Language:
English
Year of publication:
2023
Titel der Quelle:
The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2023) 202-222
Keywords:
Severus,
;
Socrates,
;
Inscriptions, Greek
;
Jewish diaspora History To 1500
;
Jews History 70-638
;
Judaism Relations Early church, ca. 30-600
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism Early church, ca. 30-600
;
History
Abstract:
In his 1934 book The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, James Parkes maintained that, despite the abundant hostility toward Jews by early Christian theologians, ancient Jewish-Christian social relations would have been excellent on the ground. Through careful analysis of both literary and material sources pertaining to the Jewish diaspora in Mediterranean late antiquity, this contribution demonstrates that social relations were more complicated than Parkes imagined. Literary texts like the Letter of Severus of Minorca on the Conversion of the Jews and the Ecclesiastical History of Sokrates of Constantinople are not reliable witnesses for historical reconstruction because their rhetorical formations of “useable pasts” where Jews and Christians had positive interactions were ideologically motivated by interests in blaming Jews for present hostilities. At the same time, however, inscriptions like those from Corykos in Cilicia, where Jews and Christians were buried in the same necropolis and shared a common set of names, might point toward instances of more amicable coexistence.
DOI:
10.1163/9789004524866_011
URL:
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