Judaism in Late Antiquity

This bibliographic essay explores the works of scholars who have used ḥadīth collections in their research on early Muslim-Jewish interactions. One of the main issues of this field has been the question of Jewish influence on ḥadīths, either by way of discussions between Jews and Muḥammad and his companions or through early Jewish converts to Islam. Even within the Islamic tradition itself, it is acknowledged that discrete Jewish traditions have been embedded within the ḥadīth, traditions which are sometimes referred to as Isrāʾīlīyāt. In addition to these, there are also ḥadīths which describe Jews and Jewish practices, usually in a polemical context. The more controversial question among scholars has been that of whether the structure of Jewish oral law influenced the formation of the ḥadīth, and I provide a survey of developments in scholarly thinking on that issue. I then turn to the impact of the ḥadīth on medieval Jews themselves and discuss the views of scholars who have argued that the medieval Islamic science of ḥadīth study had an impact on how Jews viewed their own religious tradition. Finally, I look at contemporary Islamic writings on Jews and ḥadīths.

The present article is the first comprehensive study on the
literary corpus which illustrates the distinctions and oppositions between
Christianity and Judaism since the gradual separation of the two
religions. This corpus was formed over a long period of time (approximately
from the 2nd to the 17th century) and it consists of several hundred
texts composed in various languages (Greek, Latin, Hebrew;
vernacular languages), historical contexts and very diverse cultural milieus.
It adopts various literary forms, predominantly that of the
dialogue. Certain questions persist throughout all these centuries (Law;
the nature and identity of the Messiah; Israel’s place in the divine plan),
but various historical, intellectual and religious transformations distinguishing each of them enrich the study of these texts. Beginning with
the 10th century, the confrontation became truly reciprocal in its  literary
translation. In the Christian West, a major Jewish Hebrew
work – analyzed herein – presented itself as a response to the Christian arguments. In both
traditions, this new reciprocity included a theoretical reflection on the
conditions of the controversy and on the validity of different types
of arguments. The analysis of such a corpus should take into account its
diversity while avoiding to rely on distinctions (whether chronological, linguistic or even religious) which do not account for its unity. It should also be
conducted without any polemical or apologetic concerns.

Dans cette présentation, les textes rédigés en différentes langues, à différentes époques, dans différents milieux et dans différents contextes, par des juifs ou des chrétiens sont délibérément considérés comme un ensemble. Il s’agit de montrer que, tout en tenant compte de ces paramètres, l’étude générale de cette littérature ne peut se faire que selon une méthode respectueuse de sa spécificité (nombreux phénomènes d’emprunts et d’échanges, qui dépassent les différents clivages). Le plan adopté dans l’article est le suivant : 1) Description du corpus : langues, auteurs et anonymes, époques, contextes historiques, culturels et religieux, titres, genres (commentaires bibliques, homélies, apologétique, philosophie, poésie liturgique ou profane, lettres, théâtre, historiographie, ouvrages doctrinaux). 2) Caractéristiques du corpus : éléments de variété et de continuité (forme, structure, contenu, sources et méthodes de l’argumentation ; style et tonalité) 3) Réflexion méthodologique pour son analyse : définition du genre (liens entre apologétique et polémique, etc.) ; éléments à prendre en compte pour cette analyse.

This is a research project completed for the course "Origins of Rabbinic Law" (prof. S. J.D. Cohen), Harvard University, Spring 2007.
It has not been updated or edited since then, and may contain errors. But hopefully it can serve as a resource for anyone investigating the subject.