CONFERENCE: "Rabbinic Narrative in the Jewish-Christian Encounter: New Approaches"

The Yale Program in Jewish Studies is pleased to host a conference that examines how Christian Hebraists received and incorporated the wealth of narrative traditions scattered throughout the rabbinic texts they so meticulously studied. By bringing together specialists in Christian Hebraism, medieval narrative, Jewish-Christian polemic, and broader patterns of interfaith cultural transmission, we aim to develop a more comprehensive understanding of cultural transmission across religious boundaries in the medieval West.

Scholarship on Christian Hebraism has generated valuable insights about the evolution of Christian biblical interpretation, the movement of Hebrew manuscripts, and the borders of the Jewish and Christian scholarly spheres. This research has focused on the technical linguistic aspects of this exchange. Scholars have illuminated most notably how medieval Christian scholars utilized Jewish exegetical techniques as well as Hebrew lexical and grammatical works to interpret scripture’s literal meaning. Building on this foundation, our conference draws attention to the narrative dimensions of the Hebrew texts that Christian scholars incorporated into their tradition 

This approach is inspired by emerging understandings of Jewish-Christian entanglement and polemic, which has illuminated the complex dynamics of interfaith encounter, cultural transmission, and ritual practice in medieval society. Various scholars have traced how narratives and other cultural content moved across religious boundaries, particularly in popular and vernacular contexts. The present conference brings these insights into conversation with learned Hebrew and Latinate contexts, exploring how Jewish and Christian narrative traditions embedded themselves within one another’s theological and scholarly canons. 

This one-and-a-half-day conference brings together scholars from the United States and abroad to bridge methodological divides and encourage deeper understanding of inter-religious narrative exchange. It hopes to expand the methodological and evidentiary resources available for analyzing the breadth and depth of cultural interaction between Jewish and Christian textual communities via the movement of manuscripts, everyday interactions, and scholarly encounters.

The conference is organized by Dov Honick (Jewish Studies, Yale University) and Albert Kohn (History, Princeton University).

Conference Schedule:

8:30-9 AM - Breakfast 

9:00–10:30 AM - Session One

People: Rabbinic Authorities in Christian Discourse

• Chair: Ra'anan Boustan (Yale University)
• Ryan Szpiech (University of Michigan) - ‘The Confession of the Litigant is Like One Hundred Witnesses’: Contrary Trends in the Christian Reception of Rabbinical Sources
• Darcy Chanin (Princeton University) - Reading Rabbi Solomon in Nicholas of Lyra’s Postilla super Cantica Cantorum
• Dov Honick (Yale University) - The Rabbis Who Knew Too Much: Intercession, Exile, and the Polemical Afterlives of Rabbinic Holy Men

10:30–11:00 AM – Coffee Break

11:00–12:30 PM – Session Two

Sources: Rabbinic Texts and Manuscript Culture

• Chair: Shira Eliassian (Yale University)
• Micha Perry (University of Haifa) - Practical Hebraism: Everyday Christian Engagement with Hebrew in Medieval Practical Documents
• Lorraine Enlow (Yale University) - Hidden in Plain Sight: Rabbinic Authority in the Manuscript Culture of Medieval Christian Hebraists in England

12:30–1:30 PM – Lunch

1:45–2:45 – Beinecke Manuscript Session

3:00–4:30 PM – Session Three

Stories: Narrative, Form, and Interreligious Co-Production

• Chair: Sarit Kattan Gribetz (Yale University)
• Annabelle Fuchs (University of Haifa) - Who Died First – Abraham or Moses? Narrative Form and the Changing Status of Story in Jewish–Christian Context
• Albert Kohn (Princeton University) - Between Rabbi and Saint: The Life of Gamaliel/Gamliel among Jews and Christians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 

4:30–5:00 PM – Response and Closing Remarks

• Yaacob Dweck (Princeton University)