Christians and Jews-Some Positive Images
The dean of contemporary Jewish historians, S. W. Baron, has shown that many modern conceptions of Jewish experience in medieval Christian Europe suffer from a fundamental distortion. Writing history was not a natural vocation for medieval Jews; most Jewish historiography was inspired by calamities...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
1986
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1986, Volume: 79, Issue: 1/3, Pages: 236-246 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The dean of contemporary Jewish historians, S. W. Baron, has shown that many modern conceptions of Jewish experience in medieval Christian Europe suffer from a fundamental distortion. Writing history was not a natural vocation for medieval Jews; most Jewish historiography was inspired by calamities that generated the impulse to record and, if possible, to explain. Therefore, most medieval Jewish chronicles are little more than accounts of the massacres and attacks suffered by various communities at different times. The tendency to assume that these historiographical sources present a full picture of reality resulted in what Baron called the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history,” viewing medieval Jewish experience as essentially a succession of tragedies in a vale of tears. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000020502 |
