Jewish-Christian Polemics Research Articles

“Meat from the Heavens”: The Prohibition on Meat Consumption Imposed on Adam and the Jewish-Christian Polemic

AbstractToward the end of the Noahide commandment pericope in the Talmud (b. Sanh. 56–60), we find a sugya (pericope) featuring the prohibition on meat consumption imposed on Adam and its permission to the Noahides. This unique sugya pieces together halakic and haggadic sources that reinterpret the Garden of Eden story and address the complex relationship between humans and animals. This article will examine this sugya, focusing on its closing story, which describes a pietist who merits a gift of heavenly flesh. I will demonstrate that the story has many levels of meaning, grounded in both its immediate and wider contexts, and claim that it conceals a polemic with a similar Christian story (Acts 10), which describes impure meat that descends from the sky, undermining the cultural and halakic divisions between Jews and non-Jews. The comparison between the two stories reveals opposing worldviews with regard to law and lawlessness, utopia and redemption.

Ancien Regime Jurisprudence Shaped by a Primordial Jewish-Christian Polemic

Abstract In the eighteenth century, Jewish-Christian polemics fueled a legal dualism among French officials, Jewish communities, and Christian Hebraists. Out of this friction emerged the Recueil des Loix, Coutumes, et Usages Observes par les Juifs de Metz, which illuminated Jewish laws for French judges unschooled in Hebrew and the regional Judeo-Allemande dialect. Metz officials’ request for the Recueil cheered Jewish leaders who hoped to enhance Christian interest in the community’s internal life, even as skeptical Metz Jews likely suspected intensified surveillance of their transactions both among themselves and with Christians. Still, in interpreting Jewish law, ancien regime courts did not uniformly promote antisemitism. On the contrary, as seen in the compilation of the Recueil, judges often explored Jewish law with genuine curiosity and sought to reconcile it with Christian ideals, even if some judges clung to a hope of converting Jews, for which purpose Jewish law needed to be understood.

The New Testament in Jewish-Christian Dialogues

The Christian biblical canon consists of the Old Testament (referenced as the Hebrew Bible by Jews), New Testament, and Apocrypha for some denominations (e.g., the Roman Catholic Church). The name “New Testament” is associated with, but misapplied with the Berit Ḥadasha/“New Covenant” which the Lord was to make with the Houses of Israel and Judah, not with Nations (Jer 31:30). A more accurate association/understanding is “new covenant in my (Jesus) blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25); “new covenant not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:6); “the veil remains when the old covenant (Torah) is read” (2 Cor 3:14); and so on. The New Testament embraces 27 separate books of different size, composition, and focus. They include the Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the Acts of the Apostles, 13 Epistles by Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Epistles by Peter, James, John, and Jude, and John’s Revelation (the Apocalypse). This article discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity (primarily spelled out in the Gospels and Pauline literature), evaluated from the perspective of Jewish-Christian polemics, apologetics, and respectful co-existential dialogue.

The Eunuch and the Baldhead: Sexuality in Early Jewish-Christian Polemic

Abstract Defining appropriate attitudes towards sexuality has always been an issue in Jewish-Christian polemic. Contemporary Jewish writers tend to boast of Judaism’s liberal attitude toward sexuality, while medieval Jewish polemicists were defensive when confronting Christian attacks on this matter. In ancient times, when sexual puritanism was less popular, Jewish theologians did not refrain from showing their contempt for the Christian value ​​of celibacy. This article proposes a new reading of the Talmudic legend about an argument between Joshua b. Karhah and a Christian eunuch. In this reading, the Christian figure stands for Origen, a Church father described in Christian sources as having castrated himself owing to a literal interpretation of the New Testament. In this reading, the debate summarizes the Talmudic rabbis’ perspective on the difference between Jewish and Christian views of sexuality.

The Lulav: Early Modern Polemical Ethnographies and the Art of Fencing

In recent years, scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the history of scholarship in general and, more specifically, to the emergence of critical historical and anthropological literature from and within ecclesiastical scholarship. However, few studies have discussed the Jewish figures who took part in this process. This paper analyzes the role played by historiographical and ethnographical writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian Jewish–Christian polemics. Tracing various Christian polemical ethnographical depictions of the Jewish rite of shaking the lulav (sacramental palm leaves used by Jews during the festival of Sukkot), it discusses the variety of ways in which Jewish scholars responded to these depictions or circumvented them. These responses reflect the Jewish scholars’ familiarity with prevailing contemporary scholarship and the key role of translation and cultural transfers in their own attempts to create parallel works. Furthermore, this paper presents new Jewish polemical manuscript material within the relevant contexts, examines Jewish attempts to compose polemical and apologetic ethnographies, and argues that Jewish engagement with critical scholarship began earlier than scholars of this period usually suggest

Beauty and the Beast: On a Doe, a Devilish Hunter, and Jewish-Christian Polemics

AbstractHunting scenes are common in Jewish illuminated manuscripts and are understood as allegories of the Jew, usually represented as a hare or a deer, being persecuted by the Christian, shown as a hunter and his dogs. This article will discuss a hunt scene from theWorms Maḥzor, an Ashkenazic illuminated prayer book produced in 1272, probably in Würzburg. At the top of folio 130r, an illumination of the piyyut (liturgical poem) “ʾAyelet ʾahavim” (the loving hind, or doe) for Shavuot displays a deer being hunted by a devilish hunter and his dogs. Examining the illustration in the context of contemporary textual evidence, I shall demonstrate that the deer in theWorms Maḥzorportrays the Torah itself being persecuted by the hunter, who can be understood not only as a Christian or Esau, but also as Jesus.

Animal Attraction: Hidden Polemics in Biblical Animal Illuminations of the 'Michael Mahzor'

The Michael Mahzor, produced in Germany in 1258, one of the earliest illuminated Mahzorim, is a two-volume prayer book containing liturgical poems for the Holy Days and the 'four special Sabbaths,' when liturgical additions are made to the regular weekly chapter reading during the month of Adar. The manuscript is copiously illuminated, with animals adorning the opening words of the liturgical poem, and contains a militant iconographical plan, including knights and fighting warriors. The relationship between text and image in illuminated manuscripts is important, because they need to be 'read' together in order to understand the illuminations in their immediate and general context. The novelty of this study is in a holistic reappraisal of the manner in which we think about illustration in connection with text. This paper addresses three scenes containing animals in the Michael Mahzor: El Mitnase, Mich. 617, f. 4v; Zakhor, Mich. 617, f. 11r; and Kol Nidrei, Mich. 627, f. 48r. The first two examples discussed here are the illumination of El Mitnase for Shabbat Shekalim, the Sabbath beginning the month of Adar and the piyyut for the pericope Zakhor for the Shabbath that immediately precedes Purim, which is celebrated on the fourteenth of Adar. The third is the liturgical formula Kol Nidrei for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The article suggests that the animals in the last two scenes represent the four kingdoms mentioned in chapters seven and eight of the Book of Daniel. Jewish exegesis commonly interpreted these beasts as symbols of four historical kingdoms. In addition, aspects of animal symbolism in the illuminations – such as hunted and hunting animals – should be considered in the context of medieval Jewish-Christian polemics. By examining the scenes together, we can speculate as to the greater plan the patron might have had in mind when ordering this manuscript. The article seeks to understand how the Jewish patrons envisioned themselves and their neighbors, through a prism of images, piyyutim, and the writings of Hasidei Ashkenaz.

Messianism as a Philosophical Problem: The Liber de Adventv Messiae by Ramon Llull

Abstract The Liber de aduentu Messiae is one of Ramon Llull’s major contributions to Jewish-Christian polemics. However, oddly enough, it has been neglected by scholars. The present study consists of two parts: the first contains an analysis and description of certain contextual and internal features of the work in question; and the second a critical edition of the text, which until now has remained unedited in its totality.

The Jewish-Christian Polemics in the Sermons of R. Shaul Serero of Fes (1566–1655)

R. Shaul Serero (1566–1655) served as the chief rabbi of Fes during the first half of the seventeenth century. Serero repeatedly devoted his annual sermons on the Sabbath preceding Passover to clarifying various aspects of the concept of redemption, one of the main subjects of the Jewish-Christian polemic. A review of these sermons reveals that Serero found it necessary to examine and refute the Christian dogma on three separate occasions on the Sabbath before Passover, in 1603, 1607, and 1611. Serero adopted and applied arguments from the traditional Sephardic polemics literature but adapted, edited, and expanded these arguments to shape the most appropriate argument.

“We Were Here First”: Guiding Jewish Israeli Pupils at Christian Sites

The article examines the image of Christianity and Christians as expressed in the narratives used to guide Israeli pupils at Christian sites in Jerusalem. Based on an analysis of tour observations and interviews with tour guides and those who prepare the itineraries, it explores how the presentation of Christianity and Christians serves as a means of constructing a modern Israeli identity. It argues that despite the power of Jews in the Israeli state, there is a growing sense of victimhood in Israeli society, one that leads to the introduction of Jewish-Christian polemics into the Zionist narrative, and to the transformation of tours—ostensibly designed to expose students to cultural/religious pluralism—into a means of perpetuating the notion of hostile “others”.

Yeshu the Physician and the Child of Stone: A Glimpse of Progressive Medicine in Jewish-Christian Polemics

Yeshu the Physician and the Child of Stone: A Glimpse of Progressive Medicine in Jewish-Christian Polemics

BIBLICAL POETRY, SPINOZIST HERMENEUTICS, AND CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP

This article considers a little known chapter in the long history of the question of the nature of biblical poetry. The debate between the Jewish scholar Raffaele Rabeni and the Christian Hebraist Biagio Garofalo (1710–1714) exemplifies shifting attitudes and concerns of eighteenth century Jewish and Christian polemists. Ostensibly, the exchange concerned an apparently innocuous topic, the “Poetry of the Hebrews”, namely, whether Biblical poetry was rhymed or metrical. At a closer look, the two scholars, equally familiar with Spinoza’s biblical critique and the latest philological and critical scholarship, clashed over the textual authority of the Hebrew Bible. This Italian polemical exchange not only foreshadows emerging developments in the field of biblical studies, but it also differs from previous examples because of its public ramifications. The debate was publicized by the Giornale de’ Letterati, Italy’s foremost scholarly journal of the time, which sided with Garofalo. For his part, Rabeni actively opposed the publication’s “modern” approach to sacred and profane history by supporting the Jesuit Father, Giovan Antonio Bernardi, in the course of a heated controversy over the journal’s historiographical stance and objectivity. Unlike most cases of early modern Jewish–Christian polemics examined by researchers, the Rabeni–Garofalo affair and its ramifications reflect the birth pangs that accompanied the emergence of the modern study of sacred and diplomatic history in Italy, and is best understood within the context of historical and philological‐critical studies that characterized the early stages of the Italian Enlightenment.

The Link Between the Jewish–Christian Polemic and the Masorah Notes in Rashi’s Bible Commentary

This article demonstrates how Rashi integrated the Masorah into his commentaries, utilising it in order to bolster the strength of his own ideological claims pertaining to the Jewish–Christian polemic. By relying upon the Masorah, Rashi lent credibility to his interpretations, even when they diverged from the simple meaning of the verse, for instance, when Rashi privileged exegetical-midrashic interpretations, encouraging his suffering people and refuting Christian claims, and when Rashi offered an alternate reading for verses that might have been interpreted as alluding to or substantiating Christian beliefs. Thus Rashi explained that shiroh (Ps. 42:9) does not mean his song; rather, it emphasises the Shekhinah ’s continued presence (literally, dwelling) within Israel; ḥerev (Songs 3:7–8), the sword of the priests, is the Masorah; be-suri (Hos. 9:12) is not besarai me-hem ; and neither le-ḥelkah nor ḥelka’im (Ps. 10:8, 10) alludes to the humbled and downtrodden Israelites.

Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation (review)

Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation, by Naomi Seidman. Afterlives of the Bible Series. University of Chicago Press, 2006. 333 pp. $22.00. In the six meticulously researched chapters of Naomi Seidman's Faithful Renderings, published by the University of Chicago Press as part of its Afterlives of the Bible Series, Seidman argues that the history of translations of Hebrew and Yiddish texts - from the Septuagint to Isaac Bashevis Singer - offers insight into questions of Jewish-Christian identity and difference. She reads translations with an eye to the contexts in which they were produced and circulated, rejecting the notion that Jewish translation is an essential phenomenon. Each chapter of Faithful Renderings probes specific challenges posed throughout history for translators of Jewish material for non-Jewish audiences. The first four chapters, which detail the effects of Christian genealogical anxieties on the translation of Jewish texts, ground Seidman's thesis that translation discourse mirrors Jewish-Christian tensions and polemics. The first chapter investigates the misinterpretations that permitted the patristic appropriation of Jewish sources for Christian purposes. But Seidman also invokes Jewish counter-accounts of the origins of the Septuagint to demonstrate that mistranslation can function as a tool of cultural and religious survival. Her argument is further developed in the second chapter, where she examines the fascinating figure of Aquila of Sinope, the second-century Jewish convert whose word-for-word rending of the Bible earned him the reputation as one of history's worst translators. Aquilas literalist, source-oriented approach contrasted with Christian preference for sense-for-sense translations, leading, Seidman maintains, to the association of literalism with Judaism and its consequent marginalization as a translational approach. The third chapter examines Martin Luther's reader-oriented approach to the Bible. Seidman argues that Luthet s naturalization of the Hebrew Bible as a German text made it a foundational text for modern translation practices and their ethnocentric approach. The fourth chapter investigates Jewish translations of the Bible into German through a comparison of Moses Mendelssohn's Bible to the Buber- Rosenzweig Bible. Seidman is critical of Mendelssohn's attempts to create a Jewish Enlightenment, but she also emphatically rejects the notion that the Buber- Rosenzweig Bible represents a true Jewish-German dialogue, arguing instead that it is the careful self-presentation of a minority group. Her argument here is indebted to postcolonial theory and postcolonial translation studies, in particular Homi Bhaba's work on hybridity and colonial mimicry. These tools are quite effective, although she might have justified her use of them with reference to Jewish experience in the European diaspora. In the fifth and perhaps most controversial chapter, Seidman revisits earlier work in Holocaust Studies to buttress her claim that the contemporary understanding of the Holocaust as an internationally recognizable event is a late creation that acquired its distinctive shape long after the event itself. …

The Myth of the ‘Traditional View of Paul’ and the Role of the Apostle in Modern Jewish-Christian Polemics

This is the first of two related studies of Jewish approaches to the apostle Paul. The context of the first is that of Jewish-Christian dialogue, while the context of the second is that of intra-Jewish ideological debate. Rarely mentioned by Jewish writers before the nineteenth century, the Apostle to the Gentiles took his place as the Great Apostate in the popular Jewish imagination only in the modern period. Jewish Pauline scholarship proper developed alongside the nineteenth- and twentieth-century reclamation of Jesus as a Jew. The primary context in which Paul’s background and teachings were considered was that of interfaith polemic; the apostle functioned as a means by which individual writers could explore the relationship between Judaism and Christianity more generally. Some of the key figures considered in this schematic survey of the history of the Jewish interpretation of Paul include Heinrich Graetz, Isaac Meyer Wise, Claude Montefiore, Kaufman Kohler, Joseph Krauskaupf, Martin Buber, Hyam Maccoby, Pinchas Lapide and Mark Nanos.

Wat is er met de lijdende knecht gebeurd? De lezing van Jesaja 52:13-53:12 volgens Targoem Jonathan What's happened to the Suffering Servant? The Targumic reading of Isaiah 52:13-53:12

In Targum Jonathan to Isa. 52:13-53:12, the well-known picture of the suffering servant is transformed into the image of a victorious Messiah, of extraordinary appearance, who delivers his people from bondage, punishes the wicked and makes intercession for the sins of the people. This far-reaching interpretation has led some scholars in the past to suppose that the translation as we have it now is the result of Jewish-Christian polemic. In this paper we will compare the Hebrew and the Aramaic text, and see how they are related. On the basis thereof we will reconsider whether it is necessary and tenable to suppose Jewish-Christian polemic as the immediate cause for the present translation.

A VINDICATION OF JUDAISM: THE POLEMICS OF THE HERTZ PENTATEUCH: A REVIEW ESSAY

�� Joseph Hertz, the first rabbinical graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1894), enjoyed a distinguished career as a pulpit rabbi in both the United States and South Africa. In 1913, he was elected Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, a position he occupied until his death in 1946. Between the years 1929 and 1936, Hertz edited and authored, with the help of a number of British colleagues, the first exclusively Jewish English-language commentary on the Pentateuch. This work ultimately found its way into the pews of most Jewish congregations in English-speaking lands and, throughout the twentieth century, remained the most influential Jewish commentary upon the Bible in both Great Britain and the United States. Indeed, the Hertz Pentateuch became the Jewish lens for viewing the biblical heritage of the Israel people in the English-language world. Countless numbers of Jews were schooled through its pages, and the impact of Hertz upon how English-speaking Jews understand the Bible has, unquestionably, been immense. In light of all this, a scholarly analysis of the work and its author has long been an academic desideratum. However, the task of filling in this lacuna in modern Jewish scholarship is a considerable one. After all, such analysis requires an author well versed in classical Jewish sources such as the Bible, midrash, and medieval Jewish biblical commentaries, as well as one knowledgeable in a number of other areas— biblical criticism, modern Jewish religious history, modern JewishChristian religious polemics, and modern European and American intellectual history. Fortunately, Harvey Meirovich, Dean of the Rabbinical School at Machon Schechter of the Israeli Masorti Movement, is such a scholar. Ordained a rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Meirovich also earned a doctorate in Jewish History at JTSA under the guidance of Ismar Schorsch. In A Vindication of Judaism, Meirovich provides an insightful account and full analysis of the

Psalm 22's Christological Interpretive Tradition in Light of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic

Psalm 22’s Christological Interpretive Tradition in Light of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic1 Naomi Koltun-Fromm (bio) Psalm 22 has been central to christological readings of the Hebrew Scriptures since the gospels were written, if not before. Allusions to Psalm 22 appear in all the gospels, but they are most prominent in John. For instance, while Jesus is on the cross, the soldiers divide his clothing among themselves and cast lots for his tunic. This transpires, according to John, in order to fulfill the scripture of Psalm 22.19: “They will divide my clothing among them and for the things that I wear they will throw lots” (John 19.23–4).2 In Mark, Matthew and Luke, the onlookers, both commoners and priests, mock Jesus and challenge him to save himself perhaps reflecting the psalmist’s claim (Psalm 22.7–8) that “All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads. He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him.”3 In addition, in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew Jesus cries out the opening line of Psalm 22: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.”4 Psalm 22’s tormented voice clearly speaks of the Passion to the gospel writers.5 Later Christian writers, specifically Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Aphrahat, develop the gospels’ christological interpretation of this [End Page 37] psalm. Interestingly, these writers focus not on Psalm 22.1, 7–8 or 19, as the gospels do, but on Psalm 22.17. The third part of this verse, which is often translated as “They have pierced my hands and feet,” is fundamental to these writers’ exegesis. This image of pierced limbs describes for them Jesus’ exclusive experience on the cross. Why is this seemingly appropriate image unknown to the gospel writers? Why do they dwell on the divided clothing, the mocking spectators and the cry of despair but not the pierced hands and feet? Finally, why do only several geographically and linguistically diverse exegetes concentrate on the pierced hands and feet in the centuries beginning with Justin Martyr? This paper will argue that Psalm 22.17’s exegetical development is intrinsically linked to early Jewish-Christian polemic and Christian self-identification. It is only with these three authors’6 apologetic and anti-Jewish polemical works that the image of pierced limbs appears. It is my contention that this passage’s christological interpretation is an extra-New Testament evolution and dependent on early patristic understandings of the Septuagint’s translation. It is an outcome of real, or perceived, early Jewish-Christian debates and most likely originates with Justin Martyr. This study helps illuminate the creation and dissemination of early standardized Christian exegesis for use in active and continuing anti-Jewish polemics throughout the first few centuries of the common era. In order to understand this progression it is necessary first to outline the translation problems Psalm 22.17 has caused scholars and exegetes over the years. I will then discuss Justin, Tertullian and Aphrahat’s shared exegesis of Psalm 22.17 and finally its place within early Jewish-Christian polemics. TEXT AND TRANSLATION: PSALM 22:17–18 (19) Massoretic Text: [End Page 38] 17. Because dogs are circling me; a group of evil ones surround me, [something] my hands and my feet. 18. I take count of all my bones, while they look on and stare. 19. They divide my clothes among themselves; casting lots for my garments. Targum7: 17. Because evil ones surrounded me, who are comparable to a great dog assembly closing me in, like a lion biting my hands and my feet. 18. I show all my sore bones, they stare and mock me. 19. They divide my clothing and they cast lots for them. Septuagint: 17. Because many dogs surrounded me, an assembly of evil ones beset me, they dug/gouge [at] my hands and my feet. 18. They counted all my bones and they stared and looked at me. 19. They parted my clothing among them and for my vesture they cast lots. Peshitta: 17. Because dogs surrounded me and an assembly of evil ones encircled me, they broke through/pierced...

Jewish-Christian Polemics at the Turning Point: Jewish Evidence from the Twelfth Century

In 1968 Amos Funkenstein published an article in Hebrew entitled “Changes in the Patterns of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the 12th Century.” In that article, Funkenstein argues that Christian attitudes toward Jews underwent a change in the twelfth century, a change discernable in the Christian polemical literature of the period. In contrast to the previous Christian strategy of polemicizing against Judaism through a battery of prooftexts, ortestimonia, the innovative polemics introduced three important elements—the recourse to reason, the attack on the Talmud, and the use of the Talmud to prove the truth of Christianity. These innovations signaled the beginning of the end of the relative Christian tolerance of Jews and Judaism inspired by the writings of Augustine.

An eleventh-century exchange of letters between a Christian and a Jew

A determining factor in the relations between Jews and Christians in the middle ages was the attitude adopted by these two groups towards each other's religious beliefs and customs. One of the most important types of sources we have to gain insight into these attitudes is the reports of dispulations held between Christians and Jews. The significance of one such disputation will be examined here: the correspondence between Wecelin, a convert to Judaism, and Henry, a court cleric of Henry II of Germany, contained in the well-known De diversitate temporum of Alpert of Metz. In the course of this examination new ideas will be offered on the method of study necessary for a correct interpretation of Jewish-Christian polemics. An annotated translation of the exchange of letters between Wecelin and Henry follows.