The Polemic of Nestor the Priest, Qissat Mujadalat al-Usquf and Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer: Introduction, Annotated Translations, and Commentary.

• Author: Reeves, John C.
• Position: Review

By DANIEL J. LASKER and SARAH STROUMSA. Two volumes. Jerusalem: BEN-ZVI INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE EAST, 1996. Pp. 205 [English]; 142 [Hebrew]. $70.

The past twenty-five years have witnessed a remarkable renascence of interest in the checkered history of Jewish-Christian disputational literature. Much of this activity has been fueled by renewed examinations of the rhetorical and political strategies employed by the medieval Church in its attacks against Judaism. Relatively little attention has been devoted by late twentieth-century scholarship to the parallel phenomenon of Jewish literary assault upon the integrity of Christianity. While Jewish criticism of Christian beliefs and doctrines is sometimes noted in patristic apologetic (cf. Justin, Aphrahat), and more vituperative censure occasionally surfaces (usually disguised) in talmudic literature, the production of sustained argumentative treatises by Jewish authors against Christianity does not begin in earnest until the final centuries of the first millennium of the Common Era, a time which marks the appearance of Jewish rationalist critics like Da ud b. Marwan al-Muqammis, Saadia Gaon, and Ya qub al-Qirqisani, as well as caricatures like Toledot Yeshu. It seems no accident that the initial production of such literature should take place under Islam, for Muslim critiques of both Judaism and Christianity had flourished for several centuries, and Arabophone Jewish polemicists demonstrably profited from the lessons imparted by these prototypes.

The Qissat Mujadalat al-Usquf ("Account of the Disputation of the Priest"), or its Hebrew textual avatar Sefer Nestor ha-Komer ("Book of Nestor the Priest"), may very well be "the earliest specifically Jewish anti-Christian treatise extant" (vol. 1, p. 14). Taking the form of an epistle to his erstwhile co-religionists from a Christian priest who has converted to Judaism, the treatise loosely assembles and presents a series of arguments designed to deride Christianity. It features frequent quotations of biblical proof-texts, tirelessly exposes to ridicule the primary tenets of the Christian religion - the divinity of Jesus, the doctrine of the Trinity, the concept of incarnation - and calls attention to various contradictions in Christian scriptures. The work is extant in both Arabic and Hebrew versions, with both linguistic traditions displaying a great deal of textual fluidity. One Judaeo-Arabic manuscript of the work was...