Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs. By Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski

Abstract

In recent decades, the topic of Christian identity-formation vis-à-vis Judaism(s) has been subjected to an increasing range of theoretical approaches. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski's Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs situates itself firmly within that trend. This is at once both a useful and problematic book—useful, in that it concludes a postcolonial analysis of over a millennium of historical narratives on the Maccabean martyrs with a sensitive critique of the ethics of reading supersessionism that is of contemporary relevance; problematic, in that it is reworked from the author's doctoral dissertation, leading to a degree of repetition, unevenness of treatment, and the occasional error in the early chapters. It is to be stressed, nonetheless, that its value exceeds its shortcomings, and that the title to some degree undersells the contents. While a number of studies of individual discourses on the Maccabean martyrs have been produced throughout the past century, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski offers the first attempt to bring together and to subject to a unifying analysis differing phases in the production of these narratives from the fourth to sixteenth centuries CE from countries as diverse as north Africa, the Mediterranean east, and northwestern Europe. His study employs a postcolonial hermeneutic, with attention to the concept of hybridity, adducing in addition scholarship on collective memory and the notion of allosemitism to describe the ambivalence towards Jews characteristic of certain of the narratives. This allows him to highlight the appeals to supersessionism inherent in much of the treated literature, leading to the concluding chapter, which elevates the study beyond the historical to draw an important lesson for historians, Christians of all persuasions, and adherents of the more fundamentalist branches of religions alike.