5
one might hope. It is easy to forget that Jews and Christians talked to each other about these issues for
three centuries before the appearance of AZ, ST and TA. One should not be surprised if the use of certain
texts and arguments may have developed into an expected form. Since surviving material from JP is so
scant, and since our authors give no evidence that they are consciously quoting JP, a healthy caution
should be advised on dogmatic decisions concerning the use of JP in later dialogues. The material from
the papyrus is so fragmentary that it is still too early to posit its role as a source for the later dialogues.
One additional matter should be noted. If it could be established that JP was used as a source by the later
dialogues, it would certainly work against the idea that these dialogues represented any actual Jewish-
Christian discussion that was conducted. And that brings us to that very question.
Do these dialogues reproduce with any accuracy actual discussion between Jews and Christians
during this period? To this question, scholarship over the years has generally answered with a resounding
"no." It is unnecessary to cite all the evidence since it is from so many writers.
10
Most writers see the
function of these dialogues as being apologies to all unbelievers or as catechetical manuals for instruction
of (mostly Gentile) converts. On the other hand, one of the most prominent writers on this literature, A.
Lukyn Williams, argued effectively that the dialogues did grow out of actual real-life discussion between
individuals from the two communities.
11
The language of another scholar, Marcel Simon, is even more
eloquent:
An artificial form may well conceal material drawn from life. The Jew in the dialogue often cuts
a poor figure: but does Plato in his dialogues represent the interlocutors of Socrates in any better
light? There is nothing to compel the conclusion that this Jew is merely a matter of convention; it
shows rather that the author puts into his mouth such arguments that will allow the spokesman for
Christianity an easy victory. It still also has to be explained why anti- Jewish of this kind was
produced uninterruptedly to the end of the middle ages. Do men rage so persistently against a
corpse? Or are they such slaves of habit that they will go on producing a type of literature that
has lost, centuries earlier, its justification and purpose?
12
10
Andrist, e.g., has an excellent summary of arguments against AZ serving as an accurate report of events, 429-447,
506-518. Much of this could also be applied to the other dialogues.
11
Williams, Adversus Judaeos, vii-ix, xv-xvii.
12
Marcel Simon, Verus Israel, Tr. by H. McKeating (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 140.