ἡσαΐας, μὴ ἡ παρθένος. 16. ὁ Χριστιανὸς εἶπεν· εἰ μέντοι νεᾶνις εἶπεν, νεάνις ἐν τῷ ἑβραικῷ ἐστίν· ἵνα δὲ καὶ οὕτως συμπεριενεχθῶ σοι, ἡ νεᾶνις παρθένος ἑρμηνεύεται 34.15 The Jew said: Isaiah said: Behold, the young woman not the virgin. 34.16 The Christian said: If however, he said young woman, it is young woman in the Hebrew language. But in order that I may thus be understood by you, young woman is translated as virgin.

The reading put forward by the Jew here (νεᾶνις) is that of the Jewish revisers and others, and therefore he is following an alternative tradition. The Christian recognizes that the Jew’s version is based on a Hebrew text, but his interest is in the translation/interpretation.48 This is a rarity in the TA, and indeed in most dialogues, to have such detailed textual debate, but this example is known from other dialogues such as Athanasius and Zacchaeus 31 and Justin’s Trypho 43.49 There is one other textual variant introduced into the discussion in TA, but one that is slightly odd. In a discussion of Solomon, and after a scriptural citation of 1Kgs 11:34 (TA 9.10), the Christian refers to a noncanonical tradition: 9.11 γνῶθι δὲ Ἰουδαῖε, ὅτι προσεκύνησεν καὶ ἀκρίδα ἔσφαξεν τοῖς γλυπτοῖς. Know, O Jew, that he worshipped and sacrificed grasshoppers to the idols.

This is an allusion to the first/second century ce Testament of Solomon (26.5), following the majority of manuscript witnesses. Solomon is forced to sacrifice to the idols of Raphan and Moloch and therefore he chooses grasshoppers as representative of animals of minor significance so that his actions are considered trivial. Intriguingly the Jew responds with an alternative textual tradition, represented in two manuscripts of the Testament (mss P and Q):50 9.12 ὁ Ἰουδαῖος εἶπεν· οὐκ ἔσφαξεν ἀλλὰ ἔθλασεν ἐν τῇ χειρὶ ἀκουσίως. The Jew said: He did not sacrifice, but he crushed them in his hand unwillingly. 48.  There is ambiguity in the verb ἑρμηνεύεται, which can mean ‘is interpreted’ as much as ‘is translated’. Pastis (Representations of Jews, p. 140) surmises that the author does not know Hebrew since he believes neanis is a Hebrew word, although it is talking about meaning rather than the actual words. 49.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’, p. 258: Isa. 7:14 is discussed in the Anonymous Dialogue V.263. 50. C.C.  McCown, The Testament of Solomon: Edited from Manuscripts at Mount Athos, Bologna, Holkham Hall, Jerusalem, London, Milan, Paris and Vienna (Leipzig, 1922).

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The textual tradition represents a possible aural confusion between ἔσφαξεν and ἔθλασεν, but it also ensures that Solomon is not guilty of any unlawful sacrifice. Having noted this textual variant that exonerates Solomon, the Jew further adds that this is not from the canonical Book of Kings, but from his ‘Testament’ (ἐν τῇ διαθήκῃ αὐτοῦ, TA  9.12). He thus observes a quantitative variant too. Textual Variants not recognized in TA The lack of any discussion in TA apart from the odd instances mentioned above and the tendency to quote almost exclusively the Septuagint appear problematic for those arguing for a historical basis to this particular dialogue. It diverges from some other dialogues where we find more awareness of different Jewish versions.51 However, it is worth considering where such variants would have been discussed in TA. If it proves that there were no variants in the verses quoted that would have made a difference to the debates, then we cannot infer a solely Christian context for the narrative. These could have been genuine discussions of passages that were shared in common between Jew and Christian. As a sample examination I have taken all the Pentateuchal quotations in TA and examined whether there are variants in the Jewish tradition that might have been used by the author. Within the total of almost 100 verses from the Pentateuch that are quoted (the precise figure dependent on evaluation of partial quotations or allusions), only a small number have any significant variant worthy of discussion. Twenty-two verses contain only very minor variants that do not exhibit a theological difference at all (see table below). In each of these the Septuagint is quoted in the text, but the version of Aquila had a different reading that might have been used, although with no significant effect. Gen. 1:1 = TA (LR) 4.6

LXX: Ἐν ἀρχῇ Aq: ἐν κεφαλαίῳ ἐποίησεν ἔκτισεν The well-known rendering by Aquila of ‫אׁשית‬ ִ ‫ּב ֵר‬,ְ which aims to preserve the sense of ‘head’ in the root of the word, makes little difference from an exegetical point of view. Gen. 1:31 = TA 4.16 LXX: καλὰ λίαν Aq: σφόδρα ἀγαθόν Gen. 2:1 = TA 4.10 LXX: ὁ οὐρανός Aq, Sym: οἱ οὐρανοί The pl. ‘heavens’ Gen. 2:7 = TA 19.13 LXX: ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς … Aq: ἀπὸ τῆς χθονός εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ … ἐν μυκτῆρσιν

51.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’.



THE JEWISH BIBLE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA117

Gen. 9:25 = TA 31.13 Gen. 15:12 = TA 15.8 (allusion) Gen. 18:8-33 = TA 28.1-24 Gen. 27:27 = TA 13.15 Gen. 27:33 = TA 15.2 Gen. 27:37 = TA 15.15 Gen. 49:8 = TA 34.7-10

LXX: παῖς οἰκέτης LXX: ἔκστασις minor variants LXX: ἀγροῦ LXX: ἐξέστη small plus in Sym LXX: σὲ αἰνέσαισαν

Aq: δοῦλος δούλων Aq: κάρσος or κορσός ‘nausea(?)’ Aq: χώρας Aq: ἐξεπλάγη

Aq: σοι ἐξομολογησάσθωσαν Gen. 49:9 = TA 34.7-10 Various synonyms in Aq. One significant difference discussed below. Exod. 3:2 = TA 19.3 LXX: καίεται Aq: ἀναπτόμενος Exod. 3:6 = TA 1.7 LXX: ἀπέστρεψεν Aq: ἀπέκρυψεν Exod. 33:12 = TA 29.5 Aq/Theod: in nomine LXX: παρὰ πάντας (cf. MT) Num. 14:4 = TA 22.9 LXX: ἕτερος τῷ ἑτέρῳ Aq (cf. Sym, Th): ἀνὴρ πρὸς ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ Deut. 22:22 = TA 34.17 LXX: ἀποκτενεῖτε Aq: ἀποθανοῦνται ἀμφοτέρους ἀμφότεροι Deut. 28:66 = TA 24.4; 53.8 LXX: κρεμαμένη Aq, Sym, Th: + σοί Deut. 31:16 = TA 38.23 LXX: κοιμᾷ Aq: κοιμᾶσαi Deut. 31:24 = TA 3.12 LXX: εἰς τέλος Aq: τελειώσεως Deut. 32:21 = TA 22.2; 37.18 LXX: ἐπ᾿ οὐ θεῷ Aq/Th: ἐν οὐκ ἰσχυρῷ Deut. 32:27 = TA 38.9 minor variants on ‘anger’

In the majority of these variants, the difference stems from Aquila’s technique of ensuring the same equivalent in Greek for the same Hebrew word. There is little in these examples that would warrant debate or elicit interpretative problems. The reading of Deut. 32:21 changes the sense of the passage, but it is not of great theological moment. What these variants confirm is that the Septuagint text rather than Aquila is quoted by both interlocutors and that no awareness is shown of alternative readings, but that there would have been little point recognizing these differences. One minor variant that could have a theological significance is at Gen.  1:26, and this will be discussed below as a potentially significant variant. This means there are a possible six cases where we have significant variants that the Jewish interlocutor might have made more of, whether using it in his own arguments or responding to the Christian with a retort on the differing text. Nonetheless, even with the six that we will turn to in a moment, this still leaves more than seventy instances where there was no known Jewish Greek tradition that would have made

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any difference to the argument and we cannot expect the interlocutor to have introduced an alternative text. Significant Variants There are six places where a Jewish variant to the Septuagint text might have been introduced into the discussion but has been passed over without comment. 1. Gen. 1:26 = TA 4.12-14, 20; 6.7; 19.14 LXX: Ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον κατ’ εἰκόνα ἡμετέραν καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν. Aquila: ἐν εἰκόνι ἡμῶν Symmachus: ὡς εἰκόνα

It can be debated whether this is a minor or a significant variant. Awareness that there is an issue here is already shown by Justin Martyr and therefore it could have been known from within the dialogue tradition even without recourse to Jewish versions directly (Trypho 62). Even so there is no reference to the textual variants. The larger context of the discussion, and the issue focused upon in Justin, is the use of plural verbs for making, a major point of contention as to whether the subject is understood to be angels, as the Jewish argument would go (see Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on this verse), or it is the Logos working alongside God, in the Christian argument. This discussion forms the basis of the debate in the TA. The textual variant here, however, is on the ‘image’ and the subtle use of the preposition rather than on the number of the verb. It is thought that the variants are addressing the problem as to the manner in which humans resemble God and also how God might have some human form. Some of this unease with the concept of ‘in the image of God’ is felt in the Targumim and in rabbinic literature.52 The Septuagint (‘according to our image’ κατ’ εἰκόνα ἡμετέραν) and Symmachus (ὡς εἰκόνα ‘like an image’) appear to avoid the equivalence established by the Hebrew ‘in our image’ and followed by Aquila. The Jewish interlocutor, though, may not wish to draw attention to this problematic reading. Nonetheless, The Septuagint and Symmachus are merely subtle renderings that might not have been sufficient for building an argument upon, especially in the face of the more significant plural verb in the same verse, and the fact that Aquila has the more literal but more controversial reading. 52. A. Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch (Journal of Semitic Studies monograph series 15; Manchester, 1991), pp. 5-6.



THE JEWISH BIBLE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA119

In an explanation by the Christian of how Jesus appeared to Abraham, the Jew asks him to explain the commandment to Abraham. In the course of this the Christian quotes and explains Gen. 22:13: 2. Gen. 22:13 = TA 32.2 ἐξαποστείλας δὲ κύριος ὁ θεὸς κριὸν ὃν καὶ εἶδεν Ἀβραὰμ κατεχόμενον τῶν κεράτων ἐν φυτῷ σαβέκ, (τοῦτ’ ἐστιν τῆς ἀφέσεως· τὸ γὰρ σαβὲκ οὕτως ἑρμηνεύεται ἄφεσις), ὃν κριὸν καὶ ἀνήνεγκεν Ἀβραὰμ ἀντὶ Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ. But the Lord had sent a ram which Abraham saw caught by his horns in the thicket bush (Gen. 22:13). (This is the release [aphesis; or ‘forgiveness’], for the sabek is thus interpreted as release). Abraham offered up this ram in the place of Isaac, his son. LXX: καὶ ἰδοὺ κριὸς εἷς κατεχόμενος ἐν φυτῷ σαβεκ τῶν κεράτων· Aquila: συχνεών ‘thicket’ Symmachus: δίκτυον ‘net’

Varner’s translation here is a little misleading, and a better translation for ἐν φυτῷ σαβέκ might be ‘in the plant (or shoot) of sabek’, which distinguishes it from the reading of Aquila. The possibility of a messianic reading of a shoot or some sort of tree holding the ram are clear. It is for this reason perhaps that Aquila gives a specific translation ‘thicket’, avoiding anything that sounds like a single shoot, while Symmachus goes further and dispenses with any reference to a plant at all.53 In TA the focus is not on the type of plant, but on explaining the loan-word from the Hebrew found in the Septuagint, σαβέκ. According to TA, it is to be interpreted as ‘release’ or ‘forgiveness’— the author is probably reading it from the Aramaic ‫שבק‬.54 While this might imply Aramaic knowledge, there is a tradition in Christian circles behind the interpretation.55 The implication of this interpretation is that forgiveness is attached to the plant, which has clear Christological implications that the Jew does nothing to rebuff. He neither offers a different explanation as to what the plant might be or suggests that the σαβέκ is merely the name of a plant. 3. Gen. 49:9 = TA 34.6-10; 35.28 LXX: σκύμνος λέοντος Ιουδα· ἐκ βλαστοῦ, υἱέ μου, ἀνέβης· A lion’s whelp, are you Judah. From a shoot you went up. Aquila: ἁλώσεως ‘capture’ Symmachus: θηριαλώσεως ‘capture of wild beasts’

53. Salvesen, Symmachus, p. 45. John W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (Septuagint and Cognate Studies Series 35; Atlanta GA, 1993), p.  324 n.  19, wonders whether Symmachus’s ‘net’ represents a tangled bush. 54.  Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, p.  117; Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Ramat Gan, 2002), pp. 536-37. 55.  Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, p. 117.

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As in example 2, there are obvious messianic overtones in the Genesis 49 text, Judah coming forth from a shoot, reminiscent of Isaiah 11. This is one of two examples where words that could be interpreted in a messianic sense seem to have been avoided by Aquila (this example and no. 4 below). The Hebrew ‫ טרף‬can be understood to be a ‘plucked’ shoot and this is what the Septuagint chooses to render. Aquila and Symmachus (cf. Vulgate praeda) prefer to translate the Hebrew as ‘capture’, an appropriate alternative translation. Nevertheless, the shoot or tender plant is crucial for the TA dialogue, as it explicates: ‘Therefore, how he comes from a tender plant (ἐκ βλαστοῦ) is explained when Isaiah says that a child will be given to us and his mother will not know a man.’ (TA 34.14) This is a clear case where a different reading might have made a difference to the debate. Had the Jewish interlocutor cited the translation of Aquila, there could not have been a connection made with Isaiah 11 and the Christian would have been easily refuted. 4. Gen. 49:10 = TA 34:9; cf. 35:28 LXX: οὐκ ἐκλείψει ἄρχων ἐξ Ιουδα καὶ ἡγούμενος ἐκ τῶν μηρῶν αὐτοῦ. A ruler will not be lacking from Judah and a leader from his thighs. Aquila: σκῆπτρον Symmachus: ἐξουσία

The sceptre of the Hebrew (‫ )שבט‬has been turned into a person in the Greek version of Genesis 49, but Aquila renders it as a ‘sceptre’, conforming to the Hebrew. Both this and the previous translation are accurate renderings of the Hebrew that have the consequence of down-playing the Hebrew messianic overtones. In this case, however, the difference is slight, since even a sceptre as a symbol of royalty could be interpreted messianically. Symmachus’s rendering, ἐξουσία ‘authority’, is itself an indication that any association with royalty is sufficient for the translators. 5. Deut. 21:23 = TA 24.5 TA 24.5 The Jew said: You have spoken well although you do not desire the truth. For Moses himself said: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου Deut. 21:23). Therefore, take heed to the one you are deifying! LXX: ὅτι κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου. Aquila: κατάρα Jason and Papiscus: λοιδορία ‘reproach’56 Ebionite (Jerome): ὕβρις ‘outrage’57

56. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 2, 3, 13. 57.  Full source references are given in Salvesen, Symmachus, pp. 154-56.



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This is a problematic passage as it was subjected to a Christological interpretation in the New Testament (Gal. 3:13), and here the Jew actually quotes the version of Galatians: he uses ἐπικατάρατος (cf. ἐπικατάρατος in Deuteronomy 27 and 28) and keeps the addition ἐπὶ ξύλου, also found in the Septuagint. All the versions translate the tree (Hebrew ‫ )עץ‬literally, which may or may not be a significant attempt to avoid any Christological interpretation of the cross. It is significant that the Jew follows Galatians as seeing the person being hanged as someone cursed—indeed it would have been the same had he used the Septuagint. The Hebrew expression ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫ ִק ְל ַלת ֱא‬rendered literally by Aquila (and in the earlier dialogue Jason and Papiscus and by Jerome’s Ebionite) is ‘curse of God’, which is ambiguous and could mean not only ‘cursed by God’, as Galatians and Septuagint take it, but also ‘one who has cursed God’, hanging being a punishment for blasphemy. That the Jew in TA quotes Galatians and removes that ambiguity leaves room for the verse to be taken as proof of Christ’s redeeming on the cross. Here the Jew takes it in a negative way but there is no disagreement on the reading of the text itself. It is striking that TA has updated the reading of Jason and Papiscus, if the latter is indeed the source of TA, although this is disputed.58 6. Deut. 32:43 = TA 38.7 TA 38.6 καὶ δὴ περὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἐν αὐτῇ εἶπεν· θεωρῶν γὰρ τὴν πρὸς θεὸν ἐπιστροφὴν αὐτῶν ἔλεγεν 38.7 εὐφράνθητε, ἔθνη, μετὰ τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐνισχυσάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες υἱοὶ θεοῦ. Indeed concerning the Gentiles he spoke in it, for beholding their conversion to God, he said: Rejoice you Gentiles with His people and let all the sons of God prevail (Deut. 32:43). MT:  ‫ם־ע ָב ָד יו יִ ֹּקום‬ ֲ ‫ַה ְרנִ ינּו ֹגויִ ם ַעֹּמו ִּכי ַד‬ Sing aloud, O ye nations, of His people; For He doth avenge the blood of His servants (JPS) LXX:  εὐφράνθητε, οὐρανοί, ἅμα αὐτῷ, καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες υἱοὶ θεοῦ The ‘rest’: slaves

A Qumran text (4QDeutq) confirms the Septuagint reading as having a possible Hebrew source behind it. The Jewish revisers, however, would more likely have followed the reading of ‘the rest’ in the Hexapla, which is supported by both the MT and the Samaritan (and other versions). The difference is interesting as far as textual history is concerned, but it is not of any great theological import.

58. Conybeare, The Dialogues, p. 45.

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Conclusions While we cannot be certain regarding the readings of individual verses in a Jewish Greek Bible in late antiquity, it is surprising that in the TA almost no discussion occurs concerning textual problems, apart from the standard problem of Isa. 7:14 and a very few other passages. The question, however, whether there were actually significant variants for the passages discussed in the dialogue cause problems for from the biblical quotations deriving a social context for TA. It was found that in only six passages from the Pentateuch could an alternative text have been cited, but that only two or three of these might have made a theological difference. Examples 1 and 4 would make little difference to the content and meanings, and number 6 carries little weight on its own. Number 2 appears to be an interpretative or allegorical reading and therefore separate from the meaning of the text. Only 3 and 4 might have been brought up as mistranslations, but even then the translation given in number 4 would not obviate a possible messianic interpretation. This means that of the 100 Pentateuchal passages cited, only one, item 3 on Gen.  49:9, could have been questioned on the translational level, and one, item 5 on Deut. 21:23, on the theological level. This conclusion leads one to be more sympathetic than expected to the historical basis of the dialogues. If we were expecting textual variants to be discussed, as our witnesses might imply, then we need to ask where those variants would be. Inevitably where there is no semantic difference between Aquila and the Septuagint it would not make sense to engage in a debate using two different texts, and an agreed upon text had to be used. The few variants that are in the TA are the well-known ones from the tradition of dialogue, which can lead to the conclusion that this is merely an inherited tradition. However, perhaps these were the texts that were actually disputed and therefore part of a tradition of a real dispute. Notably in this Dialogue the interest seems to be on the interpretation of the texts rather than on the nature of the texts themselves. We could nevertheless reverse the scenario and raise the question whether the lack of texts that could be disputed by the Jew is part of the fictional nature of the Dialogue. These texts are for a Christian the safe basis on which to begin any discussion. Examination therefore of the biblical texts used in the TA remains unsafe ground for any conclusions to be drawn on this Dialogue. Morlet has recognized that witnesses to dialogue and the dialogues themselves diverge on the use of the revisions.59 While Aquila’s t­ ranslation 59.  Morlet, ‘L’utilisation des révisions’, p. 129.



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was preferred by Jews, a point recognized in a number of dialogues, it is not explicitly used in many dialogue sources. It is possible that real dialogue did not focus on issues of textual disagreement but on larger areas of theological disagreement.60 We could then suggest that there was an indifference to the textual issues. However, it is also possible that Jews did have access to the Septuagint and found that sufficient for disputation. Nevertheless, when we place TA alongside other dialogues we find a remarkable absence of Aquila readings—the Anonymous Dialogue shows a marked contrast in this respect.61 The TA appears to be a cleansed version of a dispute, neither offering alternative textual or interpretative readings. We might therefore conclude after all that the negative results of textual variants does leave a clue to the setting of the TA, a setting that is far less realistic and far more skewed in favour of Christian arguments than other near contemporaneous dialogues.

60.  Morlet, ‘L’utilisation des révisions’, p. 140. 61.  Andrist, ‘Greek Bible’.

THE DIALOGUE OF TIMOTHY AND AQUILA IN LIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY JEWISH SOURCES Hillel I. Newman Abstract:  Comparison of Timothy and Aquila to Jewish sources yields mixed evidence for polemical exchanges with contemporary Jews. The dialogue does not display first-hand knowledge of Jewish customs, nor do the few explanations of Hebrew words count for much. Though several of the discussions of biblical testimonia are matched by polemics in rabbinic literature aimed at Christians, some of these are so conventional in adversus Iudaeos texts that they may simply be literary borrowings. On the other hand, there is also material unique to Timothy and Aquila which may be compared fruitfully to complementary rabbinic sources and which suggests a dialogical relationship of sorts.

Generations of modern scholarship have taught us that Late Antique dialogues composed by Christians against Jews and Judaism are primarily literary artifacts, not stenographic protocols of public debates. We are attuned to the fact that these polemics are in all likelihood addressed mainly, though not necessarily exclusively, to Christian readers. We also recognize that in some instances Jews may even serve as a foil in what is first and foremost an inner-Christian conflict; this is certainly true of the disproportionate role of the Jews in debates concerning the veneration of icons. Yet for all the rhetorical artifice and implicit solipsism displayed in so many of these texts, we know enough of the social and intellectual matrices shared by Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity to appreciate the importance of examining Jewish texts for what I shall call, with deliberate vagueness, meaningful comparisons.1 What follows is an exercise in comparison between The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila and roughly contemporary Jewish literature.2 Though we are at a loss to say 1.  Vincent Déroche, ‘Forms and Functions of Anti-Jewish Polemics: Polymorphy, Polysémy’, in Robert Bonfil et al. (eds.), Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Leiden, 2012), pp. 535-48. 2.  The discussion in this paper is restricted to the long recension of the dialogue. On problems of dating see Jacqueline Z. Pastis, ‘Dating the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Revisiting the Earlier Vorlage Hypothesis’, HTR 95 (2002), pp. 169-95. On the chronology of the long and short recensions of Timothy and Aquila see bibliography in Patrick Andrist, ‘Un témoin oublié du Dialogue de Timothée et Aquila et des Anastasiana anti­ iudaica (Sinaiticus Gr. 399)’, Byzantion 75 (2005), p. 14 n. 10, and see Andrist’s paper in this volume. Cf.  Lawrence Lahey, ‘Evidence for Jewish Believers in Christian-Jewish

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what ­elements, if any, are a product of direct encounters with Jews, it is nevertheless possible to point to a few plausible ‘dialogical’ connections between Timothy and Aquila and Jewish sources of the same period.3 One of the striking features of religious polemics between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity is the profound asymmetry displayed by the literary evidence emerging from the two sides of the debate. This asymmetry is, first of all, quantitative. The chronic preoccupation of Christian authors with Jews and Judaism and the abundance of writings devoted, wholly or in part, to confuting them vastly outweigh all that we find on the side of the Jews. One reason for this is certainly the one-sided existential challenge to Christian supersessionism posed by Judaism, almost by definition. As Vincent Déroche has put it: ‘Christian identity is necessarily questioned by the sheer existence of Judaism, while the reverse is not true’.4 This accounts at least in part for the relatively meager quantity of relevant material in rabbinic literature.5 Asymmetry is most obvious in the literary forms and genres used as vehicles of religious controversy in the confrontation between Christians and Jews. We do not compare Jewish dialogues to Christian dialogues from Late Antiquity for the simple reason that there are no anti-­Christian ­ ialogues through the Sixth Century (excluding Justin)’, in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar D Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus (Peabody, 2007), pp. 603-606. I have not seen the dissertation of Lawrence L. Lahey, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: Critical Greek Text and English Translation of the Short Recension with an Introduction Including a Source-Critical Study (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2001). References to the text of Timothy and Aquila are to the edition of William Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues: Athanasius and Zacchaeus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila (Lewiston, 2004). The translations are also taken from that volume, sometimes with minor modifications. I will refer to the two interlocutors as ‘the Christian’ and ‘the Jew’, as they are called throughout most of the dialogue. The name ‘Aquila’ will be reserved for the discussion of the biblical translator of that name. 3.  For a thoughtful discussion of how we might imagine the authors of the dialogues at work and conceive of the nature of their sources see Patrick Andrist, ‘The Greek Bible Used by the Jews in the Dialogues Contra Iudaeos (Fourth–Tenth Centuries CE)’, in Nicholas de Lange, Julia G. Krivoruchko, and Cameron Boyd-Taylor (eds.), Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions: Studies in Their Use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Tübingen, 2009), pp. 240-42. Generally suspicious of the author’s unmediated familiarity with Jews and Judaism is Jacqueline Z. Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism in the “Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila”: Construct or Social Reality? (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1994). Less skeptical is Lawrence Lahey, ‘Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Genuine Jewish-Christian Debate in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, JJS 51 (2000), pp. 281-96. 4.  Déroche, ‘Forms and Functions’, p. 542. 5.  I am implicitly staking out a position on the minimalist side of the current scholarly debate over the extent of the Jewish-Christian controversy’s impact on rabbinic literature. See Adiel Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2010).



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Jewish dialogues from that period—at least none that have survived. The first Jewish work which might properly be called a disputation text (though not a dialogue) against Christianity is the Judeo-Arabic Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al-Usquf, of the ninth century, which via its Hebrew translation became known as The Polemic of Nestor the Priest.6 Before that time, the most prominent literary form used among Jews for polemics against Christianity was the parodic anti-Gospel commonly known as Toledot Yeshu.7 Toledot Yeshu, in its manifold versions, can hardly be characterized as a rabbinic creation, though we do find rabbis featured as those who wage the battle against Jesus. This does not mean that rabbis were unaware of proto-Toledot Yeshu traditions. For example, the use of the disparaging name ‘Ben Pandera’ for Jesus, found already in the early rabbinic literature, attests to the currency of the Jewish counter-history of the origins of Jesus that was later canonized in Toledot Yeshu, but was known already to Celsus’s Jew.8 This raises a weighty methodological question: when is it proper to speak of “rabbinic” responses to Christianity as separate and distinct from other, non-rabbinic expressions of Jewish polemic? Sometimes these categories are unnecessarily restrictive. I  stress this because in what follows I focus almost exclusively on rabbinic literature as a basis for comparison. This is primarily a consequence of the simple fact that rabbinic literature is where we find the richest storehouse of Jewish biblical exegesis that may be readily compared to the copious biblical testimonies employed in Timothy and Aquila. In the final analysis, some passages in the dialogue attribute notions to the Jews that find no echo in any extant Jewish source, rabbinic or otherwise. Do any of these attest to authentic but otherwise lost Jewish claims? Some are probably strictly literary inventions, but often the problem must remain unresolved. There are, at any rate, no rabbis in Timothy and Aquila. In his dissertation, Robert Robertson proposed a translation of an obscure passage in the dialogue that he construed as an explicit reference to the rabbinic learning of the Jewish interlocutor.9 In Timothy and Aquila 5.4, the Christian 6.  Daniel J. Lasker and Sarah Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest: Introduction, Translations and Commentary, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1996). 7.  For recent studies of Toledot Yeshu see Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaakov Deutsch (eds.), Toledot Yeshu (‘The Life Story of Jesus’) Revisited (Tübingen, 2011). For my own thoughts on the evolution of Toledot Yeshu traditions see Hillel I. Newman, ‘The Death of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu Literature’, JThS 50 (1999), pp 59-79. 8.  Riccardo Di Segni, Il Vangelo del Ghetto (Rome, 1985), pp. 113-14. 9.  Robert G. Robertson, The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986), p. 382.

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addresses the Jew disparagingly and says, according to Robertson: ‘You who have interpreted all the books and filled the air with words and pretend not to “deuterosize”, don’t you know these things?’10 ‘Pretend not to “deuterosize”’ is Robertson’s rendition of δοκῶν μὴ δευτεροῦσθαι. He interprets the last verb as an allusion to rabbinic teaching, following one of the senses of δευτέρωσις—etymologically equivalent to Hebrew mishnah and often used in patristic sources to describe extra-biblical Jewish tradition. I doubt, however, whether in context middle-passive δευτεροῦσθαι can bear the weight of this interpretation. Varner’s translation—‘who filled the air with words and think that you are second to none’—is no less problematic. I am hesitantly inclined towards the definition of Lampe, who would take it to mean something like ‘you who filled the air with words without appearing to repeat yourself’.11 Timothy and Aquila purports to record a debate held in Alexandria. If it is indeed an Egyptian work, it is worth noting the papyrological evidence for a renaissance of Egyptian Jewry beginning in the fourth century, following the devastation Egyptian Jews under Trajan and a lengthy hiatus in their recorded history. Jews in the revived communities exhibit knowledge not only of Greek but also of Hebrew and Aramaic, they display an affinity to Palestinian halakha, and they maintain economic and epistolary contact (in Hebrew) with the Jews of Palestine.12 Religious disputes between Jews and Christians in Byzantine Egypt are not uncommon.13 Regarding a later period, I have argued elsewhere on the basis of parallels in Coptic sources that the ninth-century Qiṣṣat Mujādalat alUsquf, mentioned above, was composed in Egypt.14 In seeking out ‘real’ Judaism, as it were, in Timothy and Aquila, scholars have searched beyond Jewish-Christian debates for evidence of familiarity with Jewish practices and for knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic words. Jacqueline Pastis notes correctly that there is very little evidence in the book for knowledge of contemporary Jewish custom, but then proceeds to cite what are ostensibly two minor examples of testimony to 10.  Timothy and Aquila 5.4 (ed. Varner, pp. 148-49). 11. G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), p. 340. 12.  Allen Kerkeslager, ‘The Jews in Egypt and Cyrenaica, 66–c.  235 CE’, in Steven T. Katz (ed.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 67-68. 13.  See Lahey, ‘Jewish Biblical Interpretation’, pp. 182-85. Cf. Oded Irshai, ‘Christian Historiographers’ Reflections on Jewish-Christian Violence in Fifth-Century Alexandria’, in Natalie B. Dorhmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed (eds.), Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2013), pp. 137-53. 14.  Hillel I.  Newman, ‘Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, and the Church Fathers’, in Galit Hasan-Rokem and Ithamar Gruenwald (eds.), Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews: Ancient Jewish Folk Literature Reconsidered (Detroit, 2014), pp. 42-43.



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just such practices.15 The two cases tell us nothing, however, about Jewish ritual behavior. The first appears in the Christian’s discussion of the Jewish canon. There we read of the fifth book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, which was ‘not dictated through the mouth of God but was the law given a second time through Moses. Therefore it was not placed in the aron (έν τῷ ἀρῶνα), that is, the Ark of the Covenant’.16 Pastis takes this to be a description of a contemporary Jewish synagogal custom. The passage (deriving ultimately from the common source shared by Timothy and Aquila and by Epiphanius in his Weights and Measures) has nothing to do, however, with Jewish liturgical practice but is, rather, a novel interpretation of Deuteronomy 31:26, in which Moses instructs the Levites to deposit the Book of the Torah ‘to the side (‫ )מצד‬of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God’.17 In the second passage ostensibly describing Jewish practice, the Christian opens the public debate by bowing his head to the east, making the sign of the cross, and reciting the first verse of Genesis. Moved, the members of the audience rise, similarly bow their heads, and then declare in unison: ‘One God’ (εἷς θεός).18 Pastis interprets this as a performance of the Jewish Shema Yisrael (‘Hear, O Israel’), taken from Deuteronomy 6:4, and understands the direction of prayer towards the east to indicate Jewish prayer in the direction of Jerusalem, suggesting a locale somewhere to the west of Palestine, such as northern Egypt. I doubt whether the passage can really teach us anything about Jewish liturgy or about the location of the encounter. For one thing, there is no reason to assume that the crowd is exclusively or even primarily Jewish. The opposite seems to be the case. We are told at the beginning of the debate that it was held ‘in a public walk, with a great audience assembled’.19 When the Jew, egged on by his Christian opponent, is cornered into making a particular embarrassing concession in the debate, ‘all the people laughed’.20 At the end of the debate, the Jewish speaker alone is baptized; there is no

15. Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism, pp. 126-32; eadem, ‘Jewish Arguments against Christianity in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, in Benjamin G. Wright (ed.), A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft (Atlanta, 1999), pp. 191-92. 16.  Timothy and Aquila 3.12 (ed. Varner, pp. 144-45). 17.  See Robert A. Kraft, Exploring the Scripturesque: Jewish Texts and Their Christian Contexts (Leiden, 2009), p. 178. 18.  Timothy and Aquila 4.6-9 (ed. Varner, pp. 146-47; note that the passage numbers in Varner’s translation are corrupt). 19.  Timothy and Aquila 3.1a (ed. Varner, pp. 142-43). 20.  Timothy and Aquila 23.15-16 (ed. Varner, pp. 192-93).

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run of Jews on the baptismal font.21 The declaration of εἷς θεός looks simply like a public acclamation of the sort described by Erik Peterson in his book of the same title.22 The prayer to the east is probably dictated first and foremost by Christian liturgical practice, which would tell us little about Jews and even less about the location. Towards the end of the debate, the Christian again stands and bows his head to the east as he reaches the climax of his argument with the appeal to Daniel 7, describing the coming of the Son of Man. Here the gesture is perhaps informed also by the contents of his declamation, in the spirit of the declaration of the Gospel that ‘like lightning from the east, flashing as far as the west, will be the coming of the Son of Man’.23 Despite the lack of evidence in Timothy and Aquila, the search in adversus Iudaeos literature for information about Jewish praxis does on occasion yield significant results. Other Late Antique texts do have something to say about the direction of Jewish prayer, though they generally describe prayer towards the south, which would put their composition in Syria or some other region to the north of Palestine.24 In some cases, the dialogues are among the earliest witnesses to the diffusion of certain practices. Thus, in the anonymous Dialogue with a Jew edited by José Declerck, apparently of the sixth century, the Christian turns to his reluctant Jewish opponent and asks: ‘Surely you are not in any way afraid that we shall lay hands on you, and that we shall make sport of your temple hair (κατὰ κόρρης παίσομεν)…?’25 Though the bible does prohibit  shaving the hair of the temples (Leviticus 19:27), we are hardpressed to find evidence before the Middle Ages—even within rabbinic literature—of Jews growing long sidelocks (pe’ot). The comment in the anonymous Dialogue with a Jew may be the earliest allusion to Jews 21.  Timothy and Aquila 57.10-18 (ed.  Varner, pp.  280-81). For the short recension, contrast Lahey, ‘Evidence for Jewish Believers’, p. 604 n. 111. 22. Erik Peterson, Eis Theos. Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Göttingen, 1926). 23.  Matthew 24:27. See U.M. Lang, Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (San Francisco, 2009), pp. 35-60. 24. Cf. Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem, c. 37 (PG 28, pp. 617-20); Gustave Bardy (ed.), Les trophées de Damas (PO 15; Paris, 1927), p. 252. See the discussion in Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, 1997), pp. 81-82. On Jewish prayer towards the west in the dispute of Gregentios and Herban the Jew, see Albrecht Berger (ed.), Life and Works of Saint Gregentios, Bishop of Taphar (Berlin, 2006), pp.  99-100, 520-21. 25.  José H. Declerck (ed.), Anonymus Dialogus cum Iudaeis: Saeculi ut uidetur sexti (CCSG 30; Turnhout, 1994), p. 4; translation from Lee M. Fields, An Anonymous Dialog with a Jew (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 69-70.



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growing distinctive sidelocks; to this may be added comparable references in early Islamic tradition.26 Two more examples will suffice. In the first, we find in the Syriac Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew—if my correction of the editor’s translation is correct—a reference to a Jewish practice of burning crosses, perhaps on Purim. This is reminiscent of reports in Christian and Jewish sources of Jews crucifying and burning Haman in effigy.27 In another case, the Altercatio Ecclesiae et Synagogae describes the punishment by Jews of adulteresses, who are sentenced to ride, with heads shaven, on the back of an ass. Several posttalmudic halakhic texts do indeed prescribe shaving the heads of adulteresses.28 Various scholars, as I mentioned, have examined the interpretations of several Hebrew words and names recorded in Timothy and Aquila (seven or more), seeking indications of the extent and sources of the author’s Hebrew knowledge.29 These passages probably teach little or nothing about direct contact with Jewish informants, though it is noteworthy that our author should think it a helpful strategy for his Christian protagonist to pepper his arguments against a Jew with bits of Hebrew or Aramaic, for it is almost always the Christian who invokes Hebrew words. Several obvious blunders suggest that the author is no authority on the Hebrew language; it is likely that he copies from written sources that he fails to understand, or from sources which are themselves a product of ignorance or textual corruption. Some of the explanations betray an Aramaicising tendency. The fact that some of the translations in Timothy and Aquila are unparalleled in Patristic literature and are absent 26.  Eric Zimmer, Society and Its Customs: Studies in the History and Metamorphosis of Jewish Customs (Jerusalem, 1996), pp.  43-71 (in Hebrew); Michael Lecker, ‘Zayd b. Thābit, “A Jew with Two Sidelocks”: Judaism and Literacy in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib)’, JNES 56 (1997), pp. 259-73. 27.  A.P.  Hayman (ed.), The Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew (CSCO 338-39, Scriptores Syri 152-53; Leuven, 1973), vol. 1, p. 11; vol. 2, p. 12. See Hillel I. Newman, ‘At Cross Purposes: The Ritual Execution of Haman in Late Antiquity’, in Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone (eds.), Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity (Turnhout, 2013), p. 315. 28.  J.N. Hillgarth (ed.), Altercatio Ecclesiae et Synagogae (CCSL 69A; Turnhout, 1999), p. 34. See Saul Lieberman, Texts and Studies (New York, 1974), pp. 52-54; Hillel I. Newman, The Ma‘asim of the People of the Land of Israel: Halakhah and History in Byzantine Palestine (Jerusalem, 2011), pp.  98-99 (in Hebrew); Dorothea Weber, ‘The Altercatio Ecclesiae et Synagogae from a Classicist’s Point of View’, Millennium 7 (2011), pp. 70-71. 29. Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism, pp. 136-46; Lawrence Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila’, in William Horbury (ed.), Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 106-21; Kraft, Exploring the Scripturesque, pp. 190-92.

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from the lists published in the Onomastica Sacra of Franz Wutz by no means proves that they were collected from the Jews themselves. Even Wutz’s monumental work is incomplete; there are, for example, numerous etymologies in Jerome’s writings which do not appear in his Liber interpretationis hebraicorum nominum and which have never been systematically recorded by Wutz or anyone else.30 Whatever their source, some of the tidbits of Hebrew and Aramaic in Timothy and Aquila are of inherent philological interest.31 Some, however, are simply wrong.32 I turn now to more substantial questions of the relationship between the arguments against the Jews in Timothy and Aquila and apparent counter-arguments in rabbinic literature. I begin by bringing two famous examples of biblical ‘hot spots’ from Timothy and Aquila which feature consistently in adversus Iudaeos literature and which are also mirrored in rabbinic sources in clearly polemical contexts. These are familiar controversies, and I shall deal with them briefly. Following a polemical tradition going back at least as far as Justin Martyr, the Christian of Timothy and Aquila invokes Gen 1:26 (‘Let us make man in our image and our likeness’) against his Jewish opponent as proof of the participation of Christ in the creation of man.33 Other 30.  Franz Wutz, Onomastica Sacra. Untersuchungen zum Liber interpretationis nomi­ num hebraicorum des hl. Hieronymus, 2  vols. (TU  41.1-2; Leipzig, 1914-15); Hillel I.  ­Newman, Jerome and the Jews (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1997), pp.  81-85 (in Hebrew). 31.  For example, it is worth taking a closer look at the interpretation of νεχωθα—the Septuagint’s transcription of Hebrew ‫( נכתה‬Isaiah 39:2; II Kings 20:13)—which Timothy and Aquila takes to mean κρυπτήρ, i.e., ‘crypt’ (Timothy and Aquila 20.15; ed. Varner, pp. 186-87). Kraft and Lahey cite no parallels, but in fact the Aramaic Targum renders ‫ בית נכתה‬as ‫בית גנזוהי‬, a decent equivalent of Greek κρυπτήρ; a similar explanation appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 104a. See also James Aitken’s paper in this volume. 32.  I do not think it necessary bend over backwards in each case of error to recreate a valid Ur-translation in a hypothetical lost source of Timothy and Aquila. Thus, I am unconvinced by the efforts of Lahey, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, pp. 111-12, to explain the gaffe in the etymology of Emmanuel (Timothy and Aquila 8:6, ed. Varner, pp. 156-57). Lahey’s explanation of μαάν (‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, pp. 114-15) in Timothy and Aquila 22,8 (ed. Varner, pp. 190-91) is based on a false lexeme taken from Jastrow’s dictionary; on Aramaic ‫ מהן‬see Moshe Assis, A Concordance of Amoraic Terms, Expressions, and Phrases in the Yerushalmi (New York, 2010), vol. 2, p. 909 n. 171 (in Hebrew). Regarding the interpretation of Amalek as ‘antichrist’ (Timothy and Aquila 23,5, ed. Varner, pp. 19293), I wonder if this is not better understood as typological exegesis, rather than etymological interpretation. 33.  Timothy and Aquila 4.12-25; 6,7-8 (ed. Varner, pp. 146-49, 152-53). Cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 62. See Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism, pp. 152-56; Lahey, ‘Jewish Biblical Interpretation’, pp. 287-89; Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden, 1977), pp.  121-30; Menahem Kister, ‘Some Early Jewish and Christian Exegetical Problems and the Dynamics of Monotheism’, JJS 37 (2006), pp. 548-93.



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adversus Iudaeos texts do the same, and, like Timothy and Aquila, they attribute to the Jews the position that in this verse God addresses the angels. Well-known passages in the Palestinian Talmud, Genesis Rabbah, the Babylonian Talmud, and other rabbinic texts present this very issue as a bone of contention in disputes with minim—Jewish heretics—who in these cases, at least, and by the time of these later sources, may reasonably be identified as Christians of one sort or another.34 Ironically, the popularity of this theme in adversus Iudaeos literature makes it all the more likely that the author of Timothy and Aquila may never have engaged a real Jew in debate on the topic, but is instead conventionally reiterating a polemical topos found in books that he held before him. In another passage, the Christian in Timothy and Aquila cites Gen 19:24: ‘So the Lord rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of Heaven—Therefore [asks the Christian], what Lord rained fire and brimstone from what Lord?’35 The multiple references to the Lord, argues the Christian, implicitly allude to God the Father and to Christ. The argument does not originate with Timothy and Aquila. Once again, it goes back at least as far as Justin, and once again we find a complementary talmudic passage, including a confrontation between Rabbi Yishmael son of Rabbi Yose and a min.36 There are, however, cases in which rabbinic tradition appears to contend with challenges found in Timothy and Aquila and similar sources without making explicit reference to minim. For example, we read in the dialogue that the Christian cites the raised hands of Moses at the battle with Amalek as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion.37 This too has a long history in Christian literature, going back to Barnabas and Justin, but here the question of rabbinic response takes a different form. 38 The Christian authors imbue the uplifted hands of Moses with special meaning, and they do the same for the brazen serpent (Numbers 21:4-9). The two events are likewise treated together in the Mekhilta de’Rabbi Yishmael and other rabbinic sources, though obviously towards different ends; this has suggested to scholars the possibility that the midrash is a 34.  Palestinian Talmud, Berakhot 9.1.12d-13a; Genesis Rabbah 8.8-9 (ed. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck [Jerusalem, 1965], pp. 61-63); Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b, and elsewhere. 35.  Timothy and Aquila 6.9, 28.44-45 (ed. Varner, pp. 152-53, 204-205). 36.  Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56.12-15; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b. See Segal, Two Powers, 118-19, 130-31, 221-22. 37.  Timothy and Aquila 23 (ed. Varner, pp. 190-93), with reference to Exodus 17:11-12. 38.  Epistle of Barnabas 12; Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 90.4-5. See John Carleton Paget, The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background (Tübingen, 1994), pp. 15862 (additional passages in the Dialogue with Trypho are cited on p. 160 n. 286).

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Jewish rejoinder to Christian claims.39 There are, however, no minim in these passages, and without the comparison to the Christian texts no modern reader would have come a priori to such a conclusion. This is paradigmatic of the problem we face as readers examining the vast majority of sources of potential relevance. In such cases, certainty all too often eludes us, yet we would be remiss if we did not ask the question and raise the possibility. Sometimes we are liable to exaggerate the dialogical relationship between Jewish and Christian texts, polemical or otherwise. Consider the following example. Responding to alleged biblical testimonies of the Crucifixion, the Jew in Timothy and Aquila, quoting Deuteronomy 21:23, says: ‘You have spoken well although you do not desire the truth. For Moses himself said: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Therefore take heed to the one you are deifying’.40 Paul makes use of the same verse in Galatians 3:13, and it appears frequently in Christian disputation literature, beginning with Justin.41 Note how the Jews in these texts are presumed to parse the syntax of the verse in Deuteronomy, where the Hebrew reads: ‫ֹלהים ָּתלּוי‬ ִ ‫—ּכי ִק ְל ַלת ֱא‬a ִ hanged person is a ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫ק ְל ַלת ֱא‬, ִ a curse of God. The syntax of the verse is ambiguous. Does ‘curse of God’ imply that the hanged person is cursed by God (a subjective genitive)? Or perhaps it means that the act of hanging a human being is an affront to God, and God himself is thereby the object of the curse, or alternately, that hanging is intended specifically for blasphemers, who curse God (an objective genitive)? The Jews in the disputation texts parse the verse the first way, as Paul does. Hence, the Jew in Timothy and Aquila finds it incredible that Jesus, who is thus cursed, should be deemed God. The rabbis, however, commonly read it the second way. For example, in Tosefta Sanhedrin 9.7 we find the following parable of Rabbi Meir: Rabbi Meir used to say: what is the meaning of ‘for a curse of God is he that is hung’? [It is like the case of] two brothers, twins, who resembled each other. One ruled over the whole world, the other took to robbery. After a time 39.  See Marc Hirshman, ‘Polemic Literary Units in the Classical Midrashim and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho’, JQR 83 (1993), pp. 369-84; id., A Rivalry of Genius (New York, 1996), pp. 62-63. In Hirshman’s opinion, the passage in the Mekhilta de’Rabbi Yishmael is a midrashic response to the Christians. Cf.  Menahem I.  Kahana, The Two Mekhiltot on the Amalek Portion (Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 255-60 (in Hebrew). For a contrary opinion see David Rokeah, Justin Martyr and the Jews (Leiden, 2002), pp. 36-39. 40.  Timothy and Aquila 24.5 (ed.  Varner, pp.  194-95). See Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism, pp. 229-33; eadem, ‘Jewish Arguments against Christianity’, pp. 18788. For a comprehensive discussion of the history of the exegesis of Deuteronomy 21,23 see David W.  Chapman, Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion (­Tübingen, 2008), pp. 117-49, 241-51. 41.  Dialogue with Trypho 89.2; 90.1-3; 94.5; 96.1.



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the one who took to robbery was caught, and they crucified him on a cross. And every one who passed to and fro said, ‘It seems that the king is crucified’. Therefore it is said, ‘a curse of God is he that is hung’.42

The passage makes a profound statement: hanging a corpse is an affront to God, for even the hanged criminal was created in God’s image.43 It is not the criminal who is cursed, but rather God himself who is offended, and it is not the hanged man who is guilty of that affront, but those who hanged him. This reading of Deuteronomy 21:23 is actually antithetical to the logic attributed by Christian authors to the Jews who invoke the same verse against Christians in the disputation literature. The Tosefta passage should certainly not be read as a veiled allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus, as some have suggested.44 The verse does appear in the context of the crucifixion of Jesus in an early recension of Toledot Yeshu in Aramaic, where we read: He [Jesus] died on the cross, but they did not want to take him down from the cross. Rabbi Joshua said to them: ‘On account of the wicked Jesus shall we change a statute of the Torah? For it is written: “You shall not leave his corpse overnight on the cross, etc.”’. So they took him down from the cross and buried him in a water channel in the garden of Rabbi Judah the Gardener.45

Here, however, it is not the curse itself that is significant, but the biblical prohibition of leaving a corpse hanging overnight; in what follows, the removal of the body results in Jesus’s disciples believing that he has risen to heaven. All of this is still far removed from the use of Deuteronomy 21:23 in Timothy and Aquila and other adversus Iudaeos texts. There are various exegetical notions attributed to the Jews in Christian disputation literature for which we lack confirmation or parallels in rabbinic or other Jewish sources. I close this portion of the discussion with one example—the Jewish interpretation of Psalm 2. In Timothy and Aquila, the Jew objects to the Christian interpretation of the psalm and maintains that it refers to Solomon. Centuries earlier, Tertullian already attributed that opinion to the Jews, and similar claims appear in other Christian disputation texts. It seems, however, that no such i­ nterpretation 42.  Translation of R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London, 1903), pp. 86-87. 43.  See Yair Lorberbaum, Image of God: Halakhah and Aggadah (Tel Aviv, 2004), pp. 286-92 (in Hebrew). 44.  For example, Herford, Christianity, pp. 86-87. 45.  Newman, ‘The Death of Jesus’, p. 64. The fragment was first published by Louis Ginzberg and later reedited by William Horbury.

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is found anywhere in rabbinic literature.46 Is this a genuine piece of contemporary Jewish exegesis preserved only in Christian sources? Perhaps it is a literary invention which has become a literary convention? We repeatedly encounter arguments in Timothy and Aquila, against or in the name of the Jews, which appear in other adversus Iudaeos texts, both earlier and later, with almost catechetical regularity. It is therefore all the more important for us to give special attention to those elements in Timothy and Aquila which are distinctive, and not merely part of the common baggage of Christian polemics. At least a few of them may stand in what I have described as a dialogical relationship with Jewish sources of the same period, and it is these that I now address. At one point in the dialogue, the Jew asks for an account of the fulfillment of Isaac’s blessings to his sons. In response, the Christian explains that the blessings pronounced by Isaac ostensibly on behalf of Jacob were fulfilled not in Jacob, but in Esau, who represents the Gentiles. The exchange continues: The Jew said: What then? Is the scripture lying when it blessed him [i.e., Jacob]? The Christian said: May it never be [cf.  Romans 9:14]! It does not lie because scripture speaks all things truly. But hear the scripture saying that Isaac smelled the smell of Jacob’s garments. But the garments which Jacob wore then were those of Esau. And Isaac said: Behold the smell of my son’s garments is as the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed [Genesis  27:27]. So let us see whose garments they were that he spoke of their smell. It would be these garments of Esau, concerning which he said: My soul shall rejoice in the Lord. For he has clothed me with the garment of salvation and the coat of rejoicing he has put on me. He has put on me the miter as a bridegroom and he has adorned me greatly as a bride [Isaiah 61:10].47

46.  Timothy and Aquila 6.10, 9.1 (ed.  Varner, pp.  152-53, 156-57); cf.  Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 14.12. For references to other adversus Iudaeos texts: Gilbert Dagron and Vincent Déroche, ‘Juifs et chrétiens dans l’Orient du VIIe siècle’, TM 11 (1991), pp.  136-37, 253. See Marcel Poorthuis, ‘King Solomon and Psalms 72 and 24 in the Debate Between Jews and Christians’, in Albert Gerhards and Clemens Leonhard (eds.), Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into Its History and Interaction (Leiden, 2007), pp.  265-67; Gerard Rouwhorst and Marcel Poorthuis, ‘“Why do the Nations Conspire?”: Psalm 2 in Post-Biblical Jewish and Christian Tradition’, in Alberdina Houtman, Albert de Jong, and Magda Misset-van der Weg (eds.), Empsychoi Logoi—Religious Innovations in Antiquity: Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden, 2008), pp. 425-53. 47.  Timothy and Aquila 33.5-12 (ed.  Varner, pp.  214-15). On this passage see Hillel Newman, ‘A Patristic Perspective on Rabbinic Literature’, in Menahem Kahana et al. (eds.), The Classic Rabbinic Literature of Eretz Israel: Introductions and Studies (Jerusalem, 2018), pp. 701-703 (in Hebrew).



THE DIALOGUE IN LIGHT OF JEWISH SOURCES137

According to this interpretation, Isaac’s blessing was intended for the son whose garment he smelled, that is, Esau. It follows that the patriarchal blessing is the patrimony of the Gentiles, not of the Jews. The identification of Esau’s raiment in Genesis 27 with ‘the garments of salvation and the coat of rejoicing’ in Isaiah 61, suggestive of the Gentiles’ betrothal to God, is not grounded in the plain meaning of either of the two biblical passages. I have not come across this exegetical linkage in any other patristic source; according to Patrick Andrist, the only other dialogue against the Jews which mentions Isaiah 61:10 at all—albeit in a different context—is the Dialogue of Athanasius and Zacchaeus.48 There is, however, a rabbinic parallel to this passage in which the skins worn by Jacob as a disguise to acquire the blessing are identified with the ‘garments of salvation’ in Isaiah. Not surprisingly, the midrash draws a conclusion diametrically opposed to that of Timothy and Aquila. In Pesikta de’Rav Kahana, a rabbinic midrash redacted not earlier than the fifth century CE, we read: A parable of a fatherless child who grew up in a palace. When her time came to be wed, and she was asked, ‘Do you own anything?’ she replied: ‘I have something from my father, I have something from my grandfather’. Likewise Israel has merit from Abraham, and it has merit from our father Jacob. Thus the words He hath clothed me with garments of salvation [Isaiah 61:10] have reference to the merit of our father Jacob, of whom it is said she clothed his hands with the skins of the kids of the goats [Gen. 27:16]. The words He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness [Isaiah 61:10] have reference to the merit of our father Abraham, of whom it is said I have known him to the end that he may command his children . . . to do righteousness [Genesis 16:19].49

In the parable of the midrash, Israel is the orphan child whose future redemption is expressed in terms of marriage borrowed from Isaiah 61:10. Here the bride is Israel itself, the offspring of Jacob, not the offspring of Esau. Here the ‘garments of salvation’ are the skins given to Jacob by his mother Rebecca to disguise his identity, and they are rightfully his, a symbol of the merit of the fathers passed on to all generations of Israel. It is true that this midrash may be read unto itself and need not be engaged in any direct sense with the exegesis in Timothy and Aquila. The same may be said, of course, of Timothy and Aquila, without recourse to Pesikta de’Rav Kahana. But in light of the unusual combination of the 48.  Patrick Andrist, Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée. Étude des sources et du contexte littéraire (Ph.D. diss., Université de Genève, 2001), p. 277. 49.  Pesikta de’Rav Kahana 22.4 (ed. B. Mandelbaum, vol. 1 [New York, 1962], pp. 32829). The translation is adapted from that of William G.  Braude and Israel J.  Kapstein, Pesiḳta de-Raḇ Kahana (Philadelphia, 2002), p. 465.

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garments of Genesis 27—a chapter which pits Esau against Jacob—with the garments of salvation in Isaiah 61:10, we should consider the likelihood of competitive exegesis, with Jews and Gentiles both appealing to the symbolic authority of the garments of the two brothers who vied for the same blessing from one father, a blessing whose fulfillment is projected onto the same remote verse in Isaiah.50 Perhaps the most distinctive element in Timothy and Aquila, one which sets it apart from other adversus Iudaeos texts, is its extensive use of a lost source which was known in some form also to Epiphanius, who used it in his book on Weights and Measures.51 The identity of its author is unknown, but Ariston of Pella, whose lost writings were used by Eusebius to describe the same chapter of history, is sometimes suggested as a candidate. Let us look at some of those passages and ask what echoes, if any, we may find in rabbinic literature. The text itself contained, among other things, a brief history of the biblical translation of Aquila, including a description of the translator’s Gentile origins and his conversion to Judaism. In passing, the lost source also describes the deeds of Hadrian in Jerusalem at the time of the Second Judean revolt, though the very existence of the revolt itself is passed over in complete silence in our dialogue. Aquila and his translation also feature prominently elsewhere in the dialogue. The Christian accuses Aquila (that is, Aquila the proselyte) of composing a deliberately misleading translation, in contrast to the inspired and authoritative Septuagint. This, of course, is not a new charge. He also claims that the Hebrew bible of the Jews is deliberately corrupt, which is also not new. He takes the argument one step further, however, and declares that Aquila himself altered the original Hebrew (not just the translation) to hide and eliminate authentic Christian testimonia. This charge seems to be unprecedented.52 50.  The adjacent verse, Isaiah 61:9, may also have been read as suggestive of the blessings of the patriarchs: ‘Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed’ (NRSV). Typological explications of the figures of Jacob and Esau occasionally feature elsewhere in Jewish-Christian polemics, though without appealing to Isaiah 61:10. See Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2006), pp.  1-20; Pierluigi Lanfranchi and Joseph Verheyden, ‘Jacob and Esau: Who Are They? The Use of Romans 9:10-13 in Anti-Jewish Literature of the First Centuries’, in Tobias Nicklas, Andreas Merkt, and Joseph Verheyden (eds.), Ancient Perspectives on Paul (Göttingen, 2013), pp. 297-316. 51. Robertson, Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, pp. 50-146. 52.  Timothy and Aquila 40.1-2 (ed. Varner, pp. 230-31). See Andrist, ‘The Greek Bible Used by the Jews’, pp. 245-47; Edmon L. Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory: Canon, Language, Text (Leiden, 2012), pp. 174-209.



THE DIALOGUE IN LIGHT OF JEWISH SOURCES139

What do we find in rabbinic literature that may have bearing on all this? Aquila is mentioned often in these sources, in which the portrait painted of him and his translation is, not surprisingly, much more sympathetic.53 According to the dialogue’s source, Aquila was a native of Pontus, a claim made by Irenaeus as well.54 That Aquila was from Pontus emerges also from a passage in Sifra, a halakhic midrash on Leviticus, which mentions his sending produce to his slaves in Pontus.55 This is a curious thing. It has been noted that we know of another Aquila from Pontus, an earlier figure who was a contemporary of Paul, mentioned in Acts 18:2. If, as some suspect, Aquila the translator was indeed mistakenly described by later Christian authors as a native of Pontus under the influence of Acts, then what we have in Sifra is a Jewish tradition regarding one its own heroes which is already mediated by secondary Christian tradition standing under New Testament influence. Be that as it may, there are, as scholars have noted, other biographical details shared by the rabbis and by Timothy and Aquila, which is dependent on the lost source. According to Timothy and Aquila, Aquila was Hadrian’s brother-in-law.56 For the rabbis, he was Hadrian’s nephew, though in one exceptional passage in the Babylonian Talmud, he is described as the nephew of Titus.57 The lost source also relates that Aquila, prior to converting to Judaism, became a Christian. Whether this has any historical foundation, we do not know, but in any event it is not hard to imagine why the rabbis might choose to pass over that item in Aquila’s curriculum vitae even if they were familiar with it. Turning back to the tale of Aquila in the Babylonian Talmud, we may wonder if we don’t find there a caustic reflection, 53.  For a recent discussion see Willem F. Smelik, Rabbis, Language and Translation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 434-99. 54.  Timothy and Aquila 40.4 (ed.  Varner, pp.  230-31); Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.21.1 (cf. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 5.8.10). 55.  Sifra to Leviticus 25:7 (ed. Weiss, p. 106b). Giuseppe Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and ‘Canonic’ Texts: The Septuagint, Aquila and Ben Sira in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (Leiden, 2006), pp. 168-69, dismisses the evidence of Sifra out of hand, claiming that the reference there is not to Pontus; he is followed by Smelik, Rabbis, Language and Translation, p.  443 n.  31. They are both misled, however, by a trivial error in the printed editions. Their skepticism is thoroughly misplaced, given that the manuscripts of Sifra uniformly confirm that the reference is indeed to Pontus. 56.  Timothy and Aquila 40.8 (ed. Varner, 232-33). See Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible (Leiden, 2000), p. 111. 57.  Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56b-57a. On this disparity see Adiel Schremer, ‘Kinship Terminology and Endogamous Marriage in the Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods’, Zion 60 (1995), p. 9 (in Hebrew). The story in the Babylonian Talmud tells of ‘Onkelos’— which makes no difference for us. The notion that talmudic ‘Onkelos’ is anything other than a phonetic variant of Aquila is a persistent and unfortunate error. We do not know the name of the author of the Aramaic translation now known as ‘Targum Onkelos’.

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from a Jewish perspective, of this biographical tradition of progressive conversion. In that famous passage, Aquila, contemplating conversion to Judaism, raises from Hell the ghosts of his uncle Titus (in the role of Hadrian), then the prophet Balaam, and finally Jesus himself, before becoming a Jew.58 On the other hand, contrary to rabbinic tradition, which portrays Aquila as a devoted disciple of rabbinic sages, according Timothy and Aquila he turned to the ‘priests of the Hebrews’ for circumcision when he chose to become a Jew.59 Moving on to Hadrian and his deeds in Palestine, let us examine the description of his reconstruction of Jerusalem.60 I mentioned above that one would not know from Timothy and Aquila that the Jews ever revolted under Hadrian’s reign. Instead we read that Hadrian arrived in Jerusalem after its destruction by Vespasian and Titus, and then: ‘Therefore, this same Hadrian was greatly angered and seized the remaining Jews, transferred them to the market fair in Hebron and sold them, more than four for one measure of barley. He then took away the stones of the Temple and with them built the wall and the theater and plowed up the Temple’. We are further told that Hadrian appointed Aquila ‘superintendent of public works’ (ἐπιστάτην τῶν ἔργων) for the project.61 Hadrian’s reconstruction of Jerusalem is also described in other Late Antique sources. The Chronicon Paschale, for example, speaks of the construction of public bathhouses (δημόσια).62 There are no rabbinic allusions to the story 58.  See Stephen Gero, ‘Jewish Polemic in the Martyrium Pionii and a “Jesus” Passage from the Talmud’, JJS 29 (1978), pp. 164-68; Thierry Murcia, ‘B. Giṭṭin 56b–57a: L’épisode talmudique de Titus, Balaam et Yeshu en Enfer – Jésus et l’insolite châtiment de l’excrément bouillant’, REJ 173 (2014), pp. 15-40. 59.  Timothy and Aquila 40.18. See Pastis, Representation of Jews and Judaism, p. 122. This passage should be reckoned among the many instances of Late Antique Christian sources which portray Jewish priests in positions of authority. 60.  Timothy and Aquila 49.31-33 (ed.  Varner, pp.  260-61); cf.  40.8-13 (ed.  Varner, pp. 232-33)­. 61.  Timothy and Aquila 40.13 (ed. Varner, pp. 232-33). 62.  Chronicon Paschale (PG 92, p. 613). Rabbinic tradition attributes to Aquila a midrashic interpretation of the Hebrew syntax of Genesis 1:1 (bereshit bara elohim)—literally, ‘In the beginning created God’. Aquila takes the position of God’s name in the verse, following the verb and not at the beginning of the sentence, to be an expression of divine humility, in contrast to the hubris of earthly kings. In Genesis Rabba 1:12 (ed. Theodor and Albeck, pp. 10-11) we read: Rabbi Yudan in the name of Aquila: It is fitting to call this one ‘God’. In common practice, a king of flesh and blood is praised in a city even before he builds them public baths (δημόσια)…. But the Holy One, blessed be he, is not like that, but rather only after creating necessities for his world does he mention his name: ‘In the beginning created’, and then ‘God’.

Resisting temptation to speculate about a connection between this passage and Aquila’s reported role as supervisor of the reconstruction of Jerusalem, I take the affinity, for now, to be no more than a happy coincidence.



THE DIALOGUE IN LIGHT OF JEWISH SOURCES141

of Jewish slaves sold in the market of Hebron, but there are several traditions which offer a Jewish version and interpretation of what Hadrian did with the stones of the Temple. The first is found in a late midrash on the book of Lamentations known only from the Cairo Geniza and later Yemenite manuscripts. There we read: ‘There is a city whose trees and stones fall within it, and it may be easily rebuilt, but this one (= Jerusalem) is “exiled and disdained” [Isaiah  49:21], even its stones have been exiled from it, and they built them in defiled places, in bathhouses, thus it says “exiled and disdained”’. 63 The second passage is from Deuteronomy Rabbah, in which Hadrian’s destruction of the Temple is interpreted in the spirit of Ecclesiastes, but with an encouraging eschatological conclusion that constitutes a nice counterpoint to the finality of the Christian sources:64 ‘“A time to cast away stones” [Ecclesiastes 3:5]—Rabbi Tanhuma said: What is “a time to cast away stones”? A time when Hadrian will come and scatter the stones of the Temple. “A time to gather stones together”—a time when the Holy One, blessed be He, will build them’. In the final analysis, one of the great ironies of adversus Iudaeos dialogues is that the very compositions which purport to give voice to the Jews are the ones expressly designed to silence them. They are, for obvious reasons, not a terribly good place to learn about what Jews say or think, and for that we must turn to the Jews themselves. This paper was devoted in large measure to seeking dialogical connections between the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila on the one hand and the evidence of contemporary Jewish literature on the other. Indeed, we found a few such connections, but it is no less important to acknowledge the distance that exists between the discursive worlds of Jews and Christians in conflict in Late Antiquity. By and large they are, quite literally, not on the same page.

63.  The text was published by Myron B. Lerner, ‘New Homilies for the Ninth of Av’, in Moshe Carmeli and Haim Lif (eds.), Samuel Belkin Memorial Volume (New York, 1981), pp. 84-107; the cited passage appears on p. 103 (in Hebrew). See Menahem Kister, ‘Metamorphoses of Aggadic Traditions’, Tarbiz 60 (1991), pp. 199-201 (in Hebrew). 64. Deuteronomy Rabbah, Ekev 13 (ed.  S.  Lieberman [Jerusalem, 1992], p.  89); cf. standard versions of Deuteronomy Rabbah 3,13. See Oded Irshai, ‘Constantine and the Jews: The Prohibition Against Entering Jerusalem—History and Hagiography’, Zion 60 (1995), pp. 130-31 (in Hebrew).

SHAMING AN OPPONENT IN DEBATE: THE POLEMICAL USE OF EMOTIONS IN SOME ANTI-JEWISH DIALOGUES* Yannis Papadogiannakis Abstract: Ancient debates were events in which not only rational arguments were exchanged but in which emotions were expected to and did run high. While this may seem obvious, despite a growing body of literature on dialogue and debate in Late Antiquity,1 there has been very little attention paid to the role various emotions play in these events.2 As well as providing arguments and settexts for the defining and promotion of a religious view, both real debates and their literary representation were meant to persuade their audiences. Participants/ protagonists (and the authors of these texts) used a wide range of rhetorical techniques to win the argument and these involved among other things an active use of and appeal to emotions. It is therefore important, especially in the absence of scholarly interest on this topic, to show why emotions matter in the study of polemics and why they must no longer go unnoticed. Anti-Jewish dialogues offer the opportunity to explore the use of emotions and their impact on strategies of persuasion. From the rich emotional repertoire in evidence, shame stands out.

In the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila,3 the dialogue begins with an emotive scene that sets the tone for the debate: And the Christian arose and began to talk. He then bowed his head toward the east, made the sign and wept as he said the following: ‘In the beginning   The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the European Research Council, which funded the research for this contribution with a Starting Grant for the project ‘Defining Belief and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Role of Interreligious Debate and Disputation’. 1.  Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1995); Simon Goldhill (ed.), The End of Dialogue in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008); Averil Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (Washington DC, 2014); Averil Cameron and Robert Hoyland (eds.), Doctrine and Debate in the East Christian World, 300-1500 (Farnham, 2011). 2.  For a notable and welcome exception dealing with the expression of non-verbal communication of emotions (anger, defiance, pride), see Thomas Graumann, ‘Upstanding Donatists: Symbolic Communication at the Conference of Carthago (411)’, Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 15 (2011), pp. 329-55. 3.  Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila 4.7, p.  146 in William Varner, Ancient JewishChristian Dialogues: Athanasius and Zacchaeus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila: Introductions, Texts, and Translations (Lewiston NY, 2004). For a study of the argumentation that does not involve a study of emotions, see J. Pastis, Representation of *

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God made the heaven and the earth’. And when the hearers saw him stand up, they were pierced greatly in their heart. So they also arose and in the same way and bowed their own heads. All said in one voice, ‘There is one God’.4

In the verbal sparring that ensues the Jew is taunting the Christian to overcome a series of challenges. The dramatis personae of the dialogue, however, remain undeveloped compared with other contemporary dialogues such as the Trophies of Damascus. Throughout the dialogue there are many instances where emotions are running high and there are heated exchanges all building to a humiliating defeat of the Jew, which involves reducing him to silence or aporetic paralysis. The tone is set early on in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, where the reader is confronted with the following statement: ‘The Christian said: When you call Him the Almighty God, the one who speaks through you then is put to shame.’5 The author of the dialogue is evoking an emotion: shame. On the face of it, this emotion might seem out of place. But is it? Shaming one’s opponent or reducing them to what was almost certainly an often humiliating silence was a tactic widely used in early Christian literature. While this tactic was intimately associated with an emotion this connection between the two, however, has not been properly appreciated or examined.6 The fourth-century historian Socrates notes that Marcellus was asked by bishops who had convened in Jerusalem ‘that Marcellus, as a priest, should give an account of the book which he had written. Finding that he entertained Paul of Samosata’s sentiments, they required him to retract his opinion; and he being thoroughly ashamed of himself, promised to burn his book.’7 The Christian heresiologist Epiphanius, when referring to the sect of the Adamians, aims to put them to shame by exposing and ridiculing their beliefs: It is not worth my while to make a big thing of their refutation. To kill a beast of their sort one does not need weapons of war or heavy armour; it is dispatched with little stick. Often, when it has been pulled from its den Jews and Judaism in the “Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila”: Construct or Social Reality? (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1994). 4.  Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila 4.10-12. 5.  Ὁ Χριστιανός εἶπεν·ἐν τῷ ὀνομάσαι σε τὸν παντοκράτορα θεὸν νῦν κατῃσχύνθη ὁ λαλῶν διὰ σοῦ (1.3-4, p. 142 Varner). 6.  On this tactic based on laughing one’s opponent down see Susanna Elm, ‘Laughter in Christian Polemics’, Studia Patristica 63 (2013), pp. 195-202. This tactic is also attested in western medieval literature, see the introduction by Werner Röcke and Hans Rudolf Velten (eds.), Lachgemeinschaften: Kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale Wirkungen von Gelächter im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2005), pp. 9-31. 7. Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 1.36.22, ed. G.C. Hansen (GCS N.F. 1; Berlin, 1995).



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it is merely left alone and dies of its own accord, an object of jeers and ridicule with nowhere to run to. And when these people are caught they too are put utterly to shame by their ridiculous absurdity, unseemly behaviour and silly religion.8

In a more detailed account Epiphanius presents a debate between Mani and a Christian presbyter Trypho, who answered Mani’s questions point by point until the Christian bishop Archelaus showed up to protect his flock and take on Mani: At early morning Mani came into the middle of the village pretending to challenge Trypho to debate as a colleague. And after Trypho had made his appearance, and with his God-given understanding had answered Mani’s questions point by point to the fraud’s discomfiture—[though] somewhat softly where he felt doubtful—Archelaus turned up like a powerful householder protecting his property, confidently attacked the would-be plunderer, and took him to task. As soon as Mani saw Archelaus he said, with fawning hypocrisy, ‘Allow me to debate with Trypho. Since a bishop you outrank me’. But along with the refutation of the remark Archelaus silenced Mani by exposing him as an [even] greater hypocrite, and again put him to shame (εἰς αἰσχύνην αὐτόν κατέστησεν) by answering his arguments, so that he could say nothing further (ἀπεφίμωσεν [...] μηκέτι δυνάμενον διαίρειν στόμα). And the people once more grew angry and tried to lay hands on the offender. He however escaped the mob and once more to Fort Arabio.9

The stakes are higher in this public setting this time as the debate becomes a zero-sum competition for popular allegiance. The use of shame here brings into play the reputation and social standing of Mani and his religious group and helps develop/reinforce the group cohesion to which individuals felt bound as they rallied behind their religious leader. In Ps. Mark the Deacon’s Life of Porphyry, where the public debate between a Christian and a group of Manicheans is framed in the intensity of a collective ritualised gathering, the victory brought about through divine intervention, through the prayer of Christians, caused Julia, the leader of the Manichean party, ‘to tremble and to change her appearance, and remained outside her body for almost an hour. She did not speak but she was voiceless (ἄφωνος) and motionless (ἀκίνητος), having eyes which 8. Epiphanius, Panarion 3.6, eds. K.  Holl and J.  Dummer (GCS  25; Berlin, 1980). Translation by F. Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, 2 vols. (2nd ed.; Leiden, 2009). On the use of shame by Epiphanius see Blossom Stefaniw, ‘Straight Reading: Shame and the Normal in Epiphanius’s Polemic Against Origen’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 21.3 (2013), pp. 413-35 with a different emphasis. 9. Epiphanius, Panarion 3.33.4, ed.  Holl, trans. Williams. For a discussion of this episode in Acts of Archelaus, see Lim, Public Disputation, pp. 76-78.

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were open and fixated on the most holy bishop. Those who were with her, seeing what happened, were very afraid.’10 Similar emotions are registered in what is probably a recollection of a debate between an unnamed pagan and a Christian bishop Macarios, in the Apocriticus from the last third of the fourth century.11 The author punctuates his work with the reactions of the audience to the pagan’s formidable rhetorical dexterity, which are described thus: He [the pagan], then, began to roll out the plumed crests of Attic oratory for us, so that for a little while even this most competent crowd was disturbed, as they watched a fearful windbag full of arrogance. In this, therefore, he frightened us, as if he was charging quickly down a hill since he was shaking from the force of his tongue.12

In another turn of the debate the pagan opponent seeks to humiliate and deride his Christian opponent before a crowd of distinguished people: ‘When a crowd had again been gathered, and not a small one but one that was very large and full of exceedingly distinguished people, as if having resolved of set purpose to embarrass us in the sight of important persons, [the Hellene], with much laughter, tore apart the apostolic way of thinking.’13 The result of the pagan opponent’s attack on Christianity is summed up by the Christian interlocutor thus: After such a refined and forceful speech, the entire audience that was present cowered, and the senses of the noble people were completely humbled. But we, seeing the rule of the New Covenant dragged through the mud in this way, were stung in our mind and sick in our soul and all the senses of our body were agitated, so that we could almost have said, ‘Lord save us, we are perishing’.14

The fifth-century historian Philostorgius gives us in his Church History a glimpse of this process, at its most arresting and most lethal, where he describes the potentially devastating effects of being put to shame by being reduced to silence: He made his way to Anazarbus in Cilicia, where he again practiced his trade to earn a living, while continuing to debate with those he met. Now a certain grammarian who admired his talent decided to share his art with 10.  Vita Porphyrii 90, eds. H. Grégoire and M.-A. Kugener, p. 70, cited by Lim, Public Disputation, p. 86. 11.  Macarios de Magnésie, Le monogénès (Apocriticus), ed. R. Goulet (Textes et traditions 7; Paris, 2003). Also Makarios Magnes, Apokritikos, ed. U. Volp (TU 169; Berlin, 2013). 12.  Apokritikos 3.prologue.2 (ed.  Volp). All translations are from Jeremy M.  Schott and Mark Edwards, Macarius, Apocriticus: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Translated Texts for Historians; Liverpool, 2015), p. 105. 13.  Apokritikos 4.prologue (ed. Volp); Schott and Edwards, trans. pp. 204-205. 14.  Apokritikos 4.10.4, (ed. Volp); Schott and Edwards, trans. p. 213.



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him, so Aetius moved in with him and worked for him at menial tasks. And while he willingly taught him grammar, there came a time when Aetius demonstrated publicly that his teacher had misinterpreted the sacred scriptures, covering him with shame at his ignorance of such matters (πολλὴν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἐπ’ ἀμαθείᾳ τῶν τοιούτων αἰσχύνην καταχεάμενος); his reward was to be turned out of his benefactor’s house. After his rejection he fell in with Athanasius, who had been one of the disciples of the martyr Lucian but was not bishop of Anazarbus. […] And a Borborian engaged him in debate concerning his own doctrine and utterly defeated him, at which he sank so low in spirits that he thought life not worth living, since he had seen falsehood prevail over truth. But when Aetius was in this mood, a vision came to him, so our author blathers, that dissipated his dejection and showed him in signs the invincibility of the wisdom that would now be his. From then on it was given to Aetius to be defeated by no one in debate. Shortly thereafter, in fact, one Aphthnonius, a leader of the Manichaean maniacs who was held in high renown by many for his wisdom and prowess in speech, tangled with him in Alexandria in Egypt, for Aetius, drawn by his reputation, came from Antioch to meet him. When they came to grips with each other, no lengthy debate ensued, for Aetius reduced Aphthonius to silence (εἰς ἀφωνίαν συνελάσας) and brought him down from great fame to great shame (ἐκ μεγάλης δόξης εἰς μεγάλην αἰσχύνην κατήνεγκεν). So dejected was he by his unexpected defeat that he fell gravely ill and in the end died; his body did not survive the blow more than seven days.15

This account captures very well the extreme sensitivity toward offences against one’s dignity and esteem in the eyes of one’s fellow citizens and not least coreligionists. The impact and effects of shaming into silence (often in public) are no doubt consistent with a society that placed a high value on public honour and reputation.16 It is worth noting that the term used consistently for shame is αἰσχύνη, not αἰδώς. While both terms denote shame in Greek, they have different connotations. Αἰδώς means reverence, awe, respect ‘an inhibitory emotion based on sensitivity to and protectiveness of one’s image’,17 but ‘the term does not normally designate the feeling of shame for acts committed’. On the other hand, αἰσχύνη, while at times overlapping with αἰδώς, means shame through 15. Philostorgius, Hist. eccl.  3.15, eds. J.  Bidez and F.  Winkelmann (GCS  21; 2nd ed. rev.; Berlin, 1972); Philostorgius, Hist. eccl. 3.15, trans. by P.R. Amidon (Atlanta GA, 2007), pp. 53-54. On this episode see also Lim, Public Disputation, pp. 87-88 emphasizing the power of rational arguments. 16.  The most important study of honour and shame in ancient Greece is by Douglas L.  Cairns, Aidōs: the Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek ­Literature (Oxford, 1993). For the Roman period see Carlin A.  Barton, Roman Honor: the Fire in the Bones (Berkeley CA–London, 2001). 17. Cairns, Aidōs, p. 2. See also the discussion by David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto–London, 2006), pp. 91-110, esp. p. 94.

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dishonour and ‘is a sentiment induced by public disapprobation.’18 Closer to our period the second century grammarian Ammonius, who wrote a treatise on differences between similar words, confirms this distinction.19 In a face-to-face society this shaming process almost certainly meant and led to loss of standing and esteem and to social exclusion.20 A dialogue contemporary to the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila bears this out. The author of a contemporary dialogue the Trophies of Damascus21 plays precisely into the readers’ expectation of shaming and humiliating one’s opponents in a debate. Here the mise en scène is more developed and nuanced, providing us with an opportunity to see in greater detail what is only alluded to or left implicit in the considerably drier/reticent Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila. In the Trophies of Damascus the author punctuates his dialogue with episodes in which the Jews are consistently made to feel frustrated, ‘pinned’, annoyed, or constrained,22 and ultimately reduced to silence and put to shame.23 Here the Jews are not only shamed into silence but laughed down and humiliated by their defeat.24 This seems to accord well with the ‘­unusually 18. Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, p. 94. See also Philipp Steger, ‘Die Scham in der griechisch-römische Antike. Eine philosophie-historische Bestand­ aufnahme von Homer bis zum Neuen Testament’, in Rolf Kühn, Michael Raub, and Michael Titze (eds.), Scham – ein menschliches Gefühl: Kulturelle, psychologische und philosophische Perspektiven (Opladen, 1997), pp. 57-73. A similar treatment of the role of shame in Greek Late Antiquity is missing. 19.  αἰδὼς καὶ αἰσχύνη διαφέρει, ὅτι ἡ μὲν αἰδώς ἐστιν ἐντροπὴ πρὸς ἕκαστον ὧν σεβασμίως τις ἔχει, αἰσχύνη δ’ ἐφ’ οἷς ἕκαστος ἁμαρτὼν αἰσχύνεται ὡς μὴ δέον τι πράξας. Καὶ αἰδεῖται μέν τις τὸν πατέρα, αἰσχύνεται δὲ ὃς μεθύσκεται, De adfinium vocabulorum differentia 17, p. 4 ed. K. Nickau (Leipzig, 1966). 20.  It is mostly Western medievalists who have pointed out and argued on the ways in which laughing at heretics was a tactic of social exclusion. On this see Thomas Scharff, ‘Lachen über die Ketzer. Religiöse Devianz und Gelächter im Hochmittelalter’, in Röcke and Velten (eds.), Lachgemeinschaften, pp. 17-32. 21.  Les trophées de Damas: controverse judéo-chrétienne du VIIe siècle, ed. G. Bardy (PO 15, fasc. 2; Paris, 1920) all subsequent references are to this edition. 22.  Ἐστενώθη ὁ ἰουδαῖος καὶ εἶπεν, Trophies 4.3, p.  202; Τότε ὁ ἰουδαῖος στενάξας εἶπεν· οἶδεν ὁ θεὸς ἄνθρωπε, τί ἀντιθεῖναί σοι· οὐκ οἶδα. Καὶ ἐμὲ μὲν ἀπέκλεισας, Trophies 7.2, p. 214; Ἐπὶ ἱκανὴν οὖν ὥραν μὴ γινώσκοντες τί πρόσφορον ἀποκριθῆναι οἱ ἰουδαῖοι λέγουσιν·, Trophies 5.1, p. 244. 23.  Ὁ Χριστιανὸς ἐκ στόματος ἰουδαίου καταισχῦναι αὐτόν βουλόμενος ἠρώτησεν οὕτως, Trophies, Διάλεξις β΄.6.1, p. 227; Ὁ χριστιανὸς καταισχῦναι αὐτοὺς εἰς τέλος διὰ τῆς ἀληθείας βουλόμενος, ἐδευτέρωσε καὶ ἐτρίσσωσε τὸν λόγον, καὶ τὸν λαὸν ὅλον διεμαρτύρατο, καὶ τότε εἶπεν, Trophies 6 [3] p.  246; Πάλιν σύνοδος, καὶ πολύ γε τῶν προτέρων σφοδροτέρα ἅτε τῆς φήμης διαδραμούσης, καὶ τῆς ὡρισμένης ἡμέρας προμηνυθείσης, πάλιν παράταξις, πάλιν ἡ ἐκκλησία νικᾷ, πάλιν ὄχλος, πάλιν ἰουδαῖοι αἰσχύνονται, πάλιν ἀναδεύονται, Trophies 10.4, p. 260. 24.  Καταισχυνθέντες οὖν, καὶ μὴ εὑρόντες τι εἰπεῖν, λέγουσι τῷ χριστιανῷ· τί ἀπλῶς προσδοκᾷς χριστιανοὺς ποιῆσαι ἡμᾶς? Τότε ὁ παρὼν λαὸς ἐγέλασεν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς, θεωρῶν τὴν ἀπορίαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν ἧτταν διὰ Χριστοῦ γεναμένην, Trophies, Διάλεξις β΄.8.1, p. 233.



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sustained, obsessive sensitivity to this and related forms of “laughing down,”’25 that has been found to an exceptional degree reflected across the entire spectrum of public discourse in Ancient Greece. To heighten the drama, the author of the dialogue pits one emotional community against the other, contrasting the consternation and the ridicule of the Jews, who struggle to wriggle themselves out of the syllogistic trap ‘like dogs in a trap’, with the delight that their interlocutor and his community take in the Jews’ consternation/distress and his victory. Having cornered his interlocutors, the Christian then taunts them to overcome the issue in hand before moving on to other debating points.26 The Trophies of Damascus builds to this climactic finale of loss of face: Having heard these and more, the Jews were ashamed, stood still, were gagged, shaken, agitated, embarrassed, [reduced] to aporia, blushed, changed, hastened [to leave], they did not stay around, they stormed out as if chased by fire, they bumped into each other like drunkards, all their wisdom dissipated, they all departed, some in silence, others whispering, some sighing and some saying: Adonai, the priest has won. Some shaking their heads were saying to each other: ‘By Law, I think we are in error’. Some elderly said ridiculous things such as: Abala! We have deprived ourselves of so much pork for nothing! Some from then on became friends with Christians, others wait for the right time/opportunity to be baptised, those dearest to me came to the church in all sincerity and in truth and received the seal [of the baptism] and defend without defeat their teachings [their faith] against the Jews.27 25.  Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter: a Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (New York, 2008), p. 33. On derision in Byzantium, see Paul Magdalino, ‘Tourner en dérision à Byzance’, in Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Jacques Verger (eds.), La dérision au Moyen Âge: de la pratique sociale au rituel politique [Actes de la journée d’études «Pratiques de la dérision au Moyen Age», Paris-Sorbonne, 29 novembre 2003] (Paris, 2007), pp. 55-72 focusing primarily on some episodes illustrating shaming practices. On laughing down an opponent in debate in Western Middle Ages see Gerd Althoff, ‘Vom Lächeln zum Verlachen’, in Röcke and Velten (eds.), Lachgemeinschaften, pp. 3-16. 26.  Ἐκείνων οὖν στενωθέντων καὶ δίκην κυνῶν ἐκ παγίδος ἐκ τοῦ προκειμένου συλλογισμοῦ ἐξειλῆσαι ἀγωνιζομένων, καὶ ἀκαίρους ῥαψολογοῦντας ζητήσεις, ὁ χριστιανὸς ἀγαλλόμενος καὶ πάντες οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν ἰουδαίων στενοχωρίᾳ φησίν· εἰς αὐτὸ σταθῶμεν ἀδελφοὶ, τὸ προκείμενον λύσατε, καὶ τότε πρὸς ἄλλο μεταβαίνομεν ζήτημα’, Trophies 5.1, p. 243. 27.  Ταῦτα καὶ τούτων ἕτερα ἀκούσαντες οἱ ἰουδαῖοι ᾐσχύνθησαν, ἡσύχασαν, ἐφιμώθησαν, ἐσαλεύθησαν, ἐσκοτίσθησαν, ἠπόρησαν, ἠρυθρίασαν, ἠλλοιώθησαν, ἔσπευσαν, οὐκ ἀνέμειναν, ἔφυγον ὡς ὑπὸ πυρός διωκόμενοι, συνέπεσαν ὡς μεθύοντες, πᾶσα ἡ σοφία αὐτῶν κατεπόθη, οἴχοντο ἅπαντες οἱ σιωπήσαντες, οἱ δὲ ὑπογγύζοντες, ἄλλοι στενάζοντες, ἕτεροι καὶ λέγοντες· Ἀδοναῒ, ὁ ἀββᾶς ἐνίκησεν; ἄλλοι τὴν κεφαλὴν σείοντες, πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔλεγον·μὰ τὸν νόμον, νομίζω πλανώμεθα. Γηραλαιότεροι δέ τινες καὶ γελοίου ἐφθέγγοντο ῥήματα πρὸς ἀλλήλους λέγοντες·ἀβάλα πόσων χοιραίων ἐστερήθημεν. Τινὲς μὲν ἐκ τότε φίλοι ἀντ’ἐχθροῖς τοῖς χριστιανοῖς γεγόνασι· ἄλλοι καιροσκοποῦσιν, ἐκδεχόμενοι προσελθεῖν τῷ βαπτίσματι, ἐξ ὧν οἱ ἐμοὶ προσφιλεῖς, καὶ

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This tactic was not confined to purported or staged accounts of public debates. In his dialogue on Christology Eranistes, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, toward the end of the work and after a barrage of citations in support of the Orthodox’ position, has the opponent make a humiliating acknowledgement: ‘I have listened with amazement, and I am deeply ashamed that our ideas have been seen as to be more avoided than even this man’s innovation.’28 Similarly, in the sixth-century Debate of Photinus the Manichean and Paul the Persian, which purports to be a transcript of three disputations held in Constantinople at the command of the Emperors Justin I and Justinian I, 29 the Manichaean opponent after intense exchanges with his Christian interlocutor is repeatedly reduced to silence.30 Entire collections often containing either elaborately constructed questions only or questions and answers (erotapokriseis) circulated in Late Antiquity with the explicit aim of reducing the opponent to aporetic paralysis and thus humiliation. One example from the fourth century is the Syntagmation of Aetius,31 a collection of arguments in the form of short deductive proofs echoing something an opponent might be presumed to say, which were employed as ‘withering retorts with which the student is to stop the mouth of his adversaries.’32 The extent of this process of shaming one’s opponent in the process of debate can be shown by a recent discovery by Dr Barbara Roggema of a dialogue in manuscript form between Christians and Jews in Arabic.33 τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ προσήλθασιν εἰλικρινῶς καὶ ἀληθινῶς, καὶ τὴν σφραγίδα δεξάμενοι, καὶ κατὰ ἰουδαίων ἀηττήτως δογματίζουσιν. Trophies 7.1, pp. 274-75. The Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo 21.1 has a similar ending. For the text and a discussion of the relationship between the Trophies of Damascus and the Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo see Immacolata Aulisa and Claudio Schiano, Dialogo di Papisco e Filone: giudei con un monaco: testo, traduzione e commento (Bari, 2005), pp. 299-343. 28.  Dialogue 3.73, p. 247. Trans. Ettlinger. 29.  PG 88, 529A-551C. On this debate see Lim, Public Disputation, pp. 105-106 and the entry by Byard Bennett, ‘Paul the Persian’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www. iranicaonline.org/articles/paul-the-persian. 30.  PG 88, 533D, 536C, 537D, 545D, 549D. 31. For the Greek text with an English translation and commentary see Lionel R. Wickham, ‘“Syntagmation” of Aetius the Anomean’, JTS n.s. 19 (1968), pp. 532-69. For other collections, see Vincent Déroche, ‘La polémique anti-Judaïque au VIe et au VIIe siècle. Un memento inédit, les kephalaia,’ TM 11 (1991), pp. 275-311. Translated into English by Pieter W. van der Horst, ‘Twenty-five Questions to Corner the Jews: a Byzantine ­Anti-Jewish Document from Seventh Century’, in Esther G. Chazon, David Satran, and Ruth Clements (eds.), Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian L ­ iterature in Honor of Michael E. Stone (Leiden, 2004), pp. 289-302; Leontius of Jerusalem: against the Monophysites, ed. P.T.R. Gray (Oxford, 2006). 32.  Wickham, ‘“Syntagmation” of Aetius’, p. 133. 33.  MS Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana – X201sup, fols 214v–227r. The dialogue which is in the process of publication by Dr. Roggema has no title and has been provisionally/ tentatively dated by her to the 8/10 c.CE.



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The dialogue is set in the city of Homs in western Syria. The Jews of Homs had been put to shame in earlier debates with a Christian named Abū Isḥāq. They wrote to Damascus for help and the Damascene Jews sent them their most eminent expert in interreligious disputations. The Jews of Homs told this expert to only debate with the Christians on the condition that ‘the one who triumphs over his debating partner will put a pack-saddle on him and a saddle-ring and a halter, after which a young slave belonging to his religion will mount him and ride with him around Homs and all of its alleys and market squares.’34A similar punishment is meted out to the iatrosophist Gesios by the saints in the early seventhcentury collection of miracles of Saint Cyrus and John recorded by the patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius.35 Gesios who has been forced to convert to Christianity and had been ridiculing the saints for the cures that they were prescribing and had been taunting them to prove their superiority to Greek medicine, was suffering from pains in the back and sought the saints’ help. Cyrus and John responded by prescribing a cure-punishment: ‘By declaring that you are wise you have been proven rather a fool; fetch the pack-saddle of an ass and wear it over your pain-ridden shoulders ... and at midday walk around the church shouting aloud: “I am a stupid fool” and when you have done this, as we have said, your body will be immediately restored to health’. Gesios incredulous refused to follow the treatment and the saints appearing to him for the second time asked Gesios together with the pack-saddle to wear a large bell around his neck. In their third appearance to Gesios the saints required him to wear a horse’s bit in his mouth and to be pulled around the church by one of his servants while wearing the pack-saddle and the large bell, and shouting: “I am a fool”. When Gesios complied with their request he was cured of his ailments. This is obviously a variation of a public shaming ritual of humiliation that had an ancient pedigree. Similar rituals have been traced back to Plutarch who, in his Moralia 291e-f, refers to the custom of the Cumaens who punished any woman taken in adultery by mounting her on a donkey and leading around the city. Closer to our period, Procopius of Caesarea mentions that ‘in the year 426 AD the government of Valentinian III punished the usurper John by cutting off 34.  [= fol. 215a]. I wish to thank Dr Roggema for sharing this précis with me. 35.  Los Thaumata de Sofronio: contribución al estudio de la incubatio Cristiana, ed. N. Fernández Marcos (Madrid, 1975), pp. 302-306, miracle 30. See also Harry John Magoulias, ‘The Lives of the Saints as Sources of Data for the History of Byzantine Medicine in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries’, BZ 57 (1964), pp. 127-50, at p. 130. Commentary by Jean Gascou, Miracles des saints Cyr et Jean (BHGI 477-479) / Sophrone de Jérusalem (Paris, 2006), pp. 101-107.

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his hands and parading him on a donkey in the hippodrome of Aquileia before execution.’36 Theophanes in his Chronicle, written in the first quarter of the 9th century, states that in 742 AD the iconoclastic Byzantine emperor, Constantine V, ordered the false patriarch, Anastasius, to be led into the hippodrome where he was publicly whipped, then mounted and paraded naked, seated backwards on an ass. This practice continued in various forms well into the high middle ages, as the case of the emperor Andronicus I Comnenus, who after his fall in 1185 was paraded through the streets of Constantinople and to the hippodrome seated on a mangy camel37 before he was torn to pieces by the mob, shows.38 These references to a humiliating ride (often backwards) in the eighth century suggest that it may already have been a well-established and understood custom.39 Anastasios of Sinai The tactic of shaming an opponent in a debate is not only seen in literary works such as the dialogues but, is explicitly prescribed in the form of guidelines by someone who had witnessed and participated in many public debates. The seventh-century author Anastasios of Sinai in his collection of questions and answers that reflect the issues that exercised his coreligionists is called upon to respond to the following inquiry: ‘is  there not some method or other by which an uneducated person may confute the heretic?’40 In his response Anastasios recounts the arguments from a debate that was held in Alexandria, rehearsing the winning 36.  Ruth Mellinkoff, ‘Riding Backwards: Theme of Humiliation and Symbol of Evil’, Viator 4 (1973), pp. 153-86, at 154. Halliwell, Greek Laughter, p. 179, esp. n. 73, with bibliography. 37.  ‘To be paraded on camel-back through the city was a common punishment, the height of the animal providing visibility and its awkward stride inflicting exquisite humiliation on those accustomed (in the west) to showing their status by riding on horseback.’ In R. Bagnall, ‘Camels’, in G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: a Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge MA–London, 1999), pp.  360-61, at p.  361. For the humiliation of Andronicus I Comnenus, see also entry ‘Camels’ by Alice Mary Talbot, and Anthony Cutler, in A.P. Kazhdan (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 1 (Oxford, 1991), p. 368. 38.  For discussion of this episode see Magdalino, ‘Tourner en dérision à Byzance’, pp. 64-66. 39.  For more evidence mainly from the Western Middle Ages see the collection of essays in Bénédicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer (eds.), Shame between Punishment and Penance: The Social Usages of Shame in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Micrologus Library, 54; Florence, 2013). 40.  Q. 69, in Anastasius of Sinai, Quaestiones et responsiones, ed. by M. Richard and J.A. Munitiz (CCSG 59; Turnhout, 2006), pp. 121-22.



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a­ rgument of the orthodox Christian; he concludes his response by noting: ‘on hearing these things the heretics retired put to shame.’41 The evidence from Anastasios is particularly important as he was a consummate controversialist and his works suggest he was involved in debates with Monophysites, Monotheletes and Muslims in Alexandria and elsewhere.42 This experience is reflected across his writings but nowhere more clearly than in his Hodegos (Dux Viae), which contains notes from public discussions and guidelines for conducting a debate.43 On numerous occasions Anastasios spells out methods and guidelines for putting the interlocutors to shame emphasising that heretics and infidels are more forcefully put to shame by factual information.44 Anastasius refers to one occasion of ‘Wishing to pillory the malice and the poison that are hidden in their soul not just by words or from the scripture but by examples and a concrete sign by which having been sufficiently shamed they felt ashamed.’45 Elsewhere in the same work Anastasius recalls his debates with heretics: ‘having thus argued against them in Alexandria, the heretics could not defend themselves against us but were put to shame.’46 In describing the tactic of cornering an opponent with

41.  Translation in Anastasios of Sinai, Questions and Answers, trans. by J.A. Munitiz (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 184-86. 42.  Sidney H.  Griffith, ‘Anastasios of Sinai, the Hodegos and the Muslims’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 32 (1987), pp. 341-58. 43.  Anastasii Sinaitae Dux Viae, ed.  K.-H.  Uthemann (CCSG  8; Leuven, 1981). According to the editor K.H. Uthemann, the Hodegos is a defense of the Chalcedonian creed, which the author put together from his earliest writings consisting of ‘sections of treatises, the initial part of a letter, accounts of public discussions and two smaller dossiers as well as other material which Anastasius inserted as supplement or appendix. It was to serve as a guide for those dedicated to the defense of the true faith, ευσέβεια, against the heretics, in particular against the Monophysites […] hence the name “Hodegos”, “signpost” or “guide along the right path” which probably was ascribed to the work and does not belong to Anastasius himself ’. In ‘Anastasius the Sinaite’, in Angelo di Berardino (ed.), Patrology: the Eastern Fathers from the Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus (+750), trans. by Adrian Walford (Cambridge, 2006), pp.  313-31, at pp.  313-14. For a fuller study of the nature of the Hodegos see Karl-Heinz Uthemann, Anastasios Sinaites: Byzantinisches Christentum in den ersten Jahrzehnten unter Arabi­ scher Herrschaft, 2 vols. (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte; Berlin, 2015), vol. 1, pp. 17-275. 44.  Hodegos (Dux Viae) 12.1.21-22, p. 202: Οὐκοῦν διὰ πραγμάτων μᾶλλον ἰσχυροτέρως καταισχύνονται οἱ αἱρετικοί καὶ ἄπιστοι. 45.  Hodegos (Dux Viae) 12.3.4-9, p. 204: … βουλόμενοι ἡμεῖς τὸν δόλον καὶ τὸν ἰὸν τὸν κεκρυμμένον ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτῶν στηλιτεῦσαι οὐκέτι ῥηματικῶς καὶ γραφικῶς πρὸς αὐτοὺς παρεταξάμεθα, ἀλλὰ πραγματικῶς διὰ παραδείγματος καὶ σχήματος ἐνυποστάτου, ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἱκανῶς καταισχυνθέντες ἐνετράπησαν. 46.  Hodegos (Dux Viae) 22.4.70-72, p. 303: Σχόλιον: Τούτῳ τῷ τρόπῳ δογματισάντων ἡμῶν ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ οὐκ ἴσχυσαν ὅλως ἀπολογήσασθαι τίποτε οἱ αἱρετικοὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀλλ’ᾐσχύνθησαν.

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aggressive questioning, in a manner anticipating a similar technique in Muslim kalām,47 he writes: Having been asked by us and [viz. the heretics] having been put to shame, the heretics say ‘Christ’s body died’. Again, we say to them ‘didn’t His soul die, […]’ They say ‘God forbid!’ Then jeering and sneering at them we say to them ‘Are you therefore not ashamed to say that his soul that was created by Him was impassible and immortal, while of Him who created it you say ‘Holy, impassible He who suffered and died for us’.48

In his study of interreligious debates, Sidney Griffith has noted that in these dialogues the reader(s) is invited to participate imaginatively with the narrator in a scenario in which a Christian has been asked to give an account of himself and his ways of faith, both to himself and to inquisitive interlocutors in a context that reflects with some verisimilitude the very religiously challenging milieu in which the reader actually lives. The narrative details furnish this scenario of verisimilitude; its social function, in the context of the story’s composition, extends well beyond simply a documentary purpose to an exemplary one.49

In light of this observation it is important to pay attention to the literary strategies and tactics for the manipulation of emotions that the authors of these highly orchestrated and choreographed literary artefacts employ and the aims that they pursue. Ultimately they tell us a lot about how these dynamics of collective and individual religious sentiment were cultivated, ingrained, and furthered with a view to promoting a specific religious view. This is why it mattered to the audiences of these debates (and the readers of the dialogue) whether someone had laughed or cried or grown suddenly silent as they recalled or debated particular a­ rguments/events. 47.  On the development of this method in Christian literature and its influence on Muslim techniques of argumentation, see Michael A. Cook, ‘The Origins of Kalām’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43 (1980), pp.  32-43. Jack Tannous, ‘Between Christology and Kalām? The Life and Letters of George, Bishop of the Arab Tribes’, in G. Kiraz (ed.), Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P.  Brock (Piscataway NJ, 2008), pp.  671-716; Alexander Treiger, ‘Origins of Kalām’, in Sabine Schmidtke (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology (Oxford, 2016), pp. 27-43; Yannis Papadogiannakis, ‘Christian kalām before Muslim kalām?’, in Yannis Papadogiannakis and Barbara Roggema (eds.), Patterns of Argumentation in Late Antiquity (forthcoming). 48.  Hodegos (Dux Viae) 12.3.24-34, pp. 205-206: ταῦτα ὑφ’ἡμῶν ἐρωτηθέντες ὁμοῦ καὶ ἐσχάτως αἰσχυνθέντες οἱ αἱρετικοὶ λέγουσι ‘Τὸ σῶμα ἀπέθανε τὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ’. Λέγομεν πάλιν πρὸς αὐτούς; ‘μὴ ἀπέθανε ἢ ἐνεκρώθη ἢ ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ?’ Λέγουσιν ἐκεῖνοι; ‘Μὴ γένοιτο’. Τότε δὴ διαπαίζοντες, καὶ μυκτηρίζοντες αὐτοὺς εἴπομεν; ‘Εἶτα οὐκ αἰσχύνεσθε, ὅτι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τὴν κτισθεῖσαν ὑπ’αὐτοῦ λέγετε ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἀθάνατον, τὸν δὲ κτίσαντα αὐτὴν θεὸν λόγον λέγετε “Ἅγιος, ἀθάνατος ὁ παθὼν καὶ ἀποθανὼν δι’ἡμᾶς”, ὑπὲρ τὰ κτίσματα καθυβρίζοντες τὸν κτίστην;’ 49.  Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton NJ, 2008), pp. 77-78.



SHAMING AN OPPONENT IN DEBATE155

These verbal contests were meant to provide as much vicarious joy, pleasure, agony, anxiety and shame for their audiences as for the readers of these literary artefacts, who were expected to share in the suspense of the contest between the interlocutors/opponents. Religious polemics as exemplified in anti-Jewish dialogues show how the concept of shame was instrumentalised in Late Antiquity. Shame was used to maintain and control social boundaries and sanction not only inappropriate behaviour but also, in a late antique religious context, beliefs. For Greeks and Romans, shame was a ‘vigorous emotional category […] fundamental to ancient behaviour.’50 Already in his Republic, Cicero had described citizens as seeking approbation and avoiding opprobrium and had summed up the social function of shame thus: ‘They are inhabited not so much by fear of the penalties ordained by law as by the sense of shame with which nature has endowed man as a certain dread of just censure […] Shame, no less effectively than fear restrains the citizens.’51 Not unlike ancient Greek and Roman societies, late antique society placed a high value on public honour and reputation.52 This attitude to honour and shame heightened the effects and impact of the loss of face or public disgrace through the infliction of humiliating derision, hence the wielding of shame’s public power against others. This tactic could only work or have the desired effects only if it was rooted in preoccupations that had general purchase on late antique ways of thinking.53 The social use of shame extended to holding the wrong/erroneous beliefs or those of another religion. As well as c­ oncerning the public space, shame in these accounts of debates concerns the reputation and social standing of the religious group (Adamians, Jews, Manichaeans, Muslims) and the way social relations are structured. In other words there is a direct correlation between the value of their beliefs and their social standing. If these beliefs are discredited, then so is the social standing of those who hold them. While the representation of these debates was almost 50. Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, p. 110. 51.  De republica 5.4, in Barton, Roman Honor, p. 19. 52.  Carlin A.  Barton, ‘The Roman Blush: The Delicate Matter of Self-Control’, in James I. Porter (ed.), Constructions of the Classical Body (Ann Arbor, 1999), pp. 212-34; Barton, Roman Honor. 53.  On the social use of shame see, for example, Laetitia Ciccolini, ‘Erubesce, Caro quae Christum Induisti! Honte et conversion chez Tertullien et Cyprien’, in Renaud Ale­ xandre, Charles Guérin, and Mathieu Jacotot (eds.), Rubor et Pudor: vivre et penser la honte dans la Rome ancienne (Paris, 2012), pp.  99-117. I am grateful to Dr Morlet for drawing my attention to this collection of essays. The study of Virginia Burrus, Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects (Philadelphia PA, 2008) pursues different emphases. Despite a growing number of isolated articles on various aspects of shame, a more general analysis is still missing.

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certainly fictional they are played off against broader cultural and social assumptions that were anything but fictional, if they were to be effective in the communication of their message and their attempt to persuade.54 By setting emotional standards that determined the condemned and condemnable acts and beliefs, ancient authors helped shape in turn a normative standard of the social and religious order that affected the reputation and social standing of both the religious group itself and those outside it.

54.  On the nature of anti-Jewish dialogues, their literary features and the problems in interpreting them, see the remarks by Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich, and Bernard Pouderon (eds.), Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos: permanences et mutations d’une tradition polémique. Actes du colloque international organisé les 7 et 8 décembre 2011 à l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris, 2013), pp. 7-18, and Sébastien Morlet, ‘Les dialogues adversus Iudaeos: origine, caractéristiques, référentialité’, in Morlet, Munnich, and Pouderon (eds.), Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos, pp.  21-45; V.  Déroche, ‘Forms and Functions of Anti-Jewish Polemics: Polymorphy, Polysemy’, in Robert Bonfil et al. (eds.), Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 14; Leiden, 2012), pp. 535-48.

2.  Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus contra Iudaeos

READING PETRUS ALFONSI BEFORE THE TALMUD TRIALS THE MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann – Darko Senekovic Abstract:  Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus (written ca. 1109) combines polemics against Judaism and Islam with an original apology of Christian faith. The author argues that Judaism is not rational, whereas Christianity and Islam are, and that Islam is basically immoral. He supports his case with aggadic stories from the Talmud, pieces of Arabic learning, and a description of Muslim religious practice, all of which were new to his readers in Western Europe. The work had an immediate success, as the 35 extant manuscripts written before the Talmud trials testify. This paper tries to discern how readers of the 12th and beginning 13th centuries approached and understood the Dialogus, taking into account paratextual elements on the manuscripts, the context of transmission, and purposeful changes made by the scribes in the text. One version and two redactions of the Dialogus (one of them previously unknown) are analysed in some detail. It can be shown that the concentration on religious polemic becomes more intense over time, but there is also a noticeable awareness of the historical and ethical aspects of the text and interest for the story of Petrus Alfonsi’s conversion.

Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus,1 written in 1109/10, has a number of unusual characteristics for its time, since although it returns to traditional literary forms and strategies, it combines them in a new way. The genre 1.  All quotations of the text are from our own edition: Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Darko Senekovic and Thomas Ziegler, Petri Alfonsi Dialogus. Band I: Kritische Edition mit deutscher Übersetzung (Florence, 2018). The references are to ‘titulus’ followed by the paragraph. Each intervention by one of the characters constitutes a paragraph. In this way, each reference can be easily found in other editions. The text is also available in the Patrologia Latina 157, cols. 535-672, reproducing the seventeenth-century editions (1618 and 1677), which in turn were a reprint of the sixteenth-century editio princeps (Petri Alphunsi ex Iudaeo Christiani dialogi lectu dignissimi…  [Coloniae, 1536]).  Klaus-Peter Mieth’s doctoral dissertation, Der Dialog des Petrus Alfonsi. Seine Überlieferung im Druck und in den Handschriften. Textedition (Berlin, 1982) provides a text that largely corresponds to recension d (without being aware that it is in fact an altered text). On textual variability, cf. infra pp. 171-76. Information on Petrus Alfonsi’s life is scarce and is mostly derived from his work. A new assessment of the evidence can be found in Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, ‘Pedro Alfonso y su Dialogus: estado de la cuestión’, in José Martínez Gázquez, Oscar de la Cruz Palma, and Cándida Ferrero Hernández (eds.), Estudios de Latín Medieval Hispánico. Actas del V Congreso Interna­ cional de Latín Medieval Hispánico. Barcelona, 7-10  de septiembre de 2009 (Millennio

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of controversial dialogue between a Jew and a Christian had appeared in Late Antiquity, but afterwards it had become rare. Shortly before Petrus Alfonsi, Anselm’s disciple Gilbert Crispin had written his Disputatio inter Iudeum et Christianum,2 but it remains an unanswered question as to whether Petrus Alfonsi knew Anselm and his school.3 In Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus, the Jew Moyses and the Christian Petrus represent the author in different periods of his life, that is, both before and after his conversion to the Christian faith. Late antique dialogues existed (and were well known in the twelfth century), in which the characters represented different aspects of the author. This was the case in Augustine’s Soliloquia and in Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae, in which the abstractions Ratio and Philosophia symbolize the more rational part of the author’s personality, guiding his distressed and unhappy self. By contrast, Petrus Alfonsi presents a dispute in which ratio is the criterion by which the three religions at issue—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—are judged. Moyses and Petrus seldom show signs of emotional involvement, they seem rather to be discussing an abstract matter. Therefore, the author’s conversion does not appear as the result of a personal crisis, but rather of a rational choice. This contradicts, however, the preface, where the change of faith is depicted as the result of divine inspiration. Petrus Alfonsi employs ratio to denote scientific and philosophic insight, sometimes also simply to refer to common sense.4 In order to defend the rationality of Christian faith, Petrus draws on Arabic science, whereas to argue the basic irrationality of Jewish beliefs he relates a number of aggadic stories from the Talmud. At the same time, Petrus uses Jewish writings as proof for Christian dogma, quoting the Talmud to describe the signs accompanying the death of Jesus, and citing a work which he refers to as Secreta secretorum to argue his case for the Trinity.5 When Petrus and Moyses discuss Islam, Moyses gives a fairly accurate medievale 92, Strumenti e studi. N.s. 30; Florence, 2011), pp. 1049-57, on the date of the work, ibid. p. 1052. 2.  Anna Sapir Abulafia and G.R. Evans, The Works of Gilbert Crispin Abbot of Westminster (Auctores Britannici medii aevi 8; London, 1986), pp. 1-87. 3.  Cf. Francesco Santi, ‘Pietro Alfonso e Anselmo di Canterbury’, in Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann and Philipp Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus. Background – Context – Reception (Micrologus Library 66; Florence, 2014), pp. 13-42. 4.  On the role of ratio in twelfth-century anti-Jewish polemic, cf. Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London, 1995). 5.  On this work, which might refer to the Sefer Yetzirah, cf.  Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, ‘Die Quelle der Trinitätskreise von Joachim von Fiore und Dante’, Sophia 22 (1954), pp. 170-78, esp. 172-73; and Alfred Büchler, ‘A Twelfth-Century Physician’s Desk Book: The Secreta Secretorum of Petrus Alphonsi quondam Moses Sephardi’, JJS 37 (1986), pp. 206-12.



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description of the religious practice of Muslims, and Petrus replies with a biography of Mohammed based on Islamic traditions, notwithstanding its polemical stance.6 As a result of these approaches, it provided twelfthcentury readers of the Dialogus with a considerable amount of new information on Islam and Judaism, as well as on Arabic science. The Dialogus was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages and it is therefore of particular interest to find out how its readers reacted to this new information. However, whereas the outlook of an author is exposed or at least implied in his work, the opinion of his readers is much more difficult to reconstruct, unless the readers are themselves authors, that is, in the case of literary reception. In 1993 John Tolan mainly examined the literary reception of the Dialogus, as it was a source for many medieval and early modern works on religious matters.7 The authors who quoted it discussed the Islamic beliefs (these authors included, for instance, Humbertus de Romanis or Jacobus de Voragine), or the Jewish beliefs (Petrus Venerabilis, Peter of Cornwall, Vincent of Beauvais, and the convert Alfonso de Valladolid). This list has been successively expanded: Isabelle Draelants found a discussion of some passages of the Dialogus in the still unedited chronicle of Helinand of Froidmont,8 and José Martínez Gázquez described the use of Alfonsi’s work by yet another Spanish convert, Alfonso de Espina.9 This is indeed an impressive list, although we have only mentioned the better-known names, and it shows a strong interest in the polemical parts of the Dialogus. From the important apologetical part of the work, in which Petrus Alfonsi tries to demonstrate the truth of Christian faith in a rational manner, it seems that only one passage, the discussion of the Tetragrammaton, made an impact, as it was incorporated in the works of Helinand of Froidmont, Joachim of Fiore, Arnald of Vilanova, Raimundus Martini and Salvagus Porchetus.10 6.  Cf. Regula Forster, ‘Der abwesende Dritte. Die Darstellung des Islam im titulus V des Dialogus des Petrus Alfonsi’, in Cardelle and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 159-82. 7.  John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers (Gainesville, 1993). 8.  Cf. Isabelle Draelants, ‘Hélinand de Froidmont et l’exégèse hébraïque du Dialogus de Petrus Alfonsi’, in Cardelle and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 301-20, which includes also the edition of these passages. 9.  José Martínez Gázquez, ‘Titulus V of Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus and Alfonso de Espina’s Fortalitium fidei’, in Cardelle and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 349-70. 10.  Cf. George F. Moore, ‘Notes on the Name ‫’יהוה‬, The American Journal of Theology 12 (1908), pp. 34-52; Hirsch-Reich, ‘Die Quelle’; François Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (Collection SIGMA 5; Paris, 1964), pp. 8-23; Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, ‘Joachim von Fiore und das Judentum’, in Paul Wilpert (ed.), Judentum im Mittelalter. Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch (Miscellanea mediaevalia, vol. 4; Berlin, 1966), pp. 228-63, esp. 230-33; Eusebio Colomer, ‘La interpretación del tetragrama bíblico en Ramón Martí y Arnau de Vilanova’, in Wolfgang Kluxen et al. (eds.), Sprache und

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In this paper, we will approach the reception of the Dialogus in a different manner, concentrating on the manuscripts and trying to find out how the people who took part in the process of writing the codex (redactors, correctors, scribes, and commissioners) reacted to Petrus Alfonsi’s work. Tolan did indeed consider the manuscripts; however, he was not familiar with a number of manuscripts identified in the last years, and he was not in a position to carry out an in-depth analysis. During our work on the first critical edition of the Dialogus, we had the opportunity to become closely acquainted with the special features of the codices. Consequently, we will be able to present new evidence and will also suggest a different appraisal of some of the manuscripts already known to him. We will concentrate on the manuscripts from the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth century, that is, from the period before the Talmud trials, which profoundly changed anti-Jewish polemics.11 The Dialogus was the principal source of information on the Talmud during this period.12 Naturally, palaeographical evidence does not allow a degree of precision greater than approximately 25-50 years; for this reason we have considered all the manuscripts which we could attribute to the first half of the thirteenth century. We will discuss the codicological evidence and the textual variability of the Dialogus. First of all, we list the manuscripts from this period in chronological order, following the dates that we have established after a careful palaeographical examination. In this article, we will refer to them only in the short form, which we also employ in the edition. As some manuscripts do not transmit the work in its entirety, it is important to keep its structure in mind: the five first chapters, called tituli, contain the polemic against Judaism, titulus 5 discusses Islam, and tituli 6-12 provide an apology of Christian faith. P3

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 5080, first quarter of the 12th c.

Erkenntnis im Mittelalter (Miscellanea mediaevalia, vol. 13, 1-2; Berlin, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 937-45; and Draelants, ‘Hélinand’, 309-14. 11.  On the Talmud trials cf. the papers collected by Gilbert Dahan, Le brûlement du Talmud à Paris 1242-1244 (Nouvelle Gallia Judaica 1; Paris, 1999) and the recently published collection of sources in English translation: The Trial of the Talmud. Paris, 1240, Hebrew texts trans. by John Friedman, Latin texts trans. by Jean Connell Hoff, historical essay by Robert Chazan (Mediaeval Sources in Translation 53; Toronto, 2012). 12.  Petrus Alfonsi’s passages on the Talmud were quoted by Petrus Venerabilis in his Adversus Iudaeorum inveteratam duritiem, ed. Yvonne Friedman (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio mediaevalis 58; Turnhout, 1985), who however does not mention Petrus as his source. As Dominique Iogna-Prat, Ordonner et exclure. Cluny et la société chrétienne face à l’hérésie, au judaïsme et à l’Islam (1000-1150) (Collection historique; Paris, 1998), pp. 300301, remarks, this contradicts the usual practice of Petrus Venerabilis.



READING PETRUS ALFONSI BEFORE THE TALMUD TRIALS163

Ar Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, 432 (1016), second third of the 12th c.  P2 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 10722, middle of the 12th c.  B1 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Phillipps 1721, middle of the 12th c.  Do Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, 199, third quarter of the 12th c. Mo Montpellier, Bibliothèque universitaire de Médecine, H 413, last third of the 12th c.  L2 London, British Library, Harley 3861, last third of the 12th c.  He Hereford, Cathedral Library, P 2 IV, last third of the 12th c.  An Antwerp, Museum Plantin Moretus, lat. nº 2, last third of the 12th c. Be1 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 188, last third of the 12th c.  Be2 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 111, last third of the 12th c. J1 Cambridge, St. John’s College, E.4 (James 107), last third of the 12th c.  P1 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 10624, last third of the 12th c. Fi Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, McClean 120, last third of the 12th c.  P5 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 15009, last third of the 12th c.  P4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 14069, last quarter of the 12th c. D1 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, 228, ca. 1200. L1 London, British Library, Harley 3707, last quarter of the 12th  c., this manuscript transmits only the beginning of the preface. D2 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, 230, ca. 1200. J2 Cambridge, St. John’s College, D.11 (James 86), ca. 1200. A2 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 941, ca. 1200. P8 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 18104, ca. 1200. L3 London, British Library, Royal 15 C II, beginning of the 13th c. Ls Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Cod. Alcobacensis 148, first quarter of the 13th c.  A1 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 769, first quarter of the 13th c. Po Porto, Biblioteca Pública Municipal, Santa Cruz 34 (43), first quarter of the 13th c. M1 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17105, first quarter of the 13th c., text of the Schäftlarn recension. Cc Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 309, first third of the 13th c.

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Ld Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Scaliger 42, first third of the 13th c. Sd Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Biblioteca Capitular, 2, first half of the 13th c. Mu Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 28225, first half of the 13th c. Zu Zurich, Zentralbibliothek, C 125, first half of the 13th c.  T1 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 509, first half of the 13th c.  T2 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 1720, first half of the 13th c. Ta Tarragona, Biblioteca Pública, 55, first half of the 13th c. Of the manuscripts written around 1250 and later, only the following five are mentioned: K1 Cologne, Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, 78, about the middle of the 13th c. Be3 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 367, second half of the 13th c. D3 Dijon, Bibliothèque Municipale, 229 (191), ca. 1300, a summary of the Dialogus. V8 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 221, ca. 1300, a very dense résumé of the Dialogus. M2 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6502, a. 1429, text of the Schäftlarn recension. The Codicological Evidence There are different ways to search for readers’ responses in the manuscripts. First of all we consider the aspects that can be recognized at first glance, such as the quality of the material and the layout of the text. In  this regard, the examination of the older manuscripts surprised us. Most of the twelfth-century codices (the only exceptions being P4 and P8) are of very good quality and were written by well-trained scribes, who employed, all in all, just a small number of abbreviations. The layout allows a comfortable reading of the texts, as it leaves enough space between the lines and in the margins. About two thirds of the manuscripts were even written in two columns.13 The scribes never marked a special space for a commentary in the writing frame and the readers only 13.  The following manuscripts are written in two columns: A2, An, Be1, Be2, D2, Do, He, J2, L2, Mo, P3, P4, P5, and P8. D1 is written in a single column at the beginning (ff. 2r-4r), the rest of the Dialogus (ff. 4v-92r) is written in two columns.



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very seldom employed the generous margins and interlinear spaces to write glosses. This layout suggests, on the one hand, that the text was not copied for any practical use such as reading in a school, preparation of sermons or similar; on the other hand, it reveals that the text was considered to be of some importance, as the scribes obviously did not use the parchment to its full capacity. Whereas the lack of practical goals in copying the Dialogus was to be expected, we did not expect that the quality of the manuscripts would be so good, as it appeared to reveal great appreciation for the text and/or its author. In general, authors who were still alive or had lived recently commanded less authority than older ones, whose works had gained orthodoxy and value over the course of time. If a modern author attained a high level of esteem, this was usually explained by a high regard for his personal sanctity or institutional background, for instance, because he was an abbot, bishop or even pope. For the scribes of the twelfth century Petrus Alfonsi was not only a modern author, but also an unusual one. There were not many converts who wrote about the Christian faith and, as far as we can tell, there was no institution backing him, as he became neither a monk or a cleric. Francesco Santi has recently argued that the powerful order of Cluny may have supported him;14 however, if this is true, this backing did not continue for very long. Neither Helinand of Froidmont (as far as we know, the first author to quote Petrus Alfonsi by name) nor the twelfth-century scribes mention any institutional affiliation of Petrus as a monk, cleric or teacher,15 and the older manuscripts are not exclusively associated with Cluniac monasteries. In the Preface, he mentions the King of Aragon as his godfather; this may, however, be an attempt to verify his truthfulness and respectability. Robert Grosseteste is the first to surmise that Petrus was a rabbi,16 thereby indicating the need to back the Dialogus with some form of authority. Petrus Alfonsi was undoubtedly considered an authority in matters relating to Jewish belief and Islam in the Middle Ages and even in the Early Modern Era. This is comprehensible from the end of the thirteenth century onwards, since the detailed summary of the polemical parts of the Dialogus in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum historiale around the time of the Talmud 14.  Santi, ‘Pietro Alfonso’, pp. 15-23. 15.  After his conversion in Huesca with the King of Aragon as his godfather, Petrus seems to have left for England and to have lived there, and perhaps also in Northern France, as a teacher, probably working at different schools. Petrus is thus a very early example of a way of living that was to become usual in the twelfth century, cf. Wolfram Drews, ‘Intellektuelles Kapital und sein praktischer Nutzen bei Petrus Alfonsi’, in Car­ delle and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 43-59. 16. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 103-104.

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trials17 rendered Petrus Alfonsi a recognized authority at this time, at the latest. However, it is more difficult to understand the high esteem in which he was held by the scribes and readers before this time. The way in which the scribes name the author can provide some clues about the reasons for this high level of appreciation. In thirteen of twenty-two manuscripts written in the twelfth century his name is given as Petrus Alfonsi (with variants in the patronymic),18 in five of these manuscripts (Ar, B1, D1, D2, and Do) the scribe gives an additional hint as to the author’s circumstances, saying that he was a convert.19 For instance, Do (written in the last quarter of the twelfth century), gives the following title: Dialogus Petri cognomento Alfunsi ex iudeo christiani et moysi iudei (f.  96r). At the end of the work, the scribe again gives the same information with some more detail: Dialogus Petri cognomento Aldefunsi ex iudeo christiani et Moysi iudei contra perfidiam iudeorum atque errorem Sarracenorum (f. 158v). In the first half of the thirteenth century, pointing to the conversion becomes more usual, as it is mentioned in six manuscripts (Ls, M1, Po, T1, T2, and Ta), of the thirteen that can be attributed to this period of time. It appears that the Dialogus originally had no title, which means that at least some of the scribes were forced to choose an appropriate designation. Often this was a neutral heading, such as Liber Petri Alfunsi. P2 expands this title to include a reference to the contents: Liber Petri Alfunsi de lege christiana et iudaica et sarracenica per dyalogum compositus (f. 3r).20 The scribes may also convey this information by stating that one of the dialogue partners is a Christian and the other is a Jew, which is done in three twelfth-century manuscripts (An, Ar, and Do) and one from the thirteenth century (Ld). Sometimes the scribes point at the polemical character of the work, using the denomination disputatio or remarking that the text is directed against the Jews or the Muslims, such as Do in the colophon quoted in the last paragraph. This is the case in six twelfth-century manuscripts and two from the thirteenth century.21 All in all, an indication of the contents is provided by the titles in less 17.  Cf. Isabelle Draelants, ‘Libellus elegans satis contra Iudeos et Sarracenos: la rédaction du Dialogus dans le Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais’, in Cardelle and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 249-300, esp. 259-66. 18.  An, Ar, B1, D1, D2, Do, Fi, He, Mo, P2, P3, P5, and P8. 19.  De Iudeo christianus with variants. 20.  We find a similar title (Petrus Anfulsus de moribus Sarracenorum et Mahomete) in Mo, introducing excerpts from titulus 5 of the Dialogus. 21.  Usual forms are adversus Iudeos, contra Iudeos, in Iudeos, contra perfidiam Iudeorum. The manuscripts from the 12th  c.  are: Do, Fi, He, P3, P5, and P8; from the 13th c. Ld and Sd.



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than half the manuscripts; only seldom do the titles underline the polemical character of the work. Another possibility for assessing the readers’ response to the Dialogus is the context of the work in the manuscripts. A medieval codex usually contains more than one work; thus the question arises as to why precisely these texts should have been combined by a particular individual (the scribe, the librarian or the commissioner). Sometimes the answer is obvious; they may have a similar subject matter, respond to the same interests or belong to the same genre. However, it is not always possible to find a link between the texts in a codex. Some collections seem to have originated in an accidental manner, for instance, because a text was added to make use of some parchment that was left over, or because the exemplars of different works arrived in the scriptorium at the same time. In the Late Middle Ages, we find more and more collections of texts which do not conform to recognizable criteria but which respond to the interests of an individual; probably they were personal vade mecums. There is also a methodical difficulty. Some codices are composed of several manuscripts which were bound together a long time after being written. Their composition gives a hint to the librarian’s assessment of the work, which might or might not be relevant, depending on the epoch in which the codex compositus was created, and also on the criteria for binding the texts together. Sometimes, for instance, the librarian quite obviously tried to bind together manuscripts of the same size. For our purposes, we will not consider such composite codices, but rather the individual manuscripts bound together, that is, the codicological units. We have taken into consideration codices and codicological units that have been planned and written as a collection of texts. We do not consider the manuscripts in which the Dialogus is transmitted alone or has been completed with other texts later on. This leaves us only fourteen codices from the twelfth century and seven from the thirteenth century to consider.22 For us it was striking to observe that, judging by the contents of the manuscripts, interest in the polemical sections was not foremost. Whereas in the second half of the thirteenth century and afterwards the Dialogus appears most frequently with polemical texts against Jews, Muslims or heretics, we found a variety of contexts for the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth, which we will now discuss. 22.  From the 12th century A2, An, Ar, Be1, Be2, D1, D2, Do, He, L1, Mo, P1, P5, and P8, from the 13th century Ls, M1, Po, Sd, Ta, T1, and T2.

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We begin with two codices, He and T1, which are difficult to assess. Codex He, from the twelfth century, unites the Dialogus with texts relating to mysticism (two theological treatises and a commentary on the ‘Song of songs’) as well as texts on the Cross.23 T1 (thirteenth century) contains Arnoldus Bonae Vallis, Liber de cardinalibus Christi operibus and Henricus de Castro Marsiaco, De peregrinante ciuitate Dei.24 In both cases it is difficult to discern the connection between the texts. In two codices from the twelfth century, excerpts taken from the Dialogus are included in a florilegium. Mo is a collection of excerpts from different authors and works which has been written by different hands.25 It is not possible to recognize a predominant interest, at least not without studying the excerpts in detail. The person responsible for the choice (whether it is one of the scribes or someone else) selected only titulus V, dealing with Islam, from the Dialogus. The florilegium in P8 is more interesting, as it contains excerpts from a surprisingly wide array of classical and patristic works, but only three medieval authors: Fulbert of Chartres, Bernard of Clairvaux and Petrus Alfonsi.26 The excerpts from the latter are taken from titulus 1 of the Dialogus. P8 therefore illustrates the high consideration in which Petrus Alfonsi was held at the turn of the century. Three codices from the thirteenth century (M1, Sd and T2) associate the Dialogus strongly with works on moral theology. M1 transmits a treatise on penitence and two works by Pope Innocent III, De miseria humanae conditionis and De sacro altaris mysterio.27 The subject of sin and penitence reappears in Sd with ps. Robert Grosseteste, De septem uitiis capitalibus, and a Summa de poenitentia.28 In its current form, T2 23.  Description of the codex and its content in R.A.B. Mynors and R.M. Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 75-76. 24. Cf. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des Départements 2 (Paris, 1855), p. 223. 25. Cf. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des Départements 1 (Paris, 1849), pp. 449-50. 26.  This florilegium has been studied by Birger Munk Olsen, ‘Les classiques latins dans les florilèges médiévaux antérieurs au XIIIe siècle’, RHT 9 (1979), pp. 47-121, on our P8 pp. 112-14. This article has been reprinted in idem, La réception de la littérature classique au Moyen Âge (IXe-XIIe siècle) (Copenhagen, 1995), pp.  145-224, on P8 pp. 214-16. 27. Cf.  Elisabeth Klemm, Die illuminierten Handschriften des 13. Jahrhunderts deutscher Herkunft in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek (Katalog der illuminierten Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München 4; Wiesbaden, 1998), p. 25. 28.  Cf. Tomás Ramírez Pascual, ‘Una biblioteca del siglo XVI. Donación de Fray Bernardo de Fresneda al convento de San Francisco, en Santo Domingo de La Calzada, La Rioja’, Berceo 123 (1992), pp. 69-98, description of Sd on p. 95.



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contains the Dialogus with some minor additions,29 but it was originally part of a larger manuscript. We have been able to identify its first part in Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 1721,30 containing, among others, a work by Innocent III, De miseria humane conditionis, which appears also in M1, and a Liber de dulia et latria. Ethics are not a predominant subject in the Dialogus, but there are different sections which bear upon this subject, among them titulus 5, in which it is argued that Islam is rational, but immoral. The subject of conversion in the preface is also closely related to repentance and correction. In three other manuscripts (all from the twelfth century), the Dialogus is transmitted together with historiographical works. L1 is a special case, as the scribe began copying the Dialogus after Baudri of Bourgueil’s Historia Hierosolymitana, but abandoned his work before he had even finished the preface.31 Whereas L1 may reveal an interest in the Crusades, which also led to curiosity about Islam, Ar and P5 cannot be explained in this way. Ar only contains the Dialogus, followed by a short chronicle in verse, the Chronicon rythmicum Leodiense.32 P5 transmits several historiographical works relating to England, mostly abbreviated: the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae.33 But this codex displays more than just an interest in history, as the collection of texts opens with the Imago mundi of Honorius of Autun, a cosmographical treatise, which finds its correspondence in the work immediately preceding the Dialogus, the Cosmographia of Bernard Silvestris. In both cases, Ar and P5, we imagine that the scribe was mainly interested in the historical matter (taken in its broad sense) included in the Dialogus, such as the life and deeds of Mohammed, the signs surrounding Jesus’s death, and the observations on the history of the Jews included in the exegetical discussions. In P5 we can also surmise that the long excursus of titulus 1 about the climatic zones, the calculation of the meridians and the solar orbit corresponded to the collector’s clear interest in cosmography. This 29. Cf. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des Départements 2, pp. 726-27. At the end of the codex we find a short sermon (ff. 68v-70r) and a fragmentary gloss commentary on Lamentations (f. 70v). 30.  On this manuscript, cf.  Nicholas Haring, ‘Liber de dulia et latria of Master Michael, Papal Notary’, MS 33,1 (1971), pp. 188-200. 31. Cf.  ms.  Harley 3707 on (November 2014). 32. Cf. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des Départements 4 (Paris, 1872), p. 401. 33.  Cf.  Léopold Delisle, Inventaire des manuscrits de l’abbaye de Saint-Victor conservés à la Bibliothèque Impériale sous les numéros 14232-15175 du fonds latin (Paris, 1869), p. 65.

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may even have been the main cause for copying the Dialogus, as this part of the text, which includes two noticeable illustrations, immediately attracts attention.34 We come now to the codices showing a clear interest in religious polemic. These are the three codices written in the first half of the thirteenth century. Two manuscripts in Portugal (Ls and Po) transmit the Dialogus along with Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio,35 while the manuscript in Tarragona (Ta) transmits it with texts presenting the conflict with other religions (the collection of the codex Calixtinus, which includes the ps. Turpin, as well as a work on Constantinople, which could be of interest in the context of the Crusades).36 In the twelfth century this interest in religious polemic had been less evident. We have already mentioned that the florilegium in Mo includes only excerpts from titulus 5 on Islam. P1 presents a collection of anti-Jewish polemical texts. An and Do show an interest for religious debate in general, as they reunite the Dialogus with the late antique novel known as the Recognitiones pseudo-­clementinae, in which the debates between Pagans and Christians play a central role.37 But, as we shall see, there may be a second motive for associating the Dialogus and the Recognitiones. The remaining five codices (Be1, Be2, D1, D2, and A2, all of them from the twelfth century) transmit the Dialogus in a hagiographical context. We begin our examination of this group with two closely related manuscripts now in Berne (Be1 and Be2).38 Tolan presumed that the interest for all things relating to the Orient in the context of the Crusades was the directing principle behind the collection.39 However, this cannot be the only explanation, as a closer look at these codices will show. Be2 is the older of the two manuscripts, Be1 a copy of it. At the beginning of Be2, we find seven texts that are difficult to characterize as a clearly defined group. Five of them relate in a way or another to the Eastern part of the 34.  P5 does not have the illustrations, but its exemplar obviously did, as the scribe of P5 left space for copying them. 35.  For Ls cf. Thomas L. Amos, The Fundo Alcobaça of the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon, 2 (Collegeville, 1988), pp.  119-20; for Po cf.  Aires Augusto Nascimento and José Francisco Meirinhos, Catálogo dos códices da livraria de Mão do Mosteiro de Santa Cruz de Coimbra na Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto (Porto, 1997), pp. 199-203. 36.  Cf.  Jesús Domínguez Bordona, ‘Manuscritos de la biblioteca pública de Tarragona. Inventario general’, Boletín arqueológico 53-54 (1953-54), pp.  50-75, Ta on p.  55 (erroneously identified as Disciplina clericalis). 37.  Rekognitionen in Rufins Übersetzung, edited by Bernhard Rehm and Georg Strecker (2nd rev. edition; Berlin 1994). 38.  Cf.  Hermann Hagen, Catalogus codicum Bernensium (Bibliotheca Bongarsiana) (Bern, 1875), pp. 240-41 (Be1) and 156-59 (Be2). 39. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, p. 108.



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Mediterranean, as two are lives of Egyptian anchorites and another three deal with the Crusades or with political contacts with the East. There could be here (as Tolan suggests for the whole of the codex) an interest in the Orient. A large collection of about forty legends and lives of saints follows; almost all of these saints have their feast days between mid April and mid June. The last group of texts begins with Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio, under the heading of Epistula Gisleberti ad Anselmum; it follows the Passio of Saint George, Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus, another three saints’ lives and a text about the discovery of the Holy Cross. The scribe of Be1 copied this last group of texts as a whole at the beginning of his manuscript; after this he copied one text from the first block (Prophetia Sibyllae) and a selection of four of the saint’s lives from the second block. The link between the texts in the last group of Be2 appears to be that all these festivities are celebrated in April (Georgius, Eleutherius, Torpes) or in May (Conon, Inventio crucis). This could even be the reason for incorporating Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio, a work dedicated to Anselm, whose feast day is the 21st of April. The Dialogus, for its part, could have been inserted in an associative way, because of its similarity to the Disputatio. But this is probably not the only reason. These two manuscripts in Berne are not the only codices that transmit the Dialogus in a hagiographical context. The same holds true for the codices D1 and D2, which both include a Vita Eustachii rhythmica,40 and for codex A2, where the lives of two distinguished monks, Norbert of Xanten and Bernard of Clairvaux appear together with the Dialogus.41 In our opinion, the link between Alfonsi’s Dialogus and hagiography might, in all five codices, be the motif of conversion, which plays an important role in saints’ lives (understood either as conversion to Christianity or as a move to a more evangelic way of life, for instance as a monk). Conversion is also central to the story line of the Recognitiones pseudo-clementinae and might therefore have influenced the pairing of the Dialogus with this novel in An and Do. Textual Variability Textual variability in the transmission of a text is a subject of the utmost importance for editors, who have to decide on the best form of documenting it, but of course it also sheds light on the reaction of the 40. Cf.  Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France. Départements 5 (Paris, 1889), pp. 70-71. 41.  Cf.  Henry Martin, Catalogue des manuscrits de la bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 2 (Paris, 1886), pp. 185-86.

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readers to the text. As we collated the manuscripts to find the most reliable ones for the edition, we also considered carefully all those containing diverging text, in order to assess the forms of variability. We have recently published an article on this topic, in which we concentrate on the manuscripts showing minor changes.42 We summarize here, first, our results and proceed, then, to discuss the redactions and versions of the text, concentrating again on those originating in the twelfth or in the beginning of the thirteenth century. In most cases, the scribes only make a number of mistakes, depending on their capacity, their training and also on the quality of their exemplar. We also observed that most scribes tend to make minor changes on a small scale, such as altering the word order or substituting a word by a synonym. None of these alters the content; on the contrary, the variants seem to originate from the concentration of the scribes in the meaning and their comparative neglect of the correct wording, particularly in respect to words and syntactic features that do not convey any semantic information. There were however some manuscripts in which the text was altered in a more systematic fashion. This is the case with two big groups of manuscripts, which we named c and d. Here the alteration originated in the hyparchetype (that is, in the common ancestor of the group), whereas the later manuscripts just reproduced the altered text. In c and in d the redactors made stylistic changes, correcting some non-idiomatic or grammatically awkward sentences. Most scribes made this sort of correction at one point or the other, but c and d present it in a systematic way. We chose to call recension this type of variant textual form produced by a non-casual, but slight revision of the original text, that is, a revision introducing nonsubstantial changes. We could ascertain that only scribes working in the twelfth century or at the beginning of the thirteenth century made this type of stylistic revision. The exemplar of recension d must even have been written shortly after the Dialogus, perhaps even close to the author. We can get a better insight into readers’ responses by considering other forms of textual variability, which we designate redactions and versions. A redaction is the product of a more thorough revision, which might occasionally alter the content, the phrasing or the style, but does not change the literary form, the scope and the main contents of the original work. A ­version of the text implies a rewriting, which alters markedly the original work, even modifying the content or changing the genre. 42.  Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Darko Senekovic, and Thomas Ziegler, ‘Modes of variability: The textual transmission of Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus’, in Cardelle and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 227-48.



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There are several redactions of the Dialogus. We mention briefly two originating in the second half of the thirteenth century. A manuscript of Cîteaux, now in Dijon (D3), contains a summary of the whole work. The redactor’s main aim seems to have been to shorten the text. A very different form of abbreviation is found in V8. This manuscript was written about 1300 and it transmits a very dense résumé. Its redactor appears to write for his own use or for informed readers, as time and again he provides only the first lines of an argument, without developing it any further. Indeed V8 seems almost to be a guide to the complete text of the Dialogus. In our former paper we mentioned some earlier manuscripts with an altered text. However, as they transmit an incomplete text, or sometimes even only excerpts, we missed a very interesting point: All of them transmit the same redaction and alter it in different ways. We have called this group redaction e. It includes the following manuscripts: – A1 was written in the first quarter of the thirteenth century and belonged to Saint Victor in Paris. Comprising the preface, tituli 1-4 and a large portion of titulus 5, A1 is the most complete manuscript in this group. The text ends abruptly towards the end of titulus 5 because of the loss of some sheets or possibly even quires. Therefore, it is not possible to say how long it was originally. – Be3, now in Berne, of French provenance, was written in the thirteenth century. It transmits the text of the preface, titulus 1, titulus 2 (incomplete) and titulus 5. The text of titulus 2 breaks off in the middle of a sentence and jumps straight to titulus 5. Either the scribe decided to skip the rest of the text and proceed to the more interesting titulus 5 or (more probably), the exemplar was incomplete, lacking some quires. In Be3 the text of redaction e has been shortened even further. – K1, written in Germany in the thirteenth century is fragmentary, after a heavy loss of quires; the preserved parts contain only the very end of titulus 1 and small parts from tituli 2 and 3. – L1 was written in France, or perhaps in England, towards the end of the twelfth century. The scribe began to write the text but stopped suddenly before he had even completed the preface, leaving the rest of the page empty. – Mo, written in the second half of the twelfth century in France, is a collection of excerpts from different works—among them the abbreviated titulus 5 of Dialogus. This short description shows the peculiarity of this group. The scribes of four out of five manuscripts excerpted or shortened a text that had been already redacted. A1 seems to be a faithful copy of this redaction: it has

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only a few errors, is readable and has no lacunae in comparison with the other four manuscripts of this group. Regrettably, it is not complete and therefore it is not possible to say with certainty how long the original redaction e was. However, if we consider that the other manuscripts have all excerpted only titulus 1 to 5, it seems very probable that redaction e was limited to these tituli, that is to the polemical part of the work. We now consider how the redactor treated the text. He shortened it markedly, most notably the first, very long and sometimes very longwinded titulus 1. In his choice, he shows a marked interest in the sections on the Talmud (or in Petrus Alfonsi’s words, the doctrina), reproducing the description of the Jewish belief by Petrus quite faithfully, but reducing his refutation considerably. Titulus 5, dealing with Islam, is treated differently: there is much less abridgement and it has been complemented at some points. These complements have varying aims. In some cases, the Christian/Jewish position is reinforced by means of additional arguments or biblical verse quotations. This is the case, for instance, in the passage in titulus 5 (t.5§16), where Petrus argues that Muslims pray five times a day as a kind of compromise between the Jewish approach (three times a day) and that of Christians (seven times a day). Here is the text from A1, f. 178v. The manuscript quotes the Psalms, giving only the first letter of each word. We complete the text, with our additions in chevrons. The first quotation is Ps.  54:18, the second Ps.  118:164. The additions of redaction e are in italics: Iudei enim secundum legem in die orant ter, sicut Dauid ait ‘uespere et m et m n et a et e u m’, Christiani uero septies, auctoritate eiusdem Dauid ‘septies in d l d t.’ The Jews pray thrice a day following the law, as David says ‘evening and morning and at noon I will speak and proclaim, and he will hear my voice’, the Christians, however, seven times as in the passage also of David ‘Seven times a day I praised you.’

Other additions sharpen the tone of the polemic against Islam. Here is an example from the life of Mohammed, where Petrus explains the prophet’s ambition to take power. We quote text of the Dialogus in our edition, followed by the text in A1: … in tantam prorupit mentis superbiam quod regnum Arabum sibi sperandum polliceretur, nisi suos timeret contribules quia eum pro rege non tene­ rent, cum sibi et equales fuissent et maiores. (t.5§4) … his spirit became so proud as to expect the reign among the Arabs, except that he was afraid that the men of his tribe who were his equals or even his superiors would not accept him as a king.



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… in tantam prorupit mentis superbiam quod regnum Arabum sibi sperandum pollicitaretur, nisi natalium obscuritas omnibus nota nimium illud dehortaretur, euicit tantum regnandi cupiditas generis uerecundiam … (A1, f. 178r) … his spirit became so proud as to expect the reign among the Arabs, except that the obscurity of his birth, which was known to all, greatly dissuaded him. His lust of power simply overcame his shame about his origins …

The redactor appears to consider the setting of titulus 5 as artificial, since it is actually a dialogue between a Christian and a Jew on Islam where a Jew has to defend the rationality of Islam. Interestingly, the redactor allows Moyses to assert his belief in Mohammed and at the same time makes his tone sharper. When Petrus announces his intention of showing that Mohammed has not led the life of a prophet, and of refuting his doctrine, the redactor of e inserts the following sentences: Moyses: Ipso meo digito oculum conaris effodere. Petrus: Quonammodo? Moyses: Eo quod dicis certum mihi non incompertum tibi quis Mahomet fuerit et c, de quibus, si te ita ut asseris scire concederem, Mahomet non prophetam sed simulatorem inducerem. Nam quis nesciat quod alium scire sciat? Et quidem ego illum Dei prophetam teneo. Tibi si aliter uidetur, sententie tue partem rationis clipeo defendere necesse est. Moyses: You try to dig out my eye with my own finger. Petrus: How? Moyses: By saying that, I know for sure that you are not ignorant of who Mohammed was, and all the rest. By this—if I were to concede that you have the knowledge of what you assert—I would claim that Mohammed was not a prophet but an impostor. For who would ignore that which he is aware the other person knows? I certainly consider him a prophet of God. If you think otherwise, you must defend your opinion with the shield of reason.

At another point, the redactor adds a short sentence about a warrior who defended Mohammed (redaction e gives him the name Zeman) thus losing his hand: atque defendentis eum mucrone truncata manus Zeman. The redactor seems to have taken this information from the Latin translation of the Risālat al-Kindī, although there are some inconsistencies (in the Risālat the name of the warrior is Talha, and he loses his finger). The Latin Apologia al-Kindī was written in Toledo about 1142 for Petrus Vene­rabilis.43 This gives us an approximate date for redaction e, which must have been made after this time and before the writing of Mo in the last third of the twelfth century. 43. For the date of the translation, cf.  edition by Fernando González Muñoz, Exposición y refutación del Islam: la versión latina de las epístolas de al-Hāšimī y al-Kindī (Universidade da Coruña, Monografías 111; A Coruña, 2005), p. lx.

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We now end the presentation of the evidence, referring to the only version of the text, which Tolan referred to as the “Schäftlarn recension”, since it is transmitted by two manuscripts (M1 and M2) from the Schäftlarn monastery in Upper Bavaria. The older M1 manuscript was written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, thus giving the terminus ante quem for this work. The author summarized the text extensively and in a very intelligent manner. He often talks in the first person and even comments on what he is doing, for instance when he observes that he does not retain the form of a dialogue, as it produces some unnecessary repetitions: … hoc utens ordine scribit in modum dialogi ut introducat personam interrogantem et se respondentem uel econuerso. Unde pleraque ibidem proli­ xius et confusius dici uidentur. Quo circa breuiter ponere conabor (M1, f. 1ra). … using this order he wrote in the form of a dialogue, so that he introduces a person who asks and another who answers him, and the other way round. Hence many things seem to be told in a very profuse and confused way. That is why I will try to expound them more briefly.

Tolan has rightly pointed out that, when talking about the Jews and their beliefs, the tone is considerably sharper than in the original work.44 However, his observation that the author is mainly interested in religious polemic does not describe the text accurately. The whole text of the Dialogus has been reworked in the same way. The redactor summarizes the arguments of the two sides, Petrus and Moyses, in each subject and concentrates them. First, the point being discussed is stated, with the arguments of the Jew. Then the refutation of Petrus and his arguments are presented. The author always gives the Jewish sources in the same way as Petrus Alfonsi does, but he does not appear to be very interested in the aggadic tales, which he reduces to a minimum. However, the more philosophical sections—such as the discussion of the status of substance, place and time in titulus 1 or the discussion of the soul in titulus 3—are treated in a more detailed way. The text is accompanied in the older manuscript by red headings which provide a helpful reading guide. For instance, at the close of a digression, the heading will state Iterum redit ad materiam (M1, f. 12ra). These headings show little interest in Jewish beliefs, and much more in the structure of the argument and its philosophical sections.

44. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 121-23.



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Conclusions It is time now to draw some conclusions from the evidence that we have presented. Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus was undoubtedly considered an important text at a very early stage, indeed, from the very beginning of its transmission. The quality of the manuscripts and the care which the scribes took in transmitting its content—even when they decided to correct the awkward style—show their high degree of interest in it and the regard in which they held it. The context of transmission (that is, the texts associated with the Dialogus in the manuscripts) points to diverse aspects of the work as sources of interest. In the twelfth century, the Dialogus was transmitted together with historiographical works. Different parts of its content could be defined as historical, the more obvious of them being titulus 5, on the origins and religious practice of Islam. In the thirteenth century, three codices present it accompanied by moral treatises. Here, again, a possible explanation is titulus 5, in which Islam is presented as a rational, but immoral religion. Whereas, in these cases, an interest in the polemical sections of the Dialogus can only be surmised, in other manuscripts the polemical context is clear. An interest in religious polemic appears to become more intense over time, as this is noticeable in the second half of the twelfth century (Mo, P1), but more clearly in the first half of the thirteenth century (Ls, Po, Ta). In two manuscripts from the first half of the twelfth century (Ar, Do), the transmission together with the Recognitiones pseudo-clementinae may be more closely related to an interest in the author’s conversion, which also appears to have resulted in an association, in five other manuscripts, between the work and hagiographical texts. This factor may also be behind the combination of the Dialogus with treatises on moral theology, especially on sin and penitence. This interest in conversion is also manifest in the manuscripts which name the author as a convert from Judaism. Certainly, conversion and polemic are intermingled in the Dialogus. As the subject matter of the work, the preface mentions the destruction of other religions and the defence of the Christian faith. Yet it begins with a most emphatic account of Alfonsi’s conversion as the result of divine intervention, since it is God himself who removes the veil of error from his eyes and reveals to him the secrets of Scripture. His godfather the king and the baptizing bishop are not portrayed as having had any influence in his decision, whether explaining the Christian faith to him or, at the very least, praying for him. We observe that redaction e selects the polemical parts of the text, while, at the same time, retaining Petrus Alfonsi’s preface. His being a former Jew with an education in a Muslim

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environment is a guarantee for his sound knowledge of these two religions. What does this reveal about the relationship between Jews and Christians? To answer this question, it is important to determine what was more important for the scribes—the information on Muslim and Jewish beliefs or the arguments against these beliefs. The former could point at a difficulty in obtaining this information, and therefore to a shortage of cultural exchanges, whereas the second would show that discussions were frequent and an argumentative aid necessary. Only in the cases in which the recipient has reworked the text (redaction e, Schäftlarn version) it is possible to attempt to give an answer. The information about Islam seems to have attracted particular attention: titulus 5 was transmitted in its own in Mo, and in redaction e it has been less abbreviated than the tituli pertaining to Judaism. This is not surprising, giving the difficulty of obtaining knowledge on Islam in northern France or in England. In the case of Judaism, the situation is not so clear. The Schäftlarn version shows a marked interest in the more philosophical part of the discussion, even in the themes (such as the soul and its parts) that have a more tenuous relationship to Judaism.45 The author of Schäftlarn adopts a sharp tone when discussing the Jews and their manner of arguing, which he considers irrational. It is difficult to imagine that he wished to acquire this philosophical knowledge for any sort of discussion. Redaction e, on the other hand, concentrates on the aggadic parts, in much the same way as Petrus Venerabilis did in his Aduersus Iudaeorum inuete­ ratam duritiem.46 Strikingly, it is difficult to find any traces of interest in the information provided by Petrus Alfonsi about Jewish exegesis or about the right understanding of biblical texts. As far as we can see, only Helinand of Froidmont transcribes a passage with this content,47 and in only one instance (He), did we find the Dialogus associated with an exegetical work in a codex. This appears to contradict the interest of some intellectuals in northern France in Jewish exegesis in this time;48 it could also be explained by the fact that there were other ways to obtain this information—through the works of Stephen Harding or the teachers of Saint 45.  The same holds true for Helinand of Froidmont, as Draelants, ‘Hélinand’, has observed. 46. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 116-17. 47.  Cf. Draelants, ‘Hélinand’, pp. 307-309. 48.  Cf. Aryeh Graboïs, ‘The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the Twelfth Century’, Speculum 50 (1975), pp. 613-34; Gilbert Dahan, L’éxegèse chrétienne de la Bible en Occident médiéval. XIIe-XIVe siècle (Paris, 1999), esp. pp. 167-71, 229-31.



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Victor, or perhaps even in conversation with Jews. It is probable that the aggadic stories could be found only in the Dialogus, and thus appeared as arcane knowledge. As far as the reasons for this are concerned, we can but speculate. The overall impression from Christian texts on Judaism is that Christians were more interested in obtaining clarity regarding the differences on the interpretation of the Bible, and justifying their own attitudes to the Law. This could also be the case in real conversations, which would therefore not touch on matters pertaining to non-biblical Jewish texts. Only after Petrus Alfonsi demonstrated their utility in attacking Judaism did Christians develop an interest in them—with the fatal consequences of which we are all aware.

THE PLACE OF PETRUS ALFONSI IN THE MEDIEVAL CULTURE OF DISPUTATION Alex J. Novikoff Abstract:  Petrus Alfonsi’s  Dialogue Against the Jews  is both a powerful polemic against his former coreligionists and an innovative work touting the benefits of the liberal arts. As such, the work represents the confluence of two major developments of the period: it is a unique example of the age-old ­Aduersus Iudaeos  genre and also a paradigmatic specimen of the so-called “twelfth-century renaissance”, a period that is well-known for its emphasis on new learning, the translation of scientific texts, and the innovative use of literary devices such as the dream vision and the dialogue form. This essay gathers these aspects together while paying specific attention to his deployment of the term disputatio, for debate and argumentation were indeed what linked the anti-Jewish thrust of polemical discourse to the pedagogical aims of the new schools. 

Medievalists are often wont to emphasize the novelty of their period over against late antiquity and the classical periods that came before. The focus of attention on Petrus Alfonsi both in the present essay and in other recent studies suggests that his Dialogus (or Dialogue Against the Jews as it is usually translated in English) does indeed mark a new and important chapter in the history of Jewish-Christian intellectual relations. Alfonsi’s introducing of Talmudic material into Christian discourse about Judaism, his emphasis on proving his points through rational argumentation (sola ratione), and the consequent conclusion that Jews were not simply blind to Christ’s divinity but deliberately murdered him out of envy are indeed significant departures from earlier polemics against Jews, and they have understandably received much comment.1 1.  The most up-to-date critical studies of the Dialogus are published in the proceedings of an important conference devoted to the work held in Zurich in 2012: Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann and Philipp Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus: Background, Context, and Reception (Florence, 2014). Those essays are to be read in connection with the forthcoming edition of the Dialogus edited by Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Darko Senkovic, and Thomas Ziegler. I am grateful to Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann for sharing the contents of the edited volume and excerpts of the forthcoming edition of the Dialogus with me in advance of their publication. Still essential is the pioneering study of Alfonsi by John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, 1993).

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Yet we might begin by noting a couple of important points of continuity with ancient traditions. The Aduersus Iudaeos genre, and more specifically the Aduersus Iudaeos dialogue, is a literary form that was well established and widely exploited in late antiquity.2 Justin Martyr’s second-century Dialogue with Trypho and the fourth-century Dialogue of Athanasius and Zacchaeus are famous examples from the Greek corpus, but there are many others, including an anonymous Latin Altercatio Ecclesia et Synagoga that was universally attributed to Saint Augustine during the Middle Ages, and is considered by some a prototype of the medieval mystery play.3 These works were intellectual manifestations of the early Christian formation of an identity that was both founded upon and yet distinctly independent and even oppositional to Judaism. As the historian of Christianity Jaroslav Pelikan once pointedly observed, virtually every major Christian writer of the first five centuries either composed an anti-Jewish treatise or made anti-Judaism a dominant theme in a work devoted to some other subject.4 But the literary form of a dialogue or interview between characters, Pelikan further noted, neither wholly reflected nor wholly envisaged such real encounters. ‘Rather, the dialogue with Judaism became a literary conceit, in which the question of the uniqueness of Christianity in comparison with Judaism became an occasion for a literary exposition of Christian doctrine for a non-Jewish audience of Christian readers.’5 I do not wish to challenge this statement for what it does say, but rather to explore what it assumes, without in fact taking a definite position whether Alfonsi’s dialogue (or any other for that matter) does or does not reflect “real” discussions between Jews and Christians. A most elementary question, then, is why dialogue? Most scholars (including Pelikan) have either more or less accepted that the dialogue is a literary fiction, or else attempted to extrapolate authentic voices from 2.  On early Christian apologetic dialogues in general, see especially Averil Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (Washington DC, 2014), who looks widely at the use of literary dialogue (especially in Byzantium) and argues for treating the genre as a productive category of historical investigation. On the anti-Jewish dialogue, see Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich, and Bernard Pouderon (eds.), Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos: permanences et mutations d’une tradition polémique: actes du colloque international organisé les 7 et 8 décembre 2011 à l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris, 2013). See also the elegant and concise overview provided by Sébastien Morlet, Christianisme et philosophie: Les premières confrontations (Ier-VIe siècles) (Paris, 2014). 3.  Cf. James Parkes, The Conflict of Church and Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (New York, 1969), p. 239. 4.  Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago, 1971), p. 15. 5.  Ibid.

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the dialogues and debates in question. I am here more concerned with how Alfonsi’s Dialogus functions in ways that an ordinary treatise cannot, particularly within the early twelfth-century context in which the work was written and initially received. Rhetoric, rather than reality, is therefore the focus of this paper. In looking specifically at Alfonsi’s reappropriation of an ancient form, particular attention will be given to the medieval study of the liberal arts, which is the second crucial point of continuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages that needs to be raised. Dialogue and the liberal arts are in fact not unrelated. After all, it was Martianus Capella’s fifth-century De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury), written in dialogue form with alternations of prose and allusive verse, that bestowed upon the medieval intellectual tradition an elaborate didactic allegory of the seven liberal arts.6 De nuptiis was of great importance in defining the standard formula of academic learning from the Christianized Roman Empire of the fifth century forward, and it would have been as familiar (if not more so) to readers in the twelfth century as it was to readers in the fifth century. This formula included a medieval love for allegory (in particular personifications) as a means of presenting knowledge, and a structuring of that learning around the seven liberal arts. I would like to suggest that both dialogue and the liberal arts are critical elements of Alfonsi’s continuity and departure from ancient traditions. My aim is to explore the internal dialectic at work in the Dialogus, in other words to examine how the literary genre and content of the work interact and inform each other, and to then situate Alfonsi within the broader evolution of scholastic argumentation, a phenomenon I have elsewhere described as a ‘medieval culture of disputation’.7 Finally, I will consider Alfonsi’s use of the term disputatio, which I believe also displays continuity with, and a reorientation of, existing polemical discourse. These considerations should allow for some additional assessments to be made about his role in the history of Jewish-Christian relations.8 From a typological point of view, the most intriguing feature of ­Alfonsi’s Dialogus is precisely the one that at first glance also seems most 6.  The alternation between prose and verse, a genre called prosimetrum, is a defining feature of that other most influential dialogue of Late Antiquity: Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae. 7.  See my monograph, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia, 2013), with a discussion of Alfonsi and the anti-Jewish dialogue in chap. 6. 8.  To be clear, I am here less concerned with the reception of Alfonsi’s work, which has been the subject of much recent discussion, than with the early scholastic milieu in which Alfonsi lived and ultimately served.

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innocuous: its literary form. The work consists of a prose prologue and an initial dialogue, followed by a set of twelve dialogues (hence the plural sometimes given in the title) between the two different versions of the author’s self.9 The conversation is between Moses (Moyses) before his conversion to Christianity and Peter (Petrus) after his conversion. To my knowledge, this is the first polemical work to explicitly cast itself as an internal dialogue with oneself, and more specifically as an intellectual contest between the author’s historical past as a Jew and his conversionary present as a Christian.10 The work is in this sense psychologically reflective and emotionally introspective, as it seeks to bring the beliefs and identity of his past into confrontation with his present as the two characters discuss a wide range of topics from Mosaic Law and the coming of the Messiah to science, astronomy, and the deficiencies of Islam. Comparisons have often been drawn between Alfonsi’s polemic and other works treating Christian theology or Jewish disbelief in the same period. It is beside the point to list all the contemporary dialogues and treatises that touch on anti-Judaism. What is important to note are the slight but meaningful differences that are particular to Alfonsi. Whereas Anselm’s Cur Deus homo (c. 1098) and Guibert of Nogent’s Tractatus de incarnatione contra Iudaeos (c. 1111) aimed their arguments primarily at Christians and whereas the Jews depicted in the disputations of Gilbert Crispin and Odo of Cambrai did not accept Christianity, Alfonsi’s Dialogus retraces the process whereby rational argument did in fact effect conversion, and in this case the conversion of the author himself. Put another way, Alfonsi’s polemic does not end with a conversion; it begins with one. There are many aspects of Alfonsi’s life and background that remain insufficiently understood, but the basic outline of his life has been known for some time. He was an Iberian Jew who converted to Christianity in the Aragonese town of Huesca in 1106, just ten years after the town had been captured from Muslims, before emigrating first to England and then to 9.  Until quite recently, most editions and treatments of the work gave Dialogi as the title. For a detailed discussion of the early printed editions, see Klaus-Peter Mieth, Der Dialog des Petrus Alfonsi: seine Überlieferung im Druck und in den Handschriften Textedition (Inaug. diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1982), pp. xiii-xix; as well as the ‘Editor’s Preface’, in Cardelle de Hartmann and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 3-12. 10.  This format would be adopted by the convert Alfonso of Valladolid in the ­fourteenth century, who wrote in Hebrew and may well have been responding to arguments of Petrus Alfonsi. For a recent treatment of this connection, see Ryan Szpiech, ‘“Petrus Alfonsi…Erred Greatly”: Alfonso of Valladolid’s Imitation and Critique of Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus’, in Cardelle de Hartmann and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 321-48.

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France.11 He appears to have returned to his homeland before his death, for his signature witnesses a bill of sale by which a French knight who had served under Alfonso I obtained an estate in Saragossa that had previously belonged to a Muslim.12 Raised in a Jewish community that was subject to Muslim power, Alfonsi was well acquainted with the traditions of Muslim Spain, which included an Arabic education in letters, science, and philosophy, in addition to his familial grounding in Jewish traditions. His widely influential Disciplina clericalis (sometimes translated as ‘The Scholar’s Guide’) is a collection of moralistic tales (exempla) from the Arabic as well as Christian and Jewish traditions that influenced many later writers. Now thought to have been composed while Alfonsi was in England, the heroes of many of these fables are magnanimous philosophers who help the dispossessed, advise kings, and take an ascetic approach to prepare themselves for death. Hundreds of manuscripts of the Disciplina clericalis survive, giving Petrus Alfonsi a status of auctoritas to his medieval readers that virtually no other medieval Jew would ever enjoy.13 Alfonsi’s literary gift as a moralizing storyteller seems worth emphasizing, since I believe it partly accounts for the successful medieval response to his anti-Jewish polemic.14 As any alert reader can ascertain, the Dialogus is not the transcription of an actual conversation that took place; modern psychoanalysis aside, how could it be? But it does offer the personification of what a debate between an educated Christian might say, or perhaps what he should be able to say, to a stubborn Jew given a chance encounter. Most other dialogues, it bears repeating, present themselves as transcriptions of conversations that took place at a moment in time and at a given location in the past.15 This is not the case with 11.  For the patchy biographical information we possess on Alfonsi, see the outstanding introduction by Irven Resnick in his translation of Dialogue Against the Jews, pp. 3-36; and most recently the brief ‘Afterword’ by John Tolan in Cardelle de Hartmann and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 371-77. 12.  See Resnick’s introduction (note 11 above), p. 22. 13.  Cf. the remarks by Cardelle de Hartmann and Roelli, in id. (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, p. 3, ‘We can safely say that Petrus Alfonsi has been read continuously in Europe since his productive period at the beginning of the 12th century until our own days.’ 14.  Seventy-nine medieval manuscripts of the Dialogus survive, making it a veritable bestseller by medieval standards. A catalogue of the manuscripts containing copies of the Dialogus is given by Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 182-98. 15.  A notable exception is the Collationes (c. 1132) by Peter Abelard, which is set in a dream vision and is framed as a dialogue between a Jew and Christian and then a second dialogue (collatio) between that same Christian and a Philosopher. I have compared the these two works with a similarly constructed work by the Spanish Jew Yehuda Halevi in my ‘Reason and Natural Law in the Disputational Writings of Peter Alfonsi, Peter Abelard, and Yehuda Halevi’, in Michael Frassetto (ed.), Christian Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook (London, 2007), pp. 109-36.

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Alfonsi, whose inner conversations unfold almost (if not explicitly) as a dream vision, perhaps not unlike how Augustine’s spiritual dialogues with God took place in his own soul in the form of a search for his own self. Authorial intent, in other words, is arguably a more critical element of Alfonsi’s polemic than most other anti-Jewish dialogues because he is describing his own path to conversion, not the realized or even necessarily anticipated conversion of other Jews. In the prologue (prologus) that precedes the twelve dialogues themselves (the prologue itself being a common if not exclusive feature of eleventh- and twelfth-century scholastic writings), Alfonsi states forthrightly his reasons for giving the polemic its literary form: Librum autem totum distinxi per dialogum, ut lectoris animus promptior fiat ad intelligendum. In tutandis etiam Christianorum rationibus nomen, quod modo Christianus habeo, posui, in rationibus uero aduersarii confutandis nomen, quod ante baptismum habueram, id est Moysen. Librum etiam in titulos XII diuisi, ut, quod lector quisque desiderat, citius in illis inueniat.16 I have arranged the entire book as a dialogue, so that the reader’s mind may more quickly achieve an understanding. To defend the arguments of the Christians, I have used the name that I now have as a Christian, whereas in the arguments of the adversary refuting them, I have used the name Moses, which I had before baptism. I have divided the book into twelve headings, so that the reader may find whatever he desires in them more quickly.17

Alfonsi specifically draws our attention to the form and arrangement of the work in order that the reader’s mind may more quickly achieve an understanding, presumably of Christian truth. There are other such treatises from around Alfonsi’s time that make similar claims, but one work in particular that shares this pedagogical goal is Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus homo, which of course is also written in dialogue form and also takes as its starting point a defence of the rationality of Christianity against unbelievers.18 Anselm writes, since those things which are investigated by the method of question and answer (interrogationem et responsionem inuestigantur) are clearer and more acceptable to many minds, especially slower minds, I will take as my 16.  I quote from the forthcoming edition currently being prepared by Carmen Car­ delle de Hartmann, Darko Senkovic, and Thomas Ziegler, with reference to the prologus and speech number. Here, Alfonsi, Dialogus, prolog. 1§ 6-7. 17.  English translation from Irven M.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews (Washington, 2006), p. 41. I have followed Resnick’s translation in most instances below. 18.  The similarities with Anselm and Clunaic monasticism also forms the basis of the contribution by Francesco Santi, ‘Pietro Alfonso e Anselmo di Canterbury’, in Cardelle de Hartmann and Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 13-42.

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fellow disputant (disputantem) the one who has been urging me on more insistently than any other, so that in the following manner Boso may question and Anselm reply.19

As I have tried to show elsewhere, the literary form of the dialogue and the ideal of pedagogical disputation (disputatio) are twin concepts that allow Anselm and other monastic writers who followed him to best illustrate the rationalism of Christianity at work.20 So for instance in the prologue to the Dialogus, Peter describes Moses in terms very similar to the ones used by Anselm, calling him ‘a companion and fellow student (condiscipulus) from the very earliest age.’21 While the didactic element of the character setup would seem to be an echo of Anselm, the explicit attention to arrangement and order reach deep into antiquity. In the history of rhetoric, great attention had always been paid to the aspects of a work’s composition that could enhance its persuasive qualities. For instance Cicero, in his De Inuentione, had listed the five canons of rhetoric: inuentio (the process of developing and refining your arguments); dispositio (the process of arranging and organizing your arguments for maximum impact); elocutio (the process of determining how you present your arguments using figures of speech and other rhetorical techniques); memoria (which not only consisted of memorizing the words of a specific speech, but also of storing up famous quotes, literary references, and other facts that could be used in impromptu speeches); actio (the process of practicing how you deliver your speech using gestures, pronunciation, and tone of voice).22 These canons or rules applied in the first instance to oral speech making, but in the Middle Ages they came to form the foundation for the composition of texts, especially after the decline in ancient public oratory, something that should not be confused for the end of dialogue.23 Rhetoric was 19. Anselm, Cur Deus homo, in S.  Anselmi Opera Omnia, 6  vols., ed.  Franciscus S. Schmitt (Edinburgh, 1940-61), vol. 2, pp. 47-48. See also my discussion of this passage and others like it in my Medieval Culture of Disputation, 46 and passim. 20.  See my ‘Anselm, Dialogue, and the Rise of Scholastic Disputation’, Speculum 86, 2 (2011), pp. 387-418, republished as chap. 2 in my Medieval Culture of Disputation. 21.  Prologus, ed.  Cardelle de Hartman et al., P2§1: A tenera igitur pueritie etate quidam michi perfectissimus adheserat amicus nomine Moyses, qui a primeua etate meus consocius fuerat et condiscipulus. 22.  The bibliography on Cicero’s influence in the Middle Ages is significant. For a recent and very useful assessment of the medieval reception of ancient rhetorical theory, see the general introduction in Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300-1475 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 1-61. 23.  The notion that Christianity caused a decline in literary and philosophical dialogue is the subject of a provocative and erudite collection of essays: Simon Goldhill (ed.), The End of Dialogue in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008).

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a thriving topic of study at the turn of the twelfth century, as various scholars have shown, and it is evident that both Anselm and Alfonsi (among others) were actively drawing upon that same tradition, even if they do not single it out for comment.24 Alfonsi’s purported rationale, therefore, is essentially didactic. He further tells us in the same passage that he has divided the book into twelve chapter headings (tituli), so that the reader may find whatever he desires in them more quickly (another notable parallel with Anselm). These prefatory comments and the division of the work into twelve convenient headings suggest that the work was conceived of and intended for use as a handbook in disputative argumentation, not just a personal reflection or a justification of the author’s confessional choices in life. Scholastic authors often gave great attention to the ordering and organization of their works, in conformity with the rhetorical art of dispositio but most especially owing to the pedagogical needs of having a teachable and therefore accessible work. By the early thirteenth century the various books of the Bible itself were systematically being divided into chapters, a development that is usually attributed to another archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (c. 1150-1228), but this was the culmination of several generations of the intense study of scriptural texts that necessitated ready citation and quotation. Scientific works were especially meticulous in the subdivision of data and extrapolations, not least the works circulating among Arab scholars in Spain. A scientist as well as a polemicist, Alfonsi was undoubtedly inspired by the mathematical works and astronomical tables that give similar structured organization to their works.25 The various points of convergence between Alfonsi’s ideas about science and astronomy are not what concern us here. The point simply is that there is an organizational purpose that lies behind the Dialogus, one whose reliance upon and departures from ancient tradition will require that the work be situated against a broader evolution in scholastic pedagogy. Alfonsi’s Dialogus deftly responds to several ancient and very current themes simultaneously. Beyond the obvious goals it shares with other medieval anti-Jewish dialogues in subordinating an outdated Judaism to the enduring validity of Christianity, what is especially worth noting are the 24.  Especially valuable in showcasing the range of the language arts at this critical juncture in intellectual history are the essays contained in Irène Rosier-Catach (ed.), Arts du langage et théologie aux confins des XIe–XIIe siècles: Textes, maîtres, debats (Turnhout, 2011). 25.  Petrus Alfonsi’s contributions to science have been much scrutinized, beginning with Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, and more recently by John Tolan, P. Sj. van Koningsveld, and especially Charles Burnett. For the wider context of these translations into Latin, see Burnett, ‘Arabic in Latin: the reception of Arabic philosophy into Western Europe’, in Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 370-404.

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prefatory statements that explain the didactic function of the literary form and the subsequent cultivation of a dramatic scenario in which the reader can more easily visualize the characters in dispute. An exemplary illustration of this mental overlap between the ethics and the aesthetics of the Jewish-Christian dialogue is found in a thirteenth-century copy of the Dialogus, now located in the library of the Grootseminarie in Bruges (fig. 1). To my knowledge, this is one if not the only medieval illustration that pictorializes specific characters from a specific literary dialogue of the Aduersus Iudaeos

Fig. 1

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corpus. What we see is not just a Christian and a Jew in dispute, but specifically the characters that animate Alfonsi’s Dialogus. Moses, on the left and wearing the traditional conical Jewish hat, is shown engaged in a vigorous debate with Peter, whose exotic headwear is perhaps meant to evoke the philosophy and wisdom of the Greek orient. Moses enumerates the reasons for his belief on the five fingers of his outstretched hand (possibly an allusion to the five books of Moses), while Peter counters with the singular and irrefutable strength of Christianity on one finger. Medieval scribes were known to doodle. But this is no doodle. Considering that this manuscript dates to the thirteenth century, when encounters between Jews and Christians were becoming ever more public and visual allegories were commonplace, there is good reason to take this unique image as standing for a wider cultural appropriation of the Jewish-­Christian dialogue, a phenomenon I call “performative pedagogy”. Like the many other images of Jews and Christians in dispute that would circulate in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and beyond, this scene brings the textual personification of the debate into visual alignment with the oral and disputative dimensions of the verbal conversation. Just as the commonplace personifications of Ecclesia and Synagoga that adorned the monumental sculptures of cathedrals helped to contrast the notion of a blind and defeated Judaism vis-à-vis the crowned truth of Christianity, so too does the image of a Jew being bested in debate with a Christian help to cultivate a public sphere in which all consumers of public disputations were invited to participate, whose theological and pedagogical values they would recognize and thereby ingest. The second aspect of the prologue that both harkens back to antique models is Alfonsi’s invocation of the liberal arts. Not all the liberal arts, he says, but most of the liberal arts. This statement, too, merits scrutiny: Cumque notum esset Iudeis—qui me antea nouerant et probauerant peritum in libris prophetarum et dictis doctorum partem etiam, licet non magnam, habere omnium liberalium artium—, quod legem et fidem accepissem Christianorum et unus essem eorum, quidam eorum arbitrati sunt me hoc non fecisse, nisi quia adeo omnem abieceram uerecundiam, quod et Deum et legem contempseram. And when it became known to the Jews who had known me previously, and had considered me well-trained in the books of the prophets and the sayings of the sages, and to have even a portion, although not great, of all the liberal arts, that I had accepted the law and faith of the Christians and was one of them, some of them thought that I had only did this because I  had abandoned all sense of shame, to such an extent that I had condemned both God and the law…26 26.  Dialogus, prologus 1§4, ed. Cardelle de Hartmann et al.; PL 157, col. 538; Resnick (trans.), Dialogue Against the Jews, p. 41.

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It would be easy to simply gloss over the comment as a casual invocation of the seven liberal arts. But upon closer inspection, one discovers that Alfonsi has a rather original and unusual classification of the “liberal arts”. It was in the sixth century that Boethius’s pupil Cassiodorus wrote an influential treatise on the triuium and the quadriuium, thus fixing the famous liberal arts at seven and establishing the structural foundation on which medieval education would be built. This distinction between the triuium and the quadriuium, it has often been observed, was essentially a distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic sciences: there were three arts of language (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and four arts that dealt with extra-linguistic or “mathematical” realities (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). This scheme became a staple of the educational system and remained essentially unchallenged for the next five hundred years. Even when a medieval writer wished to go beyond the confines of this scheme, the basic seven remained essentially intact, since a writer could simply add to the curriculum one’s preferred subjects. Thus Honorius Augustudonensis (d. 1136), writing at about the same time as Alfonsi brings the number to ten in his short didactic treatise, Concerning the Exile of the Soul and its Fatherland.27 In addition to the traditional seven, he also added physics (meaning medicine and natural science), the mechanical arts, and economics. Although unusual in itself, even this flexibility in number was not new. The first-century BC Roman author Marcus Terentius Varro had initially listed the liberal arts as a set of nine disciplines (medicine and architecture being the additional two), but without subdividing them into the triuium and the quadriuium. Petrus Alfonsi belongs to this venerable tradition of rearranging the seven liberal arts. But his unique background as a scientist educated in Jewish and Muslim Spain produced a wholly different engagement with the liberal arts, for he did not expand but rather attempted to reduce the traditional seven, and for reasons that are intimately related to the nature of his anti-Jewish polemic.28 His classification of the liberal arts is set forth in his Epistle to the Peripatetics, which he probably wrote when he 27.  Honorius’s identity and exact whereabouts have proved frustratingly elusive to pin down to all who have tried. One current theory is that he was of German extraction but spent time with Anselm of Canterbury when in England. For the text of the work, see PL 172, cols. 807-1108, where the title is given as De animae exsilio et patria: alias, de artibus. 28.  Alfonsi’s handling of the liberal arts is nicely dissected by Gregory B.  Stone, ‘Ramon Llull vs. Petrus Alfonsi: Postmodern Liberalism and the Six Liberal Arts’, ME 3, 1 (1997), pp.  70-93, upon whose analysis I have relied, even though I am not entirely persuaded by his ‘postmodern’ conclusions.

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was in England. The Epistola consists largely of a plea for western Latin scholars to study the science of astronomy, as transmitted in the works of Arab scholars. This is predicated, however, on a reorganization of the disciplines of study. First, there are for Alfonsi only six liberal arts. Grammar, the study of language, is removed from the triuium and branded as an unworthy non-science. Alfonsi writes: ‘We have found that many of you study the science of grammar. This cannot be counted among the seven liberal arts, since it is neither knowledge subject to proof nor is it in every language the same, but in each one different.’29 For Alfonsi, there are no grounds for including grammar among the seven liberal arts because it is neither knowledge (scientia), which is subject to proof, nor is it the same (eadem) in every language. Indeed, in every language grammar is different (diuersa). For him, knowledge or scientia can have as its object only that which is eadem, always the same and always identical.30 A science of humanity, therefore, can only properly study that which is universal, one and the same in all times and places, common to all humans. Grammar or language, Alfonsi thinks, is the very epitome of diversity, of the non-universal, and therefore the very emblem of the unscientific. In his Disciplina clericalis Alfonsi uses fables for a similar didactic purpose: in order to point out and illustrate recognizable moral truths. Drawing on tales he has learned from the Greek and Arabic traditions, he uses those fables to illustrate truths that are the property of no one religious sect or of any group of specialized scientists. They are the universal property of every thinking man and woman. So it is precisely on account of grammar’s association with diversity (and with the corruptible) that Alfonsi dethrones it from the “true” liberal arts. The upshot of Alfonsi’s assault on grammar is his celebration of logic, which occupies an exalted position among the now reduced six liberal arts. ‘It is indeed a sublime art and a valid one’, he writes, because 29.  Latin text printed in Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, p. 165: Inuenimus autem nonnullus ex uobis grammatice studentes scientie. Que quamuis inter artes VII nequeat computari, cum neque sit argumentalis scientia, nec in omnibus linguis eadem sed omnino diuerse. The translation is also by Tolan, at p. 173. 30.  See Stone, ‘Ramon Llull vs.  Petrus Alfonsi’, p.  72. It should be noted that the English scientist most often associated with Alfonsi is Adelard of Bath, whose letter dedicated to his son, De edodem et diuersa (On the Same and the Different), praises the scientific learning in the Arabic-speaking East. It is also cast as a student-teacher dialogue, in this case an affable conversation between Adelard and his inquisitive nephew. See Charles Burnett (ed.), Adelard of Bath, Conversations with his Nephew: On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science, and On Birds (Cambridge, 2007); and idem, ‘Petrus Alfonsi and Adelard of Bath Revisited’, in Cardelle de Hartmann and ­Roelli (eds.), Petrus Alfonsi, pp. 77-92.

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‘through dialectic right is discerned from wrong, and true from false.’31 In other words, it is starting from logic that the higher truth can be reached. This “true” art is the one that gives humans scientia or knowledge, which the imprecise study of grammar could never achieve. Clearly the aim of Alfonsi’s revision of the classification of the liberal arts is to place grammar (language) and logic (truth) on opposite ends of the knowledge spectrum. And still this placement of grammar and logic in opposition to each other is not Alfonsi’s only departure from the traditional scheme. For in addition he makes no mention at all of rhetoric. This would seem a curious omission, since literary form, elocution, persuasive reasoning, and the ordering of statements are clearly features to which he has given considered attention. What matters in Alfonsi’s mind, of course, is the universal science of language, not its individual artistry, and rhetoric is above all an art that can be manipulated with varying degrees of effect depending on the skill of its practitioner. In the place of rhetoric he substitutes physica, by which he means medicine, a practice that he clearly views as based on universal truths. The end result is a reordering of the triuium and the quadriuium in favor of a classification that deviates significantly from the traditional liberal arts. Logic (that is, dialectic) presides triumphantly over five subordinate disciplines: Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Medicine, and Astronomy. Grammar is admitted as a valid topic of study, but not a “true” liberal art, and rhetoric (that art most closely associated with sophistry) is mentioned not at all. This idea of downplaying vernacular grammars in favour of rational logic is important to recognize because it is exactly this pedagogical program that Alfonsi dramatizes in his Dialogus. Thus in his final speech in titulus 1 of the Dialogus, Peter addresses the following remark to Moses: ‘the words of your sages seem to be nothing but the words of little boys making jokes in school (uerba jocantium in scholis puerorum), or of women telling old wives’ tales in the streets.’32 Alfonsi’s insult displays his contempt for the fact that little boys in school receive instruction in grammar while women gossip in the streets using the vernacular. Judaism, as Alfonsi presents it, thus conforms to a vernacular (protean) grammar and not a rational (universal) logic. This line of attack is what forms the basis of his lengthy critique of the writings of the Talmud. Alfonsi’s contempt for Judaism, then, is another expression of a long-standing Christian hostility towards Jewish learning, one that assumes that Jews were only able to 31. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, p. 173 (Latin at 165). See again Stone, ‘Ramon Llull vs. Petrus Alfonsi’, pp. 73-74, who has emphasized this reclassification. 32. Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews, trans. Resnick, pp.  95-96. See also Stone, ‘Ramon Llull vs. Petrus Alfonsi’, pp. 76-78.

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grasp the historical meaning of Scripture, in other words what the words themselves literally narrate and nothing more. Alfonsi regards Jewish thinking, even at its highest level, as incapable of rising beyond grammar and a vernacular, a language fit only for those rhetorical aims that do not rise above or beyond the individual circumstances of a particular people. From this it naturally follows that he should elevate logic, reason, and science above the level of history and grammar. The significance of all this is not only that it helps to illuminate the discourse that unfolds between Peter and Moses in the ensuing twelve books of the dialogue, but also it helps to place Alfonsi within the broader evolution of scholastic teachings more generally. For as all scholars of the twelfth century well know, these very themes of logic, grammar, rationality, and science are precisely the ones that would occupy the attention of that century’s most formidable minds. Much attention has been given to Alfonsi’s scientific vocabulary, which is clearly informed by his translations of Arabic treatises on mathematics and astronomy, as well as to the prominent place of reason (ratio) in his argumentation.33 A brief excursion into his use of the term disputatio, however, may be no less relevant to assessing Alfonsi’s place in the early history of scholasticism since, as we have seen above, there was considerable flexibility in the ideas and terminology of the time. He employs the noun disputatio and its verbal forms on no fewer than ten occasions, listed here for simplicity of comparison and reference:34  1. T2§27: Utrum ille homo Filius Dei fuerit, latius postea disputare oportebit, quia tantae quaestionis auctor ualidissimi argumenti uehicolo indiget. (PL 157, col. 573)  2. T5§14: Vnde in alterne disputationis campum uerba uerbis mandata mandatis discurramus (PL 157, col. 602)  3. T6§1: Satis hucusque contra sectam nostram et sectam Sarracenorum disputatum est (PL 157, col. 606)  4. T6§2: Nunc autem quaere sub quolibet titulo in eodem disputando, et liceat tibi si potueris quae a me dicta fuerint destruere. (PL 157, col. 606).  5. T§3: Deinde de aliis tuae partibus credulitatis disputabimus, donec omnes compleamus. (PL 157, col. 606)  6. T§23: Quod si, cum aliquo inde loquemur Christiano, multo inde subtilius cum eo disputare possemus. (PL 157, col. 608)

33.  See for instance Gilbert Dahan, ‘L’usage de la ratio dans la polémique contre les juifs, XIIe-XIVe siècles’, in Horacio Santiago-Otero (ed.), Diálogo Filosófico-Religioso entre Christianismo, Judaísmo e Islamismo durante la Edad Média en la Península Iberíca (Turnhout, 1994), pp. 289-308. 34.  Citation is here given according to the chapter and speech number (as established by Cardelle de Hartman et al.) followed by the column in J.-P. Migne’s PL 157.

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 7. T8§26:  Hoc autem in  disputationis exordio pactum non firmaras,  ut iniuste aliquid contradicas. (PL 157, col. 626)  8. T10§36: Veramne an falsum fuerit, diutius disputare non pacet. (PL 157, col. 644)  9. T10§76: Quod si etiam uelis, in angustam inde disputationem ueniamus et ego tibi per rationem ostendam quod, cum se Dei filium uocauit, ueritatem locutus fuit. (PL 157, col. 648) 10. T12§1: Hactenus de singulis tue credulitatis partibus sufficienter disputatum est. (PL 157, col. 656)

The first thing that should strike us is that the term does not lend itself to a straightforward translation, as the word itself carries a slightly different force in several different instances. What is clear is that disputatio refers to the argumentative nature of debate far more than to the merely inquisitive conversation of a monastic dialogue (where the word disputatio is often employed), even though Alfonsi as we saw above prefaces his work by describing how it has been written in the dialogue form (per dialogum). Indeed, it is this dual aspect of the work—at once an imaginary and pleasant conversation between two companions and fellow students in the monastic tradition and at the same time a contest in argumentative reasoning—that gives the Dialogus its distinctive and versatile qualities. In the second instance listed above, Peter is challenging Moses’ claim that the basis of their Jewish law is constructed upon the foundation of reason, and he therefore asks that ‘in the back-and-forth of debate’ (alterne disputationis) they should consider words against words, commandments against commandments, so that they will be able to discover if a proposition is well established. The implication is that the rationality of the arguments proceeds from the contentiousness of the exchange. In passage seven, Peter again admonishes Moses for not establishing an agreement ‘at the beginning of the debate’, which in turn allows Moses to later contradict his claims. The organization and rules of the encounter are emphasized, and the process of debate is also seen in examples three (‘enough has been debated up to this point’) and five (‘we will debate other parts of your belief until we have covered it all’). In the fourth instance, however, the word occurs in a speech by Peter recalling the division of the work under twelve headings, where he calls upon Moses to ‘investigate my disputation under any heading and, if it pleases you, defeat what I said, if you are able.’ Peter is not only referring to the totality of their debate (that is, ‘my disputation’) but is also clearly connecting the idea of disputation to the organizational form of the work, suggesting that the ordering of the tituli has been provided for ease of citation and facility in learning. The overall impression of the exchange

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is very scholastic, or perhaps proto-scholastic, and it is not difficult to see how the vividness of this imaginary debate would lend naturally to the later public debates that were organized between Jews and Christians. Finally, it might be noted that while most of the references to their disputatio come from the mouth of Peter, it is Moses who gives the word its final mention, saying ‘we have debated long enough and sufficiently concerning our law and yours in a mutual exchange.’ The disputation thus resolves as if striking a note of harmony, with the Jew conceding that he has produced all the scriptural arguments that he can in order to convince Peter.35 With these considerations in mind, we can now return to the distinct contributions of Alfonsi within the broader culture of disputation. I  began with his authorial intentions, because I find them particularly insightful not for what we don’t know about Jewish-Christian dialogues, but precisely for what we do know about the intellectual activities and cultural developments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The imaginary framework of having the author dispute his former self is as I said original, but the stated premise for selecting the literary form of the dialogue is not only familiar, but programmatic. To my mind, the phrasing in the prologue bears a striking resemblance both to Anselm, who wrote Cur Deus homo in the form of a dialogue to benefit “slower minds”, and to Gilbert Crispin, who, in his Disputatio Iudei et Christiani, made a very similar claim. Alfonsi doesn’t just say he is going to do this, he actually follows through and provides a narrative embodiment of that goal, and this is well captured in the thirteenth-century illustration of that work. Many passage call explicit attention to the intellectual context in which their debate not only can, but must, unfold. Peter, in the initial dialogue that follows the prologue (but before the first titulus) says that Moses was reared in the cradle of philosophy and suckled at the breast of philosophy, and Moses a little later on sets the parameters of the encounter in very proto-scholastic terms: ‘I want you to agree that sometimes it will be appropriate to question me, sometimes to respond to me, and sometimes to oppose me with an alternate argument just as the discussion will 35.  The final exchange concerns the nature of images, and in particular the apparent adoration of the cross in a church, which Moses finds too much like idol worship for his taste. Petrus explains once again how a true understanding of the cross does not entail such worship. This important point of interpretation returns in the Jewish-Christian disputation between Rupert of Deutz and Herman ‘the Former Jew’ in the latter’s Opusculum de conversione sua. See Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History and Fiction in the Twelfth Century, trans. Alex J. Novikoff (Philadelphia, 2010), esp. chap. 4.

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allow me to do.’36 The phrasing reminds us both of the ancient Roman legal practice of questions in utramque partem (on both sides of the issues) while at the same time anticipating the university scholastic practice of the classroom disputatio, where both sides of the students’ arguments are put forth and examined before a determinatio (determination) is made by the presiding master. Alfonsi’s gifts as a moralizing storyteller and his reclassification of the liberal arts inform the internal dialectic of the Dialogi, but they also herald a new age that will be profoundly concerned with literary style, the art of discourse and of preaching, and the triumph of logic as a topic of study second only to Theology itself. Alfonsi’s Dialogus is therefore both typical and atypical of Jewish-Christian disputations. He takes an ancient art form, he reworks it in a very personal manner and according to a classification that is informed by his scientific background, and he delivers up a text that is engaging to read and capable of being easily passed on from one generation to the next, with each successive interpretation adding and subtracting to it as they see fit. This flexibility in the form and function of the Aduersus Iudaeos dialogue is perhaps emblematic of the continuously evolving nature of medieval JewishChristian relations.

36.  Prologus, 2§11, ed. Cardelle de Hartmann et al.: preterea, si quid interciderit aliquando quod a legum alienum uideatur proposito, non te pigeat, queso, sed de ceteris artibus, cum oportunus exegerit locus, interroganti respondere studeto. Concedasque uolo, ut mutua ratione michi aliquando interrogare, aliquando liceat respondere, aliquando etiam aduersari, prout sermo dederit michi. English translation after Resnick, Dialogue Against the Jews, p. 45.

SPOKEN AND UNSPOKEN IN PETRUS ALFONSI’S DIALOGUE Claire Soussen Abstract: One interesting aspect of Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogue is the fact that it is a discussion between the two egos of the same man. Contrary to other controversial texts who stage two fictitious characters, a Christian and a Jew, fighting to have the truth of their religion recognized, this dialogue is in fact a monolog. Petrus Alfonsus ex-Moyses Judaeus tries to explain his former self his motivations and uses all the devices to succeed. The usual arguments of religious polemics are used as innovative ones. Despite his will to appear as a real and good Christian, Petrus can hardly deny his Jewish roots.

The main topic of the book in which this article appears is ‘fiction and reality in the Aduersus Judaeos texts’. The case of the Dialogus Petri cognomento Alphonsi ex judaeo christiani et Moysi judaei (quoting the title given in the PL 157, col. 537-38) is a striking example of the pertinence of the subject. As we frequently observe in Aduersus Judaeos texts, the Jewish narrator is not a “real” person, as the dialogue is inherently fake; it is between the two selves of the same man, the convert Petrus Alphonsus, ex-Moyses Judaeus, surely of interest to psychoanalysts. His former Jewish self discusses with his new, Christian self about a number of issues, most notably philosophy, science, ratio, and the religion-based polemics between Jews and Christians. The subjects I will focus on are religious, which compose the polemical part of the work. This aspect is the most interesting to me because it gives access to the intimacy of the man, implicitly conveying his opinions and likely his feelings, if a man who wrote almost a thousand years ago could be so approached, at a time when it was not so common to do so.1 However, the reason why we have to be more cautious with this text than all other medieval texts, is exactly because it is written by a convert, whose task is to convince his former coreligionists, and to dedicate himself to their apology. We do not only have to search for information, but also examine and question them very carefully. 1.  We must recall the example of Guibert de Nogent’s De vita Sua noticeable exception in its time.

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The first question to be raised is Peter’s honesty and authenticity.2 The prologue and the incipit of the work provide some information, but they do not reveal everything. Moreover, the genre, as with part of the work in question, are nearly codified in their formality; the same topoi are used here as in other works of that kind. We could further question the completeness of Peter’s argumentation, as he is of course biased. The fact is that we have to penetrate Peter’s thought and reasoning, between the spoken and the unspoken, and try to complete what he does not convey. As two individuals speak through his mouth, he stands at the meeting point of at least three cultures and influences that give access to just as many fields of interest: faith and religion, science, philosophy. This surely explains the success that his dialogi met during and after its time.3 Peter-Moses, by Himself: A Classical Presentation for an Exceptional Man The prologue of the work gives some information about the author. He firstly delineates a sort of faith formula, which identifies him as a real Christian, and then introduces himself and his work.4 Only then does Peter tell the reader his story, that is, the fact that he has converted from Judaism to Christianity. The words he uses to say it are quite poetic and emanate from a Christian symbolic lexical field: ‘I left the veil of falsehood and I am naked free of the tunic of injustice.’5 Those are exactly the symbols and images of the exoneration of vices, followed by a rebirth, which are often used to depict baptism. He then details the time and place of his conversion, which took place in Huesca in 1106. He received 2.  The question of his authenticity is raised by Charles Burnett, ‘The Works of Petrus Alfonsi: Questions of Authenticity’, MAev 66,1 (1997), pp. 42-79, about the authorship of his works and especially about the influences and links he could have given or received. Burnett’s approach is interesting because it allows to replace Petrus Alfonsi’s works and science in the context of his time and to imagine the network of his relations. 3.  John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, 1993), pp. 100-101. 4.  Petri Alphonsi ex Judaeo Christiani, Prefatio, PL 157, col. 537: […] et quod inde est credendum, uidelicet quod unus sit Deus, in personarum Trinitate, quae nec ullo se praecedunt tempore, nec aliqua a se segregantur diuisione, quas Christiani Patrem, et Filium, et Spiritum nominant, et quod Beata Maria de Spiritu sancto concipiens, sine uirili commistione Christum peperit […]. And further he says that he believes in the christian apostles and the catholic faith. 5.  PL 157, col. 537: […] exui pallium falsitatis et nudatus sum tunica iniquitatis. This both words are frequently used in the Bible both Ancient and New Testament to designate either the infidels or the Jews.



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his conversion by the hand of Stephanus, bishop of the city, where he was supposedly born. Huesca is located in the realm of Aragon, after having been re-conquered in 1096 and still has very close contact with the Muslim dominions. Peter was raised in this Islamic territory, which explains his strong knowledge of Islamic culture. At the time he was converted, he was forty-four years-old, and his baptismal name, Petrus Alphonsi, comes from the date of his conversion. It was the feast of Peter and Paul, June the 29th (even if he mentions the month of July), combined with the name of his godfather, Alphonsus I, king of Aragon, of whom certain say that he had been the doctor.6 What is sure is that the conversion of Moses should appear as an important matter, as the king wanted to be his godfather (or is presented as having so wanted). That context, among other factors, seems to have determined Peter’s fate, which is the apology to which he dedicates himself after his conversion. But he also gives some other pieces of information, which may indicate the trouble that he suffered after or during the process of his conversion.7 He was accused of being insincere or hypocritical. He then needs to justify himself: ‘I composed this book so that everyone knows my intention and hears my reason, in which I intended the destruction of the credulity of every other peoples.’8 And then he introduces the way he will proceed, using reason to destroy the Jews’ arguments. Moreover, his method is logical and rather effective; he uses his Jewish name to expose the Jewish arguments, and his Christian name to deny them, the device being a dialog ‘so that the reader’s mind may more quickly achieve an understanding’.9 However, when the dialog begins after the prologue, the version changes a little, and Peter adds a bit of fiction. Moses, that is his former self, is introduced as an old friend, a kind of classmate, or an acquaintance,10 6.  We have to be careful with that kind of supposition because it was very common during the Middle Ages for the converts to take or to be given a king or high person as godfather. It was a kind of symbolic patronage who gave echo to that strategic event. The spontaneous conversions were not so frequent and it was important to use them as a propaganda. 7.  We know that the real converts were considered as traitors by their former coreligionists and they were either criticized or condemned by the Jewish religious authorities. The article 70 in J. Bastardas i Parera (ed.), Usatges de Barcelona, El Codi a mitjan segle XII (Textos i Documents 6; Barcelona, 1984), shows that people convinced of having insulted a convert were condemned to pay a high fine, that is 20 ounces of gold from Valencia. 8.  Petri Alphonsi ex Judaeo Christiani, Prefatio, PL 157, col. 538: Hunc igitur libellum composui ut omnes et meam cognoscant intentionem et audiant rationem, in quo omnium aliarum gentium credulitatis destructionem praeposui […]. 9.  PL 157, col. 538: […] ut lectoris animus promptior fiat ad intelligendum. 10.  PL  157, col.  538: A tenera igitur pueritiae aetate quidam mihi perfectissimus adhaeserat amicus, nomine Moyses, qui a primaeua aetate meus consocius fuerat et condiscipulus.

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which is also very interesting on a psychological basis. The way Peter describes the so-called meeting with Moses after his conversion is also interesting. His former self appears to be very upset with his change, and is very aggressive towards him. The old acquaintance has turned into a quasi alienus.11 Does it reveal the inner torments Peter endured before he made his decision? Be it as it may, even if Moses/Peter hesitated in the past, he is described now as wearing ‘a happy expression on (his) face’.12 Once more, Peter style is very subtle as he does not express things directly, but through Moses’ mouth. The contrast is striking between Moses’ anger and Peter’s wellness, although he suffered his former coreligionists’ aggression. He goes on using the technique of being introduced by Moses instead of speaking of himself directly, to underline his own skills. Whereas he said in the prologue that the Jews thought that one of the reasons he converted was because he did not understand the basis of the Jewish law, Moses speaks of him as a clever and cultured man. He draws a picture of him as a wise Jew: For I knew well that earlier you used to excel in the writings of the prophet and the sayings of our sages, and that from your youth you were more zealous for the law than all your contemporaries; that if there were any adversary, you opposed him with a shield of defence, that you preached to the Jews in the synagogues lest any withdraw from the faith, that you taught your companions; and that you led the learned to greater things.13

Whereas lots of converts, before and after Peter’s conversion, are described as fools or stupid men who don’t understand their own law,14 Moses/Peter used to be considered as learned, and was popular, among the Jews for his culture. He is said to have been a preacher, a leader of the Jewish community in Huesca. All this makes his conversion absolutely unexpected and shocking. This skillful process not only increases his personal value, but also gives more weight to his action. Furthermore, Peter is even described by Moses as ‘a prudent man’,15 meaning that he would not do anything foolishly or spontaneously. 11.  PL 157, col. 538: […] et increpans salutauit me more non amici, sed quasi alieni. 12.  Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue againts the Jews, translated by Irven M. Resnick (Washington, 2006), p. 43: ‘Alas Petrus Alfonsi, a great deal of time has passed since I have wanted, desperately, to come to you, to see you, to speak with you, but my desire lacked effect until just now, when, by the grace of God, I see you with a happy expression on your face’. 13.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 43. 14.  That kind of arguments are used against other famous converts after Petrus Alfonsi: Nicolas Donin, the Christian protagonist of the Paris disputation in 1240 is denounced as a not well learned scholar; Paulus Christiani, adversary of Nahmanide in the Barcelona Disputation in 1263 is described in the same manner, in Nahmanide’s Vikuah. 15.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 43.



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Peter’s answer also indicates that Moses used to be an accomplished man, a “complete” scholar, and not only a Jewish leader; he is described as a learned scholar in philosophy, a wise man: ‘You, however, who have been reared in the cradle of philosophy, suckled on the breasts of philosophy, with what impudence can you cast blame on me, before you have been able to determine whether the things I have done are just or unjust?’16 We recognize here an argument often used at the time, the argument of Reason. Having been raised in philosophy, Moses cannot react like his fellow Jews, whose reactions are based on instinct or reflex. He must use his reflection towards Peter’s action. And then, as he intends to prove the Christian Truth in reason, Peter thinks that he will convince Moses in his dialog, as he has been convinced himself. It is certain that the issue of the dialog is as biased as the characters, and the process itself remains rather schizophrenic. In summary: Peter tries to convince Moses, that is himself who has been already convinced but who now represents the other Jews, as Moses says: ‘You inveigh too severely against our disgrace, and you want to denigrate the Jewish nation.’17 These last words show the wide breadth of Peter’s actions. It is not only a personal matter, the conversion of a single man, but a general one. The process concerns the entire Jewish entity, as we could understand from the beginning, when Petrus referred to king Alphonse. And here once again, the context is very important to understand what is at stake with Moses’ conversion. We said that his hometown, Huesca, used to be situated in the Islamic territories. As the Reconquista progresses with no change for the Jews who shrug off the Muslim domination for a Christian one, the general Christian project of conversion of the infidels is renewed. The argument of the Jewish fate, that is, its subjection under others’ rule and its lasting suffering,18 is drawn here and will really be run three centuries afterwards. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, the so-called Samuel of Fez’ Epistola, written by Alphonsus Bonihominis, uses it all along.19 As an aside, at that time the Jewish fate had become harsher and harsher in the Iberian Peninsula as elsewhere in Europe, which had been drawn from Petrus Alfonsi’s time. The convert states that ‘in the escape from captivity, you hope that God will perform 16.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 43. 17.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 47. 18.  Robert Chazan, Jewish Suffering. The Interplay of Medieval Christian and Jewish Perspectives (Kalamazoo, 1998).  19.  Claire Soussen, ‘The Epistle of Rabbi Samuel de Fez, What Kind of a New Strategy against Judaism?’, in P. Buc, M. Keil, and J.V. Tolan (eds.), Jews and Christians in ­Medieval Europe: The Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 131-46.

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an unwonted miracle’,20 meaning that the hard Jewish fate is endless. Later in the dialogue, Peter states that ‘since you do not know the cause and the origin of the captivity, you cannot answer why the captivity has been so harsh, so cruel and intolerable.’21 The fact that even if their masters have changed, that the Jews are still ‘in captivity’, shows that their suffering is ongoing. The polemical progression is closely linked to the political changes of the period. Given the wide dimension of the enterprise, Moses-Peter’s case is the best exemplum to be used for it. The Fiction and Reality of the Persuasion As skillful as he may seem, Peter’s technique of persuasion towards Moses is artificial, which is quite logical as we know who the characters are. We realise that all along, Moses’ dialogue bolsters Peter’s arguments, even if he seems to provide the usual answers of the Jewish part to the Christian polemics. First of all, we can examine arguments concerning either content or form. In the first Titulus, Ostendit quod Judaei uerba prophetarum carnaliter intelligunt, Peter uses an old argument of the polemics, that is that Jews only explain the Scriptures literally,22 or on the contrary—which can seem contradictory—foolishly, that is in a legendary way. Both accusations and incriminations invalidate the Jewish interpretation, as Peter has intended to use Reason, the great new method of demonstration in the twelfth century, in his apologetic task. Just as in the first Titulus, the argument is linked to the Jews’ so-called anthropomorphic conception of God. To demonstrate this, Petrus uses the interpretations of the rabbis in the Talmudic tractate called Berakhot.23 But he introduces this reference as a part of the Jewish doctrine,24 which it is not. He does so as an answer to Moses question asking him to prove this assertion, which shows that it is not a part of the Jewish ‘credo’. Further, the incrimination of anthropomorphism has become common, but the Jews always deny it. Peter is of course familiar of that denial, but uses the Talmud to by-pass it. Yet the Talmud is 20.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 46. 21.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, second Titulus, p. 103. 22.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 103; Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogi, PL. 157, col. 540, already in the Prologue: Quomodo uideo eos solam legis superficiem attendere et litteram non spiritualiter, sed carnaliter exponere […]. 23.  Berakhot 6a: ‘R. Abin son of R. Ada in the name of R. Isaac says: “How do you know that the Holy One, blessed be He, puts on tefillin?”’ 24.  Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogi, PL  157, p.  539: Si nosse cupis ubi scriptum sit, in prima parte uestrae doctrinae cujus uocabulum est benedictiones.



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a very specific opus, with a lot of diverse material, some parts of which are literal, others moral, and others completely legendary or aggadic. This last material is deeply criticised and denounced by the Christians from the twelfth century as it is known better and better among them. Those with the best knowledge of the Talmud among the Christians are the Jewish converts, the only ones to have learned it directly at the time. Doing so in his dialogue, Petrus Alfonsi provides new material to the Christian polemists for centuries. We notice that the polemics are deeply renewed by the use of Talmud against the Jews from that time. Here, precisely, it gives a double argument to Petrus; the Jews believe in an anthropomorphic God, which is scandalous,25 and that faith relies on foolish explanations about God’s wearing tefillin. As Gilbert Dahan demonstrated, the frequent mention ‘Judei fabulantur’ in polemical treaties refer to Talmudic explanations.26 The rejection of what he calls ‘foolish arguments’ is used many times by Peter in the first Titulus so that Moses cannot answer him, and even more, so that Moses agrees with him: ‘Let us avoid foolish notions, holding to the truth, since we both decided this at the beginning of the argument.’27 This provides a link with another argument, that is, the fact that the ancient Jews knew the truth, the Christiana ueritas, but they deliberately choose to hide it.28 We can deduce this from that quotation: Your argument wanders to the refuge of an irrational conclusion, since you will be able to ground every falsehood on the tradition of the ancients. Nevertheless, it is unworthy of support because you ascribe to your sages what perhaps they themselves reject, since they themselves attest that they have not received this through Moses by the report of the ancients, but that they themselves invented such things in the course of explaining the verses.29

Rejecting both the literal sense of Scripture30 and the aggadic interpretation, instead insisting on the use of Reason31 rather than all other kind of interpretation, Peter seizes the dialogue, sticks Moses’ arguments in a 25.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 73: ‘The corporeal outlines that you ascribe to God only befit a corporeal substance and imaginary thing. It is improper however, to consider that God is of this sort.’ 26.  Gilbert Dahan, Lire la Bible au Moyen Âge. Essais d’herméneutique médiévale (Genève, 2009), p. 37. 27.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 52. 28.  Claire Soussen, ‘La polémique anti-juive de Nicolas de Lyre’, in Gilbert Dahan (ed.), Nicolas de Lyre franciscain du XIVe siècle, exégète et théologien (Paris, 2011), p. 57. 29.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 52. 30.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 73: ‘Therefore, it is unsuitable to explicate the things that have been said about him, as if of a body, according to the letter alone.’ 31.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, 73: ‘For if anyone thinks this, he shows himself to be opposed equally to reason and to Scripture.’

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corner, forcing him to acknowledge his defeat: ‘I see the destruction of authority in both.’32 Then, after having demonstrated the impossibility for the Jews to possess the truth, neither in the Scriptures, nor in Reason, the realist argument is used. The Jews are confuted by their weakness. And once again, the technique used is the one of Moses vocalizing Peter’s argument. The second Titulus ‘De cognoscenda praesentis Judaeorum captivitatis causa tractat, et quam diu durare debeat’33 is dedicated to establish firmly the lasting captivity of the Jews. This assessment can lead to one and only conclusion, the conversion of the Jews. The demonstration is introduced by Moses: ‘I would like to hear why we are never able to be freed from it in the way we say, and what the means of liberation will be.’34 And Peter’s answer is easy and fast: ‘As long as you deny that Christ is the Son of God or that he came into the world for the redemption of the human race, and as long as you are unwilling to keep his precepts, you will be unable to be freed from captivity.’35 The Jews then know the solution to get to a better existence. It is their fault and lasting responsibility as their suffering goes on. The fact is that in Peter’s reasoning, as in the traditional anti-Jewish polemics, the Jews carry on the sins of their fathers. As the first exile—before the Christian era—was caused by their multiple sins, they go on sinning ever since and the fact that they don’t recognize Jesus as Messiah is both the proof and the cause of their actual sin. Peter goes back in history to anchor the Jews’ sin and fate both in the past and in the future as long as they won’t convert. We can notice the method he follows: ‘the practice of a wise physician who first examines the illness, so that he can know what medicine is necessary.’36 The process is meant to be scientific and undeniable, of which there is only one medicine, the Christian faith. Furthermore, the Jews unfaithfulness is a disease of the soul. We don’t know if that metaphoric figure is made by chance or if it is done in purpose, as the Jewish physicians were numerous among the Jewish sages, just as Moses/Peter himself used to be, but it surely was an efficient one. As we noticed, most of the time that Moses agrees with Peter, he agrees with his reasons. But sometimes he vigorously denies Peter’s arguments, as he did regarding the punishment of the Jewish people for ­having sold 32.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 52. 33.  PL 157, col. 567. 34.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 97. 35.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 97. 36.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 97.



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Jesus37 emanating from the Scriptures. He then answers: ‘Your arguments do not satisfy me, since you do not confirm them with any authority, but rather you fabricate them according to your own will […].’38 And he asks for prophet-based evidence of that statement instead of an allegorical exegesis. The reason why he does so is that the Jews always reject that kind of exegesis, saying that the Christians corrupt the sense of Scriptures. There has always been a controversy between Jews and Christians about the use of representational allegory in the exegesis. Peter is aware of it and trying to avoid the Jews’ refutation, introducing another argument, based on the prophets. He obviously quotes Isaiah, one favourite Christian reference.39 It is not our task here to go further into the details of the comment, but we can quote Moses’ first statement of the third Titulus,40 a recognition of being defeated: ‘You have demonstrated with the most clear and indisputable arguments what pertained to the present heading, namely what the cause of our very long captivity was, or in what way are we able to escape it, and all the things necessary to be said about it.’41 Those of the fourth and fifth Tituli are even stronger.42 From that point on, Moses is absolutely convinced by Peter’s arguments. Then, the rest of the Dialogue is dedicated to the classical themes of the polemics: the status of the Virgin Mary and the possibility of her giving birth without sexual intercourse, the Trinity, the nature of Jesus, both God and human. All these themes have always been disputed between Jews and Christians, and here Peter’s opus is not particularly innovative. There is one point however, which is quite different from those that are usually disputed, the direct responsibility of the Jews in Jesus’ death. Indeed, when the Jews are accused, through the polemics, of having killed Christ on purpose, their usual defence strategy is to say that Jesus was not the Christ/Messiah to them. Then they refute the accusation of Deicide. In the same logic, they usually add that Jesus was like a criminal or an agitator and that he incurred usual penance for that crime. That line of 37.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 111: ‘Your sages, however changing the name of the just man in that deed for which they were punished, actually were silent concerning Christ. For they said that the prince understood the just one to be named Joseph the son of Jacob … It seems ridiculous, however to reason that he would demand it from them for something that had happened at least 1500 years earlier…’ 38.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 111. 39.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, pp. 111-15, Isa. 24:16 and 65:11-15. 40.  PL 157, col. 581: De stulta iudeorum confutanda credulitate super mortuorum suorum resurrectione, quos credunt et resurrecturos esse, et iterum terram incolere. 41.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 120. 42.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p.  120: ‘Up to this point you have shown how worthless and inconsistent the faith of the Jewish nation is in every respect, and how irrational and unwelcome is its service to God.’

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argumentation was both a mean of putting their responsibility in perspective, and of reminding their doctrine about Jesus. But here, what is quite unusual is Peter’s strong and very affirmative tone saying in the tenth Titulus: ‘Quod voluntate spontanea a Judaeis crucifixus est Christus et occisus.’43 After a development about the devil and Adam, Peter goes back to the major point of the tenth Titulus, the Jews’ voluntary killing of Jesus. He explains that if the Jews had wanted to complete Jesus’ will of being killed to save the human race, they would not have been considered as guilty. But according to him, they killed Jesus on purpose, ‘from the poison of hatred and envy.’44 Then, Moses rejects that argument by saying that a ‘just judgment’ was sentenced to him because of his crimes of magic and blasphemy. Theoretically, there is here a deep difference, two irreconcilable points of view, between Jews and Christians; as for the Jews, Jesus was not the Messiah. Moses truly represents the Jewish point of view, and if Peter does not want the dialogue to come to a sudden end, he has to find a way to by-pass this huge obstacle. The device he uses is to pretend that some wise Jews did recognize Jesus deity, or at least ‘his teaching and his law.’45 We mentioned above that this argument was sometimes used by the polemicists to overcome this argument of the Jews, which is in fact the most difficult because it is a matter of faith. Saying that some wise Jews did recognize Jesus as both the Messiah and God is true, as there were some real spontaneous conversions, but it is also a little artificial because Peter doesn’t mention specific names. Then Moses must trust him. In fact that argument leaves him speechless: ‘I really don’t know how to answer you on this. For I have not heard that they ever believed in him, or how or when they may have done so.’46 We could think that at that point the dialogue is closed, Moses representing the old Jewish arguments and Peter the Christian ones, which have been irreconcilable for centuries and in a certain manner ineffective or fruitless for the conviction of the Jews. But in fact, Peter’s strategy is very clever, he knows that his reason can be refuted by the Jews, then he shifts the debate saying: ‘Let us put aside these things for a moment and let us inquire into his specific deeds…’ Then he endeavours to demonstrate that Jesus’ acts were inspired by God and not accomplished through magic or p ­ hysics.47 By 43.  PL 157, col. 639.  44.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 232. 45.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p.  233: ‘Moreover, why did the wise men of Egypt receive his teaching and his law, if they knew him to be a magician?’ 46.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 233. 47.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p.  233: ‘[…] so that we may inquire whether they were performed by magic art or some other natural science, or rather by the power of God.’



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doing so he activates the notion of miracle without saying it explicitly. The dead end linked to the faith argument is then a little mitigated by the one of miracles to which the Jews are very sensitive. This is in fact the only possible way to convince them. Indeed, as the Jewish exegesis explains, the Jews have for a long time lost the gift of prophecy and of miracle because of their sins. This is even a traditional polemical argument used by the Christians to prove the Jews their damnation. Moses is then very eager to hear the demonstration: ‘… if you demonstrate that his greater deeds were performed by the power of God, I will not have any doubt about the lesser ones.’48 After a discussion about the curing of lepers, Moses agrees with Peter that Jesus performed miracles like the ‘holy prophets’. Then through Moses’ mouth, Peter speeds up the reasoning saying that Jesus like the prophets was loved by God, and couldn’t have said something wrong about Him. So he was true as he said that he was the son of God.49 The logical is unanswerable (although quite artificial) and Moses is “obliged” to admit it, though while he does so he at the same time questions the fact that only few Jews acknowledged Jesus’ holiness. Through circular logic, Peter comes back to his initial statement: the Jews’ deliberate responsibility in Jesus’ death. The old wise men who refused to recognize him as the Son of God did this “from envy” because it would have resulted in the loss of their own position among the Jewish people.50 When Moses asks why Jesus did not take revenge for the pain caused to him, Peter cleverly introduces the Christian values of mercy, goodness and patience. The Titulus ends with the renewed hope of the Jews’ salvation through conversion. And just like a good friend who wishes the best for his fellow, Peter beseeches God that Moses ‘be one of those who are converted.’51 An Easy Victory From that moment, Moses is convinced; the last two Tituli are in fact a device to complete the presentation of the Christian faith. Peter insists on the dogma of the Resurrection, which gives rise to very interesting developments about metaphysical questions and real physical and ­natural 48.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 233. 49.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 236: ‘[…] it follows from this that he was his friend and faithful servant, one concludes without a doubt that he never made a false claim about God or on his behalf. And since this is the case, he called himself the Son of God truly.’ 50.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 236. 51.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 238.

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facts. Jesus’ Ascension is compared to the birds’ flight with many scientific statements that prove the deep efforts made by Peter to convince Moses by reason.52 Moses argues about details, but in fact he contributes to Peter’s reasoning: ‘I require neither an argument nor a reason for this matter. For if, as you believe, he is both God and man, I admit that it is enough that he is the judge of the world.’53 Subsequently, Moses agrees with all of Peter’s arguments. Peter’s very precise and science-based arguments not only prove the cleverness of his argumentations, but also reveal his personal training in a scientific environment. Once again, everything is constructed to convince his opponent. As for the twelfth Titulus ‘Quod lex Christianorum legi Moysi non est contraria’, it is in fact the easiest part of the process. It looks like an almost useless formal dialogue, as the most important stumbling blocks of the doctrine have been solved. Given that Moses finally agrees with Jesus’ Holiness, the Trinity, the status of the Virgin Mary, the accordance of the new Law with the Old should be easier, even if Moses insists on the circumcision and the Sabbath, which are fundamental to the Jews.54 Indeed, this physical mark is far more than a detail; it is really both the most symbolic and real distinction between the Jews and the others. Given that the circumcision distinguishes the Jews forever, if it is removed, then it is the end of the Jewish faith. The same for the Sabbath, the most voluntary act of the Jews, repeated week after week, which is as symbolic and distinctive as the circumcision for the Jews. But once more, Moses is convinced. Unsurprisingly, his last statement establishes Peter and the Christian faith as victorious: ‘Certainly God gave a great deal of his wisdom to you and illuminated you with a great reasoning power that I am unable to vanquish. Instead you have confounded my objections with reason.’55 Lots of items have been left outside of this analysis, as we decided to focus on the honesty of Peter’s argumentation. As the reader can see, this opus is very rich and profound, and the developments about the Muslim faith should be examined with great interest.56 For our purposes, we could make interesting guesses about Moses’ feelings at the time of his conversion. But what seems to be the most interesting conclusion of our investigation is that Peter/Moses cannot hide what his real personality is 52.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 240 among other examples, Moses says after Peter has developed the question of Resurrection: ‘What you say is reasonable. But can you provide some authority from the prophets that he had to be raised?’ 53.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 247. 54.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, pp.  255-57. See Harvey E.  Goldberg, Jewish Passages. Cycles of Jewish Life (Berkeley–Los Angeles–London, 2003), p. 90. 55.  Resnick (trans.), Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue, p. 273. 56.  See John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi.



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or was. Indeed, he is deeply marked by his roots; he can’t lie about them and still represents the wide range of interests that characterize the wise Jews of his time.57 Sincerely Christian and a zealous apologist, he remains shaped by his education.

57.  Burnett, ‘The Works of Petrus Alfonsi’, p. 62, explains that these characteristics are found in Abraham ibn Ezra, or Abraham bar Hiyya, two former coreligionists of Petrus, native as he is of the Northern Iberian Peninsula under the influence of Islam.

3.  Jewish Polemical Writings against the Christians

TYPES OF JEWISH ANTI-CHRISTIAN POLEMIC IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES, AND THEIR HISTORICAL-SOCIAL SETTING Philip Alexander Abstract:  Jewish anti-Christian polemics down to the Middle Ages fall into three broad types: (1) counter-narrative; (2) counter-exegesis; (3) counter-propositional argument, each with its own social and historical setting. Counternarrative and counter-exegesis dominate in late antiquity. It is only with the rise of Islam that counter-propositional argument really comes into its own. The rise of Islam marked a turning-point in the Jewish-Christian controversy, allowing Jews to express their views freely, without fear of reprisal, and providing a lingua franca (Arabic), and a mode of discourse (Qalam), which facilitated the exchange of ideas at the highest level. It is only in this period that Jews begin to quote extensively from the New Testament, and that dialogue truly begins.

In this paper I will attempt two things. First, I will, synchronically, propose a simple typology of Jewish anti-Christian polemic in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, and suggest what was the social and historical setting of each type. And second, I will argue diachronically that there was in the Early Middle Ages a significant change in the terms in which the Jewish-Christian debate was conducted—a change occasioned by the entry of a third party, Islam, into the ring.1 I will explore how the conversion of a two-way into a three-way contest resulted in the strong emergence of one of these types, and the appearance, 1.  Arguably similar conditions pertained earlier in Sasanian Babylonia, where Jews lived side-by-side with Christians under Zoroastrian rule. This would presumably have allowed them to polemicize more freely and openly against Christianity than would have been possible at same period in the Christian west, and may explain why, somewhat paradoxically, there are more explicit references to Jesus in the Bavli than the Yerushalmi. However, the situation in Sasanian Babylonia was rather different from that under early Islam. Zoroastrianism did not claim an organic, historical link with Christianity and Judaism, in the way that Islam did, and, indeed, it may have been precisely Zoroastrian hostility towards Christianity that emboldened Babylonian Jews to speak out. See Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton–Oxford, 2007), pp.  121-22: ‘The increasingly ­precarious status of the Christians in the Sasanian Empire, with the waves of persecutions breaking out under Shapur II and continuing under some of his successors, makes it highly likely that a cultural climate could develop to express their anti-Christian sentiments—and that they could expect to be supported in this endeavour by the Persian government.’ See further below for discussion of the conditions under Islam.

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a­ rguably for the first time, of something that might be dignified with the name of dialogue. I would suggest that Jews in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages used three main strategies in combating Christianity: first, counter-narrative; second counter-exegesis; and third counter-propositional argument. In counter-narrative they take a story which has sanctity and authority in Christianity and retell it in a way that counters its implicit claims. In counter-exegesis they provide an alternative interpretation of a biblical text which refutes the Christian interpretation of it. In counter-argument, they advance and rationally defend a set of propositions which negate cardinal beliefs of Christianity. These strategies do not map entirely neatly onto the extant literary texts or genres: two or even three of them can be deployed in the same text, but it is useful to distinguish them analytically, as ideal-types, and in actual fact in any given piece of Jewish anti-Christian polemic one strategy will tend to predominate.2 Counter-narrative The classic example of Jewish counter-narrative is to be found in the Toledot Yeshu—the Jewish anti-Gospel par excellence.3 The Christian narratives being countered here can be found in the canonical Christian Gospels, and, though not all that close to specific Gospels pericopes, the underlying stories are clearly recognizable. In some of the many versions of the Toledot, knowledge of non-canonical Jesus’ stories and of the Book of Acts is also implied, but the overwhelming base-narratives are those found in our Four Evangelists (with a possible preference, interestingly, for Matthew). The counter-narratives at the heart of the Toledot Yeshu are aimed at establishing a number of things: (1) There was no Virgin Birth: the story of the Virgin birth was concocted to hush up the fact that Jesus was born either of rape, or through the illicit but consensual union of Mary and a 2.  I develop here views adumbrated in several earlier essays. See ‘The Toledot Yeshu in the Context of Jewish Muslim Debate’, in Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch (eds.), Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited (Tübingen, 2011), pp. 137-59; and ‘Jesus and his Mother in the Jewish Anti-Gospel (the Toledot Yeshu)’, in Claire Clivaz et al. (eds.), Infancy Gospels: Stories and Identities (WUNT 281; Tübingen, 2011), pp. 588-616. 3.  For editions and translations see Michael Meerson and Peter Schäfer, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, 2 vols. and database (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 159; Tübingen, 2014). For recent studies see fn. 2 above.



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Roman soldier. (2) Jesus’ miracles were performed though his wicked appropriation of the shem ha-meforash, and are no evidence of his divine status or mission. This claim is formulated in a subtle way. Jesus’ miracles are seen as genuine, not as the result of conjuring or of magic that relied on demonic forces. His sin was, apparently, not even the miracles per se (a position which is actually rather hard to defend, given that so many of them were acts of healing, and manifestly did good). Rather it was that he used these genuine deeds of power to lead Israel astray as to his nature and mission. (3) There was no resurrection of the dead. His body was removed by a gardener, and this led the disciples to claim that he had been miraculously raised from the dead. But the body was rediscovered after three days and publicly displayed, and the falsehood of the Christian claims thus exposed. As with any effective counter-narrative the key elements of the base-narrative are retained, but spun in a plausibly negative way. To these potentially serious counter-claims is added a large dose of parody and burlesque, which is intended to expose Jesus, Mary and the early disciples to ridicule. This reaches tasteless, and largely counterproductive, proportions in some forms of the Toledot, such as the notorious Huldreich version. Counter-narrative is one of the oldest, possibly the oldest form of Jewish anti-Christian polemic. There are hints in the canonical Gospels themselves that the three central claims of the Toledot noted earlier were already current at the time the Gospels were composed. Indeed, arguably the canonical stories were at some points framed to counter them!4 There was clearly a fund of these stories circulating among Jews. Hence the numerous versions, and bewildering textual variety of the Toledot. Its text never fully stabilized, though there is a core of traditions which, I would argue, indicates a point in antiquity when a selection of these tales, drawn from a larger pool, was put together and set in a particular continuous narrative framework. We find similar isolated stories in the Talmud, but what is interesting is the lack of exact correlation between these Talmudic anti-Jesus stories and the Toledot. Even when there is overlap, which is not as frequent as is sometimes supposed, the Talmudic versions differ significantly from those in the Toledot, and there are Jesus tales in the Talmud which never get into any version of the Toledot. This fact was noted by someone in the Middle Ages, possibly in the Yemen, and he made 4. The Toledot Yeshu traditions as we have them in the extant recensions are much later than the canonical Gospels. I am not suggesting that we can project them back as they stand into the first or early second century. But it is reasonable to suppose that stories like these were in circulation and that the Gospels were at certain points framed to counter them.

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a collection of specifically Talmudic anti-Jesus stories—a kind of Rabbinic Toledot.5 This indicates that the Toledot in origin was probably not a work that originated in Rabbinic circles, and this is consonant with the fact that its later transmission seems to be quite strongly associated with the Qaraites. But this does not mean that the Rabbis did not know of similar traditions, nor, when they did encounter the Toledot, would have disapproved of it. The Sitz-im-Leben of the Toledot, I would suggest, was popular, oral tradition. We do have literary examples of such counter-narrative in antiquity, for example the alternative account of the Exodus which has the Jews expelled from Egypt as lepers,6 but research by Eli Yassif and others has rightly stressed the folkloristic character of the stories.7 They must surely go back to popular tales that circulated in Jewish communities which lived cheek-by-jowl with Christians (sometimes in social tension and conflict), watched them celebrate their festivals, and knew a little about their beliefs. And it should be noted that the elements of parody and burlesque serve not only the rhetorical function of holding up the other to ridicule, but contain an element of entertainment as well. It is well-documented that women are often the guardians and transmitters of folk-tales within communities: they tell tales to entertain children and neighbours round the fire. This is suggestive, given the prominent role played by Mary in certain versions of the Toledot. The surprisingly sympathetic treatment she sometimes gets would chime with distinctly women’s interests. However, there is good evidence that these tales did get out of the Jewish community into the wider world, and there served a distinctively polemical purpose. The pagan Alexandrian philosopher Celsus in the late second century knew a version of the story that Jesus’ real father was a Roman soldier called Panthera (a story, he says, he got 5.  On Jesus in the Talmud see: Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud; Thierry Murcia, Jésus dans le Talmud et la littérature rabbinique ancienne (Judaïsme ancien et origines du Christianisme; Turnhout, 2014). Johann Maier’s attempt in Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Überlieferung (Darmstadt, 1978) to eliminate references to the historical Jesus of Nazareth from the Talmud has not gained much support. 6.  Versions of this tradition are found in a number of pagan authors—Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Apion, Hecataeus of Abdera, Diodorus Siculus, Pompeius Trogus, and Taci­ tus. The origins of the tradition probably lie in the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, though it is not absolutely clear that Manetho himself had the Jews in mind. The Jewish reference may have been imposed on his story later, because of its perceived similarity to the biblical account of the Exodus. See Lucia Raspe, ‘Manetho on the Exodus: A Reappraisal’, JSQ 5,2 (1998), pp. 124-55. The Greek and Latin texts can be conveniently found in Menachem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1974-84). 7.  See Eli Yassif’s essay ‘Toledot Yeshu: Folk-Narrative as Polemics and Self-Criticism’, in Schäfer, Meerson and Deutsch (eds.), Toledot Yeshu, pp. 101-36.



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from a Jewish informant), and used it to some effect in his attack on the Gospels (Origen, Contra Celsum, I.28,32). Counter-exegesis Our second type of Jewish anti-Christian polemic is counter-exegesis, and arguably this is the dominant type employed by the Rabbis throughout Late Antiquity. Christianity triggered this response by massively ‘colonizing’ the Jewish Scriptures and using them to prove the truth of Christian claims—a colonization which marched hand-in-hand in the east with their appropriation of the Holy Land as Christian space. Sometimes the counter-exegetical nature of the given piece of Midrash is explicit, sometimes not. A case of explicit counter-exegesis would be the famous pericope in Bavli Sanhedrin 39b in which Rav Idi argues against an exegesis proposed by a Min that certain verses in Tanakh justify the claim that a Second Power exists in heaven. Now theoretically min here could designate a number of different bi-theistic or binitarian ‘heretics’, but I have little doubt, given the probable date of the pericope, and the general situation at that time, that specifically Christians are in view. A case of implicit counter exegesis would be those midrashic sources which interpret ve-lo’ yasaf in Deuteronomy 5:22 (19) as meaning not ‘and he [God] added no more’, but ‘and he did not cease’ (see Targums ad loc., and cf. Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael Baḥodesh 9 [Lauterbach II, 270], Neziqin 1 [Lauterbach III, 1];8 Sifrei Deuteronomy 2, end). The point of the latter was surely to deny the Christian claim that the Decalogue, as said directly by God himself, holds a special place within the Torah, and that this justifies Christian abrogation of the rest of the mitzvot. There is a lively debate at the moment as to the extent of counterexegesis in Rabbinic Midrash, and a growing tendency to maximize it.9 The problem is that explicit reference to Christianity is surprisingly muted in classic Rabbinic literature. Given that the Palestinian sources of Rabbinic Judaism were created at a time and in an environment where Christianity was massively encroaching on Jewish space, when, with its extensive building-programme sponsored by Constantine and his mother, it was ‘in the Jews’ face’, it is surely remarkable that it is not more overtly referenced. Indeed we face the paradox, noted earlier (fn. 1 above), 8.  Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta deRabbi Ishmael, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1933-35). 9.  See, e.g., Emmanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling, The Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2009).

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that often the most significant explicit references occur in Babylonian sources, rather than in Palestinian (though sometimes presented there as western traditions), despite the fact that the evidence suggests that the Babylonian Rabbinic communities were more culturally isolated, and less in direct contact with Christianity. Babylonian sources themselves attribute the lack of interest in Midrash in Bavel as compared with the west to the fact that the western Rabbinate had to face the exegetical onslaught of Christianity. And this claim gains credence from the literary fact that all our major classic Midrashim are Eretz-Israeli in origin. All this suggests that the silence of classic Rabbinic sources about Christianity may be a ‘loud’ silence, designed to deny Christianity the oxygen of publicity within the Rabbinic world. But we need to be careful not to overdo this argument, as some now tend to do, and see the whole of Rabbinic Midrash, and indeed Rabbinic Judaism, as fundamentally shaped by its encounter with Christianity. We should recall Jacob Neusner’s persuasive argument that the formulation of the Oral Torah in the Mishnah created an acute problem as to how Mishnah was related to Tanakh: it left many of the Mishnaic Halakhot ‘hanging by a thread’. A major impetus for the creation of Rabbinic Midrash was the attempt to rectify this anomaly and unite the two Torahs.10 In other words one can postulate a powerful inner-rabbinic reason for the generation of Midrash. And the sociology of counter-exegesis is complex, and hard to analyse. It does not necessarily imply any meaningful social contact. The Rabbis were close readers of Scripture and were well able to spot potential ways of interpreting it that did not fit in with their theology. They may have engaged in exegetical manoeuvres to exclude these unacceptable interpretations. They may even have signalled their disapproval of them by ascribing them to outsiders—a Min, a pagan philosopher, a matrona. The fact that in some cases those interpretations are precisely the ones adopted by Christian exegetes may be largely coincidental, or based only on a very cursory knowledge of Christianity. That said, however, we must avoid swinging too much the other way. The evidence that Christian exegesis was a significant factor in shaping Rabbinic Midrash is now substantial and compelling, but the nature of the social contact it entails is not so clear. I am inclined at the moment to be cautious, and to see direct debate between Rabbis and Christians over exegetical issues as having been limited in Late Antiquity. And it probably steadily shrank as the presence of Jewish Christianity shrank in the Rabbinic milieu. 10.  See, e.g., his Uniting the Dual Torah: Sifra and the Problem of the Mishnah (Cambridge, 2010).



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Counter-propositional Argument Counter-propositional argument, our third type of polemic, has two defining characteristics. (1), as indicated earlier, it uses against Christianity propositional arguments of a rational, philosophical kind, and (2), coincidentally, it shows a much higher level of direct knowledge of Christian sources, manifested, for example, in substantial and reasonably accurate quotations from the New Testament. Direct, recognizable quotations from the New Testament, or other Christian texts, are not a feature of counter-exegesis, nor even of counter narrative, though the latter does, as we noted, allude to, and parody, the general drift of certain Gospel pericopes, or, as in the case of the ‘Peter Legend’ in some versions of the Toledot Yeshu, passages in Acts, or other early Christian narratives. And although counter-propositions are implicit, or even, sometimes, explicit in some counter-exegesis, they are not rationally argued in the way we find in the category under review. Counter-propositional argument in the sense I intend first emerges in the early Islamic period and in the Islamic domain. Only later is it deployed by Jewish polemicists in Latin Christendom and then, at least initially, in clear dependence on their forerunners in the Muslim world. At least two subcategories can be distinguished. The first is represented by the Qiṣṣat mujādalat al-Usquf, originally a Judaeo-Arabic text which was subsequently rather freely translated into Hebrew and became known as the Book of Nestor the Priest. It is marked by great textual diversity and was obviously rewritten again and again by different copyists to meet their different needs. It has, however, a core of shared traditions and a distinctive style which remain constant throughout all its manifold versions. Lasker and Stroumsa, who have produced an important edition of the work,11 note certain similarities to the Toledot Yeshu, and posit the Toledot as one of its sources, but I am not so sure. What strikes me as more important than the few similarities are the enormous differences between these two works. The Qiṣṣa is full of quotations from the New Testament in Arabic translation, and these are generally accurate, and given a fair hearing. There is no attempt to twist their texts for polemical ends. 11.  Daniel J.  Lasker and Sarah Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest: Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al-Usquf and Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1996). For an unusual version of the Qiṣṣa see Philip Alexander and Sagit Butbul, ‘Rylands Gaster Heb. MS 1623/3 and the Qiṣṣat Mujdālat al-Usquf ’, in Renate Smithuis and Philip Alexander (eds.), From Cairo to Manchester: Studies in the Rylands Genizah Fragments (Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 31; Oxford, 2013), pp. 249-89.

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The origins of these quotations have never been properly investigated. My preliminary analysis suggests that they are simply transcriptions into Judaeo-Arabic script of a Christian Arabic New Testament, the text-type of which seems generally close to that of the so-called ‘Alexandrian Vulgate’.12 At least one leaf of an Arabic version of the Gospel of Mark was found in the Cairo Genizah,13 and it was probably texts such as this which formed the basis for the Judaeo-Arabic transcriptions on which the Qiṣṣa relies. There is no evidence that a complete New Testament was available to the authors’ of the Qiṣṣa, or even a complete Gospels. It is probable they drew on a Judaeo-Arabic anthology of New Testament texts made for polemical purposes. The favoured mode of argument in the Qiṣṣa involves the charge of contradiction, either in the form of a claim that what Christians say contradicts the Christians’ own New Testament, or that one statement in the New Testament contradicts another. The argument is often reinforced through the use of dilemma: To answer my charge you must say either x or y. If you say x, the following unpalatable consequences flow; but if you say y the consequences are equally unpalatable for you. You are caught on the horns of a dilemma. The argument does not rely on invective or denigration but is logical and rational. However, though the Qiṣṣa is qualitatively different from the Toledot in its direct knowledge of Christian sources, and in its attempt to engage in rational debate, it does not seem to have originated in a setting of active dialogue with Christians. It shows little knowledge of how Christians actually argued. Its knowledge of Christianity is general and bookbased. This comes out in its references to the Tanakh/Old Testament which are nearly as frequent as those to the New. These do not correspond to the classic testimonia from the Old Testament on which Christians relied to prove the truth of their claims.14 This lack of correlation is startling and suggests to me that the authors of the Qiṣṣa were not 12.  Family K in the typology of Kashouh: see Hikmat Kashouh, The Arabic Versions of the Gospels: The Manuscripts and their Families (Arbeiten zur Neutestamentlichen Textforschung 42; Berlin–Boston, 2012), pp. 205-57. 13. Rylands Genizah Ar  261. See Alexander and Butbul, ‘Rylands Gaster Heb. MS 1623/3’, pp. 280-84. One has to be a little careful not to assume that all the fragments in the Gaster Genizah Collection in the Rylands Library came from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, but the fact that other Christian texts were found there makes such a provenance more likely for Ar  261. See Krisztina Szilágyi, ‘Christian Books in Jewish Libraries: Fragments of Christian Arabic Writings from the Cairo Genizah’, GQ 2 (2006), pp.  107-62; Friedrich Niessen, ‘New Testament Translations from the Cairo Genizah’, CCO 6 (2009), pp. 201-22. 14.  For a survey see: Oskar Skarsaune, The Proof from Prophecy. A Study of Justin Martyr’s Proof-Text Tradition: Text-type, Provenance, Theological Profile (Leiden, 1987).



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engaged in active controversy with Christians, for if they had been they could hardly have avoided these texts. They would have been forced to address them. The Qiṣṣa is essentially a scholarly exercise, forged in the study, intended primarily for an internal Jewish audience. It arose when a Jewish scholar got hold of an Arabic New Testament and read it critically, armed only with the kind of general ideas that one would gather from living in proximity to Christians as to what they believed and did. Nevertheless one has to salute it for its attempt to get beyond the scurrility of the Toledot, and to move the debate onto more serious, objective ground. The second sub-type of counter-propositional argument is represented by the anti-Christian polemic contained in the works of Saadia, al-Qirqisani, Maimonides and others.15 This is altogether on a higher intellectual plane, and involves much closer engagement with ‘the enemy’. It does show from time to time an awareness of the Christian testimonia, and attempts seriously to refute them, but it is also more aware of sophisticated Christian theology, and offers an informed analysis and critique of it. This high-brow debate ultimately has to go back to a real meeting of minds, and is surely hard to envisage without close personal contact somewhere along the line. It is unlikely that the Jewish scholars would have acquired it simply through reading books. An example of this kind of polemic is the critique of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Second Treatise of Saadia’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions. This forms part of a comprehensive discussion of the unity of God. Having first asserted God’s unity through rational argument (2.1), Saadia goes on to refute two views which, he claims, deny that unity—first dualism, the belief in two gods, and then trinitarianism, the belief that God is three in one, a view he associates with Christianity (2.5-7). He rounds off his discussion with a long discussion (2.8-13) of the epithets or predicates (some of a strikingly anthropomorphic character) applied to God in the Hebrew Bible, arguing that they are not to be taken literally but only as approximations or figures of speech. God in himself is beyond the descriptive powers of language. It is important to set Saadia’s specific refutation of the doctrine of the Trinity in this wider context, because what it makes clear is that he understands the Trinity in terms of the debate about the attributes of God that was raging in his day. Indeed, as we shall see, he has totally subsumed it into that debate. 15.  For a survey see Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages (2nd  ed., The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; Oxford‒­ Portland, 2007).

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A substantial part of Saadia’s refutation is devoted to Scriptural proofs adduced by its defenders in support of the doctrine of the Trinity. Some of these are classic Christian testimonia such a Genesis  1:26, Proverbs 8:22, and Genesis 18:1-2, which shows he was aware of Christian use of such texts. Others are aimed at demonstrating exegetically that God possesses ‘spirit’ and ‘word’, as implicitly distinct from his ‘essence’ (2 ­Samuel 23:2; Job 33:4; Psalm 33:6). These are not part of the traditional testimonia, but provide Scriptural proof for the particular formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity which Saadia argues against, to which I will come in a moment. This part of his argument falls, strictly speaking, into the category of counter-exegesis, but note that it is actually closely tied to counter-propositional argument, and it is the latter that is foregrounded in Saadia’s exposition. The doctrine of the Trinity is fundamentally wrong not because it is contrary to Scripture, but because it is incoherent and contrary to reason, and if this is the case, then it cannot be found in Scripture, which is fully in accord with reason. Saadia roundly declares at the beginning of his argument that he has in his sights not uneducated Christians ‘who profess only a crass materialistic trinity’, but the opinions of the Christian elite, who maintain that they adopted their belief in the trinity as a result of rational speculation and subtle understanding, and it was thus that they arrived at these three attributes and adhered to them. Declaring that only a thing that is living and omniscient is capable of creating, they recognized God’s vitality and omniscience as two things distinct from his essence, with the result that they became for them a trinity.16

In other words the Trinity is ‘essence – vitality – omniscience’, seen as ‘attributes’ of the one God. Saadia proceeds to attack the incoherence of this position. If, he argues, these attributes are truly distinct from one another, then this would imply that, contrary to what the Christians claim, God is indeed a body, since only a body is capable of division or composition. And if God is a body then he must be created, for all bodies are created, and how could he then be the Creator of all as Christians assert. Moreover, why stop with these three ‘attributes’. God has many other attributes. It is illogical not to accord them the same status as these three. What is striking about Saadia’s argument here is its avoidance of the concept of ‘persons’ which is prominent in the classic Greek formulations 16.  I use the translation of Samuel Rosenblatt, which, though it can be criticized in places, is adequate for my present purposes. See Samuel Rosenblatt, Saadia Gaon: The Book of Beliefs and Opinions (Yale Judaica Series; New Haven, 1948).



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of the Trinity. This might at first sight suggest a lack of knowledge on his part of Christian thought. However, Christian theologians writing in Arabic contemporary with Saadia also try to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity in terms of divine attributes. One reason for this was that it allowed them to relate the doctrine to the contemporary debate within Islamic theology on the attributes of God. Saadia’s argument shows a deep knowledge of Christian and Islamic theology in Iraq in the ninth century.17 It is surely no accident that such high-level engagement with Christianity really only emerges with the rise of Islam. There are several possible reasons for this. (1) Islam levelled the playing-field in the Jewish-Christian debate. Jews under Islam found themselves able to express their ideas with a freedom that did not exist when their opponents wielded political power. It also reopened the question of Christianity’s relationship to Judaism by raising again many of the key issues (supersessionism, the nature of God, etc.) of the earlier phase of the debate, but now with regard to a third party, which claimed a relationship to Judaism and Christianity close to that which Christianity had claimed with regard to Judaism, and which adapted a number of the classic Christian arguments to justify its position. (2) Islam created a new intellectual lingua franca, Arabic, through which Jews and Christians could debate, a condition which did not exist in Late Antiquity. The linguistic situation in Jewish-Christian debate is too often ignored, and it is forgotten that in some regions, for considerable periods of time, Jews and Christians did not share a common language in which they could discuss their differences. Even when they did, as was the case in the Levant in the Early Middle Ages, there were still barriers to communication. It should not be forgotten that a text such as the Qiṣṣa, though broadly speaking in Middle Arabic, would not have been readily accessible to Muslim or Christian speakers of that language because of the script. And this is one reason why we have to factor in social contact as a significant factor in the interchange of ideas. Schoeler has argued that, generally speaking, orality played a much greater role in the culture 17.  For a useful survey of Christian Arab thought on the Trinity see Sara Leila Husseini, Early Christian-Muslim Debate on the Unity of God: Three Christian Scholars and their Engagement with Islamic Thought (9th Century C.E.) (Leiden, 2014). The three thinkers she analyses are Theodore Abū Qurra (c.750–c.820), Abū Rā’iṭa al-Takrītī (c.755– c.835), and ‘Ammār al-Baṣrī (d. c.840).

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of the Islamic world in the Early Middle Ages than it did in the Greek-speaking west.18 (3) Islam also created an intellectual system, the Qalam, based on Greek ideas transmitted initially through Christian channels, into which the intelligentsia of all three faiths bought, and which provided shared concepts and modes of argument in which they could debate at the highest philosophical level. The intellectual world of early Islam was unified in a way that, from the perspective of interfaith debate, had not been seen before. In Late Antiquity pagan and Christian intellectuals shared a common language and common modes of discourse, but the Rabbis, with their suspicion of Greek wisdom, stood to one side. Now they were within the same linguistic and thought-world, and, sometimes in alliance with Islam, took on the Christians in terms the Christians could not ignore. Finally, what was the nature of this personal contact without which the step-change in interfaith debate could not have taken place? This has been surprisingly under-researched: I know of no thorough discussion of the sociology of interfaith dialogue till the modern period. However to round off this paper I will offer two suggestions of areas worth exploring. (1) Islam seems to have for a time blurred the boundaries between the three faiths. Throughout the first few Islamic centuries Islam was still seeking its own identity, and remained remarkably open to ideas from the other faiths. And it also scuffed the clear lines of demarcation, worked out over centuries, between Judaism and Christianity. It seems to have led initially to high levels of religious hybridity. It is in this context, I would suggest, that we should put the upsurge of Jewish Christianity in the early Islamic period. There was certainly extensive conversion from both Judaism and Christianity to Islam, and probably also from Christianity to Judaism and vice versa. These converts would have brought with them knowledge of their old faith into the new, and, at the same time, since many would surely not have entirely lost their old social networks, would have acted as conduits for knowledge of their new faith to their old coreligionists. It has long been suspected that the Isra’iliyyat in the earliest Islamic sources came in largely through conversion. (2) There is also evidence that intellectuals from all three faiths formed personal friendships, which resulted in a remarkably free and frank 18.  Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures; London, 2006).



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exchange of ideas. And here I would single out two characteristically Islamic institutions which fostered this exchange. The majlis, the salon, was sponsored by some social big-wig who set it up specifically to allow the intellectuals to debate their ideas, for his entertainment, of course. The majlis was very different in atmosphere from the public disputation in the west. It was more intimate and relaxed, and seems to have allowed free speech. And let us not forget the coffee house. Coffee—the ‘wine of Islam’—seems to have exercised as beneficent a role in the interchange of ideas in the Islamic world as it does in academic life today, and coffee houses may have been as much the locus of radical, innovative thought then as they were in eighteenth century Europe. Who knows what masterpiece of polemics—Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, what knowledge gained, what skills honed, we may owe to time spent drinking coffee in the “Starbucks” of Baghdad or Cairo!

JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUES AND POLEMICS WRITTEN BY MEDIEVAL JEWS Marc Saperstein Abstract:  For almost a thousand years, religious argumentation between Christians and Jews was based almost exclusively on the Hebrew Scriptures. This changed dramatically in the twelfth century. Christians, some of them converts who had received a traditional Jewish education, began to use the classical rabbinic literature for polemical purposes. And Jews responded not only by defending the Talmud but also by exposing inconsistencies in the New Testament. This article will focus on little-known polemical passages written by two thirteenth-century Jews living in southern France, Meir ben Simon of Narbonne and Isaac ben Yedaiah of Beziers, both of them responding to exploitations of the rabbinic literature by Christian intellectuals, and showing how external critiques stimulated important new developments in Jewish thought.

It might be argued that for almost a thousand years, religious debates between Christians and Jews were based almost exclusively on the Hebrew Scriptures, and very little changed. The same issues were raised, the same verses were contested.1 The broader issues raised by Jews dealt with methodology: can Christians make compelling arguments based on the Hebrew Scriptures without knowledge of the original Hebrew text? Can biblical verses refer both to characters and events in the ancient period and—on a different, deeper level—to events that occurred during the life of Jesus of Nazareth? Can the simple meaning of some biblical commandments—relating to dietary laws, the Sabbath and holidays—be ignored, while other ­commandments— 1.  There is actually little explicitly polemical writing preserved in the classical rabbinic literature or by early medieval Jewish authors before the commentaries of Rashi at the end of the eleventh century, as opposed to the abundant literature written by Christians. In the classical compilation by Bernhard Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens latins du Moyen Âge sur les juifs et le judaïsme (Paris, 1963), the first 274 pages describe texts by Christian authors before 1100, many of whom report ‘Dialogues’ with Jews for which there is no Jewish evidence. Similarly, Frank Talmage’s collection of texts, Disputation and Dialogue: Readings in the Jewish-Christian Encounter (New York, 1975) includes material from Justin Martyr (mid-2nd century), Aphrahat (mid-4th century), Jerome (ca. 400), Augustine (ca. 400), and John of Damascus (ca. 700), but no Jewish author before the mid-twelfth century writer Joseph Kimhi. For polemical material (of the older kind) in the biblical commentaries of Rashi, see Avraham Grossman, Rashi (Oxford, 2012), pp. 101-106, 128-30, 191-94.

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loving God, loving one’s neighbor—remain in force? Did the loss of Jewish sovereignty prove that God had abandoned the Jews and selected a ‘New Israel,’ triumphal in its spread throughout most of Europe? As Amos Funkenstein and others have convincingly argued, the nature of the arguments, debates, and disputations began to change significantly in the twelfth century.2 One major shift was the influence of philosophical insights as a source of authority, enabling both sides to argue that the other failed the test of reason. A second major shift was the broadening of the textual foundations of disputation beyond the Hebrew Scriptures. Jews were able to go on the offensive by citing problematic passages and internal contradictions in the New Testament.3 And Christians—especially Christians who had been born and raised as Jews and received a solid Jewish education including a mastery of rabbinic literature—were able to cite problematic and offensive passages in the classical rabbinic texts: the Talmud and the Midrashim.4 In this article, I will focus on how Jewish controversialists, aware that rabbinic literature was being used by Christians in their debates, presented the new Christian challenge and responded to it. An example of a Jewish author on the cusp of change is Joseph Kimhi, who flourished in southern France in the middle of the twelfth century and wrote a small work entitled Sefer ha-Brit, ‘The Book of the Covenant’, in the form of a dialogue between a min (heretic) and a ma’amin (believer). It is one of the very first Jewish anti-Christian polemical treatises written in Europe.5 Although Kimhi displays knowledge of the New Testament and the Church Fathers, and he raises issues of irrationality in central Christian beliefs and problems with the claims of Christian triumphalism, I confess that I find the text itself not especially inspiring. 2.  Amos Funkenstein, ‘Changes in Christian anti-Jewish Polemics in the Twelfth Century’, in id., Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 172-201. 3.  For a fine, accessible example of this, see The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A critical edition of the NIẒẒAḤON VETUS, with an introduction, translation, and commentary by David Berger (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 167-230: ‘A Critique of the Gospels and Christianity’, a section largely based on the earlier Sefer Yosef haMeKanne (on which see Berger, pp.  279-80, and Hanne Trautner-Kroman, Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100-1500 [Tübingen, 1993], pp. 92-93). And see now the recent publication by Christopher Ochs, Matthaeus adversus Christianos: The Use of the Gospel of Matthew in Jewish Polemics against the Divinity of Jesus (Tübingen, 2013). 4.  The paradigm is Petrus Alfonsi, discussed in other papers. 5.  See Joseph Kimhi, The Book of the Covenant, transl. by Frank Talmage (Toronto, 1972); for a broader presentation of the author, see F.  Talmage, ‘Rabbi Joseph Kimhi: From the Dispersion of Jerusalem in Sepharad to the Canaanites in Zarephath’, in id., Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: Studies in Medieval Jewish Exegesis and Polemics (Toronto, 1999), pp. 359-81.

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The Christian poses simple, straightforward questions to which the Jew responds in extensive passages, and virtually everything is based on familiar passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. Once rabbinic texts become central to the dialogue or disputation, however, things became considerably more interesting. Rather than recapitulating examples of Petrus Alfonsi using rabbinic texts—such as the assertion that God also prays—to challenge the rationality of Jewish faith, I will illustrate by a more dramatic example: Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny and one of the most influential churchmen in twelfthcentury Europe. In the fifth section of his Treatise ‘Against the Inveterate Obstinacy of the Jews’, he turns to the non-legal passages of the rabbinic literature, the aggadah. Some of the same passages used by Alfonsi appear, but the tone is markedly different: instead of the patient instructor, we find a raging demagogue, who does not converse with his imagined Jewish opponents but mocks, insults, and reviles them because of ‘the absurd and utterly foolish fables’ of the Talmud. These include not only rabbinic statements that appear to be blatantly irrational, such as those that appear to limit the power of God, but also statements insulting to the Christian faith, asserting that Jesus was a magician, conceived in an illegitimate pregnancy, who led the Jewish people astray.6 To provide one example of the ‘foolish fables.’ The Babylonian Talmud contains a rather thought-provoking passage about Rabbah bar Nahmani, a leading Babylonian scholar who flourished at the beginning of the fourth century. The narrative asserts that one day there was a dispute On High over a technical issue of Jewish law: One day, they were disputing in the Heavenly Academy thus, ‘If the bright spot preceded the white hair, he [the person apparently suffering from leprosy] is unclean; if the reverse, he is clean (cf. Lev. 13:1-3). If [the order is] in doubt, the Holy One, blessed be He, ruled, He is clean, while the entire Heavenly Academy maintained, He is unclean.’ Who shall decide it? They said, ‘Rabbah b. Nahmani’, for he said, ‘I am pre-eminent in the laws of leprosy and tents.’ A messenger was sent for him, but the Angel of Death could not approach him, because he did not interrupt his studies [even for a moment]. Then a wind blew and caused a rustling in the bushes, and he imagined it to be a troop of soldiers. ‘Let me die’, he exclaimed [interrupting his study], ‘rather 6.  There is a large literature on this topic, complicated because of the extensive censorship that was imposed on the Jewish manuscripts and printed editions. For fine current treatments, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, 2007), and Thierry Murcia, Jésus dans le Talmud et la littérature rabbinique ancienne (Turnhout, 2014).

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than be delivered into the hands of the State.’ 7 As he was dying, he exclaimed, ‘Clean, clean!’ [implying that he was aware of the heavenly dispute], when a Heavenly Voice cried out, ‘Happy are you, O Rabbah b. Nahmani, whose body is pure and whose soul has departed in purity!’8

The rather unusual underlying premises of this passage are clear: that the greatest reward for scholars after death is to study Talmud together with God in the Heavenly Academy, that if the consensus of the heavenly scholars differs from God’s interpretation of a legal problem a living expert may be consulted to decide, and that a scholar on earth is immune from the Angel of Death so long as he is studying a sacred text. It is obviously not a work of technical theology or philosophy, but a mode of discourse—characteristic of the aggadah—that communicates religious ideas in an intriguing and provocative manner. Peter the Venerable presented in Latin a greatly expanded version of this text (his source is not clear), with the central figure named Nehemias. He then grafted on the conclusion of a different passage, far better known, on a similar theme: the rabbis (on earth) were debating a technical legal issue, and R. Eliezer alone argued against the majority. Failing to convince them by traditional modes of argumentation, he pulls off some rather impressive stunts, making a tree pull up its roots and move several meters away, making a river flow backward, and making the walls of the academy begin to incline. But the rabbis refused to accept such miracles as proof against the consensus based on their own arguments. Finally, Eliezer says, ‘If I am right, let heaven prove it,’ at which point a voice comes from the heavens, saying ‘Why do you refuse to accept Eliezer’s position? He is correct!’ None of the present rabbis challenges the assumption that the voice had come from God. But the leading representative of the majority, R.  Joshua, responds, ‘We do not pay heed to a Heavenly Voice; as the Torah says, lo ba-shamayim hee, the law is not in the heavens (Deut. 30:12), for You have given it to human beings for us to decide in accordance with the consensus of a majority.’ The passage ends with the statement cited by Peter the Venerable: some time later a rabbi met the Prophet Elijah, who occasionally visits the earth, and asked, ‘How did God respond to the rabbis’ decision rejecting God’s own input?’ The response attributed to Elijah: ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, laughed, and said, “nitzḥuni 7.  According to the Talmudic account, Rabba was accused by an informant of keeping Jews from paying the taxes they owed to the State, and was hiding from State officials, though continuing his study. 8.  Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metsia 86a.

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banai, My children have defeated Me”’—that is, by using a verse from the Torah that I revealed in order to repudiate My claim to authority.9 One can certainly read this as a moving expression of the authority of sincere, learned human beings to make the decisions that they will live by. But Peter the Venerable, who apparently had little sense of humor, went apoplectic in his sarcasm. ‘Defeated by the judgment of human beings! ... Why does God tarry on the throne of omnipotence? God has been deposed by the Jews, overthrown by the Jews! Not omnipotent, not omniscient. He is tested by His superiors, the Jews, who are wiser than He!’ The passage then continues rather ominously: These mad, demonic words are not to be refuted by authority or reason, but are eminently worthy of being spat upon with derision and execration. But since these words are believed, spoken and written by you, O nation that is doomed and deserving of doom, who can remain silent? Who can restrain his hands, let alone his words? ... Who of us could restrain his hands from your blood, were it not for the command of that God who has cast you away and chosen us, speaking through your prophet, ‘Slay them not’ (Ps. 59:12)?10

That the aggadah of the Talmud exposes the rabbis in a conscious distortion and defiance of the divine will was a novel and vexing accusation, which challenged the very basis of the Augustinian doctrine of toleration. The challenges raised by rabbinic literature emerged dramatically on the historical stage when the problematic rabbinic passages were denounced to the Church by a Jewish apostate, Nicholas Donin, and the Talmud was brought before the newly established papal Inquisition, in the presence of the Queen Mother, Blanche of Castile, in what has been 9.  Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metsia 59a-b. 10. Peter the Venerable, Tractatus aduersus Iudaeorum inueteratam duritiem, PL  CLXXXIX (Paris, 1854), pp.  507-650, esp. chap.  5, ‘De ridiculis atque stultissimis fabulis Judaeorum’, cols. 614-15. A modern edition of the Latin work with English introduction is Petri Venerabilis Adversus Iudeorum inveteratam duritiem, ed. Yvonne Friedman (Turnhout, 1985). The work has recently been published in English translation: Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews, transl. by Irven M. Resnick (Washington DC, 2013); the first Talmudic passage is found there on pp. 219-20, with the diatribe continuing for ten pages before citing the second passage with a transliteration of the Hebrew words, and reaching the climax of his warnings: pp. 231-34. Psalm 59:12 was the most important text cited by Augustine as justification for a Christian obligation to protect Jews from physical harm; it was quoted by Peter’s great contemporary, Bernard of Clairvaux in his opposition to anti-Jewish violence in the wake of the Second Crusade. For fuller bibliography on this passage by Peter the Venerable, see Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah (Cambridge MA, 1980), p. 214, nn. 11-12.

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called the ‘Disputation of Paris’ in 1240, but more properly is characterized as ‘the Talmud on Trial.’11 Jewish defenders of the Talmud had to respond to examples of what were described as ‘blasphemous’ assertions about God—for example, that a Babylonian rabbi heard a divine voice saying ‘Woe is Me that I have made an oath; who will release Me from My oath?’ (Baba Batra 73b), in addition to other ‘errors,’ ‘turbid and filthy stories,’ narratives ‘too preposterous to believe.’ Most dangerous of all was the assertion that the Talmud contained ‘blasphemies against the humanity of Christ,’ including the assertions that Mary was an adulteress and that Jesus was in hell, immersed to his neck in boiling excrement.12 In an environment that was anything but conducive to rational discourse, the Jewish spokesmen had to argue— according to an account by a Jew written some twenty years after the event—that the problematic aggadot were not intended to be understood literally, and that the offensive statements apparently about the Holy Family were not about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but about a Jewish figure who had lived two generations earlier. The issue had changed from whether Judaism was a rational religion to whether the Talmudic literature should be tolerated, and in Paris, all copies of Talmudic texts were confiscated and burnt as heretical texts. These attacks on the non-legal components of the rabbinic literature thus became an ongoing challenge to medieval Jewish thinkers, first because of the danger that Jews living in Christian Europe might be deprived of the post-biblical texts that were critical to their religious faith, and second because some of the issues raised by outsiders about the blatantly irrational statements in the aggadah also raised serious internal problems for Jews who had been influenced by the philosophical writings of Saadiah Gaon, Maimonides, and others, written original in Arabic but recently translated into Hebrew. I would like to share two striking examples of how thirteenth-century Jewish writers presented the intellectual challenges raised by Christians with whom they purportedly debated, and how they responded to these challenges.

11.  See Judah M. Rosenthal, ‘The Talmud on Trial’, JQR n.s. 47 (1956), pp. 58-76, 14569; Hyam Maccoby, Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages (Rutherford NJ, 1982), containing translations of Jewish and Christian accounts of the Paris event. 12. B. Gittin 56b. Petrus Alfonsi had already maintained that the Talmud contained statements insulting to the Christian faith. For the purpose of the claim, see Maccoby, Judaism on Trial, p. 156.

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The first is a figure named Meir ben Simon of Narbonne in southern France, who flourished in the middle of the thirteenth century. He was the author of an extremely important Hebrew text entitled Milḥemet Mitzvah, ‘Holy War,’ which of course is about spiritual rather than actual warfare. Although several significant articles by respected scholars and a doctoral dissertation have been written about it, the entire text remains in a unique manuscript (De Rossi 155), never fully printed in the original Hebrew, never translated except for selections.13 It is actually not a single coherent text on one topic, but rather a composite of various topics, treated in different genres, probably collected in its present form in the late 1260s.14 A central theme is devoted to Jewish-Christian disputation, recorded in the form of dialogue and in the texts of sermons delivered by Meir in response to a Christian sermon presented in the synagogue of Narbonne which the Jews were compelled to attend.15 In order not simply to recapitulate material that is available in publications by Robert Chazan and 13.  The first scholarly publication was apparently Henri (Heinrich) Gross, ‘Meir b. Simon und seine Schrift Milchemeth Mizwa’, MGWJ 13 (1881), pp. 295-305, 444-52, 55469, containing selected Hebrew texts and German comments. The closest to a full treatment is in an unpublished Yeshiva University doctoral dissertation completed in 1974 by William K. Herskowitz, Judaeo-Christian Dialogue in Provence as Reflected in Milhemet Mitzva of R. Meir Hameili (available through Ann Arbor University dissertation microforms). For a recent review of the literature on this work, see Jonathan Dauber, ‘Competing Approaches to Maimonides in Early Kabbalah’, in James T. Robinson (ed.), The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought (Leiden, 2009), p. 61, nn. 7-8. 14.  One of the themes that has been treated by scholars, for example, is a purported disputation on the theme of Jewish money-lending, based almost entirely on biblical material. Siegfried Stein, ‘A Disputation on Moneylending between Jews and Gentiles in Me’ir b. Simeon’s Milhemeth Miswah (Narbonne, 13th Cent.)’, JJS 10 (1959), pp. 45-61. The two figures in this artificially imagined disputation are a Christian, referred to as ha-Qadesh (a biblical term for a male cult prostitute), in whose mouth are placed short simple statements and questions, and a Jew, ha-Qadosh (the holy one), to whom long explanatory passages are attributed. A strong attack on Christian morals is included (p. 59). Another broad theme in the work relates to disparaging language and legal provisions about Gentiles in the Talmud (181a, 214b, 225a-226a) 15.  Robert Chazan, ‘Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne: A Christian Sermon and a Jewish Reply,’ HTR 67 (1974), pp.  437-59; id., ‘Polemical Themes in the Milḥemet Miẓvah,’ in G.  Dahan (ed.), Les Juifs au regard de l’histoire. Mélanges en l’honneur de Bernhard Blumenkranz (Paris, 1985), pp.  169-84; id., Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2004), chap. 4: ‘Jewish Polemicists of Southern France and Northern Spain.’ In these studies, the focus is on traditional themes: Biblical proofs that Jesus was the Messiah, with Jewish refutations; claims about irrationality of Christian doctrine and practice (Trinity, Incarnation; baptism); and the triumphalist argument: ‘The priest said that from the fact that we live in exile and degradation under their [Christian] dominance and have remained so for such a long time we must conclude that their faith is more correct and better than our faith.’ See also Trautner-Kromann, Shield and Sword, pp. 73-84 on Meir’s polemical material.

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others, I will discuss material from the last part of the work, which has not been treated by other scholars, and which focuses largely on the problem of Talmudic material. It is presented as the memoir (or report) of a dialogue between the author and ‘the great Bishop’ of Narbonne (Milḥemet Mitzvah 214a). While there is some ambiguity in the Hebrew word (borrowed from the Greek) hegemon, which could refer to a high political official not associated with the Church, the consensus of scholars is that it refers to Guillelmus/William I of Broa/Broue, Archibishop of Narbonne (1245-57), who apparently was rather familiar with Talmudic material.16 Asked about a disparaging statement pertaining to Gentiles, Meir’s answer was that this statement pertained to the seven ancient idolatrous nations of ancient Canaan, not Christians: Christian beliefs about God, he states, are consistent with Jewish faith. And then he proceeds to turn the rhetorical tables, with memories of the Albigensian Crusade still fresh in the mind: ‘But those religious deviants (minim) whom you call heretics, who believe in two Gods, one good and one evil, and claim that everything we can see with our eyes is not the creation of the good God, may He be blessed: they are worthy to destroy and to proclaim their money ownerless. On this you agree!’ (215a). When the bishop asked about whether it was indeed stated in your Talmud that theft from a Gentile is forbidden, Meir writes that ‘I said to him, “My lord, know truly that this is the case, and if you wish, command one of our apostates [who has accepted Christianity], and I will show him the entire passage in the Talmud, and he will read it aloud in the vernacular’ (215b).17 16. Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity, pp.  105-14, esp. p.  106; some later passages possibly present interaction with Archbishop Guy Fulcodi (1259-61), later Pope Clement IV; see Chazan, ‘Archbishop Guy Fulcodi and His Jews’, REJ 132 (1973), pp. 587-94. 17.  This was a complicated issue in rabbinic law, and the formulation of the question implies that the common Christian view was that Jewish law permitted robbery from a Gentile. One Talmudic position is that it was indeed forbidden to rob a Gentile (b. BK 113a-b; this would undoubtedly have been the Talmudic passage that Meir would have asked the apostate to read aloud), while another position held that such robbery was permitted (b. Sanh. 57a, BM 111b, based on the use of the term ‘of your brethren’ in Deut. 24:14). The clear consensus of post-rabbinic authorities, however, is that robbery of Gentiles is prohibited, as codified by Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Gezelah 1.1-2, (see Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader [New York, 1972], p. 156), though it was permitted to keep the lost object of a Gentile unless such behavior defames the reputation of Jews (ḥillul haShem: Maimonides, 11.3-5). On the rabbinic sources, see Moshe David Herr, ‘The Sages’ Reaction to Antisemitism in the Hellenistic-Roman World’, in Shmuel Almog (ed.), Antisemitism Through the Ages (Oxford, 1988), pp.  35-36 (nn. 36 and 39). Cf.  Sefer Ḥasidim, paragraph 1414 (quoting Tosefta BK 10.15): ‘One who robs a Gentile must return the property to the Gentile; robbery from a Gentile is worse than robbery from a Jew, because of

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Some of the questions said to have been raised by the bishop regarding the Talmud are familiar from Alfonsi and Peter the Venerable. There are the familiar problematic assertions using corporeal language about God, for example that God puts on phylacteries (b. Ber. 6a). Meir insists that the incorporeality of God was never in question for the Talmudic sages, and that this kind of expression must be interpreted figuratively, like the prophetic visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The tefilin or phylacteries allude to the greatness of God’s love and providential care for Israel (221b-222a). Another theme applies to statements about the messianic age. For example, the statement that in the future, when the Messiah comes, ‘all commandments are annulled (betelot),’ or that the Exodus will no longer be mentioned in the Messianic age.18 A number of statements cited by the bishop and interpreted by Meir are not theological at all, but rather fanciful assertions about biblical figures: Adam had sexual relations with each of the animals in Eden, but was not satisfied (b. Yeb. 63a);19 Korah’s treasure was so vast that it took 300 camels simply to carry the leather keys for the chests (b. Sanh. 110a; cited by Alfonsi and Venerable);20 that King Og of Bashan was so huge and powerful that he was able to uproot a mountain (b. Ber. 54b).21 The bishop also asked, rather mockingly, ‘What about the statement of a rabbi in the Talmud that it is forbidden to raise a cat (asur le-gadel ḥatul)?’ [b. BK 80b]. ḥillul ha-Shem.’ For this theme in a late-thirteenth-century Jewish sermon, see Marc Saperstein, ‘The Preaching of Repentance and the Reforms in Toledo of 1281’, in Beverly Kienzle (ed.), Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons (Louvaine-la-Neuve, 1996), p. 168. On this accusation in the Middle Ages and the Jewish legal responses, see Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (Oxford, 1961), pp. 60-61; id., Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (New York, 1993), pp. 32-34. The accusation remained among the rhetorical weapons of antisemites such as Johann Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judentums, 2 vols. (Koenigsberg, 1810), 1, chap. 12. 18.  For the assertion that ‘all commandments will be annulled (betelot) in future, when the Messiah comes’ see b. Nid. 61b (Milḥemet Mitzvah 224b). The idea that the Exodus will not be mentioned in the Messianic age is a minority view raised by Ben Zoma on the basis of Jeremiah 23:7-8, but rejected by the consensus of the Sages; see Mishnah and Gemara in b. Ber. 12b (224b). 19.  Meir’s answer is that Adam thought about each animal brought before him until he realized that the female was not proper for his own nature; the proof that he could not have had sexual relations with them is that many of the animals are too small (222b). 20.  Meir responds that this is obviously an example of rhetorical hyperbole, not to be taken literally. But he also makes a linguistic point: that the word gamlei does not mean ‘camels’ in this context but rather ‘pieces of wood’ (220b-221a). 21.  This is said to be obviously impossible. Meir’s answer is that we must believe in miracles when they are possible, even if it involves a temporary change in nature, as they reveal God’s providence. But this is to be interpreted in a rational way: uprooting mountains is metaphoric language (mashal) about the relationship between Og’s army and a great king with a large army (‘Who are you har gadol?’) [222b-223a].

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In all of these cases, a figurative interpretation is provided. With regard to the cat, Meir first articulates a methodological principle: ‘If according to the simple meaning a [Talmudic] statement makes no sense, we should interpret it figuratively or allegorically so that the interpretation is sensible, and all the more so when the figurative interpretation produces a very good message’ (215b-216a). He then goes on to give a figurative interpretation. In another instance—a Talmudic statement about two sages, one who prayed that God would give him wisdom in his understanding of Torah, the other who prayed that God would provide him with a good wife (b. Ber. 8a)22—a prayer strongly criticized by the Christian—Meir writes that he said, ‘My Lord, I will interpret these words in their simple meaning, which is called temporal and in their esoteric meaning, which is called spiritual’ (217a). In such cases, Meir insists that the fundamental meaning of the statement is esoteric, although the simple meaning is also valuable (220a). At one point, Meir records a probing question raised by one of the Christian scholars, who said, ‘Know that all you have said about this [aggadah] is appropriate, leading to good behavior, but the question remains: If the intention [of the rabbis] was as you say, why did they seal the true meaning of their words by speaking in a figurative manner? It would have been better for them to explain the matter so it would be intelligible to all, saying clearly that each person must always look into his deeds and confess about his faults.’ I responded to him, ‘This question is unworthy of a scholar like yourself, for you will find that this is the way the sages [of antiquity] spoke of such matters. For example, in Solomon’s book of Proverbs: the simple meaning is understood by the masses, which is good, while the more elevated esoteric meaning is expressed figuratively, as the wise man said, “Apples of gold in settings of silver” (Prov. 25:11).23 But you can respond for me to your own question, for I will show you in the fundamental book of your faith, which is called in your language Evangelion, that there is one passage that you yourselves say must necessarily be interpreted in a figurative manner even though it is not explicitly stated that it is figurative, but the simple meaning is simply incorrect according to standards of proper behavior; it is blatantly violent and immoral [ḥamas va-avel].24 22.  On this passage, see Ira Stone, Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud: An Introduction (JPS; Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 51-57. 23.  The biblical verse was used in this way by Maimonides in his Introduction to The Guide for the Perplexed. Cf.  Talmage, Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver, esp. chap.  4, pp. 108-50. 24.  Reference is to account of Jesus and disciples feeling hungry: they see a fig tree and approach it, but discovering that it has no fruit, curse it; as a result it dries up never again to produce fruit (Mark 11:12-14, 20; Matt. 21:18-22). Cf. Niẓẓaḥon Vetus in Berger,

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Now you interpret this figuratively concerning the proper way for people to behave so that they will not be cursed by God. ... From this passage there is an answer to your question, for it is the manner of biblical verses in many places to conceal their true meaning and to rely on the understanding of wise exegetes in every generation’ (220b). He accepted my words graciously, saying that he had never found anyone who could explain these matters to him so wisely until now.

Meir also reports on several other encounters with the bishop, including a time when he visited together with other Jews, and discussed ‘many matters related to the oppressive measures (onasim) that the king’s officials are enforcing upon us.’ He tried to convince the bishop that it was his Episcopal responsibility to save Jews from oppressors, ‘for we too, like our fathers, endure in this land in the shadow of your wall and in the shadow of the Pope. ...’ According to this account, the bishop ‘accepted our words, and did what we asked of him’ (226b). In a subsequent encounter, Meir writes that the bishop claimed proof for the truth of Christianity by citing the high intellectual level of apostates from Judaism joining the Church. Here is how he quotes the bishop: For there are some of your scholars, wealthy and enlightened, who have left your religion and entered our own because their minds have been illuminated. In the past those who abandoned your community were the licentious ones [peritsim] within your people, and from them I would not suspect anything, but now that some of your scholars have left your ranks, you should be able to understand from them that they have found the essence of the fruit [ha-rimon] and want to toss away the husk [ha-kelippah] and eat what is at the core. You yourself should do the same and learn from them.

To this severe challenge, Meir has only a brief response: that the phenomenon was prophesied in the biblical book of Daniel: ‘Some of the knowledgeable ones will fall, that [the others] may be refined through them’ (Dan. 11:35). Those who become apostates convert not through the use of their reason, but through their foolishness (226b). In short, we see from Meir ben Simeon that many of the challenges raised by Christian writers familiar to some extent with the rabbinic literature were taken seriously and generated thoughtful responses from Jewish intellectuals. But the Talmudic material was used by Christians not only to denigrate rabbinic Judaism for its departure from the pure truth of the Bible. The Jewish-Christian Debate, pp. 188-89. There the Jewish writer raises questions about Jesus feeling hungry, having to approach to see whether the tree had figs, and cursing the tree despite has command to ‘Love your enemies.’ Such questions were raised in internal Christian discourse as well.

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In a rather astonishing transformation which does not seem to have preceded the middle of the thirteenth century, Christians (beginning once again with converts from Judaism) started using rabbinic material to buttress certain Christian claims. This new approach to the rabbinic literature is associated most dramatically with the Disputation of Barcelona in 1263, held in the presence of King James I of Aragon and several highly regarded churchmen including Raymond of Penyafort, where the Christian position was represented by, and the Jewish position defended by the most eminent rabbinic leader of the Iberian peninsula, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, Nahmanides, known as Ramban.25 Unlike the trial of the Talmud in Paris a generation earlier, this was structured as a formal disputed question. The first question to be debated was ‘Whether, according to the Talmud, the Messiah has already come.’ Things soon got unexpectedly complicated for Nahmanides, according to his own report of the events. Two examples. First is a rabbinic statement that the Messiah was born on the day the Temple was destroyed, that is, in the year 70 CE.26 Second is a Talmudic narrative stating the third-century Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, a third-century CE rabbi actually met and talked to the Messiah at the gates to the city of Rome.27 Nahmanides claimed that these statements supported his position, as they proved that Jesus could not have been the Messiah. But he was (properly) ruled out of order by the chairman, who reminded him that the topic under debate was not about Jesus but whether according to the Talmud 25.  There is a large scholarly literature on this dramatic event. For a translation of the two central texts, one by Nahmanides, the other a Latin protocol, see Maccoby, Judaism on Trial (above n. 11). For scholarly literature available in English: Martin Cohen, ‘Reflections on the Text and Context of the Disputation of Barcelona’, HUCA 35 (1964), pp. 15792; Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Christian Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, 1982), pp. 108-27; Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, 1989), esp. pp. 70-85, and id., Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley, 1992); Robert I. Burns, ‘The Barcelona “Disputation” of 1263: Conversionism and the Talmud in Jewish-Christian Relations’, CHR 79,3 (1993), pp. 488-95; David Berger, ‘The Barcelona Disputation’, AJS Review 20,2 (1995), pp. 379-88; Harvey J. Hames, ‘“Fear God, My Son, and King”: Relations Between Nahmanides and King Jaime I at the Barcelona Disputation’, HJB 10, 1 (2014), pp. 5-19. 26.  Lamentations Rabbah 1:27. The statement makes sense if it was said and recorded during the twenty or so years following the destruction of the Temple, as then the message would be that the Messiah is in the world, waiting to grow to full maturity in order to begin his career. It was obviously problematic more than 1000 years later. 27.  According to the Talmudic passage, Joshua ben Levi, based on instructions given by the prophet Elijah, is said to have travelled to Rome and had a brief encounter with the Messiah who was sitting under deep cover among the lepers at the gates of Rome, awaiting divine instructions to reveal himself and begin his messianic career (b. Sanh. 98a).

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the Messiah had come. I paraphrase his reply: ‘OK, if you want to be technical, I too can be technical. These statements assert that the Messiah has been born, while the debate was on whether the Messiah had come, meaning, begun his public career.’ But that left him having to defend the proposition that the Messiah, who had obviously still not yet ‘come,’ was more than 1000 years old, still under cover. At this point, I will leave Nahmanides’ familiar account of the Disputation of Barcelona and shift to a far lesser-known text, one that had never been studied until I myself made it the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation and first book. The author’s name was Isaac ben Yedaiah, and the work is part of a massive commentary on the aggadot of the Talmud, written in the middle of the thirteenth century, only part of which has been preserved, in a unique manuscript. Strongly influenced by the philosophical tradition of Maimonides, the author wrote his commentary to demonstrate that all of the aggadot of the rabbinic literature—as strange as they may seem—are consistent with philosophy if understood properly. Within the extant commentary is a record of his disputation with an unnamed Christian scholar, focusing on the statement that Joshua ben Levi had found the Messiah sitting at the gates of Rome. The author first provides an allegorical interpretation of the passage, in which ‘messiah’ is a figure for the human intellect, which must be anointed to rule over all the other faculties of the body. But then he turns to its surface meaning, and continues: And now I will speak openly, following the obvious meaning of these aggadic statements, telling what I answered to one of the Christian scholars. While debating with me, he asked me why we keep silent about the messianic king who has come (according to their opinion. ...). They find support in these and similar aggadot, [claiming] that the [Talmudic] sages prophesied about their faith, and testified that the Messiah had already come and was present in the city of Rome, a great city to their God whom they worship. This Christian asked me, ‘What did the [Jewish] sages mean, and what did they want to teach us, when they said that the Messiah already existed in their time and went to Rome, if not that they prophesied about the Messiah who came during their days and brought into being a new religion and faith, that of the Christians? Therefore [the Christian continued], we [Jews] wait in vain for someone else to come to lead us out of this long exile. ...’ This was the thrust of the question he asked, and he thought it was a great one. I answered the one who taunted me that we await and believe in a messianic king. ... When the Sages said that he existed, they did not intend to teach that he was actually in physical existence in their day. ... For if he existed so many years ago, as it seems from the apparent meaning of these statements, why has he remained hidden until now for a thousand years? ...

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As for your question about what the Sages intended to teach us by saying that he existed in their time, know ... that in these statements the Sages follow the words of the Prophets, who speak about a future event in the perfect [or past] tense because they have seen in a prophetic vision that it is destined to come about. ... They said he existed, while speaking about the future. Do not take this matter lightly, for you have already buttressed your new religion by this manner of interpreting the Prophets. You claim they prophesied that your religion would come into being eventually, and that they prophesied about the future while speaking in the past tense, ... For the prophet said, ‘Behold a young woman has conceived and bears a son’ (Isa. 7:14), and according to your way of thinking, this did not come about until a thousand years or more later. According to you, he said harah [not in the future tense] to hint and prophesy about the future event. ... As for their saying that they found him sitting at the gate of Rome, having proved that he will indeed come, they went on to teach how he will remove the [Jewish] people from the midst of all the nations. ... The Sages wanted to teach that when the messianic king comes on God’s mission to redeem the people from its enemies, he will come in Rome before the greatest of all the gentile kings of flesh and blood [the Pope], just as the master of the prophets [Moses] came before the great king Pharaoh, and all his ministers and servants. ... So the messianic king will go to Rome, and request their supreme leader and his advisers to write to the kings under his hegemony, and seal it with his bull, that they must restore to him the people [of Israel] according to the word of God who sent him for this purpose. ... But they [the Pope and his advisers] will not believe him until he performs powerful signs and unmistakable portents in the sight of all present! Then the Pope will know and recognize that the Jewish Messiah is an emissary of the true God, and he will send his legate to all the kings, near and far, [informing them] that the Jews are about to go forth from slavery to freedom, and that they must let every Jew go by himself, freely, demanding no money, for a redeemer has come to Zion. ... So this man spoke to me, and so I answered him. He was mollified by my words and did not summon the strength or the effrontery to raise his head.28

Such statements of intellectual triumph leaving an opponent incapable of response are something of a topos in such literature; they rarely if ever reflect the reality of one side conceding defeat. I hope to have illustrated that, beginning in the thirteenth century, Jewish accounts of dialogues or debates with Christians reveal that they took the Christian attacks on the rabbinic literature very seriously. This was partly because of the threat that the rabbinic texts might be collected and confiscated at the orders of Christian kings following instructions 28. Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis, pp. 103-106, 198-99.

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from the Pope. But it was also because many Jewish intellectuals, especially those who considered the philosophical tradition to be an integral component of their religious worldview, were themselves deeply aware of the problems posed by certain rabbinic texts. They therefore addressed these problems in internal texts that had nothing to do with Christian challenges. The work of Meir ben Simon and the massive commentaries of Isaac ben Yedaiah on the aggadot of the Talmud and Midrash reveal how external critiques often stimulated important new developments in Jewish thought. I leave it to others to determine the extent to which this dynamic worked in the opposite direction as well.

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Indexes

BIBLICAL INDEX Genesis 1:1 49, 116 1:2 110 1:3 70 1:6 70 1:14 70 1:26 49, 101, 117-18, 132 1:31 53.65, 70, 116 2:1 116 2:7 116 2:17 106 3:17-19 56.76 5:5 54.69 9:25 117 15:12 54.70, 117 16:19 137 17:14 106 18 76.32 18:8-33 117 19:24 133 22:13 112, 119 27 137-38 27:16 137 27:27 117, 136 27:33 117 49 81 49:8 117 49:9 117, 119, 122 49:10 120 Exodus 3:2 117 3:6 101, 117 20:6 107 24:8 53.65, 71 33:12 117 33:18 67 34:5 67 Leviticus 19:27 130 25:7 139.55

26:15-17 106 Numbers 6:22-27 107.17 14:4 117 21:4-9 133 23:19 100.24 24 81 35:30 80, 81.39 Deuteronomy 5:22 217 6:4 53.65, 70, 101, 107, 107.19, 129 17:6 80, 81.39 18:15 51.53 19:15 80, 81.39 53.65, 71, 120, 122, 134-35 21:23 22:22 117 22:22-26 73-74 27-28 121 28:66 100.24, 117 31:16 117 31:24 117 31:26 129 32:21 117 32:27 117 32:43 121 1 Samuel 11:34 115 14:39 106 2 Samuel 12:25 112 23:2 222 2 Kings 20:13

112, 132.31

Job 33:4 222 38:7 49

272

Biblical INDEX

Psalms 2 79.37, 135 2:2 54.69 33 (32 LXX):6 224 55 (54 LXX):18 174 59 (58 LXX):12 233 81 (80 LXX):9-10 101 81 (80 LXX):10-11 71, 107 81 (80 LXX):11 107.19 89 (88 LXX) 68.20 102 (101 LXX):26 49 119 (118 LXX):164 174 Proverbs 25:11 238 Ecclesiastes 3:5 141 Isaiah 1:10 54.70 1:21-27 72 1:26-27 71-72 54.69, 68.20, 69, 73, 7:14 79.37, 114-15, 115.49, 122 8:4 79.37 9:6 49-50 11:1 113 14:19 113 39:2 112, 132.31 44:6 101, 107, 107.19 45:14-15 49 49:21 141 51:2 70 61 137 61:9-10 138.50 61:10 136-38 62:1 53 66:23 54.70 Jeremiah 23:7-8 237.18 Daniel 7 130 11:35 239 Joel 5:2 53.63

Micah 3:12 67 Habakkuk 1:2 53.63 Haggai 2:8-9 51.53 Zechariah 3

79

Matthew 18:16 81.40 21:18-22 238.24 24:27 130.23 Mark 11:12-14.20 238.24 Luke 1:4 89 4:8-10 71 Acts of the Apostles 8:27-36 73 18:2 139 Romans 9-11 31 9:10-13 138.50 9:14 136 11:26 31 11:23 31 11:25 35 1 Corinthians 9:12 76 2 Corinthians 13:1 81.40 Galatians 3:13  56.76, 71, 121, 134 Philippians 3:1 83 Hebrews 9:20 71

INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL NAMES Abū Rā’iṭa al-Takrītī 225.17 Aetius 150 Agapius of Hierapolis 64 Alphonso de Spina 12 ‘Ammār al-Baṣrī 225.17 Ammonius (grammarian) 148 Anastasios of Sinai 152-53 Anselm of Canterbury 160, 171, 184, 186, 188, 196 Aphrahat 12, 60 Apion 218.6 Arius 25 Arnoldus Bonae Vallis 168 Athanasius of Alexandria 76.31 Augustine 21, 43, 85, 88.54, 94, 160, 182, 186

Fulbert of Chartres 168

Basil of Caesarea 81 Bernard of Clairvaux 168 Bernard Silvestris 169 Bodo-Eleazar 23 Boethius 160, 191

John Chrysostom 15, 19, 44, 60, 75.30 John Moschus 51, 55, 59 John Philoponus 110 Joseph Albo 30 Joseph Kimhi 230 Judah ha-Levi 30 Justin Martyr 4, 11, 16, 43, 46, 53, 111, 114, 118, 132, 133.36, 133.38, 182

Cassiodorus 191 Celsus (philosopher) 39, 42, 218 Chaeremon 218.6 Cicero 155, 187 Cyprian 16 Cyprian (Ps.-) 45.25 Cyril of Alexandria 48, 51, 63 Cyril of Jerusalem 15, 57-58, 58.84, 68, 73-74, 76.31, 85-87, 92-93, 95 Diodorus of Sicily 218.6 Dionysius Bar Salibi 12 Egeria 85 Epiphanius 47, 65-66, 75.30, 112, 129, 138, 145, 145.8-9 Eusebius of Alexandria 51, 51.55 Eusebius of Caesarea 47, 67, 67.19, 68.20, 69, 69.23, 72.26, 73-74, 81, 85, 85.49, 92-96, 139.54

Gennadius 12 Gilbert Crispin 23, 160, 170-71, 184, 196 Gregory (author of the Panegyric to Origen) 92 Gregory of Nyssa 110 Guibert of Nogent 184, 199.1 Hecataeus of Abdera 218.6 Helinand of Froidmont 165, 178 Henricus de Castro Marsiaco 168 Honorius of Autun 169, 191 Innocent III (pope) 168 Isidore of Pelusium 51, 56, 59

Lysimachus 218.6 Macarios Magnes 146 Maimonides 234, 236.17, 238.23 Manetho 218.6 Mark the Deacon 146 Martianus Capella 183 Maximus the Confessor 91 Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) 240-41 Nicholas de Lyra 12 Odo of Cambrai 184 Origen 4, 6, 16, 39, 39.2, 42, 44, 50, 56.76, 56.78, 68, 69.22, 73-75, 81, 81.41, 92, 95, 110-11, 145.8

274

index of ancient and medieval names

Paul of Tarsus 30-31, 134 Pelagius 25 Peter the Venerable 178, 231, 233.10, 237 Petrus Alfonsi 13, 237 Philo of Alexandria 28 Philostorgius 147.15 Plato 92 Plutarch 152 Pompeius Trogus 218.6 Procopius of Caesarea 152 Procopius of Gaza 113 Ps.-Jonathan 118 Ramon Llull 193.31 Robert Grosseteste 165, 168 Saadia(h) Gaon 30, 223-24, 234

Samuel of Fez 203 Socrates of Constantinople 144, 145.7 Stephen Langton 188 Tacitus 218.6 Tatian 104 Tertullian 4, 16, 43, 110, 136.46 Theodore Abū Qurra 225.17 Thedore Bar Koni 94 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 73, 75.30, 82, 150 Theophanes 152 Theophilus of Antioch 95 Theophylact Simocatta 76 Varro 191 Vincent of Beauvais 165

THEMATIC INDEX allegory, allegorical reading  122, 183, 190, 207, 238, 241 antisemitism  6-8, 13-21, 32-34, 237.17 Arabic language  94, 127, 150, 185, 188.25, 192, 194, 215, 221-23, 225, 234 Aramaic (language)  48, 49.42, 11114, 119, 128, 131-32, 135, 139.57 biblical criticism  25 Cairo Genizah  109.27, 141, 222 catechesis, catechetical  5, 21, 54, 56-59, 63-96, 136 conflict  6, 14-15, 19, 21, 32-33, 35 deicide 207-208 emotions  143-56, 184 Greek language  19, 42, 47.37, 49, 53, 53.64, 54, 69, 74-75, 106, 128, 147, 182, 190, 192, 224, 226, 236 Hebrew language  9, 13, 22, 33, 48-49, 53-55, 58, 68-69, 72, 74-75, 77, 104, 111-14, 125, 127-28, 131-32, 138, 184.10, 221, 223, 229, 233.10, 234-36 Islam, islamic  131, 154, 174-75, 177, 184, 201, 203, 211.57, 215, 221, 225-27 Jewish apologetic  5, 215-27, 229-43 Jewish proselytism/mission  3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 19-22, 40 liberal arts  181, 183-93, 197 metadiscursive remarks  86

miracle(s) 151, 204, 209, 217, 232, 237.21 mystery 25 mystery play  182 mysticism 27 oral tradition  28, 67, 218 philosophy, philosophical  160, 176, 178, 190, 196, 199-200, 203, 221, 226, 230, 232, 234, 241, 243 questions and answers (erotapokriseis) 78, 150, 186-87 reason (ratio), rational  10, 143, 147.15, 159-61, 169, 175, 177, 181, 184, 186-87, 193-95, 199, 216, 22124, 231, 234 religious philosophy  27 revisions of Septuagint  47.37, 53-54, 58-59, 68-75, 108-109, 122 rhetoric, rhetorical  21, 42-43, 60, 125, 143, 146, 183, 187-88, 191, 19394, 218, 236, 237.20 secularization  26, 29, 34 Septuagint  53-54, 58, 68-75, 103-23, 138 shame 143-56 Syriac language  12-13, 77, 131 testimony, witness  80-82 textual variability  73-74, 114-23, 217 Trinity  10, 82, 160, 207, 210, 223-25, 235.15

LATE ANTIQUE HISTORY AND RELIGION 1. H. Amirav & B. ter Haar Romeny (eds.), From Rome to Constantinople. Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron. 2. J.A. van Waarden, Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 1: The Episcopal Letters 1-11. 3. H. Bakker, P. van Geest & H. van Loon (eds.), Cyprian of Carthage. Studies in His Life, Language and Thought. 4. P. van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God. Augustine as a Negative Theologian. 5. W. Mayer & P. Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300-638 CE). 6. D.A. Napier, En Route to the Confessions. The Roots and Development of Augustine’s Philosophical Anthroplogy. 7. J.A. van Waarden & G. Kelly (eds.), New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris. 8. J.H.F. Dijkstra & G. Fisher (eds.), Inside and Out. Interactions between Rome and the Peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian Frontiers in Late Antiquity. 9. A. Dupont, M.A. Gaumer & M. Lamberigts (eds.), The Uniquely African Controversy. Studies on Donatist Christianity. 10. F. Millar, Empire, Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East: Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens (Collected Studies, 2004-2014). 11. P. van Geest (ed.), Seeing through the Eyes of Faith. New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers. 12. M. Debié, L’écriture de l’histoire en syriaque. Transmissions interculturelles et constructions identitaires entre hellénisme et islam. Avec des répertoires des textes historiographiques en annexe. 13. G. Bevan, The New Judas. The Case of Nestorius in Ecclesiastical Politics, 428-451 CE. 14. J.A. van Waarden, Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 2: The Ascetic Letters 12-18. 15. H. van Loon, Living in the Light of Christ. Mystagogy in Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters. 16. H. Amirav & F. Celia (eds.), New Themes, New Styles in the Eastern Mediterranean: Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Encounters, 5th-8th Centuries. 17. H. Amirav, E. Grypeou & G.G. Stroumsa (eds.), Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity. Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries. 18. H. van Loon, G. de Nie, M. Op de Coul & P. van Egmond (eds.), Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy. 19. M. Metselaar, Defining Christ. The Churh of the East and Nascent Islam. 20. F. Celia, Preaching the Gospel to the Hellenes. The Life and Works of Gregory the Wonderworker. 21. S. Morlet (ed.), Jewish-Christian Disputations in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Fictions and Realities. 22. B. Bitton-Ashkelony, The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings. The Praying Self in Late Antique East Syrian Christianity.

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