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This paper discusses "polemical triangulation," a common rhetorical and polemical device in Antiquity, through which an author attacks a person or a group of persons who are not the explicit addressees of a text or speech. It looks at its use and diversity with examples from Melito of Sardis and Ignatius, in the context of polemics against the Jews and the Docetists. In all cases, these models imply the existence of a marked anti-Judaism in Ignatius and his addressees. Some well-known methodological questions are addressed, such as the author's knowledge of the persons attacked, his or her relations with them, and other more or less consciously used sources of information. Finally, the paper draws conclusions about the relevance of the concerned statements for a historical study of the adversaries, their thinking or the arguments attributed to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period of the Crusades has often been considered as an epoch of eschatological fervor for the Christians who participated to this enterprise, a mission that aimed to reconquer the holy places from the Muslims. Such a zeal, however, did not affect only Christians, but also the Jewish communities that lived in Europe, in the Byzantine empire and in the Holy Land. This paper focuses on the Jewish literary production during the Crusades, aiming to demonstrate that the eschatological texts were functional in order to explain persecutions, battles, clash of civilizations and religions. These happenings were interpreted as events anticipating the final era, the time of the advent of the Messiah(s) who would gather the exiles, redeem the Jewish people, reconquer Jerusalem and restore the supremacy of Israel. In other words, this period of crisis was understood as a sequence of events that were part of a divine plan leading to the redemption of Israel. The texts that are taken in consideration are Aggadat Mašiah, The Prayer of R. Šim'on b. Yoh'ai and 'Otot ha- Mašiah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first two books of Maccabees and Flavius Josephus dedicate several pages to King Antiochus Epiphanes and they constitute the sources for a reconstruction of the history of the relationships between Antiochus and the Jews, but they are marked by a pronounced ideological perspective. The death of the king is recounted in three different ways in the two books of Maccabees. Those who are intent on historical reconstruction limit themselves to considering as worthy of trust only the elements shared by all three accounts. Those who are interested in the message examine, rather, the differences among these texts that claim to report the same event. In this paper the three accounts are first compared with extra-biblical sources. The identification of a conventional model to account for the king's death raises a question: What is the story's function in the overall narrative? The death of Antiochus has a strategic placement in the narrative. The literary and ideological aspect of the story emerges from this analysis. Finally, it is emphasized that even modern interpretations are conditioned by ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Leo the Great's sermons that allow to glimpse the intertwining between anti-Judaic and anti-heretical controversies. As part of the formulation of his doctrine, both Trinitarian and Christological, Leo strongly aimed to contrast both Judaism and the different heretical currents circulating at his time. In his dialectical procedure Judaism is often combined to other heresies (in particular, Manicheism), considered in a progressive removal from orthodoxy: Leo contested several heresies, for which the controversy against the Jews is proposed as an origin and as a model. He mixes pagans, Jews, and heretics according to polemical strategies functional to his ideological and religious conceptions. In particular, Jews are considered as a potentially dangerous enemy as Manichaeans. Although, in fact, the devil has exercised his dominion over all heretical doctrines, he has mainly caused the madness of the Manichaeans, in which the worst distortions of the true faith have flowed: the profanity of pagans, the blindness of Jews, the illegal practices of magic and, moreover, sacrilegious and blasphemous elements shared with other heresies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira from Qumran, Masada and the Cairo Genizah present numerous variants between the different Hebrew witnesses, as well as in the marginal readings of manuscript B. One salient feature of these variants is that most represent "synonymous readings." In this paper, we would like to examine this phenomenon more closely by looking at the different textual Hebrew witnesses of Ben Sira, while focusing on three main points: (1) In what way these synonymous variants may be comprehended from an historical-linguistic point of view; (2) How this typical feature may inform us about scribal practices from antiquity to the medieval period; (3) Whether a comparison of this phenomenon with similar features in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which Shemaryahu Talmon highlighted in his "Synonymous Readings" article, might show that these textual variations can serve as a paradigm highlighting scribal practices in textual transmission in antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Epideixis of Irenaeus of Lyons is known to us only in its Armenian translation. In Epideixis 43 appears a Hebrew quotation both transliterated and translated first from Hebrew to Greek and then from Greek to Armenian. This quotation – as far as we know, the only one in the Hebrew language in the whole work of Irenaeus – entails three problems. First: Irenaeus affirms that it is a quotation of Moses, but we can’t recognize it in any text we know, even if it resounds to Genesis 1,1. Second: it is difficult to reconstruct the original Hebrew text because the transliteration and the Armenian translation don’t correspond to each other. Indeed, a sequence of letters of the transliteration hasn’t any correspondence in the translation, and moreover, it is difficult to identify it with a Hebrew term. Third: in our passage, the Armenian language presents ambiguities that Greek did not, and the scholars do not agree about the position of Irenaeus in the theological point that this quotation would explain, namely if the Word was generated ab aeterno or ante tempus.  is paper pretends to present the status quaestionis of the previous interpretations of the quotation and to support one of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes into consideration the last great Roman-Persian war of 602-628 as an example of how the eschatological expectations are a frequent response to perceived crises. Jews and Christians welcomed the looming downfall of the Roman Empire and the takeover by the Messiah or Christ soon to follow. Imperial propaganda attempted to counter such scenarios by presenting Emperor Heraclius not simply as the defeater of a political adversary but as a redeemer king, the savior of pagans from their disbelief, the unifier of Christendom, God's chosen general and basileus, a new King David and, finally, the converter of the Jews. All these images clearly pointed to an eschatological redemption that was partly realized here and now, in the form of a glorified Christian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]