Barcelona Disputation [Source: Wikimedia]

Michail Kitsos, “Speaking as the Other: Late Ancient Jewish and Christian Multivocal Texts and the Creation of Religious Legitimacy” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan, 2020)

Late Antiquity saw the rise of many antagonisms among religious and social groups. At the same time, literary production in Late Antiquity witnessed the development of disputation literature. Among this disputation literature are dialogue texts, such as the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues that portray a “Christian” and a “Jew” in conversation with each other and rabbinic dialectical multivocal texts that portray discussions between Rabbis or among Rabbis and non-rabbinic or non-Jewish “others.” Scholars working in the adjacent fields of Christianity and Judaism in Late Antiquity have shared a focus on anonymously written Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives, but this common interest has not spurred comparative analysis of Rabbinic and Christian evidence. Scholars have interpreted the function of these compositions as ways of providing self-definition or opinion-making (in the case of Adversus Iudaeos dialogues) or as demonstrating internalization of and anxiety over others’ criticisms or as parodies (in the case of selected rabbinic multivocal narratives). However, these two corpora, have not often been studied in tandem nor have the purposeful deployment of “other” interlocutors or “other” narratives in them been investigated.

My work, Speaking as the Other: Late Ancient Jewish and Christian Multivocal Texts and the Creation of Religious Legitimacy, examines the reasons for the deployment of contrasting characters and narratives in texts in which interlocutors discuss with each other topics of belief and practice. In my study, I analyze excerpts from the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and the rabbinic literature that are conceptually similar. These pertain to icons, idols, idolatry (Chapters Two and Three) and the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth, and his origins (Chapters Four and Five). From the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues’ corpus, I examine excerpts written in Greek, Syriac, and Latin between the early fifth to the tenth centuries CE. From the corpus of rabbinic literature, I examine multivocal narratives from works written in Mishnaic Hebrew and Babylonian Aramaic between the early third and the early eighth centuries CE. My analysis draws on the literary concept of foil, which allows one to interpret by means of contrast the qualities of characters and stories.

This study argues that the anonymous Christian and rabbinic authors deployed the “other” (whether a character or a narrative) as a foil to another character or narrative, respectively, to claim legitimacy of opinion on matters of practice and belief. By weaving contrasting opinions between discussants and between narratives in the context of dialogues, these texts propose an authoritative stance toward the interlocutors’ opinions and attitudes, imposing what the correct or legitimate view, attitude, or teaching is according to them.

Chapter One, “Introduction,” starts with bringing together the approaches of modern scholarship on the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and the rabbinic dialogues, and it explains the questions that scholars have asked in the separate examinations of each corpus. I delineate the historical context of the composition of the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives under scrutiny, and I provide an overview of the characteristics of these dialogue texts. This survey paves the way to describe the methodological parameters that can allow us to study the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives together, as I suggest in my work, proposing a new approach that favors their comparative study to answer an array of questions that can expand beyond the focus of this study. It is within these parameters that I construct the analysis of the seemingly disparate Christian and rabbinic dialectical sources.

Woodcut carved by Johann von Armssheim (1483) featuring a disputation between Christian and Jewish scholars (Soncino Blaetter, Berlin, 1929. Jerusalem, B. M. Ansbacher Collection) [Source: Wikimedia]

Chapters Two and Three examine selected excerpts from the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives on similar matters, broadly speaking, that concern interaction with idols and idolatry. Through these selected excerpts we observe diverse reasons for the deployment of the “other” as a foil to the Christian and rabbinic interlocutors. Chapter Two, “Christian Authorial Dialectical Claims of a Religious Legitimacy: Christian Dialectical Discussions on Icons and Idols in the Adversus Iudaeos Dialogues,” examines issues of icon-making, icon-worship, and the association of icons with idols through imagined dialectical conversations between “Christians” and “Jews” from the Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo, Jews, with a Monk, the Trophies of Damascus, the Dialogue of Gregentius with a Jew Herban, and the Disputation of Sergius the Stylite Against a Jew.[1] Drawing on the literary concept of foiling, I argue that the authors of these works deployed monolithically the “Jew” as a foil to help them mirror their practices to similar (according to these authors) practices of the biblical Israelites in the Tabernacle and the two Temples, claiming that biblical Israelites, just like the Christians for whom they wrote, worshipped not the sacred objects per se but God through them. In so doing, I contend that these authors asserted a claim and a share to a legitimacy that they had already recognized to the “Jews,” to whom they acknowledged a genealogical affinity with biblical Israelites. On the other hand, as I argue in Chapter Three, “Foiling the “Other” in Rabbinic Multivocal Narratives on Idols,” in which I investigate the deployment of the image of the “other” interlocutor—both rabbinic and non-Jewish—as a foil in multivocal narratives on idols from Palestinian rabbinic sources, in particular Mishnah Avodah Zarah 4:7, 3:4, and Sifre Deuteronomy ῾Ekev 43:12, the anonymous rabbinic authors deployed characters as foils from among any number of groups, even from the rabbinic class. In the hands of the anonymous rabbinic editors, the “other” as the foil either challenges the Rabbis (in the case of gentiles as religious or ethnic “others”) or expresses an “other” opinion (in the case of rabbinic “others”) from the opinion with which the rabbinic authors side. In so doing, I maintain, the anonymous rabbinic authors and editors either underlined the legitimacy of the rabbinic stance, or they attempted to demonstrate their sympathies to the rabbinic opinion that they chose to promote. They were interested in securing exclusive ownership of legitimacy on their part and not in sharing legitimacy with the “other.”

The topics of the divinity of Jesus, his origins, and virgin birth are the focus of Chapters Four and Five, in which we can see an asymmetry in the choice of foils by anonymous Christian and rabbinic authors: While Christian authors of Adversus Iudaeos dialogues limited themselves to taking the character of the “Jew” as a foil for various purposes, the Rabbis did not restrict themselves to only “other” characters, including Rabbis; they also crafted foil dialectical narratives, by providing their own retelling of “other” stories as a way to emphasize the contrast between a rabbinic and “other’s” stance toward accounts that seemed unbelievable.

Specifically, in Chapter Four, “Imagining the “Jew” as the Foil Against Their Own Kin in Dialectical Discussions on (the Divinity of) Christ in Adversus Iudaeos Dialogues,” I explore the use of the “Jew” as a foil on matters of Christian teaching and doctrine; in particular, in imaginary discussions on the Virgin Mary and the birth of Jesus in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, the Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo, Jews, with a Monk, and the Altercation of Simon and Theophilus.[2] The authors of these texts, I argue, manipulated the image of the “Jew” by presenting him as the foil to both his ancestral biblical Israelite authors (not merely biblical Israelites) and their Christian audience in order to claim exclusive ownership of religious legitimacy of opinion. To that end, the authors of the aforementioned works maintained that their beliefs on these subjects had been anticipated by biblical authors, whom their “Jewish” interlocutors failed to understand, forging a relationship with biblical Israelite authors through rendering their constructed “Jewish” interlocutor as a foil. This literary/rhetorical device allows Christian authors to reimagine the correctness of their views and to propagandize for their views’ antiquity. Conversely, in some Babylonian rabbinic dialectical narratives, such as in b. Bekhorot 8b (=b. Sanhedrin 67a) and b. Shabbat 104b that allude to Jesus, his birth, and origins, the anonymous rabbinic editors employ another type of foiling, different from characters, namely dialectical narratives as foils to “other” texts, the latter often called “original” or “source” texts. As I discuss in Chapter Five, “Rabbinic Dialectical Narratives as Foils to “Other” Stories,” reading these rabbinic dialectical stories not as parodies, as scholars have done so far, but as foils to Christian narratives composed and/or preserved in Greek and Syriac, I explain that their authors highlighted the contrast between their accounts, which they wrote as absurd narratives and saw as such, and “other” stories, which the Rabbis saw as absurd but they were circulated as believable accounts. By highlighting this contrast, I argue, the anonymous rabbinic authors insinuated that they were not naïve to believe irrational stories, offering their alternative look at certain accounts and that they would not base teachings or beliefs on senseless narratives as “others” did, demonstrating, thus, a dichotomy between Rabbis, as wise, and “others” whose beliefs seem nonsensical.

Moses and Peter ca. 13th c. CE [Source: Flickr]

In the conclusion chapter, Chapter Six, I describe the implications of my approach to studying Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives side by side to examine the purposeful use of the “other” (whether a character or a narrative) as a foil that allowed the anonymous Christian and rabbinic authors to create such realistic accounts of interlocutors in debate. Specifically, my approach illuminates the mechanics of orthodoxy- and orthopraxis-making by anonymous Christian and rabbinic authors of dialogue texts by showing the process of constructing the contrasting qualities of characters and stories.

In all, my work shows the important role the anonymous Christian and rabbinic authors placed on contrasting traits of the interlocutors they deployed (in the case of both Christian and rabbinic authors) and of the stories they created in response to “other” stories (in the case of the rabbinic authors alone) to affirm their legitimacy on matters of practice and belief. It shows how these portrayed contrasts were critical to the rhetoric of legitimacy employed by the authors of dialectical works. Furthermore, my research emphasizes the significance of looking at the Christian and rabbinic dialogue texts using literary approaches which allow us to answer questions that concern the use of similar styles and practices for the composition of texts that seem to share specific characteristics, and it suggests the parallel study of Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives, advancing the study of these corpora. In the end, comprehending the role of foil characters and foil narratives in the Adversus Iudaeos dialogues and rabbinic multivocal narratives allows us to understand how “others” were an integral component in the rhetoric used by the authors of these works.

[1] For modern translations of these dialogues see: Gustave Bardy, ed., “Les trophées de Damas: controverse judéo-chrétienne du VIIe siècle,” Patrologia Orientalis 15 (1920): 173-274; Albrecht Berger, ed., “Dialogue of Gregentius Archbishop of Taphar with Herban a Jew” in Life and Works of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop of Taphar: Introduction, Critical Edition and Translation (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006); A. Peter Hayman, ed., The Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew, CSCO 338 (Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, 1973.

[2] For modern translation of these dialogues see: William Varner, Ancient Jewish-Christian Dialogues: Athanasius and Zacchaeus, Simon and Theophilus, Timothy and Aquila: Introductions, Texts, and Translations (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004).

Michail Kitsos is a scholar of the History of Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity and is currently a Research Fellow at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, Laboratory for the Management of Greek and Latin Digital Resources.