ABSTRACT
The study of Jewish–Christian polemics was transformed by Jacob Katz, who began to investigate the role of polemics in the context of medieval Jewish life. While the traditional narrative stressed the emergence of Christianity out of Judaism, and postulated a continuity between premodern polemics and modern anti-Semitism, newer research points to the impact of Christianity on rabbinic and medieval Judaism. Since Jews and Christians shared the Hebrew Bible as one of their foundational texts, polemics based on scriptural evidence are very old. One of the earliest and most popular anti-Christian works is Toledot Yeshu, an anti-Gospel that tells the story of the life and death of Jesus from an anti-Christian perspective. In the Middle Ages, evangelization among the Jews expressed itself first in forced sermons, often held in synagogues, and then in the form of forced public debates between Christian and Jewish leaders that forced the latter to engage with Christian arguments, and to respond in public.
