‘And Their Laws Are Diverse from All People’. Haman’s Protests against the Jews in Targum Sheni to Esther

What can we make of the similarities between the arguments from Targum Sheni, written around the seventh century, and those that appear in early modern Christian descriptions of Jewish customs and ceremonies? Is it possible that there is a link between these texts or between the text of Targum Sheni and early medieval polemical literature? In order to answer these questions it is important to understand the history of Christian writing on Jewish customs and ceremonies and the developments within this genre. In many ways the early medieval and medieval Christian polemical literature against the Jews was not very different from the Christian literature of earlier periods. Altogether the medieval anti-Jewish literature has very few references to Jewish customs and ceremonies. In the ninth century Agobard of Lyon wrote about the laws of ritual slaughter and also about several beliefs concerning God that were based on early Kabbalah books such as Sefer Yetsirah (Book of Creation) and about the anti-Christian text Toledot Yeshu (The life of Jesus) (Bonfil 1986; Schäfer 2011). There are some other later examples of medieval texts that divulge information on customs such as circumcision (Cohen 2001; Cohen 1982, 95; Yerushalmi 1970, 374–376), but it is only in the sixteenth century that Christians start to write systematically on Jewish customs and ceremonies (Deutsch 2012). Therefore it is unlikely that the text of Targum Sheni was based on early medieval Christian polemical literature. Following my discussion above concerning possible sources, I would like to suggest that the list of Jewish anti-Christian ceremonies and customs in Targum Sheni is a unique and in many ways exceptional text in the ChristianJewish polemic. Not only is the argument unprecedented, it is also written by a Jew who probably did not have access to non-Jewish sources (Christian or classical), but wrote from his own mind. In this case it is probable that the author presented the Christian point of view based on his own experience as a practicing Jew. This possibility means that the author tried to adopt and internalize the Christian point of view in order to present a more accurate picture of the Jewish religion as it was viewed by Christians. At the same time he also added another layer to the Christian polemic against the Jews since the text of Targum Sheni is probably the first text that gives a detailed description of the Christian view—or at least of what he thought was the Christian view—on Jewish customs and ceremonies in the context of the Christian-Jewish polemic.