Source in the Spotlight
Jacob Ben Reuben’s Milchamot HaShem: A Co-produced Christian-Jewish Dialogue
Source in the Spotlight
Jacob Ben Reuben’s Milchamot HaShem: A Co-produced Christian-Jewish Dialogue
In the history of Christian-Jewish interactions in the Latin West, the 11th and 12th centuries are known for their rich production of Christian literary dialogues. Works of this genre present a conversation between a Jewish and a Christian figure about the Christian faith. While these exchanges may be based on real conversations, they are fundamentally fictional scenarios invented by their Christian authors. They serve primarily to refute Jewish criticisms of Christianity, to polemicize against Judaism, and thus to emphasize Christianity as the only true religion. Such dialogues leverage invented conversations to present a Christian self-understanding in the face of and by using the Jewish other. In this sense, they can be perceived as artifacts of religious co-production.
Event: Open zoom seminar
Online Seminar with Jan Loop: “Co-production under Duress – Captive Labour in Early Modern Orientalist Scholarship”
May 20, 2024, 9–11 am EST / 3–5 pm CET Zoom
Learn moreEvent: International Conference
Conference: Co-producing Heresies: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
September 1–4, 2024 Schloss Münchenwiler (CH)
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Who we are
The project is coordinated by Katharina Heyden, Professor for Ancient History of Christianity and Interreligious Encounters at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and David Nirenberg, Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (U.S.), and includes a network of collaborators across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
New Case Study
A Co-Produced Tradition about the Messiah and His Mother in Late Antique Rabbinic Literature
The Hebrew word mashia’h, meaning “anointed”, originally referred to people whose special relationship with God was sanctioned by a ritual act involving the rubbing of oil. In the Hebrew Bible, it is applied to priests, prophets, and kings, some also called “son of God” and/or “son of man”. Christian tradition has interpreted all these as references to Jesus, called “Christ”, the Greek translation of mashia’h. The analysis of a 4th-century rabbinic story about a historical Messiah born on earth at the end of the 1st century CE allows us to see how the characteristics attributed to the Messiah in late antiquity were shared and co-produced among Jews, Christians, and Muslims.