The Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora wordnomodidaskalosindicates an awareness on the part of the gentile out-
sider that the teaching of the Law was a characteristic function of a Jewish
community.
As in almost all of our Christian evidence, a consciousness of the pres-
ence of Jews in the social and religious spectrum goes together here with
an unabashed hostility. We see this conjunction in a different light again in
a number of letters from the vast surviving correspondence of Isidorus of
Pelusium in the Egyptian delta. He was apparently a presbyter and monk
there, writing in the first half of the fifth century.^50 What is striking in this
context is the number of allusions to explicit Christian-Jewish argument,
and theological dispute. On occasion, the allusions are unspecific—possible
disputes over the doctrine of the Trinity against Sabellians, or Jews on the
one hand, and Arians or Eunomians or pagans on the other (Ep. , ); or he
advises ascholasticusnamed Theodosius to use his sharp tongue against the
madness of the heretics, the superstition of the pagans, or the ignorance of
the Jews (, Evieux [n. ], no. ). But most of the relevant letters
envisage, or respond to, specific disputes conducted by named individuals.
One Adamantius is told to refute the Jew who has been claiming that the
notion of the Incarnation has no biblical foundation, by pointing to the cre-
ation of Eve from Adam’s rib, and of Adam from the earth (, ). Isidorus
also writes directly to a Jew named Benjamin who claims that sacrifice re-
quires blood, and hence that the use of bread for communion is improper,
pointing to the table of Shewbread in the Temple (, ). To Athanasius, a
presbyter, to whom a Jew has claimed that one must keep only to the literal
text of the Bible, Isidorus points to the retelling of the biblical narrative by
Philo and Josephus, with the one’s use of allegory and the other’s of extended
exposition (, ). Another correspondent is agrammaticus, Ophelius, who is
in dispute with a Jew over the interpretation of Deuteronomy :, ‘‘God
will raise up a prophet for you’’ (, ); and yet another is a bishop, also called
Isidorus, who is involved in an argument with a Jew on the still extremely
acute problem mentioned above: did the Bible offer any justification for the
view that the Temple would be restored, or was the situation of Jews on earth
in irrevocable decline? Haggai :–, at any rate, could be shown to offer no
. For the correspondence, in five books, with , letters in all, seePGLXXVIII,
cols. –. For a modern study, see P. Evieux,Isidore de Péluse(), and for an edi-
tion and translation of (so far) nearly of the letters, P. Evieux,Isidore de Péluse, LettresI:
nos. –,andII:nos. –(Sources Chrétiennes, , and , ). Note that
Migne, as cited above, uses a division by book and number, while Evieux’s edition deploys
the continuous numeration found in some manuscripts.