TNR has an interesting piece (here is a cache version of the first page) about Jewish-Christian polemics (in both directions). It is mostly a review of Peter Shaeffer's Jesus in the Talmud; a scholarly work which predictably appeals to anti-Semites. My comment on Noah Feldman and his perceptions of Orthodox Judaism elicited a lot of response. Most of it was interesting, though of course some individuals across the web became convinced that I was an anti-Semite who was a Muslim working against Jews. This missed the whole greater thrust of my point: it isn't always about you, context and situation are not only critical, but often they are determinative. In the TNR piece the author notes now anti-Christian invective was much more pronounced in the Babylonian Jewish literature than in the Palestinian equivalents. Is this because Babylonian Jews were naturally more anti-Christian than Palestinians? As a matter of fact the Palestinian Jews were under the rule of a Christian Empire which was just initiating a long history of focused anti-Jewish persecutions and forced conversions. In contrast, Babylonian Jews were numerically preponderant across broad swaths of southern Mesopotamia, and though under the rule of the Zoroastrian Sassanids, there was no great threat of being forcibly converted or oppressed for religious reasons. Rather, under the Sassanids both the Christians and the Jews were at parity, and Schaefer suggests apparently that Jews had an advantage, unlike Christians they had no notional affiliation with a foreign empire (Rome). I think the TNR piece has to be careful here, because it is important to remember that the Christians within the Sassanid Empire were generally of the Church of the East, whose intellectual and institutional origins were are sharp variance with both the Jacobite (anti-Imperial) sects across the border in Syria as well as the Chalcedonian orthodoxy promoted by Constantinople. There was a reason that these eastern groups were sometimes termed the Persian Church.
In any case, the primary point is that when Jews had power their behavior was less than meek or supplicant. In 6th century Mesopotamia one could make a good argument that the Jews were in a less precarious position than the Christians, so it makes sense that they were more assertive and forceful in laying out their position, which was by its nature contradicted the truth claims of Christianity. In contrast Jews within the Christian Roman Empire had to be more circumspect, their relative mildness and respectability in the eyes of pluralistic moderns may not necessarily be a function of Jewish virtue, but Jewish circumstance. Similarly, the Babylonian Jewish community's jarring polemics against the figure of Jesus Christ does not reflect the demonic anti-Christian nature of the Jew, rather, it is the sort of reaction one would expect from a community whose fundamental beliefs are being challenged. Today Judaism is a religion which generally enforces a high bar to conversion; and yet as I have pointed to some readers during the time of the Macabees Jewish temporal power resulted in the forced conversion of gentile peoples. Obviously the situation was different, and religious scholars tend to be aware that one must interpret events through a historical lens. Unfortunately contemporary social demands often diminish or attenuate historical parameters in explaining howpeoples and individuals behaved, and there is a natural tension that arises when systems of thought which arose during the early Iron Age are forced to accede to the rules of the modern period. Elite cant tends to enforce the implicit dictum that all religions are manifestations of the same ancient core truth, despite the central planks of some sects that this is absolutely false. In a peculiar turnabout more conservative Christians and Jews are in the same boat as they were in the ancient pagan world, facing an amorphous and vaguely pious elite which is uncomfortable with their exclusive and strident claims. As a non-believer I have to keep in mind that while I conceive of religion as a man-made construct which is strongly conditioned by situation and contingent events, the vast majority of humans tend to hold to the belief that their faith is out of time and essential in its characteristics. Teasing apart and untangling these various strands can often be quite difficult. Some of the conundrums posed by research on the historical arc of religious dynamics is probably due to the fact that most people in the modern world believe in a timeless truths as the heart of their faith, but must grapple with the elasticity and change on record.
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A good case can be made that Jesus had it coming to him.
It's tough to say what "the real Jesus" was like and did, or even if he existed at all. I find Koenraad Elst's theory about him in Psychology of Prophetism interesting.
.It's tough to say what "the real Jesus" was like and did, or even if he existed at all.
in the context of religious polemic it is pretty irrelevant.
I just finished reading Secrecy and Deceit, a detailed account of Crypto Judaism in Spain, Portugal and their colonies in Latin America.
One of the ways that the Conversos (or the New Christians), who did not wish to assimilate, maintained their Jewish identity was to reject in private the Catholic practices they were forced to observe in public. Sometimes that rejection was in the form of regret or apology. For example, before entering the church many Crypto Jews would mutter a prayer which essentially said, "Lord, forgive me for what I am about to do inside this building. I do not worship sticks or stones nor do I see divinity in bread or wine. I believe only in the laws of Moses." At other times, the reluctant Converso would just try to avoid Christian worship by faking illness on Sundays and other holy days. But equally often the practice took the form of outright denunciation of and derision for the central tenets of the new faith in private surroundings, among other Crypto Judaizers. The derision occasionally went beyond mere words and translated into actual desecration or mockery of Christian holy symbols - among them, the cross and Catholic statuary and icons.
All this was quite naturally to be expected from a reluctant group of converts on whom Christianity had been forced under the threat of death, expulsion and extreme privation. What I found surprising however, was the fact that Virgin Mary actually was the target of baser and more vicious abuse than Jesus himself. The mockery of Mary, quite naturally always centered around the Christian belief in her virginity and the divine nature of her conception. One form of showing disrespect towards Mary consisted of throwing figs or making the sign of a fig(?) at her statue or painting. I can guess what the symbolism of the fig must have meant. But I am curious to know whether this was a common form of showing contempt towards women of questionable moral character in the middle ages, including among Christians.
The fig was and is a common obsecene gesture. It isn't specialized to women or the Virgin Mary. The idea probably was just that she wasn't really a virgin.
According to _The hand book_ (Linda Lee and James Charlton,Prentice-Hall, (1980), "The /fica/ or fig sign is an ancient copulatory gesture. Here the thumb is thrust between the forefinger and the middle finger of the same
hand, simulating the penis thrust through a woman's labia. (...) It is called the /fica/ or fig because the inserted thumb is about the size and shape of the fig, which, being an ancient symbol of abundance, carried with it a sense of virility and fecundity to the /mano in fica/. (...)"
(page 70).
http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-146.html
Thanks John.
I knew of the fig as a symbol of sexuality. Didn't know that it played a role in a common gesture of disrespect in most European cultures.
This is an interesting post on the history of Babylonian Jewry, but the blog title is misleading, because Jews under the Sassanian Empire were never a majority. The Jewish population has been estimated by various scholars (Jacob Neusner, Michael Marony) to be around 10% of the total population in Babylonia of the time. Some areas may have had a local Jewish majority, but never the entire area.
The Jewish population has been estimated by various scholars (Jacob Neusner, Michael Marony) to be around 10% of the total population in Babylonia of the time. Some areas may have had a local Jewish majority, but never the entire area.
the title is an anachronism in any case, right? wouldn't the jewish population clustered around ctesiphon, not babylon. but i don't think that 'the large jewish popuation of selecuia-ctesiphon' would have a good ring to it....
Dr. John Jackson, of SWRC, once remarked to me that man is a "typing" animal (at the time I was working with a large natural history collection, about 12 million specimens with many holotypes and paratypes) and he theorized that people are much more resistant to ideas that break up their categorizations than ideas that create new categories.Perhaps your critics can't make a new category for you, because it would break the existing taxonomy they use to comprehend the world, and they haven't the ability (or perhaps, the courage?) to forge a new system. Happens to me all the time. :)