ABSTRACT
Extensive recent discussion of the Jewish presence and Jewish representation in early modern England has generally bypassed Thomas Nashe's Christ's Teares over Jerusalem. The Jewishness of Christ has almost always been accepted, albeit with considerable difficulty and complex maneuvering, in Christian theology and historiography. In Christ's Teares, Jews are represented primarily as actors in a continuing eschatological drama, in which contemporary London has replaced Roman-era Jerusalem, and contemporary Londoners have replaced Jerusalem's Jews. The evil Londoners are now asking for it, as did their predecessors in Jerusalem. The chapter focuses on Christ's Teares can and should be included in the constellation of "Jewish" representations in the English literature of its place and time. In Christ's Teares, the hardness of Jerusalem's Jews makes them practically indistinguishable from the stones of the city they inhabit. While Luther found Jewish obstinacy provoking, then, his anti-Semitic pamphlets nevertheless contain no self-exposure comparable to that of Christ's Teares.
