Development and contexts of the Syriac Christian Anti-Jewish Literature in North Mesopotamia (5th‒ early 6th century)

本研究项目着重分析了5-6世纪初北美索不达米亚地区叙利亚反犹太文学的历史背景和发展趋势。所讨论的争辩文学具有特别重要的意义，因为经典的叙利亚语与犹太巴比伦阿拉姆语在语言上非常接近。然而，到目前为止，在学术界几乎完全忽视了这一点。该项目的主要来源是一个语料库，由Narsai(+C.500)和Jacob of Sarug(+521)创作，部分已于2017年出版(Jacob)，部分仍可在手稿(Narsai)中找到，以及这两位作者的Advs.Judaeos作品，这些作品早已为人所知，但仍未被研究。该项目的目的是研究在早期叙利亚叙事中发现的反犹太母题的接受情况，如Narsai和Jacob的新诗句说教中的Addai教义、Protonike传奇或Kyriakos传奇，并调查这些说教是否在后来叙利亚反犹太文本的发展中发挥了作用(例如，叙利亚传统的《玛丽亚经》或《叙利亚朱利安罗曼史》)。这些过程的背景以及Narsai和Jacob的Advs.Judaeos作品将澄清这些作者在哪些情况下与犹太宗教、犹太基督徒、非犹太人犹太主义者的代表或被争议地称为“犹太人”的基督教异端分子有关。还应调查他们的争论在多大程度上依赖于基督教国家对犹太人的宗教政治和意识形态。最后，将讨论两位作者的基督教忏悔(“hysis m”[Jacob]和“nestoriism”[Narsai])以及他们各自的环境(拜占庭帝国[Jacob]和萨萨尼亚帝国[Narsai])之间可能存在的干扰问题，以及他们对犹太人的态度。这个项目的新奇之处在于，作为一个整体，解决了5-6世纪初叙利亚反犹太文学被学者忽视的大量文学作品，并寻找这一现象的可信的历史背景。通过这样做，申请人打算澄清一个几乎不为人知的方面的犹太和基督教的关系在晚期古代。该项目的结果也将与对叙利亚反穆斯林争议性文献的解释相关，这些文献严重依赖于反犹太文献。研究成果应在若干期刊出版物上发表，并可合并成一本书。

This research project focuses on the analysis of the historical contexts and the development trends of the Syriac anti-Jewish literature in North Mesopotamia in the 5th‒ early 6th century. The polemical literature in question is of special importance because of the linguistic proximity of the classic Syriac to the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Nevertheless, it has been almost completely neglected in the scholarship so far. The main sources of the project are a corpus of the unknown verse homilies by Narsai (+ c. 500) and Jacob of Sarug (+ 521), which have been partly published in 2017 (Jacob) and partly remain available in the manuscripts (Narsai) as well as the Adversus Judaeos works by the same two authors, which have been known for a long time but still remain unstudied. The purpose of the project is to study the reception of the anti-Jewish motifs found in the earlier Syriac narratives, such as the Teaching of Addai, the Protonike Legend or the Kyriakos Legend in the new verse homilies by Narsai and Jacob, and to investigate whether these homilies played any role in the development of later Syriac anti-Jewish texts (e.g. the Syriac tradition of the Transitus Mariae or the Syriac Julian Romance). The contextualization of these processes and the Adversus Judaeos works by Narsai and Jacob shall clarify in which cases these authors had to do with representatives of the Jewish religion, Jewish Christians, Gentile Judaizers or with Christian heretics polemically called "Jews". It shall be also investigated to what extent their polemics depended on the religious politics and ideology of the Christian state with respect to the Jews. Finally, it shall be addressed the question about possible interferences between the Christian confession of the two authors ("hysism" [Jacob] and "nestorianism" [Narsai]) as well as their respective surroundings (Byzantine Empire [Jacob] and Sasanian Empire [Narsai, from 489]) on the one hand, and their attitude towards the Jews, on the other. The novelty of this project lies in addressing as a unity the scholarly neglected, vast literary production of the Syriac anti-Jewish literature in the 5th ‒ early 6th century, and in searching for plausible historical contexts of this phenomenon. By doing so, the applicant intends to elucidate an almost unknown facet of the Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity. The project results will also be relevant for the interpretation of the Syriac anti-Muslim polemic literature, which heavily relies on the anti-Jewish one. The research results shall be made available in a number of journal publications which can be combined in a book.