The Bible in Jewish–Christian dialogue

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521860062.034

32 - The Bible in Jewish–Christian dialogue

from Part III - The Bible Interpreted

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2012

Richard Marsden and

E. Ann Matter

A. Sapir Abulafia

Show author details

Richard Marsden: Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
E. Ann Matter: Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The meaning of the Hebrew Bible has always been one of the most crucial areas of contention between Jews and Christians. From the very beginnings of the encounter between Ecclesia and Synagoga the Hebrew Bible provided protagonists from both camps with seemingly limitless ammunition to debate the differences between them. For Jews the Torah (Pentateuch), Neviʾim (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings) encoded the covenant between God and Israel; for Christians the Hebrew Bible constituted the Old Testament, which presaged the new covenant between God and new Israel. This meant that whatever interest Christians had in the letter or historical meaning of the Hebrew Bible, they also had to read it as if it were about Jesus Christ. Within the Jewish–Christian dialogue this christology could take on many different kinds of allegorical forms. As we shall see below, it could even be presented in a literal guise. Because Jews did not read the Bible christologically Christians commonly assumed that they were capable solely of reading the Bible ad litteram. Jewish readings were compared unfavourably with Christian spiritual readings which Christians claimed uncovered the hidden truths of the texts from under the veil of the letter. For their part Jews claimed that Christians took unwarranted liberties with the words of God.

For Christians the role of Jews vis-à-vis the Old Testament was definitively worked out by Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). Augustine taught that Jews served Christians by carrying for them the books of the Old Testament. The very fact that Jews preserved the books of the Bible even though they themselves did not understand what those books said about the life, teaching and passion of Jesus Christ seemed to exemplify the salvific promise held within those books. It was, in other words, the role of Jews in Christian society passively to embody the Christian supersession of Judaism. Their dispersion marked the punishment of the Jews for rejecting Christ. At the end of time the Pauline prophecy (Romans 11) would be fulfilled and Jews would convert to Christianity. At the core of Augustine's ‘witness theory’ was the paradox that Jews could not or, even worse, did not want to understand their own holy texts. How that could be reconciled with the ability of Jews to read Hebrew remained a question generations of Christian scholars would struggle to answer.

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge History of the Bible , pp. 616 - 637

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521860062.034 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Blumenkranz, B., Les auteurs chrétiens latins du moyen âge sur les juifs et le judaïsme (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1963)Google Scholar

Funkenstein, A., ‘Basic Types of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics’, Viator 2 (1971), 373–82Google Scholar

The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages. A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus, ed. Berger, D. (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979)Google Scholar

Schreckenberg, H., Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte, 3 vols. [with various updated editions] (Frankfurt: Lang, 1982–99)Google Scholar

Judaism on Trial. Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Maccoby, H. (London: Associated University Presses, 1982)Google Scholar

Trautner-Kromann, H., Shield and Sword. Jewish Polemics against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100–1500 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993)Google Scholar

Krauss, S., The Jewish–Christian Controversy. From the Earliest Times to 1789. Vol. i: History, ed. and rev. W. Horbury (Tübingen: Mohr, 1995)Google Scholar

Abulafia, A. Sapir, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 1995)CrossRef Google Scholar

Christians and Jews in Dispute. Disputational Literature and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c.1000–1150) (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1998)

Cohen, J., Living Letters of the Law. Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar

Chazan, R., Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004).Google Scholar

Guillaume de Bourges, Livre des guerres du Seigneur et deux homélies, ed. Dahan, G., SC 288 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981), pp. 80–5.Google Scholar

Dahan, G., Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge (Paris: Cerf, 1990), p. 485.Google Scholar

Kimhi, Joseph, The Book of the Covenant and Other Writings, trans. F. Talmage (Toronto: PIMS, 1972), p. 40.Google Scholar

Crispin, Gilbert, Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili, ed. A. Sapir Abulafia, in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, ed. A. Sapir Abulafia and G. R. Evans, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 8 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1986), pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

Écrits théologiques de l’école d’Abélard. Textes inédits, ed. Landgraf, A. M., Études et Documents 14 (Leuven: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934), pp. 63–289, at pp. 281–2Google Scholar

Thiel, M., Grundlagen und Gestalt der Hebräischkenntnisse des frühen Mittelalters, Biblioteca degli Studi Medievali 4 (Spoleto: CISAM, 1973), pp. 69–84.Google Scholar

Tolan, J., Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993), pp. 37–8Google Scholar

Expositio magni prophete Abbatis Joachim in Apocalypsim (Venice, 1527), fol. 36v.

Pedro Alfonso de Huesca, Diálogo contra los Judíos, ed. Mieth, K.-P. (Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 1996), p. 116.Google Scholar

Reuben, Jacob ben, Milhamot ha-Shem, ed. J. Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1963), pp. 11–14Google Scholar

Lasker, D. J., Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York: Ktav, 1977), p. 158.Google Scholar

Serta Mediaevalia. Textus varii saeculorum x–xiii in unum collecti, ed. Huygens, R. B. C., CCCM 171 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 330–1Google Scholar

Adversus Iudeos di Gioacchimo da Fiore, ed. Frugoni, A., Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 95 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1957), pp. 44–5 and 9–17.Google Scholar

Posnanski, A., Schiloh. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Messiaslehre (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1904), pp. 108–10.Google Scholar

Annulus sive Dialogus inter Christianum et Iudaeum, ed. Haacke, R., in M. L. Arduini, Ruperto di Deutz e la controversia tra Christiani ed Ebrei nel seculo XII (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1979), pp. 189–93 and 203–4.Google Scholar

Timmer, D. E., ‘The Religious Significance of Judaism for Twelfth-Century Monastic Exegesis. A Study in the Thought of Rupert of Deutz, c. 1070–1129’, PhD thesis, University of Notre Dame (1983)

‘Biblical Exegesis and the Jewish–Christian Controversy in the Early Twelfth Century’, Church History 58 (1989), 309–21.CrossRef

Bull, M. and Housley, N. (eds.), The Experience of Crusading. Vol. i: Western Approaches (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003), pp. 135–7Google Scholar

McGinn, B., The Calabrian Abbot. Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 161–203.Google Scholar

Lerner, R., The Feast of Saint Abraham. Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

Gregory the Great, Moralia sive expositio in Iob, ed. Adriaen, M., 3 vols., CCSL 143, 143A, 143B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), xx, ix, 20, pp. 1018–19.Google Scholar

Rosenthal, E. I. J., ‘Anti-Christian Polemic in Medieval Bible Commentaries’, Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (1960), 118–19.CrossRef Google Scholar

Kamin, S., ‘Rashi's Exegetical Categorization with Respect to the Distinction between Peshat and Derash…’, Immanuel 11 (1980), 16–32Google Scholar

Sultan, C., ‘Apologétique et polémique dans les commentaires de Rashi sur les Psaumes, les Proverbes et Daniel’, in G. Dahan (ed.), Le brûlement du Talmud à Paris 1242–1244 (Paris: Cerf, 1999), pp. 161–9Google Scholar

Signer, M. A., ‘God's Love for Israel. Apologetic and Hermeneutical Strategies in Twelfth-Century Biblical Exegesis’, in M. A. Signer and J. van Engen (eds.), Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), pp. 123–49.Google Scholar

Mehlman, B. H. and Polish, D. F., ‘The Response to the Christian Exegesis of Psalms in the Teshuvot La-Nozrim of Rabbi David Qumhi’, in R. A. Brauner (ed.), Jewish Civilization. Essays and Studies. Vol. iii: Judaism and Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 1985), pp. 184–5Google Scholar

Smalley, B., ‘Ralph of Flaix on Leviticus’, RTAM 35 (1968), 35–82.Google Scholar

Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), chs. 3 and 4Google Scholar

Signer, M. A., ‘Thirteenth-century Christian Hebraism. The Expositio on Canticles in MS. Vat. Lat. 1053’, in D. Blumenthal (ed.), Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, vol. iii (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 91–3Google Scholar

Andreae de Sancto Victore opera. Vol. vi: Expositionem in Ezechielem, ed. Signer, M. A., CCCM 53E (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), pp. ix–xxxviiGoogle Scholar

Goodwin, D. L., ‘Take Hold of the Robe of a Jew’. Herbert of Bosham's Christian Hebraism (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

Dahan, G., L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible en Occident médiéval XIIe–XIVe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1999), p. 377.Google Scholar

de Visscher, E., ‘The Jewish–Christian Dialogue’, in ‘Twelfth-Century Western Europe. The Hebrew and Latin Sources of Herbert of Bosham's Commentary on the Psalms’, unpubl. PhD thesis, University of Leeds (2003)

Loewe, H., ‘Alexander Neckam's Knowledge of Hebrew’, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958), 17–34Google Scholar

Olszowy-Schlanger, J., ‘The Knowledge and Practice of Hebrew Grammar among Christian Scholars in Pre-Expulsion England. The Evidence of “Bilingual” Hebrew–Latin Manuscripts’, in N. de Lange (ed.), Hebrew Scholarship in the Medieval World (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001), pp. 107–28.Google Scholar

‘Secundum Salomonem’. A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Song of Songs, ed. Kamin, S. and Saltman, A. (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989), pp. 7–48.Google Scholar

Cohen, J., ‘Synagoga conversa. Honorius Augustodunensis, the Song of Songs, and Christianity's “Eschatalogical Jew”’, Speculum 79 (2004), 309–40.CrossRef Google Scholar

Signer, M. A., ‘The Glossa ordinaria and the Transmission of Medieval Anti-Judaism’, in J. Brown and W. P. Stoneman (eds.), A Distinct Voice. Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P. (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 591–605.Google Scholar

Cohen, J., ‘The Jews as the Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition, from Augustine to the Friars’, Traditio 39 (1983), 1–27CrossRef Google Scholar

Jungmann, J. A., The Mass of the Roman Rite. Its Origins and Development, trans. F. A. Brunner, 4th edn, vol. ii (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1992), pp. 128–34Google Scholar

Landgraf, A., ‘Scholastische Texte zur Liturgie des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 45 (1931), 213Google Scholar

Guillelmi Duranti Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. Davril, A. and Thibodeau, M., 3 vols., CCCM 140, 140A, 140B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998–2000), iv, 34, 1–3, vol. i, pp. 410–11Google Scholar

Frizzell, L. E and Henderson, J. F., ‘Jews and Judaism in the Medieval Latin Liturgy’, in T. J. Heffermann and E. A. Matter (eds.), The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (Kalamazoo, MI: MIP, 2001), p. 189.Google Scholar

HaLevi, Yehuda, The Kuzari. In Defense of the Despised Faith, trans. and ed. N. D. Korobkin (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998), p. 150.Google Scholar

Guillelmi Duranti Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. Davril, and Thibodeau, , iv, 43, 13, vol. i, pp. 485–6.

Ruperti Tuitiensis, Liber de divinis officiis, ed. Haacke, H., CCCM 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), ii. 13, p. 47.Google Scholar

Opera Quodvultdeo Carthaginiensi episcopo tributa, ed. Braun, R., CCSL 60 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), pp. 227–58.Google Scholar

Young, K., The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933), vol. ii, pp. 125–71 (text, pp. 154–65)Google Scholar

Chambers, E. K., The Mediaeval Stage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903), pp. 52–6Google Scholar

Dahan, G., ‘L’interprétation de l’Ancien Testament dans les drames réligieux (xie–xiiie siècles)’, Romania 100 (1979), 71–103.CrossRef Google Scholar