A key strategy of persuasion employed by our Jewish polemicists was the advancing of the widest possible range of issues and arguments. Since their objective was to alert Jews to every possible Christian thrust and to provide responses to each, broad and exhaustive coverage was necessary. At the same time, this strategy posed a significant danger as well – the danger of losing sight of the forest for the trees. Thus, our Jewish polemicists balanced their commitment to inclusivity with recognition of the need to prioritize – to highlight more dangerous Christian thrusts, to isolate the key issue or issues in contention between Christians and Jews, or to propose a set of criteria on the basis of which the conflict might be adjudicated.

Our five Jewish authors do in fact project a hierarchical sense of the dangers flowing from the heightened Christian aggressiveness, a perception that some Christian thrusts were more threatening than others. At the same time, they also identify for their readers key issues in contention. Finally and most importantly, they provide the criteria for assessing religious traditions, thereby offering guidance as to why their Jewish readers should remain Jewish. Indeed, underlying the entire polemical enterprise was a commitment to sketching out alternate Christian and Jewish identities – the latter irrational and debased, the former reasonable and dignified.