Book contents
- Front Matter
- CONTENTS
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Chapter 1 The problem of Byzantium and the early Islamic conquests
- Chapter 2 The Byzantine Empire in an era of accelerating change
- Chapter 3 Difficulties in devising defenses for Syria
- Chapter 4 The first Muslim penetrations of Byzantine territory
- Chapter 5 Early tests in southern Palestine
- Chapter 6 Problems of cohesion: the battle of Jābiya- Yarmūk reconsidered
- Chapter 7 The brief struggle to save northern Syria and Byzantine Mesopotamia
- Chapter 8 Byzantium, Armenia, Armenians, and early Islamic conquests
- Chapter 9 Controversy and confidence in the seventh-century crisis
- Appendix 1 Author and date of the anti-jewish treatise
- Chapter 10 Elements of failure and endurance
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix 1 - Author and date of the anti-jewish treatise
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Front Matter
- CONTENTS
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Chapter 1 The problem of Byzantium and the early Islamic conquests
- Chapter 2 The Byzantine Empire in an era of accelerating change
- Chapter 3 Difficulties in devising defenses for Syria
- Chapter 4 The first Muslim penetrations of Byzantine territory
- Chapter 5 Early tests in southern Palestine
- Chapter 6 Problems of cohesion: the battle of Jābiya- Yarmūk reconsidered
- Chapter 7 The brief struggle to save northern Syria and Byzantine Mesopotamia
- Chapter 8 Byzantium, Armenia, Armenians, and early Islamic conquests
- Chapter 9 Controversy and confidence in the seventh-century crisis
- Appendix 1 Author and date of the anti-jewish treatise
- Chapter 10 Elements of failure and endurance
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
More than two centuries ago the ecclesiastical historian Jacob Basnage commented in his essay De Anastasio Observatio that some of the Disputatio's arguments would appear unconvincing to contemporary Jews:
He uses various arguments to silence the Jews which are sufficiently solid. However some arguments occur to which a Christian will not easily give assent. For who will conclude that the Christian religion was established by divine providence by the proof that no Christian emperor was delivered into the hands of the barbarians and was slain? Does the author not remember either Valens or Nicephorus who was slain by the Bulgars? Even if it were true, would it effect the consequences against the Jews that he infers from it? It is astonishing that he adds indeed frequently emphasizes that the Gentiles were unable to abolish the image or sign of the cross from the coinage of the Christians although not a few tyrants have tried to do it, however this is the greatest argument for the truth that we hold.
Basnage did not realize that the precise arguments that appeared so strange to him in the eighteenth century were those that provide evidence for the historical context of the treatise, or at least of this section.
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- Information
- Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests , pp. 231 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992