Stephen J. Shoemaker, Let Us Go and Burn Her Body. The Image of The Jews in The Early Dormition Traditions

American Society of Church History
"Let Us Go and Burn Her Body": The Image of the Jews in the Early Dormition Traditions
Author(s): Stephen J. Shoemaker
Source: Church History, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1999), pp. 775-823
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History
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"LetUs Go and BurnHer Body":
TheImageof theJewsin the Early
DormitionTraditions
STEPHEN
J. SHOEMAKER
In his recent book, Mary through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan

notes that "one of the most profound and persistent roles of the Vir-
gin Mary in history has been her function as a bridge builder to other
traditions, other cultures, and other religions."' This is particularly
true of the late ancient Near East, where Mary's significance fre-
quently reached across various cultural and religious boundaries.2
But it is equally true that Mary often served to define boundaries
between traditions, cultures, and religions. As Klaus Schreiner ex-
plains in his similarly recent book, Maria: Jungfrau, Mutter, Herrsherin,
"Briicken, die Juden und Christen miteinander hatten verbinden
konnen, schlug Maria im Mittelalter nicht.... Maria trennte, grenzte
aus."3 In the rather substantial chapter that follows, Schreiner pres-
ents perhaps the best overview of Mary's role as a focus of Jew-
ish/Christian conflict in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.4 Scholars
have long recognized the role played by the Virgin and her cult in the
I would like to thank the following people for their contributionsto this article:Alexander
Alexakis,Melissa M. Aubin, JorunnJacobsonBuckley,ElizabethA. Clark,Derek Krueger,
David Levenson,and two anonymousreadersfor ChurchHistory.Earlierversions of some
of this material were presented at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the AAR and the 1999
SoutheastRegionalMeetingof the AAR.
1. JaroslavPelikan,MarythroughtheCenturies(New Haven, Conn.:Yale UniversityPress,
1996),67.
2. Some of these "bridges"are thoughtfullyexploredin Pelikan,Mary,chap.5.
3. Klaus Schreiner, Maria:Jungfrau,Mutter, Herrscherin(Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1994),
413.
4. Schreiner,Maria,chap. 11.
StephenJ. Shoemakeris National Endowmentfor the Humanities Fellow, W. F.

Albright Institutefor ArchaeologicalResearch,Jerusalem.
? 1999,The AmericanSocietyof ChurchHistory
ChurchHistory68:4(December1999)
775
776 CHURCH HISTORY
exclusion of Jews from Christian society during the Western Middle

Ages,5 Marian piety being, along with eucharistic devotion, the most
anti-Jewish aspect of medieval piety.6 Throughout the medieval pe-
riod,7 and likewise continuing into the Renaissance and Reformation,
the Virgin Mary figured prominently in Christian anti-Jewish litera-
ture, where the (alleged) Jewish disparagement of Virgin Mary
"weighed heavier than thefts of the host, ritual murders, and .
well poisoning."8
This phenomenon is not, however, as one study might seem to
suggest, particularly "une tradition de l'Occident chretien."9In fact,
its origins seem to have been primarily Eastern, and, as scholars of
the medieval West have occasionally recognized, the earliest tradi-
tions of the Virgin's Dormition laid important foundations for this
anti-Jewish aspect of medieval Marian piety.'0 The ancient Dormition
traditions, the earliest accounts of the end of the Virgin Mary's life,
5. See, for example,Hedwig Rockelein,"Marie,l'tglise et la Synagogue:Culte de la Vierge

et lutte contreles Juifsen Allemagnea la fin du Moyen Age,"in Dominiquelogna-Prat,
Eric Palazzo, and Daniel Russ, eds., Marie: Le Culte de la Vierge dans la societe medievale
(Paris:Beauchesne,1996), 513-31; Peter Michael Spangenberg,"Judenfeindlichkeitin
den altfranzosischenMarienmirakeln.Stereotypenoder Symptome der Veranderung
Zur
in RainerErb, ed., Die Legendevom Ritualmord:
der kollektiven Selbsterfahrung?"
Geschichte der Blutbeschuldigunggegen Juden, Dokumente, Texte, Materialien 6 (Berlin:
Metropol-Verlag,1993),157-77;RobertWorthFrank,"Miraclesof the Virgin,Medieval
Anti-Semitism,and the Prioress'sTale,"in TheWisdomof Poetry,ed. LarryD. Benson
and Siegfried Wenzel (Kalamazoo,Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications,Western
MichiganUniversity, 1982),177-88;Louise O. Fradenburg,"Criticism,Anti-Semitism,
1 (1989):69-117, esp. 85-90;and JoanYoung Gregg,
and the Prioress'sTale,"Exemplaria
Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflectionsof the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories, SUNY Series
in MedievalStudies (Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress,1997),esp. 194-97.
6. Denise L. Despres, "Maryof the Eucharist:Cultic Anti-Judaismin Some Fourteenth-
Century English Devotional Manuscripts," in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and
Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen, Wolfenbiitteler Mittelalter-
Studien11 (Wiesbaden:HarrassowitzVerlag,1996),379.
7. This is perhapsmost dramaticallydemonstratedfor the medieval period by consulting
the index of Heinz Schreckenberg's Die christlichenAdversus-Judaeos-Texte(11.-13. Jh.),
Mit einer Ikonographie des Judenthemas bis zum 4. Laterankonzil, Europaische
Hochschulschriften,Reihe XXIIITheologie, Bd. 335 (Frankfurtam Main: Peter Lang,
1988),696, s.v. "Maria,MariasVirginitat,Jungfrauengeburt."
8. Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissanceand Reformation,
trans.JamesI. Porter(Philadelphia:Fortress,1984),83.
9. Rockelein,"Marie,"513.
10. See Gregg,Devils,194;Frank,"Miraclesof the Virgin,"181-82;Rockelein,"Marie,"513.
The latter cites Gregoryof Tours'sLiberin gloriamartyrumas the source by which this
theme was introducedto WesternChristianliterature.This is a ratherlikely proposal,
given the possibility that in this work Gregoryintroduced a traditionof the Virgin's
Dormition to the West; see Averil Cameron, "The Theotokos in Sixth-Century
Constantinople," Journalof TheologicalStudies, n.s. 29 (1978): 90.
EARLYDORMITIONTRADITIONS 777
first come into historical view around the year 500, when they almost
simultaneously appear in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine.1 From these
"origins," these legends spread rapidly throughout the early medie-
val world, with the result that we currently possess over sixty differ-
ent accounts from before the tenth century, preserved in nine ancient
languages, ranging from Old Irish to Old Georgian.12Although the
narratives often differ greatly in detail, they are almost unanimous in
their identification of the Jews as fierce enemies of both the Virgin in
particular and the Christian faith more generally. With only one ex-
ception,13the Dormition narratives indulge in anti-Jewish harangues
and report various episodes that depict the Jews as harassing and
attacking the Virgin, actions for which they invariably receive violent
divine punishment.14
While the hostile images of these traditions undoubtedly laid sig-
nificant foundations for the Virgin's anti-Jewish status in medieval
Christendom, they also correspond with many of the anti-Jewish
themes present elsewhere in late ancient literature. The strong con-
nection in the Dormition traditions between Mary and anti-Judaism
seems to have roots in the (actual) disagreements between Jews and
Christians over the question of Mary's virginity in late antiquity. The
Jewish claims against Christ's Virgin Birth during late antiquity are
well known from Jewish, Christian, and even pagan sources. Such
attacks inevitably extended to the Virgin, whom the Jews accused of
sexual improprieties of varying severity. In the course of the Chris-
tian response, the Virgin developed into a figure with anti-Jewish as-
sociations. These Jewish accusations against the Virgin's purity also
appear in the early Dormition traditions, where they are an important
part of the strong animus against the Virgin that the Jews are repre-
sented as holding.
11. See Stephen J. Shoemaker, "Mary and the Discourse of Orthodoxy: Early Christian
Identity and the Ancient Dormition Traditions" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1997),
esp. 21-55.
12. A catalogue of these is available in Michel van Esbroeck, "Les Textes litteraires sur
l'assomption avant le Xe siecle," in Les Actes apocryphesdes ap6tres, Franqois Bovon, ed.
(Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), 265-85.
13. The Homily on the Dormition attributed to Modestus of Jerusalem (Patrologia Graeca,
[1857-66, hereafter PG] 86:3277-3312). This homily's authenticity has been challenged
by Martin Jugie: "Deux homelies patristiques pseudepigraphes: Saint Athanase sur
l'Annonciation; Saint Modest de Jerusalem sur la Dormition," ?chos d'Orient 39 (1940-
42): 285-89; idem, La Mort et l'assomption de la Sainte Vierge: Etude historico-doctrinale,
Studi e Testi 114 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1944), 214-23.
14. This feature of the Dormition traditions was briefly noted by James Parkes in his The
Conflict of the Church and Synagogue: A Study of the Origins of Anti-Semitism (London:
Soncino, 1934), 103. More recently, see also Boudewijn Dehandschutter, "Anti-Judaism
in the Apocrypha," Studia Patristica 19 (1989): 345-50.
778 CHURCH HISTORY
In addition, many of the earliest narratives of Mary's Dormition

portray the Jews as hostile to certain developments of late ancient
Christian piety, most notably the veneration of the saints, relics, and,
in later narratives, images. This image of the Jews is found elsewhere
in late ancient Christian literature, and when joined to their identifi-
cation as enemies of the Virgin, this served to mark them as the bitter
enemies of the Christian faith. In the later Roman Empire, citizenship
was increasingly linked with orthodox Christian faith, and religious
deviants, including Jews and Christian heretics, were legally ex-
cluded from the civic body.15At the same time, the cults of the saints
and relics, and of the Virgin in particular, were identified with and
promoted by the imperial establishment,16making opposition to such
practices tantamount to civic disloyalty. In this atmosphere, such
hostile stereotypes, as Nicholas de Lange notes, "must surely have
had practical consequences for the treatment of Jews,"17consequences
which no doubt include the intensifying conflict between the empire
and its Jewish inhabitants in the sixth and seventh centuries.
I. JEWSAND CHRISTIANSIN EARLYBYZANTIUM
During the early Byzantine period the Roman Empire adopted an

increasingly hostile stance toward the Jews living within its borders.
Such actions in many ways continued a practice of the "pagan" em-
pire, where religious deviance was considered both a sign of civic
disloyalty and a threat to the empire's divine favor. Indeed, it was in
accord with this policy that the early Christians had themselves been
persecuted for stubbornly standing outside the religious establish-
15. J. B. Bury, History of the LaterRoman Empire,from the Death of TheodosiusI to the Death of
Justinian (London: MacMillan and Co., Ltd., 1923), 2:361; Peter Brown, Authority and the
Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 53-54; Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late
Antiquity: A.D. 395-600, Routledge History of the Ancient World (London: Routledge,
1993), 141-44; eadem, Christianityand the Rhetoricof Empire:The Developmentof Christian
Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures 55 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
190-208. A good summary of the various late Roman laws against "pagans," Jews, and
heretics may be found in A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1964; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1986), 2:338-56.
16. John Haldon, "Ideology and Social Change in the Seventh Century: Military Discontent
as a Barometer," Klio 68 (1986): 162.
17. N. R. M. de Lange, "Jews and Christians in the Byzantine Empire," in Christianity and
Judaism: Papers Read at the 1991 Summer Meeting and the 1992 Winter Meeting of the
Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 29 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992), 26.
ment of Greco Roman society.18But with the change in imperial re-

ligious ideology that began with the accession of Constantine, Chris-
tianity slowly transformed itself from a persecuted faith into a perse-
cuting faith, thus continuing the "pagan" empire's intolerance for
religious deviance. Early Byzantine religious ideology held that the
empire's divine favor rested on uniformity of doctrine, and any chal-
lenge to the empire's theological unity was viewed ultimately as a
threat to imperial stability.19Deviant religious groups saw their legal
status diminished, and in many cases were eventually eliminated
from the empire.20The Jews, however, remained, as they had been in
the "pagan" empire, a special case. The Roman Empire had always
protected the Jews' right to practice their religion, as well as their
privilege to abstain from participation in the Roman civic cults, a
concession not generally made for other ancient religions.21The iner-
tia behind this legal privilege seems to have protected the Jews
through the early years of the Christian empire, but as time passed,
and the empire became increasingly Christianized, this tolerance
likewise diminished.22
Several factors seem to have contributed to this change, but
among the most important were the direct challenges that Judaism
posed to Christianity on a variety of fronts. On the one hand, there is
rather persuasive evidence that during late antiquity Christianity
faced competition from Judaism for the hearts and minds of the Ro-
man populus,both from Jewish "proselytism" and from the disruptive
presence of "Judaizers," Christians who also observed Jewish prac-
tices, within the Christian communities. Although there is some de-
bate surrounding the issue of Jewish proselytism in the earliest
Christian centuries,23the issue of Christian Judaizers seems to have
18. W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdomand Persecution in the Early Church:A Study of a Conflictfrom

the Maccabeesto Donatus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 104-26.
19. Jones, LaterRoman Empire,2:934-35; Cyril Mango, Byzantium:The Empireof the New Rome
(New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1980), 88-89.
20. Jones, Later Roman Empire, 2:939-56; Cameron, Mediterranean World, 140-44; eadem,
Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather
Classical Lectures 55 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 190-208; Mango,
Byzantium, 89-97.
21. Mango, Byzantium, 91; Jean Juster, Les Juifs dans l'empire romain:Leur conditionjuridique,
economiqueet social (Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1914), 1:244 45.
22. Jones, LaterRoman Empire,2:946; Cameron, MediterraneanWorld, 140-41.
23. In favor of the existence of Jewish proselytism throughout the early Christian period,
see especially Simon, Verus Israel, 271-305; John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism:
Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1983), 55-66; Bernard J. Bamberger, Proselytism in the TalmudicPeriod (Cincinnati:
Hebrew Union College Press, 1939; reprint, New York: Ktav, 1968); William Horbury,
Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy(Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1998), 98-102,
780 CHURCHHISTORY
generated less controversy.24Yet for the period under consideration

here, there is near unanimity concerning the existence of both Jewish
proselytism and Christian Judaizers. Even those who dispute such
activities in earlier centuries will generally concede the significance of
Judaizers and some form of Jewish proselytism for understanding
Jewish/Christian relations in the post-Constantinian period.25These
phenomena not only indicate the attractiveness of Judaism to the
Christian masses but also provide evidence of some real contact be-
tween the two religious communities in late antiquity.
Judaizing Christians no doubt posed a particular challenge for the
Christian leadership of the early Byzantine Empire, presenting a ma-
jor source of Jewish/Christian conflict that persisted at least until the
136-40; and Louis H. Feldman's extensive discussion in Jew and Gentile in the Ancient
World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 288415. Recent critiques of this view have been posed by
Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the
Roman Empire(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Miriam S. Taylor in Anti-Judaism
and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus, Studia Post-Biblica 46
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); and Leonard V. Rutgers's critical review of Feldman's book,
"Attitudes to Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period: Reflections on Feldman's Jew and
Gentile in the Ancient World," Jewish Quarterly Review 85 (1995): 361-95. See also
Feldman's response to Rutgers's article: "Reflections on Rutgers's 'Attitudes to Judaism
in the Greco-Roman Period,'" Jewish Quarterly Review 86 (1995): 153-70; and the
discussion of Taylor's work in Horbury, Jews and Christians,21-25.
24. See, among others, Simon, Verus Israel, 306-38; Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism, 113-33;
and Robert L. Wilken, JohnChrysostomand the Jews:Rhetoricand Reality in the Late Fourth
Century, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 4 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1983), 66-94.
25. See Goodman, Mission and Conversion, 129-53; Taylor, Anti-Judaism,29-32. Rutgers too
concedes this point, but somewhat more reluctantly it would seem. Rutgers agrees that
in Chrysostom's Antioch the city's Christian masses both were attracted to Jewish
practices and associated freely with the city's Jewish inhabitants (Rutgers, "Attitudes to
Judaism," 381-85). He then concludes, somewhat strangely, that "the reaction of the
masses tells us little about what people in antiquity generally thought about Jews and
Judaism" (385). To the contrary, although it may tell us little about what the
intellectuals of late antiquity thought (contra Feldman), it most certainly does reveal a
great deal about general attitudes. Seemingly as if to minimize the significance of this
point, Rutgers notes that "in these very same years Christians further east, in
Callinicum on the Euphrates, related to Jews in a much less peaceful manner: they
destroyed a local synagogue" (385). Nevertheless, if one considers the (roughly)
contemporary evidence offered by Aphraat's writings, we can see that the incidents at
Antioch were not isolated but were characteristic of late ancient Christianity generally
and in Mesopotamia specifically (see Simon, Verus Israel, 318-20; Jacob Neusner,
Aphraat and Judaism:The Christian Jewish Argument in Fourth-CenturyIran, Studia Post-
Biblica [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971]). That one should find at the same time both Judaizers
and anti-Jewish violence in Mesopotamia is neither contradictory nor surprising.
seventh century.26This can be seen in a well known set of incidents

from fourth-centuryAntioch,where JohnChrysostomfaced a Jewish
"missionary"effort that yielded many Jewish sympathizersamong
the Christiansat Antioch.27As a result, these JudaizingChristians
adopted certainJewish customs in addition to their Christianprac-
tices,28 so that on certain Jewish feasts, for instance, the churches
would be almost empty. Moreover,because Christianidentity relied
so heavily on its distinctionfrom Judaismand the relatedclaim that
Christians,ratherthanthe Jews,were now "thepeople of God,"these
Judaizerscompromisedthe truth of Christianityby collapsing this
distinctionand implying that Christianitywithout Judaismwas not
complete.29
In addition to the social pressuresof Jewish proselytismand Ju-
daizingChristians,the continuedexistenceof the Jewssimply in itself
presenteda constantchallengeto the truthof Christianityalong dif-
ferent lines: if Jesus was truly the Jewish messiah, and Christianity
was, as it claimed,the completionof Judaism,why then did Jews re-
main?This was the difficulttheologicalquestionposed by the abid-
ing presence of the Jews in the Christianempire.30In general, the
Christianresponse alleged that although the Jews in fact knew in
their heartsthe truth of the Christianclaims,they remained,despite
this recognition,inexplicablyobstinate.31 As Christianitybecame in-
creasinglyjoined with the late Roman state, this "deliberate"resis-
tance to the truth of imperial religious ideology was a source of
mounting social and political friction. The empire's Christiansre-
sented this Jewishchallengeto the truthof imperialChristianity,and
the "obstinacy"of the Jews was viewed as a constantthreatto the
empire'sdivine favor that began to take on connotationsof civic dis-
loyalty.32Consequently,increasinglyrestrictiveimperial laws were
26. See especially the article of Gilbert Dagron, "Judaiser," Travaux et Memoires 11 (1991):
359-80; Simon, Verus Israel, 395. For evidence of Judaizing Christians in early Islamic
sources see Patricia Crone, "Islam, Judeo-Christianity and Byzantine Iconoclasm,"
JerusalemStudies in Arabicand Islam 2 (1980): 59-95.
27. On this, see especially Wilken, John Chrysostom.
28. Simon, Verus Israel,289, 337. See his general discussion of this phenomenon, 306-38.
29. Wilken, John Chrysostom,77-79.
30. See, for example, Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 1.1.1-8 (Bernard Grillet, Guy Sabbah,
and Andre-Jean Festugiere, O.P., eds., Sozomene:Histoire ecclesiastique,Livres1-2, Sources
Chretiennes 306 [Paris: Les editions du Cerf, 1983], 108-13); see also Mango, Byzantium,
91; de Lange, "Jews and Christians," 18-19; Judith Lieu, "History and Theology in
Christian Views of Judaism," in The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman
Empire,ed. Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak (London: Routledge, 1992) 84-85.
31. Simon, Verus Israel, 208-9, 215-16; Parkes, Conflict of the Churchand Synagogue, 102-3.
32. J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformationof a Culture, rev. ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 345-47.
782 CHURCHHISTORY
adopted against the Jews, culminating in forced baptisms of Jews in

the late sixth and early seventh centuries, which were aimed at
purging this religious "other" from the empire.33The Jews and their
Samaritan cousins (who also posed a similar threat to imperial relig-
ious unity and received much the same legal treatment34)responded
to this legal pressure at times with violence. The late sixth and early
seventh centuries bear witness to increasing violence between Jews
and Christians in the East, in the context of generally increasing social
and religious unrest in the region.
Although the period from Theodosius II to Justinian saw a hiatus
in imperial legislation against the Jews, relations between the Jews
and the empire remained occasionally turbulent.35 All of this
changed, however, and for the worse, with Justinian's accession. Vig-
orous imperial anti-Jewish legislation resumed, and over the course
of the subsequent century relations between the Jews and the empire
steadily declined.36The beginning of this period saw several revolts
in Palestine, commencing with the Samaritan revolt of 529, in which
the Samaritans temporarily gained control of all of ancient Samaria.37
While it appears that no Jews were involved in this uprising, it nev-
ertheless did not improve their standing in the eyes of the empire,
since, although imperial legislation clearly distinguished between
Samaritans and Jews, "the connection between the two communities
was as obvious in official eyes as the difference between them."38But
33. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century, 345-47; Jones, Later Roman Empire, 2:944-50.
Although Heraclius was the first emperor to force baptism on the Jews, there were
sporadic incidents of forced baptism as early as the fifth century, and, beginning with
Justinian's reign, they were increasingly frequent in the East.
34. Andrew Sharf, Byzantine Jewryfrom Justinian to the Fourth Crusade,The Littman Library
of Jewish Civilization (London: Routledge, 1971), 30.
35. Sharf, ByzantineJewry,26-29.
36. Mango, Byzantium, 92-93; Michael Avi-Yonah, The Jews of Palestine: A Political History
from the Bar KokhbaWar to the Arab Conquest (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976), 246-51. See
also Petrus Browne, S.J., "Die Judengesetzgebung Justinians," Analecta Gregoriana 8
(1935): 109-46; and Alfredo M. Rabello, Guistiniano, Ebreie Samaritanialla luce dellefonti
storico-letterarie ecclesiastiche e giuridiche, 2 vols., Monografie del Vocabolario di
Giustiniano 1-2 (Milano: Dott. A. Giuffre Editore, 1988).
37. John Malalas, Chronographia18 (Ludovic Dindorf, ed., Ioanneis Malalae Chronographia,
Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 15 [Bonn: Impensis ed. Weberi, 1831], 445-47);
and Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Sabae 70 (Eduard Schwartz, ed., Kyrillos von Skythopolis,
Texte und Untersuchungen (hereafter TU) 49.2 [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1939], 171-73).
This is probably the same uprising described by John of Nikiu, Chronicle 93 (H.
Zotenberg, ed., Chronique de Jean, eveque de Nikiu: Texte ethiopien [Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1883, 164-65 [Eth] and 397-98 [Fr]).
38. Sharf, ByzantineJewry,30.
in the next uprising, probably in 555,39 the Jews joined the Samaritans
in attacking the Christians and their churches, as well as the palace of
the provincial governor, whom they murdered.40Numerous similar
uprisings followed, as the conflict between the Samaritans, Jews, and
the empire continued to escalate throughout the later sixth and early
seventh centuries, culminating in the Jewish collaboration with the
invading Persian armies in their conquest of the Holy Land.41
These heightened tensions between the Jews and the empire also
found cultural expression in contemporary literature, both Christian
and Jewish.42Nevertheless, the degree to which this literature reflects
actual relations between Jews and Christians has been a issue of long-
standing debate, and this is a matter of some importance for ap-
proaching the anti-Judaism of the ancient Dormition traditions. To-
ward the end of the nineteenth century, Adolf von Harack famously
concluded that the Christian anti-Jewish literature was "apologetic,"
rather than "polemical," literature; that is, it was designed for inter-
nal consumption only, to reassure Christians of the truth of their
faith.43It was not intended as a response to Jewish criticism, nor to
39. There is some contradiction in our sources regarding the actual date, and it may have
occurred as early as 552 or as late as 556. 555 is the date chosen by Stein and Juster. For
the details, see their discussions in Ernest Stein, Histoire du Bas Empire, vol. 2, De la
disparition de l'Empire d'Occident a la mort de Justinien (476-565) (Paris: Desclee de
Brouwer, 1949), 374 n. 2; and Juster, Les Juifs, 2:198 n. 1.
40. Theophanes, Chronographia,A.M. 6048 (J. Classen, ed., TheophanisChronographia,Corpus
Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 41-42 [Bonn: Impensis ed. Weberi, 1839-41], 1:355-57).
41. See the summaries of these events found in Andrew Sharf, "Byzantine Jewry in the
Seventh Century," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 48 (1955): 103-15; Joshua Starr, "Byzantine
Jewry on the Eve of the Arab Conquest (565-638)," The Journal of the Palestine Oriental
Society 15 (1935): 280-93; Gilbert Dagron and Vincent Deroche, "Juifs et Chretiens dans
l'Orient du septieme siecle," Travauxet memoires11 (1991): 17-273, esp. 17-43. Although
the reports of Jewish participation in the violence against the Christians of Palestine in
614 are undoubtedly exaggerated, they almost certainly contain some kernel of truth.
Consequently, the precise nature of Jewish involvement has been a matter of some
debate: for more on this, see the discussion below, as well as in Elliott Horowitz, "'The
Vengeance of the Jews Was Stronger Than Their Avarice': Moder Historians and the
Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614," Jewish Social Studies 4 (1988): 1-39
[http: / /www.indiana.edu / -iupress / jounals / jss4-2.html].
42. The Christian literature is discussed below, along with some of the Jewish material. For
more on the Jewish literature, see Simon, Verus Israel, 179-201; Alan F. Segal, Two
Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, Studies in
Judaism in Late Antiquity 25 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977); and Burton L. Visotzky, "Anti-
Christian Polemic in Leviticus Rabbah," Proceedings of the American Academyfor Jewish
Research 56 (1990): 83-100; idem, "Trinitarian Testimonies," Union Seminary Quarterly
Review 42 (1988): 73-85.
43. Adolf von Hamack, Die Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani: Nebst
Untersuchungen iiber die antijiidische Polemik in der alten Kirche, TU 1.3 (Leipzig: J. C.
Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1883), 64.
784 CHURCHHISTORY
convert the Jews. On the contrary, Hamack believed that the Jew in
Christian literature was "not the Jew as he really was, but the Jew as
the Christian feared him," which was actually, according to Hamack,
not the Jews at all, but rather, "the pagans."44The Jews of early
Christian literature are then "straw men," bearing no resemblance to
the actual Jews of antiquity or their objections to Christianity, but
representing instead the criticisms of pagans, both outside and later
inside (in other words, heretics) the church.45This "Jew"is only a lit-
erary device, a "devil's advocate" that enables the Christians to reas-
sure themselves against the doubts raised, not by the objections of
real Jews, but by "pagan" criticisms raised not only by "pagans" in-
side and outside the fold, but also by "the pagan that lurked under
the skin of every Christian convert."46
In a recent study near to the present topic, David Olster presents
an intriguing interpretation of the early Byzantine adversusJudaeos
tradition that is nevertheless of an entirely different spirit than the
present work. Despite all of its profuse objections to Harnack,47it is,
in my opinion, a work cast in the same mold, psychologizing the Jews
of this literature into an ahistorical projection of Christian self-doubt.
Following Harnack closely in spirit, Olster sets out explaining that
these writings "addressed intra-Christian social and political issues.
More importantly, they used the Jew as a rhetorical device to person-
ify the doubts within their own community with a recognizable, evil,
and most important, eminently defeatable opponent. For this reason,
the Jews' place in Christian society had relatively little to do with
their sudden prominence in seventh century literature."48Such an
approach does not in my opinion venture very far from Hamack's
understanding, with which it shares the conviction that the Jews of
these texts bear no relation to historical Jews, nor can they afford us
any real insight into the relations of Jews and Christians during this
period. These characters are instead understood as psychological
projections of the self-generated fears and doubts from the collective
Christian consciousness, placed in the mouths of Jews, where they
may be easily assuaged.
While Olster is quite correct in noting the significance of this liter-
ary assault on Judaism in the formation of Christian social and politi-
44. Hamack, Altercatio,63-64.

45. Harnack, Altercatio,64, 73.
46. Simon, Verus Israel, 137.
47. See especially the extended criticism in David M. Olster, Roman Defeat, Christian
Response, and the Literary Construction of the Jew (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 14-21.
48. Olster, Roman Defeat, 3.
cal identity, I strongly disagree with his deliberate disregard for the
real social contact between Jews and Christians in the early Byzantine
period.49 Significant Jewish populations were scattered throughout
the early Byzantine Empire, and interreligious contact was an un-
avoidable consequence of the late ancient city's cramped quarters. As
Hans Drijvers explains: "Pagans, Jews, and Christians did not live in
splendid isolation in an antique town in which a good deal of life was
lived in public, and privacy was an almost unknown concept. Ideo-
logical conflicts and struggles like those between Christians, Jews,
and pagans found their origin in daily experiences of different relig-
ious, and consequently social, behaviour because religion in the an-
cient world was mainly a matter of public conduct according to tra-
ditional standards."50Olster does not venture to deny this fact, freely
admitting that during this period "Jews and Christians debated; Jews
and Christians had extensive social contacts."51Nevertheless, Olster
determines to ignore this important context, proceeding on the as-
sumption that despite this contact, the various images of Jews present
in early Byzantine literature "were not inspired by Jewish-Christian
theological debate or social relations."52Rather strangely then, Olster
examines Christian anti-Judaism as an ideology with substantial so-
cial and political implications, while at the same time neglecting al-
most entirely the very real social matrix of Jewish-Christian interac-
tion, an important context alongside which such rhetoric evolved.
This decision seems to be the result of a false dichotomy. There is no
49. Concerning this contact see Vincent Deroche, "La Polemique anti-judaique au Vie au
VIIe siecle," Travaux et m6moires11 (1991): 284-90; Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, "Religious
Contacts in Byzantine Palestine," Numen 36 (1989): 16-42; Robert L. Wilken, "The Jews
and Christian Apologetics after Theodosius I Cunctos Populos," Harvard Theological
Review 73 (1980): 451-71, esp. 467-71; idem, John Chrysostom,43-49, 68-73; idem, Judaism
and the Early Christian Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexandria's Exegesis and Theology (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971), 39-53; idem, The Land Called Holy: Palestine
in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 194-
202; Averil Cameron, "The Eastern Provinces in the Seventh Century A.D.: Hellenism
and the Emergence of Islam," in Hellenismos: Quelquesjalons pour une histoire de l'identite
grecque, ed. S. Said, Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg, 25-27 octobre 1989, Travaux du
centre de recherche sur le Proche-Orient et la Grece antique 11 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991),
303; Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism, 117-73; Simon, Verus Israel, chaps. 1-2, esp. 64;
Robert C. Gregg and Dan Urman, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Golan Heights: Greek
and Other Inscriptions of the Roman and Byzantine Eras, South Florida Studies in the
History of Judaism 140 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 289-322.
50. Hans J. W. Drijvers, "Jews and Christians at Edessa," Journal of Jewish Studies 36 (1985):
89. See also Sharf, Byzantine Jewry, 2; and Wilken, John Chrysostom, 78. Gregg and
Urman, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Golan Heights, 289-322 argues for similar
contact in a more rural setting.
786 CHURCHHISTORY
reason why one cannot approach the phenomenon of Christian anti-

Judaism as a social and political ideology that is deeply embedded in
such social-historical realities as extensive social contact between
these two religious traditions. To do otherwise is to perpetuate Har-
nack's separation of the Christian tradition from its social context.53
Yet in order to understand the relationship between this literature
and its social-historical environment one need not adopt the some-
what extreme view embraced by Arthur Lukyn Williams, who re-
garded this literature as an accurate representation of the real inter-
actions between ancient Jews and Christians. These treatises had been
composed, he believed, either to convert the Jews to the Christian
faith, or, at the very least, to strengthen the Christians in the face of a
Jewish ideological assault. In order to have been effective, Lukyn
Williams supposed that these writings would have to preserve a his-
torically accurate representation of ancient Judaism and its theologi-
cal objections to Christianity,54and it was with this in mind that he
turned to this ancient material for inspiration in the effort to convert
the Jews of his own age.55
The preferred approach, I would argue, lies somewhere between
the two extremes represented in Hamack and Lukyn Williams. We
need not approach such literature as credulously as has Lukyn Wil-
liams in order to provide a convincing relationship to its social-
historical context,56nor must the artificiality of this genre lead us to
overpsychologize these writings into projections of Christian self-
doubt as Harnack and, more recently, Olster have done.57As many
scholars have recognized, there is a "middle ground" on this point.
This intermediate position was perhaps first articulated earlier this
century by Marcel Simon in his influential Verus Israel,58a work
whose approach can with some accuracy be identified as representing
53. As Olster correctly characterizes Hamack and his influence on early Christian studies:
Roman Defeat, 8.
54. Arthur Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos:A Bird's-Eye View of Christian Apologiae until
the Renaissance(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), xv-xvi. This is also the
view of Amos B. Hulen, "The 'Dialogues with the Jews' as Sources for the Early Jewish
Argument against Christianity," Journalof BiblicalLiterature51 (1932): 58-70.
55. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos,xv-xvi.
56. See, however, John Moschus, Pratum spirituale 172 (PG 87.3:3040-41), where John tells of
an Alexandrian Christian named Cosmas who specialized in the composition of anti-
Jewish literature. John also notes that Cosmas often sent him to debate the Jews, in
order that they convert.
57. The problems with both orientations are well noted by Simon, Verus Israel, 136-40.
58. Although as Horbury rightly notes Uews and Christians, 23), Simon's approach owes
important debts to both Juster's Les Juifs dans l'empire romain and the work of Bernhard
Blumenkranz (see for instance his collected essays in Juifs et Chretiens: Patristique et
Moyen Age [London: Variorum Reprints, 1977]).
the "scholarly consensus" on this matter.59The tenor of this work and

others following in its wake is perhaps best summarized by Simon's
conclusion that "an artificial form may well conceal material drawn
from life."60Dispensing with the notion that this literature was aimed
at converting the Jews, Simon considers instead how this literature
represents an internally directed Christian response to shore up the
faithful against the real threats of Jewish proselytism and Judaizing
Christians.61As recent work by Gilbert Dagron and Vincent Deroche
demonstrates, this approach continues to be valid during the sixth
and seventh centuries, when Judaizing Christians and Jewish prose-
lytism remained a persistent source of friction between Jews and
Christians.62Deroche's study of the early Byzantine anti-Jewish tra-
dition in particular effectively extends Simon's hypothesis into this
later period. Here he concludes (with Simon) that although this lit-
erature is indeed artificial and was circulated only within the Chris-
tian communities, it nevertheless reflects real ideological conflict
between Jews and Christians, in the face of which it aims to
strengthen belief and focus Christian identity.63
Given this context, one might reasonably expect to find that in
many instances (although certainly not all) these texts afford us some
indirect insight into the real conflicts and relations between late an-
cient Jews and Christians. The surest way to identify these instances
seems to be the approach suggested by David Berger, who proposes
that we may critically assess the representations of these Christian
texts by comparing them with the polemics found in Jewish sources,
59. This status is recognized, for instance, in the subtitle of Taylor's recent critique of this
approach: Anti-Judaismand Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus.
Nevertheless, see Horbury, Jews and Christians, 21-22, where he notes that beginning
with Harnack and Juster, "modem study [of the adversus Judaeos literature] has
continued to exhibit a division between students of the literature for whom its Sitz im
Leben within the church is decisive, and those prepared to envisage Christian-Jewish
contact as part of its setting." Here Horbury also categorizes the various modem
studies of the Christian adversus Judaeos tradition according to which of these
approaches they exemplify. As should be clear, the present study stands in the tradition
of those works willing to recognize the significance of Christian-Jewish contact for
understanding certain aspects of the early Christian depiction of Jews and Judaism.
61. Simon, Verus Israel, 145-46.
62. See Deroche, "La Polemique," and Dagron, "Judaiser." For evidence of Judaizing
Christians in the early Islamic sources see Patricia Crone, "Islam."
63. Deroche, "La Pol6mique," 275, 283-90. See also de Lange, "Jews and Christians," 25,
where he concludes similarly that despite often conventional substance, such texts were
prompted by real-life concerns.
788 CHURCH HISTORY
scant though these may be.64In those instances where a correlation is

found, we have a high probability that the given issue was one that
generated at least some real conflict between ancient Jews and Chris-
tians, even though there may be misrepresentations on both sides.
Such is the understanding of Christian anti-Judaism adopted in this
study, in light of which I will situate the anti-Judaism of the Dormi-
tion traditions in two separate but related contexts: as an internally
oriented response to Jewish criticisms of Christianity and as an effort
to strengthen Christian identity through the identification of the Jew
as a social and religious "other."In doing so, I will focus on the three
main aspects of the Jewish portrayal in the early Dormition tradi-
tions: their identification as enemies of the Virgin, their opposition to
certain practices of late ancient Christian devotion, and the imagined
relationship between the Jews and the Roman state. Each of these
themes will be investigated in the context of sixth- and early-seventh-
century Near East, where the initial emergence of the Dormition tra-
ditions into the historically well preserved "mainstream"of Christian
discourse coincided with these mounting tensions between the
Christian empire and its Jewish citizens.
II. "HIS MOTHERWAS STADA: . . . SHE WAS UNFAITHFULTOHER

HUSBAND": THE QUESTION OF MARY'S VIRGINITY
"The Jews," the early Dormition legends frequently inform us,
"hated the Lady Mary greatly."65On account of this a sixth-century
Syriac apocryphon advises, "Let no one who loves God and my Lady
Mary, who bore him, be a companion and friend of the Jews; for if he
is so, the love of the Messiah is severed from him."66Of the over sixty
narratives of the Virgin's Dormition surviving from before the tenth
century, only one omits the canonical anti-Jewish scenes, which in-
vade even the Dormition's iconography. With the notable exception
of the homily On the Dormitionattributed to Modestus of Jerusalem,
the ancient Dormition legends persistently attack the Jews and Juda-
ism, casting them as enemies of both the Christian faith in general
and the Virgin in particular through a variety of anti-Jewish episodes.
Although some of these scenes are peculiar to only a single narrative,
64. David Berger, TheJewish-ChristianDebate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the
Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary,Judaica, Texts and
Translations 4 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979), 7-8.
65. Agnes Smith Lewis, ApocryphaSyriaca, Studia Sinaitica 11 (London: C. J. Clay and Sons,
1902), ua (Syr) and 52 (Eng). Similar statements to this effect occur throughout the
Dormition traditions.
66. William Wright, "The Departure of my Lady Mary from this World," The Journal of
SacredLiteratureand BiblicalRecord7 (1865): c\ (Syr) and 149 (Eng).
others have permeated large segments of the early Dormition tradi-

tions, including particularly the story of "Jephonias," as he is often
named, a Jew who attacks the Virgin Mary's body as the apostles
transport it to her tomb. This episode appears in every early Dormi-
tion narrative but two67and has even found its way into the iconog-
raphy.68
Although the details of this story vary somewhat from version to
version,69the overall structure is remarkably uniform, suggesting its
incorporation at a very early stage. The episode takes place as the
Virgin's funeral procession passes along the outside of the Jerusalem
city walls from Sion to Gethsemane, when the apostles' singing and
the general commotion attract the attention of the Jewish leaders,
who plot to seize her body and burn it. As they start out of the city,
the Jews are suddenly stricken with blindness, except for one, Jepho-
nias, who rushes the Virgin's bier and grabs it in an attempt to upset
it. Immediately, however, an angel with a flaming sword appears to
defend her body and cuts off Jephonias's hands, leaving the unfortu-
nate man writhing in pain while his severed hands remain clinging to
the bier. When Jephonias begs the apostles to heal him, they reply
that only the Virgin can help him, suggesting that he pray for her aid.
When he does, he is healed and consequently becomes a Christian,
which in some texts prompts a damning confession, in which Jepho-
nias explains how the Jewish leaders conspired to turn the Temple
into a money-making racket. When they recognized Christ as the son
of God, they killed him to protect their avaricious scheme.70After-
67. The above mentioned homily of pseudo-Modestus of Jerusalem and the Sahidic homily
On the Dormition attributed to Evodius of Rome. The latter is, however, rabidly anti-
Jewish.
68. This scene is found in one of the earlier representations of the Dormition, found in
Cappadocia at Yilanli Kilisse and dating to around the ninth or tenth centuries.
Subsequent examples including this episode, however, are somewhat later, belonging
to the twelfth or thirteenth century. See Elisabeth Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew in
Byzantine Art, trans. David Maizel (Oxford: Pergamon, 1992), 81-83, and Ann Wharton
Epstein, "Frescoes of the Mavrotissa Monastery near Kastoria: Evidence of
Millenarianism and Antisemitism in the Wake of the First Crusade," Gesta 21 (1982): 21-
27.
69. The Coptic tradition in particular preserves a slightly different form of this episode.
"Jephonias" is not named, and the Jews collectively attempt to bum the Virgin's body.
See, for example, pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem, Homily on the Dormition (E. A. W. Budge,
Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt [London: British Museum, 1915],
71-72 [Copt] and 648-49 [Eng]).
70. Liber Requiei 75 (Victor Arras, ed., De Transitu Mariae apocrypha Aethiopice, Corpus
Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium [hereafter CSCO] 342-43, 351-52, Scriptores
Aethiopici 66-69 [Louvain: Secretariat du CSCO, 1973-74], 342:43-44 [Eth] and 28-29
[Lat]); Antoine Wenger, A.A., L'Assomptionde la T. S. Vierge dans la traditionbyzantine du
790 CHURCHHISTORY
wards, the apostles send Jephonias back into the city to heal the Jews
of their blindness, as a result of which many convert to the Christian
faith, thereby regaining their sight.
To this nearly universal episode the various individual accounts
usually add an assortment of anti-Jewish episodes and polemic too
vast to catalogue completely in this article. We will instead address
the more general question of why these traditions link the Virgin so
strongly with anti-Jewish sentiment and portray the Jews as having a
particular hatred for Mary. No doubt this is to some degree an at-
tempt to make the events of Mary's death parallel those of her son, a
tendency often apparent in these narratives. Yet Christian hagiogra-
phy commonly patterns the death of a saint after the death of
Christ,71and so this does not explain completely the particularly vio-
lent anti-Judaism present in the Dormition traditions. Instead, an an-
swer more specific to the Virgin's life is to be found in the ideological
struggles between Jews and Christians in late antiquity.
In the centuries before the Dormition traditions made their initial
emergence into the Christian "mainstream,"72the Virgin Mary and
her sexual status were the subject of an intense debate between Jews
and Christians, manifest in both Jewish and Christian sources. In
general, the early Christians asserted that Mary had conceived and
given birth to Christ while remaining a virgin. This claim was per-
sistently challenged by the Jews throughout late antiquity and the
Middle Ages, who insisted that Christ was a bastard and Mary
hardly a virgin, but a woman of somewhat questionable morals who
had conceived out of wedlock. This dispute was fueled by the Chris-
VIe au Xe siecle, Archives de l'Orient Chretien 5 (Paris: Institut Francais d'ltudes

Byzantines, 1955), 236-37; John of Thessalonica, Oratio in dormitionemBMV 13 (Martin
Jugie, ed., Homelies mariales byzantines [2], Patrologia Orientalia 19.3 [Paris: Firmin-
Didot et Cie, 1925], 399-400, 429); E. Revillout, ed., lvangile des douze apotres, PO 2.2
(Paris: Librairie de Paris/Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1907), 175. Other texts give a much
shorter confession, in which the Jews' malice is attributed to, among other things, "the
enemy of the human race," who has blinded their hearts. See the Latin Transitus "W"
41 (A. Wilmart, O.S.B., Analecta Reginensia: Extraits des manuscrits Latins de la Reine
Christine conserves au Vatican, Studi e Testi 59 [Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
1933], 352); and pseudo-Melito, Transitus 12 (Monika Haibach-Reinisch, ed., Ein neuer
"Transitus Mariae" des pseudo-Melito [Rome: Pontificia Academia Mariana
Interationalis, 1962], 81).
71. See, for example, Derek Krueger, Symeon the Holy Fool:Leontius' Life and the LateAntique
City, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 25 (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1996), 108-25, where this is discussed in the context of
the Lifeof Symeon the Fool.
72. The presence of various heterodox theologoumena in many of the earliest narratives
makes an origin somewhere outside of proto-orthodox Christianity a strong possibility.
For more on this, see Shoemaker, "Mary and the Discourse of Orthodoxy," 197-220.
tian use of the Septuagint, which in Isaiah 7:14 translates the Hebrew
i;nTD,meaning simply "a young woman," with the Greek nap0Evog,
which more specifically indicates "a virgin." The Jews, who had ac-
cess to the Hebrew original, seem to have brought this "mistake" to
the Christians' attention, and this issue specifically, as well as the
Virgin's sexual status more generally, formed an important topic of
the early Christian and Jewish debate.73This was no mere Christian
self-doubt; the testimony of the early rabbinic literature is clear that
this was a point emphasized by early Judaism in defining itself
against Christianity, and not just an intra-Christiandiscourse.
The Jewish counterclaim against Mary's virginity is first known
from the pagan Celsus's second-century attack on Christianity,74
where he reports to have learned from a Jewish informant that "he
[Christ] fabricated the story of his birth from a virgin; he came from a
Jewish village and from a poor country woman who earned her liv-
ing by spinning. She was driven out by her husband, who was a car-
penter by trade, as she was convicted of adultery. After she had been
driven out by her husband and while she was wandering about in a
disgraceful way she secretly gave birth to Jesus."75Later, Celsus adds
the name of Mary's lover, "Panthera,"76a detail that signals the rela-
tion of his story to similar accounts that were circulating in Jewish
circles. These Jewish countertraditions are well known from early
rabbinic literature, making it highly unlikely that the elements of this
story are the invention of either Celsus or Origen. Rather, it seems
73. It appears as early as Justin Martyr's Dialogus cum TryphoneJudaeo,43. The importance
of Isa. 7:14 in the Christian anti-Jewish literature can be seen in Heinz Schreckenberg,
Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texteund ihr literarischesund historisches Umfeld (1.-I1.
Jh.), Europiische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XXIII Theologie, Bd. 172 (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 1982): see the index, 662, s.v. "Isaias, 7:14," for references. See also
Simon, Verus Israel, 159-60, and Schreiner, Maria, 423-26.
74. Jane Schaberg, however, proposes that there are hints of a tradition of Christ's
illegitimacy in the gospel narratives, where the tradition is always associated with the
Jews. See Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist TheologicalInterpretationof
the Infancy Narratives (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 145-65. Note that Justin's
dispute with Trypho, mentioned above, is centered more on the appropriate
understanding of Isa. 7:14 in relation to the Messiah. It does not concern the issue of
Mary's virginity specifically, but rather, whether the Messiah would in fact be bor of a
virgin or a young woman.
75. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28 (Marcel Borret, S.J., ed., Origene: Contre Celse, Sources
Chretiennes(hereafter SC) 132, 136, 147, 150, 227 [Paris: lditions du Cerf, 1967-76], cited
at 132:150-52; translation from Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1953], 28).
76. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.32 (Borret, Origene: Contra Celse, 132:162; Chadwick, Origen:
ContraCelsum, 31).
792 CHURCHHISTORY
quite probable that Celsus acquired this information as he reports:

from a Jewish informer.77
The early rabbinic sources frequently identify Jesus as either "ben
Pantera" (the son of Pantera) or "ben Stada" (the son of Stada),78for
reasons that the following passage from the Babylonian Talmud ex-
plains: "The son of Stada is the son of Pandira. Rab Chisda said 'the
husband was Stada, but the lover was Pandira.' The husband was
Paphos the son of Jehuda. His mother was Stada and his mother was
Miriam the women's hairdresser: as we say in Pumbeditha, she was
unfaithful (T7 rnD: stath da) to her husband."79According to this
Jewish countertradition, the name ben Pantera referred to Jesus' bio-
logical father, who was not Mary's husband, while ben Stada appears
to have two explanations: it refers either to Mary's husband, Stada,
who actually was not the father of Jesus, or it refers to Mary herself,
who was "unfaithful," stath da in the Aramaic, to this husband.80
Similar references abound in the early rabbinic literature, identifying
Jesus as a bastard and, by implication, the Virgin Mary as an adulter-
ess,81one passage perhaps even going so far as to describe the Virgin
as a prostitute.82As Burton Visotzky writes, the "idea of Mary as
77. See M. Lods, "Etudes sur les sources juives de la pol6mique de Celsus contre les
Chretiens," Revue d'histoireet de philosophiereligieuse 21 (1941): 1-33, although one need
not suppose, as Lods, that the transmission was via a written source. Celsus probably
encountered these traditions in the manner that he reports-through a Jewish
informant. See also Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 245-46 n. 82; Morton Smith, Jesus the
Magician (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 59; and Robert L. Wilken, The
Christiansas the Romans Saw Them(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 109-10.
78. See Gustaf Dalman, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar, and the Liturgy of the
Synagogue, trans. A. W. Streane (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1893), 7-25.
79. b. Shabb. 104b and b. Sanh. 67a (Text in R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and
Midrash [London: Williams and Norgate, 1903], 401).
80. This probably is not the origin of the name ben Stada, but was suggested later to explain
its use. See the discussions in Dalman, Jesus Christ, 7-25 and Herford, Christianity,35-41,
where various explanations for the origins of both titles are considered.
81. Many examples are given in Dalman, Jesus Christ, 25-39.
82. Pesiq. R. 100B-101A (text in Herford, Christianity,426), where the teaching that there are
"two Gods" is attributed to "the son of a harlot." Neither Jesus nor Mary is named
explicitly, but there is good reason to believe that they are intended. See the discussions
in Herford, Christianity, 304-6 and Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 56-57. Shaberg
(Illegitimacy of Jesus, 164-65) links this accusation with the logion 105 of the Gospel of
Thomas,which says, "He who knows the father and the mother will be called the son of
a harlot" (Gospel of Thomas 105 [Bentley Layton, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, vol. 1,
Gospelaccordingto Thomas,Gospelaccordingto Philip, Hypostasis of the Archons, and Indices,
Nag Hammadi Studies 20 [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989], 90-91). Schaberg also claims that the
Yemenite text of the Toledoth Yeshu repeats the charge that Mary was a prostitute
(Illegitimacyof Jesus, 249 n. 135), but this is not immediately obvious from the text, where
Jesus is referred to only as "the son of a menstruous woman," or perhaps less rigidly,
Mother of God, Theotokos,must have been seized upon in equal

measure by Jews and Christians. The Christians found it a solace, a
source of hope, a miracle; while the Jews found it an absurdity, a
theological impossibility, a source of parody."83
Such Jewish claims continued during the early Byzantine period,
when many of the later rabbinic collections were redacted and ver-
sions of a Jewish life of Jesus known as the ToledothJeshubegan to
circulate among the Jews of the Byzantine and Persian empires.
Drawing on older traditions, such as those found in the rabbinic col-
lections, these popular legends, which were probably first compiled
during the fifth century, tell the story of Mary's seduction by a man
named Joseph Pandera.84Although she was already betrothed to an-
other man named Yohanan, Mary and Joseph Pandera had sexual
relations, which resulted in pregnancy. The son she bore was named
Yeshu, and when later in his life it became known that he was a bas-
tard, he was forced to flee to Galilee where he gathered followers and
proclaimed himself the Messiah, born of a virgin.85 This Jewish
countertradition concerning the Virgin's conception of Jesus thus re-
mained strong in the early Byzantine period. In defiance of Christian
claims that she had virginally conceived by the Holy Spirit, the an-
cient Jews asserted that her conception was hardly miraculous, or her
virginity intact. On the contrary, Mary had conceived by natural
means and moreover with a man who was not her husband, making
her an adulteress.
While of course there is no reason to suppose that any ancient
Christians ever read these texts, early Christian literature reveals an
awareness of what the Jews were saying about Christ and the Virgin.
Originally oral traditions,86these Jewish legends doubtlessly contin-
ued to circulate orally, in which form they probably reached the
Christians by any of the means identified above: Jewish proselytizing
efforts, Judaizing Christians within the churches, or even the casual
contact generated by the crowded quarters of the ancient city.87Once
known, however, it was certain to provoke a Christian reaction, since
Mary was increasingly revered in Christian late antiquity, particu-
"an impure woman": T7D C- (text in Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jiidischen
Quellen [Berlin: S. Calvary and Co., 1902], 118).
83. Visotzky, "Anti-Christian Polemic," 96-100; quote at 96.
84. Krauss, Das LebenJesu, 242-48, esp. 246.
85. Summarized in Krauss, Das LebenJesu, 28-29 n. 1.
86. See for instance, Celsus, who first encountered this tradition orally; see n. 77.
87. For more on the intercultural circulation of such stories in the early medieval Near East,
see Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early
Islam 13 (Princeton: Darwin, 1997), 40-44.
794 CHURCHHISTORY
larly as an ascetic model honored for her virginity and purity.88In

this context, the Jewish charge that Mary was a woman of low sexual
morals could not fail to elicit forceful Christian response.
Such a Christian response is evident as early as the second cen-
tury, especially in the efforts of the Protevangeliumof James"to defend
the purity and nobility of Mary against Jewish and pagan detrac-
tors."89This is manifest, for instance, in such episodes as Mary and
Joseph's subjection to the ordeal of the "water of trial" by the temple
priests, and the withering of Salome's hand when she doubts Mary's
virginity ante partum.90Both of these elements explicitly address Jew-
ish doubts regarding Mary's virginity, putting them to rest in the first
instance by Mary and Joseph's successful endurance of a traditional
Jewish ordeal, the sotah,91and in the latter by adducing a Jewish eye-
witness.
The ancient Dormition traditions often draw on these earlier tra-
ditions in connecting their portrait of relentless Jewish animosity for
the Virgin with the real-life Jewish "slander"against Mary's virginity.
This is the case, for instance, in the sixth-century Syriac apocrypha,
where the Jews plead with Mary to repent of her sins and confess
what is known to all, that she is not a virgin, and that Christ is the son
of Joseph the carpenter and not the Messiah.92In one of these earliest
narratives, Mary refers explicitly to the sotah ordeal described in the
Protevangeliumof Jamesas proof of her virginity, verified according to
their own traditions.93Similarly, the Coptic homilies attack the Jews
for doubting "that the holy Virgin brought forth Christ without inter-
88. See Pelikan, Mary, 113-22; Cameron, Christianity, 164-88; Kenneth G. Holum, Theodosian
Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the
Classical Heritage 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 139-42.
89. Mary Clayton, The Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge
Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
13-16; quote at 15. See also Schreiner, Maria, 415-23; Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New
TestamentApocrypha,rev. ed., trans. and ed. R. McL. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1991), 1:417, 425; for the date, see 423.
90. ProtevangeliumJacobi16, 20 (C. Tischendorf, ed., Evangelia Apocrypha,2nd ed. [Leipzig,
1876; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966], 30-31, 37-39.
91. For a recent discussion of this biblical and rabbinic ordeal, see Judith Hauptman,
Rereading the Rabbis:A Woman's Voice (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1998). Note also
that despite Joseph's participation in the Protevangelium's account, the sotah was
traditionally reserved for women.
92. Wright, "Departure," r. (Syr) and 134-35 (Eng); idem, Contributions to the Apocryphal
Literature,(London: Williams and Norgate, 1865), \ (Syr) and 20 (Eng); Smith Lewis,
Apocrypha,* (Syr) and 22-23 (Eng).
93. Smith Lewis, Apocrypha, . (Syr) and 23 (Eng).
coursewith a man,"94 and for bearingfalse witness to Pilatethat "itis

through fornicationthat Mary gave birth to Christ,"95 to which the
earliestArmenianversionadds thatthe JewsharassedMary"to deny
the truthfulbirth of the Messiah."96 If the charges of Mary'ssexual
immoralityimplicitin the Jewish sources are occasionallysomewhat
muted in these Christiantexts, this is probablya deliberateactionby
Christianwriterswho found such accusationstoo shockingto repro-
duce accurately.Nevertheless,the relationbetween these portraitsof
the Jews as especiallyhostile towardthe Virginand the Jewishclaims
abouther sexual moralityseems quite clearin these and othersimilar
passages.
This connectionis elsewhere confirmedin late antiqueliterature,
where the Virginoften appearsas a stronglyanti-Jewishfigure,par-
ticularlyin the context of refutingJewish claims against her sexual
purity. Among the many possible examples from ancient Christian
literature,the adversusJudaeos traditionin particularstandsout. Here,
Mary and her virginity frequentlyappear as points of dispute in
Jewish-Christian"dialogue,"where the Jewishdenial of her virginity
is both raisedand summarilyrefuted.Forexample,in an anonymous
anti-Jewishdialogue,probablyfrom the sixth century,the Jewishin-
terlocutor,who has alreadybeen convincedof the truthof the Incar-
nation,objectsthat "it is impossiblefor a virgin to give birthwithout
a man."97Thereuponthe Christiandefends Mary'svirginal concep-
tion at length, arguing exclusively from the Hebrew scripturesand
94. Pseudo-Evodius of Rome, Homily on the Dormition (St. Mac.) 4 (Paul de Lagarde,
Aegyptiaca [1883; reprint, Osnabriick: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1972], 41).
95. CTBeOY MTnenleKAXC OYClTC ZN TCKTTnPTO ) CelOIOyaJI
eTCOOq MTNNLy, NTLKXCOOC ZM TICKAX,C NC9OyCpXTq
MTTIXATOCXJ NT3MHapll. .XTTO MTTeXC ZN OyTTOpN<e>1hX:
pseudo-Evodius of Rome, Homily on the Dormition (St. Mich.), Pierpont Morgan MSS
596, 22v; Stephen J. Shoemaker, "The Sahidic Coptic Homily on the Dormition of the
Virgin Attributed to Evodius of Rome: An Edition of Morgan MSS 596 and 598 with
Translation," Analecta Bollandiana 117.3-4 (1999, forthcoming). This passage occurs in
?10 of the edition.
96. b-L mptf,u&nj/ptnj q/n,j,_ Ltp fi pptfjbi JuultLtugSIP,I RpPuutnub , qfi q/lFntu
QtIngsu ,^upnLJb.Lb.I, nrp.u.i ',t*ktg*li qJfu IL wuuLW.uufLgnLg'P, ntrpulvuI
qftr'WupunLehtulJUi Yl-~lL's_rl OtLnj's I. Daietsi, ed., "bpU'lktLnJ 'bilb4nqtbFdnu,
WuuigtuiL 3uquiMquu 'LiPui'i UWLusPbui'nL uunnLwauwbit i tL Wtbu, tInLub'lt [A
Narration concerning the Dormition of the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary by the
Blessed Nicodemus]," in ,4/u,ipp, qp np tuju,4uil"u'puwu [Ankanon Girk' Nor
Ktakaranac'], uw,i,qwpwr , u/jl4u/4w,'u /,
/t;L 'tnL, '-u/pniLbL/g,, fP [T'angaran
Haykakan Hin ew Nor Dprut'eanc' 2] (Venice: I Dparani S. Lazaru, 1898), 460.
97. Anonymus dialogus cum Iudaeis 5.1-12 (ose H. Declerck, ed., Anonymus dialogus cum
Iudaeis, saeculi ut videtur sexti, CCG 30 [Turnhout: Brepols/Leuven University Press,
1994], 34); for the date see Declerck, introd., xlii-li.
796 CHURCHHISTORY
focusing primarily on Isaiah's prophecies concerning the "virginal"

conception.98Other anti-Jewish works from the sixth century also ad-
dress this theme specifically, such as pseudo-Gregentius's Disputation
with the Jew Herban and Jacob of Serug's Homilies against the Jews,99
both of which identify Mary, and her virginity in particular, as key
features of the Christian polemic against Judaism.
This debate also appears in the mariological literature of late an-
tiquity, which occasionally responds to the Jewish challenge to
Mary's virginity. This is a theme, for instance, of Jacob of Serug's
Marian homilies,100just as it is in his anti-Jewish homilies. Proclus too
rebukes the Jews in his second oration for their denial of the Virgin
Birth,o10and Ephrem's Hymns on the Nativity respond emphatically to
these Jewish charges, defending Mary's virginal conception against
Jewish "slanders" at several points.102More dramatic is the sixth ora-
tion of Hesychius of Jerusalem, in honor of Mary the Theotokos.103
98. When one of the Jews present objects that in the Hebrew, the prophecies do not refer
to a virgin, but to a young woman, the Christian responds that these mean the same
thing in the Hebrew scriptures. Anonymus dialogus 5.263-99 (Declerck, 41-42).
99. Pseudo-Gregentius, Disputatio cum HerbanoJudaeo (PG 86:656A) and Jacob of Serug,
Homilies against the Jews 1.79-80 (F. Graffin, ed., Jacques de Saroug: Homelies contre les
juifs, PO 38.1 [Turhout: Brepols, 1976], 48 [Syr] and 49 [Fr]). One might also include
the Testimonia adversus Judaeos attributed to Gregory of Nyssa. This collection of
biblical answers to Jewish objections to Christianity contains a lengthy section devoted
to defending the Virgin Birth against the Jews (PG 46:207-9). While this work is
generally recognized as spurious, there is no consensus about its date. A. C. McGiffert
suggests that it was "composed long after his [Gregory's] time," and that it belongs to
the seventh century (Arthur Cushman McGiffert, ed., Dialogue Betweena Christianand a
Jew [Ph.D. diss., University of Marburg, 1889], 15, 34). Otto Bardenhewer, on the other
hand, suggests that it belongs to Gregory's time, but nevertheless cannot be
considered authentic (Bardenhewer, Geschichteder AltkirchlichenLiteratur[Freiburg im
Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1912], 3:202).
100. Jacob of Serug, Homily on the Theotokosand Ever-Virgin Mary (Paul Bedjan, ed., S.
Martyrii qui et Sahdona,quae supersunt omnia [Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1902], 688).
See also Constantino Vona, Omelie mariologichede S. Giacomo di Sarug: Introduzione,
traduzione dal siriaco e commento (Rome: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei
Lateranensis, 1953), 41.
101. Proclus of Constantinople, Oratio2 (PG 65:696B).
102. See Kathleen E. McVey, "The Anti-Judaic Polemic of Ephrem Syrus's Hymns on the
Nativity," in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, IntertestamentalJudaism,
and Christian Origins Presented to John Strugnell on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday,
ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., College Theology
Society Resources in Religion 5 (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1990), 229-
40. The passages in which Ephrem attacks the Jews for "slandering" Mary are
collected at 233 n. 28.
103. Text, translation, and introduction in Michel Aubineau, Les Homelies festales
d'Hesychius de Jerusalem, Subsidia Hagiographica 59 (Bruxelles: Societe des
Bollandistes, 1978-80), 1:171-205.
This homily, probably pronounced on the feast of the Memory of

Mary on August 15,104contains an extensive harangue against the
Jews that comprises over half of the homily. The homily begins with
material appropriate for the occasion, which was a celebration of
Mary's role in the nativity. Hesychius reflects first on the Annuncia-
tion and then ponders the Magi's faith, which he contrasts with the
unbelief of the Jews. He castigates the disbelief of Jews, who, unlike
the Magi, have ample testimony from their own tradition indicating
that Jesus was the Messiah. In an effort to demonstrate this, the re-
mainder of the homily adduces twelve passages from the Hebrew
Scriptures. Strangely enough, only two of these concern the virginity
of Mary,105which is not directly addressed as an issue of Jewish un-
belief. Nevertheless, this homily marks an important moment in the
development of Mary and her cult especially as elements of the
Christian anti-Jewish tradition.
To be sure, not all, or even most of the late ancient mariological
literature exhibits this anti-Jewish emphasis. Nevertheless, it was
certainly a significant theme, especially in the early Dormition tradi-
tions, which would eventually develop into the strong anti-Judaism
of the medieval cult of the Virgin. It was also an association that
Mary maintained as she was adopted by the other religious traditions
of the early medieval Near East. Although this is not the place to ex-
plore such connections in detail, it is worth noting that in both the
early Islamic and Mandean traditions Mary appears as a strongly
anti-Jewish figure, at least on occasion.106In both of these traditions,
as in the Christian tradition, the main issue is the Jewish sexual
"slander" of the Virgin, an issue which serves to distinguish all three
of these religious traditions from their Jewish source. Although this
rhetoric undoubtedly served to construct identity in all of these tra-
ditions, it is equally clear that the portrayal of the Jews as "oppo-
nents" of the Virgin who challenged her virginity was not merely a
104. See Mimouni, Dormition, 394-95, but see also Aubineau, Les Homelies, 184-89, where he
suggests that the homily formed part of the celebration of Epiphany.
105. Isa. 7:14 and Ezek. 44:2-3.
106. See Qur'an 4:156 and 19:27-28; and The Mandean Bookof John 34-35 (Mark Lidzbarski,
ed., Das Johannesbuchder Mandier [Geissen: Verlag von Alfred T6pelmann, 1915], 127-
42 [Mandean] and 126-38 [Germ]; E. S. Drower, The Canonical Prayerbook of the
Mandeans (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959), 173 (trans. 130); Mark Lidzbarski, Mandaische
Liturgien, Abhandlungen der koniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu
Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, Neue Folge, 17.1 (Berlin: Weidmannsche
Buchhandlung, 1920), 210-11. See also the article by Jorunn Jacobson Buckley, "The
Mandean Appropriation of Jesus' Mother, Miriai," Novum Testamentum35 (1993): 181-
96. For more on this, see Shoemaker, "Mary and the Discourse of Orthodoxy," 317-24,
although the subject merits yet further study.
798 CHURCH HISTORY
Christian invention, unrelated to "real"Jews and designed merely to

strengthen identity. On the contrary, the prominence of claims
against Mary's virginity within the Jewish tradition itself shows it to
have been a "real"issue to which certain Christians chose to create an
internally directed response, in the early Dormition traditions as well
as elsewhere.
OF A GATHERINGOF BONES":MARY, THEJEWS,AND

III. "THE CUSTOMERS
THE CULT OF THE SAINTS
One of the main issues increasingly separating Christianity from
the other religious traditions of late antiquity and the early Middle
Ages was the Christian veneration of various "created" objects,
ranging from saints and their relics to icons. The Dormition tradi-
tions, emerging in the context of this change in the patterns of Chris-
tian devotion, reflect its influence, frequently showing reverence for
the Cross, the tombs and bodies of holy people, and, in later narra-
tives, even icons.107Certain rival religious traditions, however, as well
as many within the Christian fold itself, considered such practices
blasphemous, generating a resistance that would later erupt in the
iconoclastic efforts of the middle Byzantine period. In late antiquity,
however, such veneration of the created was especially opposed by
Judaism, as both our Jewish and Christian sources attest. Presumably
this Jewish criticism explains, at least in part, the relatively uniform
portrayal of the Jews in the ancient Dormition traditions as oppo-
nents of the veneration of relics and saints, and of the Virgin in par-
ticular. Although these representations of Jewish opposition are un-
deniably fictionalized, they are nevertheless revealing of Christian
perceptions of Jews in late antiquity, and, furthermore, their spirit
finds some confirmation in Jewish literature of the period.
The different early Dormition narratives portray such Jewish op-
position in a variety of ways, but perhaps most persistently in the
efforts of the Jewish leaders to destroy the Virgin's body, a plot which
culminates in Jephonias's botched assault on Mary's funeral proces-
sion. Knowing their intentions in advance, the Virgin warns the
apostles before her death to guard her body against the Jews, who
have threatened to burn it,108and as the apostles carry her lifeless
107. A fine example of the latter is pseudo-Theophilus of Alexandria, Homily on the

Assumption (W. H. Worrell, ed., The Coptic Texts in the Freer Collection, [New York:
Macmillan, 1923], 249-321 [Copt] and 359-80 [Eng]). Nevertheless, this text is rather
difficult to date, and although it may be as early as the late sixth century, we can only
be certain of its existence by 906, the date of its earliest manuscript.
108. For examples among the earliest texts, see Liber Requiei 43 (Arras, De Transitu, 1:26
[Eth] and 17 [Lat]); Wenger, L'Assomption,220-21; Wright, "Departure," \ (Syr) and
body to the tomb, the Jews seize the opportunity to destroy the body
that begot "the seducer of Israel."'09Although the Jewish will to de-
stroy the Virgin's body is not always explained, certain texts attribute
it to Jewish fears that her bodily relics will work wonders, luring even
more Jews into the Christian faith. In the homily attributed to Cyril of
Jerusalem, for instance, the Jews decide that they "must not let her be
buried in the city, lest mighty deeds be worked [at her tomb] similar
to those which her Son performed, and lest the people believe in her,
and they change our Law," resolving, "Let us go and bum her
body."110Theodosius of Alexandria, in his sermon of 566/7, reports
likewise that the Jewish attempt to destroy her body was aimed at
preventing its miracles from making Christian converts: "if we let this
[her body] be buried in our borders, there will appear from it signs
and wonders, and many will be assembled to it and believe on
Him.""11One of the early Syriac apocrypha equally manifests this
concern: after Jephonias's failure to destroy the Virgin's body, the
Jews continued their efforts to prevent the body from manifesting its
power. First they filled the tomb with corpses, hoping that the smell
would keep people away, and when that failed they tried to burn the
body in the tomb, only to have themselves enveloped in fire, so that
"the heads of their chief men were set on fire, and the flames burnt
the edges of all their beards."112
To the ancient Christian mind, it was only natural to assume that
Mary's bodily relics would, like the remains of others among the
blessed dead, be a constant source of miracles, a "reality" here pre-
sumed obvious to the Jewish leaders as well. In order to prevent her
body from manifesting the truth of Christianity, they attempt to de-
stroy it, but their attempt backfires when Jephonias's failed attack
140 (Eng); Smith Lewis, Apocrypha, nm (Syr) and 32 (Eng); Daietsi, "brpwIiSLtLni
I1h4,nqT,niu, Wu,UgLuiL,t 460.
109. Again, examples from the earliest texts: LiberRequiei 72 (Arras, De Transitu, 1:42 [Eth]
and 27-28 [Lat]); Wenger, L'Assomption,234-35; Wright, "Departure," .t (Syr) and 149
(Eng); idem., Contributions,. (Syr) and 37 (Eng); pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem, Homily on
the Dormition (Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts, 71 [Coptic] and 649 [Eng]);
Theodosius of Alexandria, Homily on the Assumption (Forbes Robinson, Coptic
Apocryphal Gospels, Texts and Studies 4 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1896], 116-17); Daietsi, "b,pw,LLfJI Ltb4n,,tinu,' WLu-tuL," 472.
110. Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem, Homily on the Dormition (Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts,
71 [Coptic] and 648-49 [Eng]).
111. Theodosius of Alexandria, Homily on the Assumption (Robinson, Coptic Apocryphal
Gospels, 116-19).
112. E. A. W. Budge, History of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the History of the Likenessof Christ
which the Jews of TiberiasMade to Mock at (London: Luzac and Co., 1899), 116 (Syr) and
122 (Eng).
800 CHURCHHISTORY
demonstrates instead her body's healing power. Jephonias, having

lost his arms in the assault, only has them restored when he prays to
the Virgin and embraces her body, demonstrating the power of both
this holy woman and her relics.13 Then, the apostles give Jephonias
either a palm from the Tree of Life or a staff, which he uses to heal
those Jews willing to accept the Christian faith of their "blindness"
and "ignorance," continuing the exhibition of the power of Christian
relics.14 Thus, the Jews' own malice is turned against them, and their
worst fears are realized, as the miraculous powers of the Virgin's
body and the palm/staff result in numerous defections from the
Jewish faith.
In connection with the emerging reverence for the bodily relics of
holy men and women, the tombs of these "very special dead" also
became an important focus of Christian devotion during the fifth and
sixth centuries.15 These were considered places where the distance
between heaven and earth was at its narrowest, prompting the faith-
ful to travel, often over great distances, to such holy sites in order to
communicate more directly with a divine intercessor. The saint's
shrine, and the bodily relics it housed, were loci of divine dispensa-
tion, where prayers would be answered and "mighty deeds"
worked.l6 This phenomenon appears in certain Dormition traditions
as the Virgin regularly visits her son's tomb to pray and offer incense,
exemplifying the Christian practice of prayer at the tombs of holy
men and women. As in the attempts to prevent visits to the Virgin's
tomb, the Jews also appear here as opposing such veneration; often
obtaining an injunction from the Roman governor, they prohibit
Mary's visits to Christ's tomb.17 Although in certain narratives their
intervention proves effective, prompting the Virgin to depart Jerusa-
113. Examples from the earliest narratives may be found in Liber Requiei 76 (Arras, De
Transitu, 44-45 [Eth] and 29 [Lat]); Wenger, L'Assomption, 236-37; Wright,
Contributions,-\-AL, (Syr) and 38 (Eng); idem, "Departure," cn (Syr) and 149 (Eng).
114. Selected examples from among the earliest texts include, for the palm, LiberRequiei 76
(Arras, De Transitu, 44-45 [Eth] and 29 [Lat]); Wenger, L'Assomption,238-39; and for
the staff, Wright, Contributions, 3-~ (Syr) and 38 (Eng); idem, "Departure," on
(Syr) and 149 (Eng).
115. The phrase is borrowed from Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in
Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), chap. 4.
116. See Brown, Cult of the Saints, chap. 4.
117. This episode is especially characteristic of a particular group of closely related
Dormition narratives, known as the "Bethlehem and Incense" texts (for more on this
group of texts, see van Esbroeck, "Les Textes," 268-76). For examples from the earliest
versions, see pseudo-John the Evangelist, Transitus 2 (K. Tischendorf, Apocalypses
Apocryphae [Leipzig: Herm. Mendelssohn, 1866], 95-96); Wright, "Departure," r,_-A
(Syr) and 133-35 (Eng).
lem for her Bethlehem house,ll8 other traditions demonstrate the im-
potence of the Jewish efforts, reporting that Mary's presence at the
tomb was miraculously concealed from the Jewish watchmen, ena-
bling her to continue to pray there.l19
The sixth-century Syriac apocrypha preserve yet another instance
of Jewish-Christian conflict over the veneration of Christian relics,
this one centered around the relic of the True Cross. This relic, which
had emerged as a focus of Christian veneration during the fifth cen-
tury, developed into a powerful anti-Jewish symbol in late ancient
Christianity, in apocryphal literature as well as the adversusJudaeos
tradition.120In these Dormition narratives, the relic of the True Cross
is sought by the Christians, who ask the Roman governor of Palestine
to demand that the Jews reveal where they have hidden the imple-
ments of Christ's crucifixion.12'When the governor, who has himself
become a Christian, forces the Jews to disclose the location, the Jews
confess to having buried the Cross beneath a pile of stones, leaving
only a small opening through which one could touch the tip of the
Cross with a hand. For a fee, the Jews allowed the sick to reach in and
touch the Cross, which healed them of their affliction. But when the
thousands who had been healed by this relic asked what had cured
them, the Jews replied: "a pot of manna, and of the water of trial, and
the staff of Aaron."'22As was the case with the Virgin's body, then,
the miraculous powers of a Christian relic are understood as obvious
to both Jew and Christian alike. In this case, however, the Jewish rec-
ognition of the power of the Cross does not prompt an effort to de-
118. See, for example,Wright,"Departure,".r (Syr)and 134-35 (Eng).

119. See, for example, pseudo-John the Evangelist, Transitus 2 (Tischendorf, Apocalypses,
96).
120. On the various legends concerning the discovery of the True Cross, see below. From
the adversusJudaeostradition, see The Teachingsof Jacob,the Newly Baptized1.34 (Vincent
Deroche, ed., "Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati," 120-21 in Gilbert Dagron and Vincent
Deroche, "Juifs et Chretiens"); Leontius of Neapolis, Apology against the Jews (Vincent
Deroche, "L'Apologie contre les Juifs de Leontios de Neapolis," Travauxet mimoires 12
[1994]: 69, 134-71, 194 [Grk] and 77-78 [Fr]); pseudo-Athanasius, Doctrina ad
Antiochum ducem (PG 28:621). See also the Homily on the Cross attributed to Cyril of
Jerusalem, where the veneration of the Cross is defended against both Jewish and
Samaritan attacks (Budge, ed., Miscellaneous Coptic Texts, 183-230 [Copt] and 761-808
[Eng]). It is difficult to date this text, but its most recent editor suggests that the final
redaction dates to the first half of the seventh century (A. Campagnano, Pseudo Cirillo
di Gerusalemme:Omelie copte sulla passion, sulla croce e sulla vergine, Testi e Documenti
per lo Studio dell'Antichita 65 [Milano: Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1980], 14).
121. The account of this debate is preserved in the early Syriac apocrypha: see Smith Lewis,
Apocrypha, ao\-\ (Syr) and 4346 (Eng); Wright, Contributions, ?-A (Syr) and 27-30
(Eng); Budge, History of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 136-38 (Syr) and 150-53 (Eng).
122. Wright, Contributions, M (Syr) and 29 (Eng).
802 CHURCHHISTORY
stroy it, as in the case of the Virgin's body. Instead, the Jews attempt
to disguise the relic, attributing its power to a different, Jewish
source, thereby coopting Christian relics and creating holy relics for
their own faith. In this way Jews are once again depicted as they are
so frequently, not as ignorant, but rather as fully cognizant of the
truth and inexplicably obstinate.
This episode links the early Dormition traditions with another set
of legends that developed in Syro-Palestine during the previous
century: the various accounts of the discovery of the True Cross. Pre-
sumably in order to avoid conflict with these traditions, the Dormi-
tion traditions explicitly note that after its discovery, the Cross was
reburied by orders of the Roman governor, thus allowing for its re-
discovery later, as related in the various legends of the discovery of
the True Cross. The earliest of these True Cross legends are not espe-
cially anti-Jewish, but as the tradition develops, the stories display
increasing hostility to Judaism.123The most overtly anti-Jewish of the
three main versions are the most recent, the so-called "Protonike"
and "Judas Kyriakos" legends which developed during the fifth
century, just prior to the earliest Dormition traditions.124
Perhaps not surprisingly, these two versions are the ones with
which certain of the earliest Dormition traditions are explicitly linked.
The Kyriakos traditions are evoked as these Dormition narratives
commence with a story designed to explain the sudden
(re)appearance of the Dormition traditions after centuries of silence.
These ancient narratives inform us that the traditions were recovered
as a result of inquiries made by certain monks of Mt. Sinai. The
monks began their ultimately successful search for traditions of the
Virgin's death by contacting the bishop of Jerusalem, whose name
was Kyriakos (or in some versions Kyros).125This is undoubtedly a
reference to Judas Kyriakos of the True Cross legends, who following
the discovery of the cross converts and is named bishop of Jerusalem
123. Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend
of Her Finding of the True Cross, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 27 (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1992), 143-45, 161-63, 177-80.
124. These three versions and their development are discussed in Drijvers, Helena Augusta,
79-180. Dates: Protonike, ca. 400; Judas Kyriakos, 400-450 (Drijvers, Helena Augusta,
174-75).
125. Wright, "Departure," o (Syr) and 130 (Eng); Smith Lewis, Apocrypha,u (Syr) and 16
(Eng); Maximillian Enger, ,_1I I a

j3 &-LJI L>. ,LI [Akhbar Yuhanna as-salih fi
naqlat umm al-masih], Id est Joannis apostoli de transitu Beatae Mariae Virginis liber
(Eberfeld: R.L. Friderichs, 1854), 12-13. On Kyros for Kyriakos, see Wright,
"Departure," 131 n. m.
EARLY DORMITION TRADITIONS 803
by Helena.126Likewise these Dormition narratives also evoke the

Protonike tradition, referring to an important anti-Jewish episode
from this tradition's literary source, Doctrina Addai. Both traditions
share the story of Abgar's desire to destroy the Jews for crucifying
Christ, which he restrains only out of respect for Roman authority, as
well as a first-century setting for the discovery of the True Cross.127
Beyond these few points of contact, however, the Dormition tradi-
tions depart significantly from the more familiar versions of the dis-
covery of the True Cross. They share the strong anti-Judaism of the
later Cross traditions, but they have transformed these legends and
made them their own. In both the Protonike and Judas Kyriakos ver-
sions of the True Cross legends, the Jews prevent Christians from
having access to the True Cross, albeit with somewhat more drama in
the Kyriakos version. Nevertheless, the reasons behind this Jewish
obstruction, although they may be obvious, are not made clear. The
early Dormition traditions, as we have seen, are explicit about this:
the Jews are accused of having hidden the relics of the crucifixion and
disguised them as Jewish relics, so that their power will bear witness
to the truth of Judaism and not against it. In this way the early Dor-
mition traditions transform the discovery of the True Cross into an
incident that highlights not only the power of Christian relics, but
also the unsuccessful Jewish effort to subvert those relics.
Other contemporary Christian texts reveal similar perceptions of
the Jews as especially hostile to the veneration of relics. This is the
case, for instance, in the Coptic History of the Church,a work of the
late fifth century preserved in fragments now scattered among differ-
ent European and American collections.128In its account of Julian's
126. Han J. W. Drijvers and Jan Willem Drijvers, The Finding of the True Cross, The Judas
Kyriakos Legend in Syriac: Introduction, Text, Translation, CSCO 565, Subsidia 93
(Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 50-51 (Syr) and 68-69 (Eng).
127. George Howard, trans., The Teaching of Addai, Society of Biblical Literature Texts and
Translations 16, Early Christian Literature Series 4 (Chico, Cal.: Scholars, 1981), o (Syr)
and 13 (Eng); Wright, "Departure," ,-a (Syr) and 134 (Eng); Smith Lewis, Apocrypha,
v-cA(Syr) and 21-22 (Eng); Marius Chaine, S. J., Apocryphade B. Maria Virgine, CSCO
3940 (Rome: Karolus de Luigi, 1909), 24-25 (Eth) and 20-21 (Lat); Enger, .I1 I1;i j
'l>, L>l, 22-25; for more on the Protonike version of the True Cross legends,
&L,JI
see Drijvers, Finding of the True Cross, 147-63.
128. The majority of the published fragments are found in Tito Orlandi, Storia della Chiesa
de Alessandria, 2 vols., Instituto di papirologia dell'universita degli studi de Milano,
Studi Copti 2 (Milan: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1968-70). For the date, see
Orlandi, Storia della Chiesa de Alessandria, 2:129-30. See also David W. Johnson,
"Further Fragments of a Coptic History of the Church: Cambridge Or. 1699R,"
Enchoria 6 (1976): 7-17; Tito Orlandi, "Nuovi frammenti della Historia Ecclesiastica
804 CHURCH HISTORY
attempt to rebuild the Temple, the Coptic Historyof the Churchreports

the following incident:
Julianappointed an official to clear the Temple and prepareits foun-
dation, so that he might build it. And he went to Persia to fight and put
the holy ones in prison. Those destroying the Temple cleared it, and they
did not leave stone upon stone, accordingto the words of the Lord. They
began to build, and they built from morning until evening. And they ar-
rived in the morning and found the building that they were building de-
stroyed, not by a human hand. But they persisted, continuing their hard
labor for two months. They accomplished nothing, according to the
providence of God, which was hindering them. The Jews who were there
told them, "Burnthe tombs in which there are Christians,and you will be
able to build." And they listened to them and burned the tombs. But
when they came to the tomb of John the Baptist and Elijahthe Prophet,
the fire did not touch them. For many days the fire filled their surround-
ings, and the fire did not touch them.129
The narrative continues to describe the translation of John and
Elijah's relics to Egypt, an event recorded similarly elsewhere.130The
entire episode as preserved in the Coptic History of the Churchde-
pends on a number of older traditions, which it has modified in sig-
nificant ways.131The earliest traditions locate the discovery of the
relics in Sebaste,132while the Coptic Historyof the Churchrelocates the
story to Jerusalem, setting it in the context of Julian's efforts to re-
build the temple. Here it further modifies the earlier traditions by
attributing the suggestion to burn the tombs of the Christian saints to
the Jews, rather than to the pagans as in the earlier version. With this
change the Coptic History of the Churchbrings these traditions into
harmony with the stream of fifth- and sixth-century Christian litera-
ture that depicted the Jews as opponents of Christian relics.
copta," in Studi in onore di Edda Bresciani, ed. S. F. Bondi, et al. (Pisa: Giardini, 1985),
363-83.
129. Orlandi, Storia, 1:42-44 (Copt) and 65-66 (Lat).
130. See the discussion of these traditions in David Levenson's forthcoming study, Julian
and Jerusalem:The Sources and the Tradition,Brill's Series in Jewish Studies 15 (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, forthcoming).
131. See also Tito Orlandi, "Un frammento copto di Teofilo di Alessandria," Revista degli
Studi Orientali 44 (1969): 23-26; A. van Lantschoot, "Fragments coptes d'un
Panegyrique de S. Jean-Baptiste," Le Museon 44 (1931): 235-54; A. Mingana, "A New
Life of John the Baptist," WoodbridgeStudies (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1927-
34), 1:234-87 (reprinted from Bulletin of the JohnRylands Library11 [1927]).
132. See Otto F. A. Meinardus, "The Relics of St. John the Baptist and the Prophet Elisha,"
OstkirchlicheStudien 29 (1980): 118-42, esp. 133.
Similar sentiments are expressed in another, recently "discovered"

text from this period soon to be published by Alexander Alexakis.133
Here, however, hostility to the veneration of relics is not ascribed di-
rectly to Jews, but rather to a particular group of Judaizing Chris-
tians, the Sabbatians. In this "dialogue," probably composed some-
time during the late fifth or early sixth century,134a monk named
"Moschus" defends the Christian veneration of certain created ob-
jects, including the Cross, the Eucharist, the Gospels, and even icons,
against his Sabbatian opponent. The Sabbatians were an early Byzan-
tine Christian sect that originally separated from the Novatians dur-
ing the late fourth century, primarily over the date of Easter, which
the Sabbatians observed on the Jewish Pascha.135 Their founder, Sab-
batius, was a Jewish convert to Christianity who reportedly contin-
ued observance of many Jewish customs after his conversion,136a
practice maintained by his followers, who, as described by the East
Syrian bishop Marutha Maipherkatensis (d. before 420), observed a
Judaizing form of Christianity: "The heresy of the Sabbatians, who
are called in Syriac the Shabtaye. They say that instead of Sunday, the
liturgy should be celebrated on the Sabbath, because this is the day of
rest. And instead of the Gospels, the Pentateuch should be read at
length before the people. And circumcision should not cease, nor
should the observances of the Law be annulled. And also the example
of Passover is retained, because the new is not opposed to the old.
133. Codex Parisinus graecus 1115:278-80. Text, translation, and commentary are
forthcoming in Alexander Alexakis, "An Early Iconophile Text: The Dialogue of the
Monk and Recluse Moschus Concerning the Holy Icons," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 52
(1998). I thank Professor Alexakis for allowing me access to his work before its
publication. This text was previously signaled, with a brief description, by Jean
Gouillard in "L'Heresie dans l'empire Byzantin des origines au XIIe siecle," Travauxet
Memoires 1 (1965): 311.
134. Alexakis tentatively suggests a date of 425-60, based primarily on the virtual
disappearance of the Sabbatians, and the Novatians, from whom the Sabbatians were
descended, after the fifth century. Timothy Gregory shares this general assessment
that these sects were in decline during the latter half of the fifth century, after which
point they pass for the most part out of view. Gregory also notes, however, that
Justinian persecuted the Sabbatians, leaving the possibility that this dialogue was
composed during the sixth century. See Timothy E. Gregory, "Novatianism: A
Rigorist Sect in the Christian Roman Empire," Byzantine Studies/ltudes byzantines 2
(1975): 16.
135. Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica5.21 (PG 67:621-25); Gregory, "Novatianism," 13-16.
136. See Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica5.21 (PG 67:621B-C). This would seem to belie Patricia
Crone's suggestion that the Sabbatians who broke off from the Novatians were a
different group from those Sabbatians who were known in our ancient sources as
Judaizers. Crone, "Islam," 84.
806 CHURCHHISTORY
And even though they want to observe the Law, they call themselves
Christians. "137
Presumably, such adherence to the Jewish law led the Sabbatians

to regard the veneration of created objects as a violation of the second
commandment, a conclusion that Moschus's dialogue aims to refute.
Against his Sabbatian opponent, Moschus defends particularly the
Christian veneration of the Cross and "the icons of martyrs," prac-
tices considered idolatrous by his adversary.138Interestingly, how-
ever, Moschus notes that his opponent has not extended this judg-
ment to include such similarly created items as the book of Gospels
or the Eucharist, objects which the Sabbatian distinguishes as "having
divine power." Nor apparently did the Sabbatians object specifically
to the veneration of holy men and women, since Moschus later men-
tions their veneration of Sabbatius's relics, a practice also recorded in
Socrates' Church History.139These exceptions are not altogether
strange in a "Jewish" context, however, given the respect that Juda-
ism affords its sacred texts,140as well as the tradition of venerating
holy men and women and their relics in ancient Judaism.
This latter point is of special interest: prerabbinic Judaism fre-
quently revered its holy men and women, building elaborate tombs
in their memory and seeking their miracles and intercession. In fact,
there are even hints of pilgrimage and relic veneration in early Juda-
ism.141Nevertheless, such practices are generally absent from the
137. t_. icu. ,_rlof ,o.a Q2l9icn

Q,,A^;r,,--n,a
cw IMA 1
.r<UJL ,?<),cnT. in>..I
r>io r*AnkuIfn MLA.t tl3.MU ;^Li3rn i<7n
-,
ro > reao re tiMov a.pe.m 7 " iDtur
i?? W i4 %<Ao QXreI
CA r<e.ku?. 1\*Iku PX am3aaA M. reAo rewcema.i cnk%lcay
ressm^ s.-cr
(n
X.risciVjto'l r tVi
.a tL77 rCouWa r,AMa-caw
aI* t1.u-A
Marutha Maipherkatensis, Tractateon Heresies 1 (Ignatius Ephraem II Rahmani, ed.,
Studia Syriaca [Monte Libano: Typis Patriarchalibus in Seminario Scharfensi, 1904-9],
vol. 4,,-_5
138. Alexakis, "Early Iconodule Text."
139. OITC4i[cava appc,aToov,oovpi3n, OTtsntat0v xaTExp6TrloavI v6oovs idoavro.
66S iot
Dialogue of the Monk and Recluse Moschus Concerning the Holy Icons (Alexakis, "Early
Iconodule Text"); Socrates: Historia ecclesiastica6.25 (PG 67:793C-796A).
140. Regarding the Torah scroll in particular, see, for example, b. Meg. 27a; b. Mak. 22b; b.
Shabb.14a; m. Shabb.16:1;Mo'ed Qat. 25a, 26a.
141. Joachim Jeremias, Heiligengraberin Jesu Umwelt: Eine Untersuchung zur Volksreligionder
Zeit Jesu (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1958), 3. Teil, esp. 138-41. See also in
the New Testament, Matt. 23:29: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For
you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous." See
also Brown, Cult of the Saints, 10. An example of Jewish intercessory prayer is
preserved in the LiberRequiei25-31 (Arras, De Transitu, 13-17 [Eth] and 8-11 [Lat]), in
the story of Rachel and Eleazar, where Rachel calls for and receives the intercession of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This tale also appears several times in rabbinic literature:
contemporary rabbinic literature, where many are explicitly con-

demned, prompting Joachim Jeremias to suggest that these were ex-
pressions of "popular" Jewish religion.142While it is possible that
such practices continued to be a part of popular Jewish practice, in
the ascendant version of late ancient Judaism represented by the rab-
bis, which presumably posed the most formidable Jewish challenge to
Christianity, we meet an increasing resistance to the veneration of
created objects, whether they be holy men and women, their bodily
relics, or even images.143
This ancient Jewish practice becomes a specific issue of Christian
anti-Jewish polemic in the extant fragments of Leontius of Neapolis's
early seventh-century Apology against the Jews,144in which Leontius
defends the veneration of various created objects, including the relics
of saints, against the objections of a supposed Jewish opponent.
Among his many arguments are several reminders to his Jewish "in-
terlocutor" of similar Jewish practices, including particularly the rev-
erence shown for the bones of certain Jewish saints, such as Moses
and Elisha. This prompts Leontius to ask, "if it is impious to honor
bones, how were the bones of Jacob and Joseph transported from
Egypt with every honor? How was a dead man resurrected when he
touched the bones of Elisha?"145Unfortunately, Leontius's Jewish
"opponent" is not permitted a response, leaving us to wonder how
Jews of the early seventh century might have regarded the reverence
of their forebears for holy bones.
see F. Manns, Le Recit de la dormitionde Marie (Vatican grec 1982): Contributiona l'etude
de origines de l'exegese chretienne, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Maior 33
(Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1989), 76, esp. n. 14a.
142. Jeremias, Heiligengraber,142-44. See also Theodor Klauser, "Christlicher Mirtyrerkult,
heidnischer Heroenkult, and spatjiidische Heiligenverehrung: Neue Einsichten und
Neue Probleme," Arbeitsgemeinschaftfur Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen,
Geisteswissenschaften, Heft 91 (Koln-Opladen, 1960), 27-38; reprinted in idem,
GesammelteArbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte,Kirchengeschichte,und christlichenArchdologie,
Ernst Dassmann, ed., Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum, Erganungsband 3
(Miinster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1974), 221-29, esp. 224 in the
reprint.
143. Jeremias, Heiligengraber,142.
144. On the authenticity of this work, see Vincent Deroche, "L'Authenticite de l'FApologie
contre les Juifs> de Leontios de Neapolis," Bulletin de correspondancehellenique 110
(1986): 655-69. I do not find Paul Speck's reply convincing; see Paul Speck, "Der
Dialog mit einem Juden angeblich des Leontius von Neapolis," Poikila Byzantina 6
(1987): 315-22.
145. Leontius of Neapolis, Apology against the Jews (Deroche, "L'Apologie,"69.143-44 [Grk]
and 77 [Fr]). Jeremias also finds hints of a Jewish relic cult in the traditions of the
bones of Moses: Jeremias, Heiligengraber,139-41.
808 CHURCHHISTORY
Indeed, this remains an important question: is there any historical

reality behind this Christian representation of Jewish opposition to
the cult of the saints and relics? Although the specific details of many
episodes are undoubtedly Christian inventions (such as the Jephonias
incident), various early Jewish sources can to some degree confirm
this Christian view that many late ancient Jews were increasingly un-
easy with or opposed to such practices. These attitudes are especially
present in the rabbinic literature's persistent opposition to the ven-
eration of "Jewish saints," as noted above, as well as in explicit Jew-
ish criticism of similar Christian practices.146This suggests that in the
rabbinic period the veneration of Jewish saints was in decline, if not
abandoned, despite strong biblical precedent.147
Changes in Jewish burial practices during late antiquity and the
related intensification of attention to corpse impurity by the rabbis
could also suggest such a change, albeit indirectly. During the Second
Temple period, the Jews had commonly engaged in a practice known
as secondary burial, in which the bodies of the deceased were initially
laid on niches cut into the walls of rock-cut tombs. Here, their bodies
were allowed to decompose, a process which was widely believed to
atone for the sins of the deceased. Then, once their flesh had com-
pletely decayed, the bones were gathered together and placed in
stone receptacles called ossuaries.'48 Sometime during the fourth
century, however, the Jews discontinued this practice of secondary
burial, which some have interpreted as a Jewish response to the
emergent Christian veneration of the bodies of the holy dead.149De-
spite the obvious attractions of this explanation, there is little evi-
dence to support it.150Likewise, the similarities between secondary
burial and later Christian devotional practices prompted Andre Gra-
bar to propose that the Christian veneration of the bones of the holy
dead and their collection in reliquaries owes much to this earlier
Jewish practice,'15but this hypothesis has been shown to be similarly
146. Jeremias, Heiligengraber,142; see also below.

147. For Jacob, see Gen. 50:13-25; for Joseph, see Exod. 17:6; for Elijah, see 2 Chron. 13:21.
148. This practice is well described in Pau Figueras, "Jewish Ossuaries and Secondary
Burial: Their Significance for Early Christianity," Immanuel 19 (1984/85): 41-57.
149. Figueras, "Jewish Ossuaries," 55-57; idem, DecoratedJewish Ossuaries (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1983), 10-12.
150. Byron R. McCane, "Bones of Contention? Ossuaries and Reliquaries in Early Judaism
and Christianity," The SecondCentury 8 (1991): 245-46.
151. Andre Grabar, "Recherches sur les sources juives de l'art paleochretien (Troisieme
article)," CahiersArcheologiques14 (1964): 51-53.
problematic.152Nevertheless, despite the lack of a direct relation with

Christian practice, this change in funerary custom indicates a signifi-
cant shift in Jewish attitudes toward dead bodies, which very well
may have generated Jewish criticism of Christian veneration of relics.
Judaism has always regarded corpses as a major source of ritual
impurity, prompting a general avoidance of contact with either the
dead or their tombs. But while this restriction had been a feature of
Judaism during earlier periods, the rabbis possessed a special concern
to define and extend the notion of corpse impurity, which many con-
sidered so potent that it could be incurred merely by the passage of
one's shadow over a corpse or a tomb.153In fact, the rabbis identified
contact with the dead as the most serious of all ritual impurities.154
Excepting such corpse impurity as was necessitated by the death of
family members or close friends, contact with the dead was avoided
as much as possible.155For this reason, the Jewish veneration of the
holy dead was never extended to include an organized cult at their
tombs, and actual contact with the "relics" of the deceased remained
out of the question.156The same also seems to have been initially true
of early Palestinian Christianity, which continued observance of
corpse impurity until the fourth century.157After this point, however,
Jewish and Christian attitudes toward the dead diverged markedly,
as indicated primarily by the Jewish abandonment of secondary bur-
ial and the simultaneous rise of the Christian cult of the saints.
Yet even if we cannot simplistically attribute the disappearance of
Jewish secondary burial to the emergent Christian veneration of the
holy dead, its elimination and the rabbinic intensification of the
corpse taboo signal heightened Jewish avoidance of contact with the
dead that was bound to impact their judgment of the Christian ven-
eration of relics. The elimination of the important exception to the
separation of the living and the dead afforded by secondary burial
would only have served to make the Christian fondness for these
152. L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collection of the State of Israel
(Jerusalem: The Israel Antiquities Authority/The Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, 1994), 60-61.
153. E. P. Sanders, Jewish Lawfrom Jesus to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1990), 33-34,
184-86. At first glance this might seem in contradiction with the practice of secondary
burial during the early rabbinic period, but it is not. As Sanders explains, "for the
ordinary person, contracting corpse impurity was not wrong; rather piety required
care of the dead. The only transgression was to enter the temple while impure" (33).
154. m. Kelim 1.4d.
155. Sanders, Jewish Law, 187-88.
156. Klauser, "Christlicher Martyrerkult," 226.
157. Byron R. McCane, "Jews, Christians, and Burial in Roman Palestine" (Ph.D. diss., Duke
University, 1992), 202-13.
810 CHURCHHISTORY
holy corpses appear all the more deviant in Jewish eyes. As a result of
this widening divide, the manner in which the dead were respected
emerged as an important point of Jewish and Christian self-definition
in late antiquity, inspiring both Christian writers to polemicize
against the Jewish avoidance of corpses and Jews to criticize the
Christian veneration of dead bodies.158
Such Jewish criticism is evident in Jewish sources as well as
Christian, including especially two sixth-century hymns from the
Cairo Geniza that polemicize against the Christian veneration of
bodily relics. These hymns, ascribed to Yannai, rebuke the Christians
specifically for venerating bones, condemning them as "the custom-
ers of a gathering of bones" and "those that in the future will gather
bones."159Approximately two hundred years after the Jews had
abandoned their practice of secondary burial, the "gathering of
bones" was no longer an acceptable practice in Judaism. On the con-
trary, contact with the dead had become the most unholy of actions,
in light of which the Christian veneration of the holy dead was reck-
oned a perverse violation of the corpse taboo. Similar sentiment ap-
pears in the Leviticus Rabbah, a collection redacted sometime be-
tween the fifth and sixth centuries.l60Here the rabbis appear to criti-
cize the Christian practice of offering intercessory prayers to the de-
parted saints at their graves. The passage begins with the story of a
man "who lost his child and went to inquire about him among the
graves." The rabbis ridicule this man, asking, "do the quick have
need, then, of the dead," continuing, "our God lives and endures for
all eternity, while the god[s] of the gentiles is [are?] dead.... they are
dead! Shall we abandon the Eternal One and bow to the dead?" Al-
though the various elements of this passage perhaps took shape in an
antipagan context, it seems rather likely that by the time of their final
redaction in the Leviticus Rabbah, they were primarily aimed at
Christian practice.161
Such predilection for the dead was not the only element of late
antique Christian piety offensive to Jewish sensibilities. In the case of
bodily relics, any violation of the corpse taboo merely added to the
more serious blasphemy of worshipping the created rather than the
creator. This was certainly the case with the increasing Christian ven-
eration of holy images, which no doubt appeared to the Jews as a
particularly glaring violation of the second commandment, as the
158. McCane, "Jews, Christians, and Burial," 202-13.

159. These are given by Figueras, "Jewish Ossuaries," 56-57; idem, Decorated,12.
160. Visotzky, "Anti-Jewish Polemic," 83 n. 1.
161. Visotzky, "Anti-Jewish Polemic," 86-88.
Judaizing Sabbatians of Moschus's dialogue are said to have re-

garded this practice. The first Jewish source to voice such objections
is the Sefer Zerubbabel,an early-seventh-century Palestinian apoca-
lypse about which more will be said in the following section.162Here
Christian images are explicitly identified as idols and their veneration
as idol worship: "And from there, in Riblah, which is Antioch, he
[Rome, or the Roman emperor] will begin to plant the idols [nlltti]
of the nations and to worship their false gods [uI') ], whom God
hates."163Although these objects are identified using the names of the
Canaanite deities Baal and Asherah, it is clear that these "idols" are
Christian cult objects and not "pagan" statues.164As is discussed in
more detail below, this apocalypse comes in response to the Christian
reconquest of the Holy Land following the Persian occupation of the
early seventh century, and its polemics are directed at Christian,
rather than pagan, practices. By using such language, however, the
SeferZerubbabelattacks the nascent Christian veneration of images as
a blasphemy no different from the pagan worship of false gods,
placing it on par with the biblical idolatry of the Canaanites.
Limited as they are, such Jewish polemics provide important con-
firmation of Christian reports of Jewish opposition to the cult of the
saints and relics, indicating that alongside the Christian effort to con-
struct identity against its Jewish source stood real Jewish criticisms of
Christian practice. To be sure, many if not all of the details of these
162. For the date and provenance see Israel Levi, ed., "L'Apocalypse de Zorobabel et le Roi
de Perse Siroes (Suite)," Revue des ?tudes Juives 69 (1919): 108-115. Brannon M.
Wheeler, however, suggests that the work was composed in Edessa, without much
explanation as to why: "Imagining the Sassanian Capture of Jerusalem: The 'Prophecy
and Dream of Zerubbabel' and Antiochus Strategos' 'Capture of Jerusalem,"'
OrientaliaChristianaPeriodica57 (1991): 69-85, at 73.
163. Sefer Zerubbabel (Israel Levi, ed., "L'Apocalypse de Zorobabel et le Roi de Perse
Siroes," Revue des ?tudes Juives 68 [1914]: 143; trans. Martha Himmelfarb, "Sefer
Zerubbabel," in Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew
Literature,ed. David Ster and Mark Jay Mirsky, [Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society, 1990], 80, slightly modified).
164. I do not find convincing the recent suggestion by Paul Speck ("The Apocalypse of
Zerubbabel and Christian Icons," Jewish Studies Quarterly 4 [1997]: 183-90) that the
Sefer Zerubbabelwas actually a Christian text and that the "idols" being opposed are
actually pagan idols. Speck here, as elsewhere, argues that the cult of icons was not in
existence during the early seventh century. Most scholars, on the other hand, seem to
agree that the origins of the cult of icons lie even earlier, in the later sixth century; see
for instance Averil Cameron, "Images of Authority: Elites and Icons in Late Sixth-
Century Byzantium," Past and Present 84 (1979): 3-35; Peter Brown, "A Dark Age
Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclast Controversy," English Historical Review 88 (1973): 1-34;
reprinted in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982), 251-301; Ernst Kitzinger, "The Cult of the Images before Iconoclasm,"
DumbartonOaks Papers 8 (1950): 85-150, esp. 129-31.
812 CHURCH HISTORY
Christian narratives are pure fiction, and it is unlikely that these texts
represent any kind of actual exchange, literary or otherwise. Like-
wise, it is equally certain that such representations of the Jews were
meant more to reassure Christian doubt than to convert any unbe-
lieving Jews. Nevertheless, we must remember Simon's insightful
conclusion, "an artificial form may well conceal material drawn from
life."165Such seems to be the case in this instance. In spite of the artifi-
ciality of both the Christian and Jewish polemical traditions, the con-
nections between the two seem to bear out the point that these po-
lemics were developing with at least some awareness of what the
other was actually doing and saying. Even if the depictions of Jewish
opposition to the veneration of relics and saints were meant primarily
to answer criticism coming from within the Christian fold, rather
than from Judaism, it is equally important to recognize that contem-
porary Judaism occasionally raised such criticisms, which no doubt
fueled the "orthodox" Christian response.
IV. "SATAN WILL COME AND LIE WITH HER, AND SHE WILL BEAR A SON....
HE WILL DESTROY THE PEOPLE": MARY AND IMPERIAL ANTI-JUDAISM
The mounting hostility between Jews and the Christian state also
found expression in many of the early Dormition narratives, where
the conflicts and persecutions of the later Roman Empire are fre-
quently retrojected into the Dormition's first-century setting. Here,
the contemporary relations between the empire and its Jewish in-
habitants are naturalized by projecting them back into the mythic
time of (Christian) origins, where officials of the "pagan" empire
foreshadow the actions of their Christian successors. These depictions
lend justification to the anti-Judaism of the Christian empire, giving it
an air of timelessness and implying that it is not rooted in any par-
ticularly Christian prejudice. Rather, the early Dormition traditions,
among other early Christian narratives, imagine the imperial anti-
Judaism of late antiquity as the "natural"response of a just and rea-
sonable state to "troublesome" inhabitants, as shown by the prior ac-
tions of both the Roman Empire and its independent clients.
In the first of these episodes, the legends recall the supposed rage
of King Abgar of Edessa upon learning that the Jews had crucified
Christ, an episode that draws on an earlier tradition from the Doctrina
Addai.166 When he heard the news, "Abgar arose, and rode, and came
to the river Euphrates, and wished to go up against Jerusalem and lay

166. Howard, Teachingof Addai, ,p-a (Syr) and 75-81 (Eng).
it waste. And when Abgar came and reached the river Euphrates, he
reflected in his mind, 'If I cross over, there will be enmity between me
and the emperor Tiberius.'"167 Hoping to avoid an international inci-
dent, Abgar tempered his fury and decided to pursue a more diplo-
matic means of satisfying his anger. Instead, he sent a letter to the
emperor Tiberius, explaining the gross injustice that the Jews had car-
ried out against Jesus. When the emperor read the letter, he "was
very much enraged, and was going to destroy and kill all the Jews."168
It seems clear that he in fact did not, although there is no explanation
why. Rather, we are told that when the "people of Jerusalem"learned
of this, they were alarmed, and the priests went to the governor to
ask that they be permitted to prevent Mary from praying at her son's
tomb. The permission was granted, but again it is not entirely obvi-
ous how this might be related to Jews' fear of the emperor's wrath.
What is absolutely clear, however, is the portrayal of these first-
century rulers as sympathetic to Christianity and, more importantly,
as desirous of using their civil authority to punish the Jews for their
"crimes." Although their wishes are ultimately unfulfilled, the deci-
sions of these two rulers, one a proto-Christian and the other a pagan,
validate the later actions of the Christian empire against its Jewish
inhabitants.
The second, rather lengthy episode begins just as the Ab-
gar/Tiberius episode is "resolved," when the Jewish priests approach
the Roman governor, seeking permission to act against Mary.169This
begins a series of requests in which the Jewish priests seek the assis-
tance of the secular authorities in an effort to control Mary, whom
they view as posing a special threat to the existence of their faith. Ini-
tially, the Jews experience some success in their requests for aid from
the state, but eventually the authorities turn against them. As the nar-
ratives begin, the Jewish priests persuade the Roman governor to
prohibit Mary from visiting her son's tomb, as well as securing the
authority to banish her from Jerusalem to Bethlehem when she re-
fuses to repent of her sins and confess to lying about her virginal
status.
167. Wright, "Departure," , (Syr) and 134 (Eng); in addition to this version, see also the
passages listed in n. 127 above.
168. Wright, "Departure," ,.-, (Syr) and 134 (Eng).
169. This episode appears in many of the earliest versions, with some slight variance in
certain details. The following summary relates the essence of these accounts, relying
primarily on the accounts preserved in the sixth-century witnesses: Wright,
"Departure," -r~ (Syr) and 141-46 (Eng); idem, Contributions, M-4 (Syr) and 24-28
(Eng); and Smith Lewis, Apocrypha,. -ou(Syr) and 33-43 (Eng).
814 CHURCHHISTORY
When Mary relocates to Bethlehem, the apostles join her. She be-
gins to work great miracles, and word of her power spreads among
the people of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and beyond. The Jewish priests
are disturbed by this, and again they approach the Roman governor.
When the governor expresses reluctance to act against Mary, the Jews
threaten to go over the governor's head to the emperor himself. Per-
suaded by their threats, the governor sends Roman troops to seize the
Virgin and the apostles in Bethlehem. When the soldiers arrive at
Mary's house in Bethlehem, they find no one-while they were en
route, Mary and the apostles were miraculously transported through
the air from Bethlehem to her house in Jerusalem. After several days,
angels are spotted coming and going from Mary's house, and the
Jews again approach the governor, who acquiesces to their desire to
burn the Virgin's house. When they attempt this, their malice is
turned against them-the doors of the Virgin's house burst open and
spew forth flames on the Jewish mob, many of whom die.
With this, the governor is suddenly persuaded that the Jews are in
the wrong. He spontaneously professes his faith in Christianity and
orders that all the people of Jerusalem be gathered before him on the
next day. When they assemble, he rebukes the Jews and divides the
people into two parties, the "believers" and the "unbelievers," both
of which appear to consist of ethnically Jewish people. Then, the gov-
ernor initiates a debate between the two parties over whether Jesus
was the Messiah or not. When the "believers" confess Jesus as the
Messiah, the governor congratulates them, since "it is not necessary
that one of the Emperors should come against you, and force you,
and that you should confess the Messiah against your will."170In the
debate that follows, the believers argue for Jesus' messiahship against
the unbelievers who insist that Jesus was not even on a par with the
patriarchs and prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. Although the un-
believers concede that they are unable to meet the arguments of the
believers, they nevertheless refuse to believe. As a result, the gover-
nor has the unbelievers flogged, and he venerates the Virgin. From
this point, the stories continue with the traditions of the True Cross,
discussed above, in which the governor forces the unbelieving Jews
to reveal the location of this relic, which they have disguised as a
Jewish relic.
In spite of their obvious fictionalization, the imagined relations
among Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire in these events
clearly reflect the Jews' place in Christian society and the relations
between real Jews and Christians in late antiquity. At the same time,
170. Smith Lewis, Apocrypha,ca (Syr) and 40 (Eng).

they also perpetuate certain Christian stereotypes that were impor-

tant for constructing Christian identity, and more specifically the re-
lationship of Christianity with the Roman empire. This series of epi-
sodes collapses the long history of Christian relations with the empire
into a matter of a few weeks. Centuries of changing attitudes are rep-
resented as well as prefigured in the events leading up to the Roman
governor's sudden conversion. As the narratives open, the Jews stand
in favor with the imperial officials. When they initially approach the
Roman governor, they successfully secure his authority to act against
their enemies, in this case Mary, who represents the nascent Christian
movement. In part, this image accurately represents the relationship
that Jews and Christians each had with the empire at an earlier time.
While the Jews were extended certain imperial favors, including most
notably the freedom from participating in the Roman cults, this was
not the case for Christians. By the reign of Severus we can speak of a
distinct inequality in the empire's treatment of Jews and Christians,
according to which Judaism was tolerated and Christianitywas pro-
hibited and occasionallypersecuted.171
Nevertheless, here, as in many other early Christian texts, the
source of Christian persecution is identified not with imperial con-
cern for the Roman cults, but rather with the Jews. This is particularly
the case in the second incident between the governor and the Jewish
priests. Here the governor is initially reluctant to act, but eventually
he yields, fearing Jewish threats to appeal directly to the emperor,
threats which again indicate their imperial favor. Such images of the
Jews are certainly nothing new here. Beginning with the New Testa-
ment, early Christian literature frequently sought to place the blame
for its victims on the Jews, deflecting it from its real source-Rome.
While we cannot completely rule out the possibility that in some in-
stances the Jews may have played a role, as Paul's early persecution
of the Christians reminds us, it is equally clear that early Christian
literature developed and promoted a stereotype of Jewish instigation
and Roman reluctance in the persecution of Christians.172 This is seen,
for instance, in the passion narratives, where Pilate's reluctance fi-
nally yields to the Jewish mob, and the Roman centurion's recogni-
tion, "Certainly this man was innocent,"173contrasts with the machi-
nations of the Sanhedrin to have this "innocent" man condemned.
This self-representation was important to early Christianity, as it
sought to coexist with the Roman state. It presented Christianity as a
171. Simon, VerusIsrael,98-107.

172. Simon, VerusIsrael,115-25;see also Gager,OriginsofAnti-Semitism,
253-56.
173. Luke23:47(NRSV).
816 CHURCHHISTORY
friend of the empire, and not as a movement whose founder was a

common criminal executed by the state. Christ and the martyrs had
been put to death not for crimes against Rome, but simply because
the Jews had deluded the civic authorities into executing them.174
Nevertheless, the Christians of late antiquity continued to value this
"myth" of Christian origins, as the early Dormition narratives attest.
As Christianity became increasingly intertwined with imperial
authority, such images served to normalize this relationship. The
portrayed Christian sympathies of Abgar, Tiberius, and the Roman
governor attempt to gloss over centuries of Roman antagonism and
project the late ancient "symbiosis" of church and empire back onto
the moment of origins. Thus the relationship is made to seem "time-
less" and consequently, natural. To any thought of the return of a
non-Christian empire, the Christian could respond by pointing to
these empathetic rulers as harbingers of an inevitably Christianized
empire.
Moreover, the actions of these rulers prefigure in many ways the
roles that the Christian emperors would come to play in the late an-
cient church, naturalizing their behavior as well. The Roman gover-
nor, for instance, calls for a religious debate in which he decides the
outcome. This episode foreshadows the direct intervention of the
Christian emperors in church affairs, in the ecumenical councils as
well as elsewhere. Justinian was even so bold as to legislate correct
Jewish practice,175in the same way that the Roman governor involves
himself in what is presented as basically an intra-Jewish dispute. And
like the Roman authorities of late antiquity, the governor dispenses
punishment for religious deviance, scourging the Jewish unbelievers
for their refusal to recognize Jesus as Messiah.
The transformation in the governor's attitudes toward Jews and
Christians following the debate is especially significant, mythically
representing real changes in the Roman Empire's treatment of Jewish
and Christian inhabitants. Until this point in the narrative, the gover-
nor's actions favor the Jews and are hostile to the Christians. But
when the governor converts to Christianity, it is the Christians who
suddenly find themselves in favor, while the Jews are persecuted by
the authorities. This imaginary turn of events symbolizes the real
changes in the relations among Jews, Christians, and the Roman state
174. Simon, Verus Israel, 118-19.

175. In novella 146, issued in 553, Justinian published instructions on synagogue worship,
prohibiting the reading of the Mishnah and the Hebrew Torah and instructing that
Torah be read in Greek, preferably in the Septuagint version. For further discussion of
this, and perhaps other interventions in Jewish life by Justinian, see Wilken, Land
CalledHoly, 204-5.
that took place in the wake of Constantine's "conversion." The em-

pire's Christians, who had only recently been the victims of imperial
persecution, suddenly found themselves recipients of imperial pa-
tronage. The empire's Jews, on the other hand, who had before this
moment enjoyed a special relationship with Rome (despite occasional
disruptions), now found themselves in an increasingly antagonistic
relationship with the empire.
Although the Jews officially continued to enjoy their special
status, as noted above, during the sixth and early seventh centuries,
the period during which the Dormition traditions first emerged, rela-
tions between the empire and its Jewish inhabitants grew increas-
ingly turbulent, often turning violent. The legendary events of the
early Dormition traditions reflect their formation in this historical
milieu, representing the imperial authorities and their clients both as
sympathetic to Christianity and as violent opponents of Judaism. In
this way the early Dormition narratives normalize the real social and
political relations of their own time by projecting them back onto the
timelessness of origins. That Mary should stand at the center of this
mythical anti-Judaism is in no way surprising. As discussed above,
Mary had by this time acquired significant anti-Jewish associations,
specifically in the context of Jewish-Christian debates over her vir-
ginity. Perhaps more importantly, however, it was also during this
age that Mary emerged as a primary focus of imperial Christian
identity-a powerful, celestial patroness whose favors fell especially
on the empire, its capital, and its rulers.176The combination of these
two characteristics yielded the portrait of Mary found in the contem-
porary Dormition narratives. In this time of escalating conflict be-
tween the empire and its Jewish inhabitants, when Judaism was in-
creasingly deemed synonymous with political and ideological sub-
version,177Mary emerged as a symbol of the Christian empire, and
the end of her life embodied the increasing identification of the Jews
as an internal "other," against which Christian religious, social, and
political identity was constructed.
Thus Mary also appears in an important Jewish text of this period,
one that we have already mentioned, the Sefer Zerubbabel,which
identifies the Virgin as a symbol of the Christian empire's anti-
Judaism. This intriguing text was probably composed in the wake of
176. See Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian
Constantinople (New York: Routledge, 1994); Cameron, "Theotokos"; eadem, "The
Virgin's Robe: An Episode in the History of Early Seventh-Century Constantinople,"
Byzantion 49 (1979): 42-56; eadem, "Images of Authority," 22-23; Holum, Theodosian
Empresses,227-28.
177. Haldon, Byzantium, 347.
818 CHURCHHISTORY
the seventh-century Persian conquest of Palestine, in which a Jewish

"betrayal" of the Roman Empire is purported to have played a key
role. According to our admittedly biased Christian sources, the Jews,
weary of Roman oppression, welcomed the Persians as liberators and
seized the opportunity to even the score, destroying churches and
massacring Christians.l78Although modem historians have debated
the reliability of many lurid details from the biased Christian ac-
counts, most agree that the Jews of Palestine assisted the Persians and
participated in violence against Christians and their houses of wor-
ship.179Such limited archeological evidence as we have seems to sub-
stantiate the reports of Jewish military activity and destruction of
churches in the areas of Acre and Tyre,l80and differences of opinion
among modern historians "have often revolved less around what
actually happened than around how much should be told and
how."181
The SeferZerubbabeloffers a sort of retelling of these events, one
which has recast them in the mythological time and language of
apocalyptic. The result of this transformation, however, is not, as
Brannon Wheeler explains, "a messianic fantasy which leaves behind
reality and devotes itself to a suppositious prediction of the fu-
ture."182Rather, the SeferZerubbabelis an attempt to deal with histori-
cal reality in terms of the cultural categories that were available for
making sense of what had happened. Thus, it presents the events of
the Persian conquest as seen through the eyes of a contemporary
Jewish apocalypticist, in an account with some striking similarities to
the Christian texts discussed above. On the one hand, it seems to con-
178. For discussion of the various accounts,see Dagron and Deroche,"Juifset Chretiens,"
22-28; RobertSchick, TheChristianCommunities of Palestinefrom Byzantineto Islamic
Rule:A HistoricalandArchaeologial Study,Studies in Late Antiquity and EarlyIslam 2
(Princeton: Darwin, 1995), 26-31; Wilken, Land Called Holy, 202-7; Horowitz,
"Vengeanceof the Jews";Wheeler,"Imaginingthe SassanianCapture."
179. "Comingas these statementsdo from Christianwriterswho were outragedat Jewish
collaborationin the plunderingof the holy city, they no doubt exaggeratethe role of
the Jews in the conquest.Christianfeelings were runninghigh. Yet there is no reason
to doubt that Jews took the side of the Persians. What role they played is more
difficult to assess";Wilken, LandCalledHoly, 206-7; see also Dagron and Deroche,
"Juifset Chretiens,"22.
180. Schick,ChristianCommunities of Palestine,26-31.
181. Horowitz, "Vengeance of the Jews." In this interesting article, Horowitz links
nineteenth-century efforts to minimize Jewish military involvement with an
"orientalist"feminizationof the Jews, and similarlate-twentieth-centuryefforts with
sensitivityto depictionsof Jewishviolence againstnon-Jewsand "a desire on the part
of many Israelis to see themselves as enlightened and humane occupiers in the
present."
182. Wheeler,"Imaginingthe SassanianCapture,"81-82.
firm Christian reports of Jewish involvement in Persia's defeat of the

Christian armies, but more importantly, it paints a picture of the Vir-
gin Mary as a focus of imperial identity and anti-Judaism, distin-
guishing her as an focus of Jewish as well as Christian self-definition.
Near the beginning of Zerubbabel's visions, the angel Mi-
chael/Metatron comes to him and reveals to him the events that are
to take place at the end of time. First among these are "acts of salva-
tion" performed by the mother of the Messiah, Hephzibah, who we
are told will defeat "two kings whose hearts are set on doing evil. The
names of the two kings: Nof, king of Yemen, who will wave his hand
at Jerusalem. The name of the second, Iszinan, king of Antioch."183
These "prophecies" refer to events of the Persian conquest, here as-
cribed to a Jewish agent, Hephzibah, which seems to support the
claims of Jewish involvement in the Christian sources. More intrigu-
ing, however, is the prominent role played by Hephzibah, the mother
of the Messiah, here and elsewhere in the text. In the passage above
she is credited with defeating the evil kings, which probably repre-
sents the actual Persian defeat of both an Arab invasion and the Ro-
mans at Antioch in 611.184As Martha Himmelfarb notes in the intro-
duction to her English translation of the text, "nowhere else in Jewish
messianic speculation is the mother of the Messiah so important a
figure."185Himmelfarb explains this figure's unusual significance in
the Sefer Zerubbabelas an effort to promote Hephzibah as a Jewish
counterpart to the Virgin Mary.186This is an attractive hypothesis,
given the strongly negative references to the Virgin also found in the
SeferZerubbabel.Having recognized in Mary, the mother of the false
messiah, a powerful symbol of the imperial persecutors, the Sefer
Zerubbabelattempts to focus Jewish identity around the mother of the
true messiah, who will at the end of time deliver the Jewish people
from their affliction.
Although allusions to Mary are scattered throughout the text, she
makes her most dramatic appearance when Michael/Metatron trans-
ports Zerubbabel to "the house of disgrace and merrymaking," that
is, a Christian church. There he beholds "a marble statue in the shape
of a virgin. The beauty of her appearance was wonderful to behold."
Since he does not entirely understand what he has seen, the angel
who is his guide explains:
183. SeferZerubbabel
(Levi, "L'Apocalypse"[1914], 134; Himmelfarb,"SeferZerubbabel,"
73).
184. Wheeler,"Imaginingthe SassanianCapture,"73-74.
185. Himmelfarb,"SeferZerubbabel,"69.
186. Himmelfarb,"SeferZerubbabel,"69;echoed in Wilken,LandCalledHoly,210.
820 CHURCH HISTORY
"This statue is the wife of Belial,"he said. "Satanwill come and lie
with her, and she will bear a son named Armilos. He will destroy the
people. In the Hebrew language ... He will rule over all, and his domin-
ion will reach from one end of the earth to the other. There will be ten
letters in his hand. He will worship strange gods and speak falsehood.
No one will be able to stand before him. He will slay by the sword any-
one who does not believe in him, and he will slay many of them. He will
attack the men of the holy ones of the Most High with the help of ten
kings, in might and great strength. He will make war on the holy ones
and destroy them. He will kill the Messiah son of Joseph, Nehemiah son
of Hushiel and sixteen righteousmen with him."'87
Unquestionably, this statue of a beautiful virgin that Zerubbabel

beholds in the church is a representation of the Virgin Mary, whose
"virginity" is at first strangely affirmed in this Jewish text, only then
to be compromised by her intercourse with Satan. Despite her "vir-
ginity" and beauty, however, she is an entirely negative figure who
ultimately bears responsibility for the destruction of the Jewish na-
tion, accomplished by her son, "Armilos." "Armilos," however, is not
Christ, as one might expect at first glance, but is rather a prominent
figure of medieval Jewish apocalyptic who represents the political
and spiritual head of the "evil" Roman Empire.188His descent here
from "the virgin" is indicative of the extent to which imperial identity
had become joined to the Virgin Mary, in Jewish eyes as much as in
Christian. In this vision the Virgin is literally the mother of the Ro-
man Empire, a role she filled symbolically as the empire's celestial
patroness. Other references to this "virgin" in the Sefer Zerubbabel
equally suggest a Jewish awareness of the Virgin's role in imperial
Christian identity, such as the angel's prophecy that "Armilos will
then take his mother, the stone from which he was born, out of the
house of disgrace of the scoffers. From all over, the nations will come
to worship that stone, burn incense, and pour libations to her. No one
will be able to look upon her face because of her beauty. Whoever
does not bow down to her will die, suffering like an animal."'89
Commentators have often seen this passage as a reference to the
early Byzantine practice of carrying images of the Virgin to protect
187. Sefer Zerubbabel(Levi, "L'Apocalypse" [1914], 136; Himmelfarb, "Sefer Zerubbabel,"

75).
188. See, for example, Himmelfarb, "Sefer Zerubbabel," 68-69; Israel Levi, "L'Apocalypse
de Zorobabel et le roi de Perse Siroes (Suite et fin)," Revue des etudes juives 71 (1920):
58-61.
189. Sefer Zerubbabel (Levi, "Sefer Zerubbabel" [1914], 143; Himmelfarb, "Sefer
Zerubbabel," 80).
cities under siege or armies in battle.190Heraclius, who is almost cer-

tainly the historical Armilos of this apocalypse, is reported to have
carried a statue of the Virgin into battle, at least on one occasion,191
and perhaps this was also done during his reconquest of the Near
East, as the SeferZerubbabel'sauthor seems to report. In any case, this
passage seems to reflect an awareness of the Virgin's particularly
anti-Jewish status; the Jewish refusal to bow down before her is iden-
tified as a specific cause of their persecution by the empire. In the Se-
fer Zerubbabel,however, this anti-Jewish status is inverted, and the
Virgin is transformed into an anti-imperial, anti-Christian symbol.
In the Sefer Zerubbabelthen the Jewish "attack" on Mary is no
longer primarily a backdoor attack on Christ aimed at challenging the
legitimacy of his birth, as it was in earlier Jewish sources, but has now
become instead an attack directed against the Christian empire, pre-
sumably in response to its intense persecution of the Jews during the
previous century. In this age of forced baptism,192the Christian state
posed a potent threat to the continued existence of the Jewish people,
a threat here identified with "Armilos" and the Virgin. Thus, in
Zerubbabel's vision of Jewish resistance and identity, Mary has be-
come for the Jews, as she had recently become for the Christians as
well, a symbol of the Christian empire and its military might. Here
the Virgin has become for Jews, as she already was for Christians, a
potent anti-Jewish symbol who marks a major boundary between
Christianity and its Jewish source and symbolizes Christian violence
against the Jews.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The image of the Jews in the ancient Dormition traditions devel-
oped against a background of intense Jewish and Christian conflict in
late antiquity, in both political and religious spheres. The period in
which these traditions emerged saw increasingly hostile relations
between the Jews and the Christian empire, beginning with the ag-
gressive legal anti-Judaism of Justinian and concluding in the early
seventh century with the Jewish betrayal of Jerusalem into Persian
hands, the forced baptism of Heraclius, and the final loss of most of
the Near East, with its large Jewish population, to the Arab conquest.
Against this political backdrop, we find that from the second century
onward, the Jews had, to the Christian mind at least, "slandered" the
190. Himmelfarb,"SeferZerubbabel,"69, 82 n. 11;Levi, "SeferZerubbabeI"(1920),60. See

also the discussionof this practicein Kitzinger,"TheCult of Images,"110-12.
191. Kitzinger,"Cultof Images,"111.
192. See above, n. 33.
822 CHURCHHISTORY
Virgin's characterwith allegations of her sexual impurity. In response

to this accusation, defense of the Virgin's character and her virginity
became an important focus of the ideological conflict between ancient
Jews and Christians. Nor was this missed by the Jews themselves,
who recognized in Mary a violently anti-Jewish figure. Consequently,
she figures prominently as a symbol of the empire in the SeferZerub-
babel'sreaction to the imperial persecution of the previous century.
The overall effect of this representation is to identify the Jews as
an internal "other" in an increasingly Christian society. This is per-
haps most explicit in those early narratives that retroject imperial
sympathies for Christianity and the persecution of Jews into the first
century. Here, the Jews are identified as menacing enemies of the
Christians, who are to be punished by civil authorities who have em-
braced the "truth" of the Christian faith. More subtle, however, are
the ways in which portrayed Jewish antagonism toward certain as-
pects of Christian piety has this effect. Each focus of Christian devo-
tion that the Jews are shown to oppose has strong ties specifically
with the empire. The tomb of Christ, for instance, to which Mary re-
turns to pray, was in late antiquity very much an "imperial" shrine.
Under Constantine's imperial patronage, it had been excavated and
adorned with a church more splendid than all the other buildings of
the world. This was to be a "new Temple" that was for Christian
identity what the "old" Temple had been for the Jews.193Likewise,
the True Cross was a decidedly imperial relic, whose discovery by the
empress Helen, Constantine's mother, was well known.194In the early
Dormition traditions, the Cross is "prediscovered" by the proto-
Christian Roman governor, but then is reburied, presumably to await
Helen's fourth-century "rediscovery." Once rediscovered, the nails
found with the Cross were supposedly included in the emperor's bri-
dle and helmet, solidifying the Cross' symbolism "of the heavenly
alliance between the emperor and the Christian God."195Finally, the
Virgin herself was, as we have already noted, a powerful imperial
symbol and heavenly patroness, and these images of Jewish animos-
ity for her clearly mark them as enemies of the Christian empire. The
Jewish attempt to burn her body suggests this most powerfully; in-
deed, this episode alone can well summarize the image of the Jews as
they appear in the early Dormition traditions. It exemplifies the three
major themes that we have traced here. It not only represents a naked
hatred by the Jews for the Virgin, but identifies their motivation in
193. See the discussion in Wilken, Land CalledHoly, 83-100.

194. Drijvers, Helena Augusta, 81-93.
195. Drijvers, Helena Augusta, 182.
theirfear of the power of her relics.Moreimportantly,however, this

attackon Mary'sbody is equally an attackon the social body, on the
Christiansociety that Mary represents.Thus, the early Dormition
traditionsportray the Jews as dangerous enemies of the Christian
state, deserving divine punishment,which it was the state's duty to
exact.It is an image of the Jews which, unfortunately,was to persist
and thrive in the subsequenthistory of Christianity,particularlyin
the contextof Mariandevotion.

Stephen J. Shoemaker, Let Us Go and Burn Her Body. The Image of The Jews in The Early Dormition Traditions

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Stephen J. Shoemaker, Let Us Go and Burn Her Body. The Image of The Jews in The Early Dormition Traditions

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American Society of Church History

In his recent book, Mary through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan

StephenJ. Shoemakeris National Endowmentfor the Humanities Fellow, W. F.

exclusion of Jews from Christian society during the Western Middle

5. See, for example,Hedwig Rockelein,"Marie,l'tglise et la Synagogue:Culte de la Vierge

In addition, many of the earliest narratives of Mary's Dormition

I. JEWSAND CHRISTIANSIN EARLYBYZANTIUM

During the early Byzantine period the Roman Empire adopted an

ment of Greco Roman society.18But with the change in imperial re-

18. W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdomand Persecution in the Early Church:A Study of a Conflictfrom

generated less controversy.24Yet for the period under consideration

seventh century.26This can be seen in a well known set of incidents

adopted against the Jews, culminating in forced baptisms of Jews in

44. Hamack, Altercatio,63-64.

reason why one cannot approach the phenomenon of Christian anti-

the "scholarly consensus" on this matter.59The tenor of this work and

scant though these may be.64In those instances where a correlation is

II. "HIS MOTHERWAS STADA: . . . SHE WAS UNFAITHFULTOHER

others have permeated large segments of the early Dormition tradi-

VIe au Xe siecle, Archives de l'Orient Chretien 5 (Paris: Institut Francais d'ltudes

quite probable that Celsus acquired this information as he reports:

Mother of God, Theotokos,must have been seized upon in equal

larly as an ascetic model honored for her virginity and purity.88In

coursewith a man,"94 and for bearingfalse witness to Pilatethat "itis

focusing primarily on Isaiah's prophecies concerning the "virginal"

This homily, probably pronounced on the feast of the Memory of

Christian invention, unrelated to "real"Jews and designed merely to

OF A GATHERINGOF BONES":MARY, THEJEWS,AND

107. A fine example of the latter is pseudo-Theophilus of Alexandria, Homily on the

demonstrates instead her body's healing power. Jephonias, having

118. See, for example,Wright,"Departure,".r (Syr)and 134-35 (Eng).

(Eng); Maximillian Enger, ,_1I I a

by Helena.126Likewise these Dormition narratives also evoke the

attempt to rebuild the Temple, the Coptic Historyof the Churchreports

Similar sentiments are expressed in another, recently "discovered"

Presumably, such adherence to the Jewish law led the Sabbatians

137. t_. icu. ,_rlof ,o.a Q2l9icn

contemporary rabbinic literature, where many are explicitly con-

Indeed, this remains an important question: is there any historical

146. Jeremias, Heiligengraber,142; see also below.

problematic.152Nevertheless, despite the lack of a direct relation with

158. McCane, "Jews, Christians, and Burial," 202-13.

Judaizing Sabbatians of Moschus's dialogue are said to have re-

165. Simon, Verus Israel, 140.

170. Smith Lewis, Apocrypha,ca (Syr) and 40 (Eng).

they also perpetuate certain Christian stereotypes that were impor-

171. Simon, VerusIsrael,98-107.

friend of the empire, and not as a movement whose founder was a

174. Simon, Verus Israel, 118-19.

that took place in the wake of Constantine's "conversion." The em-

the seventh-century Persian conquest of Palestine, in which a Jewish

firm Christian reports of Jewish involvement in Persia's defeat of the

Unquestionably, this statue of a beautiful virgin that Zerubbabel

187. Sefer Zerubbabel(Levi, "L'Apocalypse" [1914], 136; Himmelfarb, "Sefer Zerubbabel,"

cities under siege or armies in battle.190Heraclius, who is almost cer-

190. Himmelfarb,"SeferZerubbabel,"69, 82 n. 11;Levi, "SeferZerubbabeI"(1920),60. See

Virgin's characterwith allegations of her sexual impurity. In response

193. See the discussion in Wilken, Land CalledHoly, 83-100.

theirfear of the power of her relics.Moreimportantly,however, this

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