Psalm 45 between Abraham and Jesus: A Palestinian Rabbinic Polemic and Its Shelf Life

Abstract

Abstract: This article describes an interpretive shift that occurred in Roman Palestine during the amoraic period (ca. 200–650 CE). It argues that rabbis of this era and in this region began to identify parts of Psalm 45 in light of Abraham as a form of anti-Christian polemic, a way to present Abraham as the Jewish response to Christ. It then shows that this exegetical framework, which originated as a polemic, developed a life of its own. As late antiquity slowly transitioned into the early Middle Ages, some Jews read other parts of the psalm—and then the entire psalm—as pertaining to Abraham.