Byzantines and Jews: some recent work on early Byzantium

The publication of David Olster’s book, Roman Defeat, Christian Response and the Literary Construction of the Jew (Philadelphia 1994) marks a further stage in the recent tendency to draw attention to the role played by Jews in the events of the early seventh century. As several other scholars have done, Olster draws attention to what seems to have been a heightened awareness of Jews and Judaism by the Christian majority in Byzantium in this period and during the next century or so. A number of contemporary examples survive of the Christian anti-Jewish literary dialogue form familiar in Greek since the second century AD; what is perhaps even more striking, anti-Jewish comments and whole passages on this topic also feature in many other kinds of writing in the period, even when they have no obvious relevance to the topic. Iconophile texts are pervaded by such material, in particular the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea in AD 787, and Jewish subject matter also appears in visual art. This review combines comments on Olster’s book with a wider consideration of the topic itself and of other recent publications touching on it; it also asks why the subject became so pressing to contemporary Christians, and makes some suggestions about the interpretation of the relevant material.