256 A History of Judaism
concern that such pagan imagery might dilute the Judaism of
worshippers.^22
The religious response of Jews to Christianity was similarly varied.
Some Jews seem to have contrived to ignore Christianity altogether
even at times and places where its influence might have been expected
to be particularly strong. Thus the rabbis who compiled the Palestin-
ian Talmud in the fourth century exhibit no awareness whatsoever,
when discussing the religious customs of non- Jews, that since the
320s the province of Palestine had been endowed with state funds by
emperors from Constantine onwards intent on creating a new Christian
Holy Land. On the other hand, it has been reasonably surmised that
Jewish Bible interpretation in late antiquity was at least sometimes
engaged in a covert dispute with Christian understanding of the same
scriptural passages. This is particularly likely in interpretations of
the proof texts used by Christians to bolster their own faith, although
most explicit evidence for such disputes comes from Christian sources
such as Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, in which Trypho
is portrayed as taking issue with Justin’s interpretation of the proph-
ecy in Isaiah that ‘the young woman is with child and shall bear a
son.’ Justin, in accordance with the Gospel of Matthew, took the pas-
sage to refer to Christ and Mary, but Trypho insisted that the son
mentioned in the passage was Hezekiah and that Justin was wrong to
understand the word for ‘young woman’ (alma in Hebrew) as ‘virgin’.
Elsewhere in Justin’s Dialogue, Trypho objects to the claim of Chris-
tians to be Israel, and it is probably the same Christian claim to be the
true Israel which is confronted polemically in Song of Songs Rabbah,
a midrash redacted around the beginning of the seventh century in
Palestine:
The straw, the chaff and the stubble engaged in a controversy. This one
says: ‘For my sake was the land sown’ and that one says: ‘For my sake was
the land sown.’ Said the wheat to them: ‘Wait until the harvest comes and
we shall see for whom the field was sown.’ When harvest time came and
all go to the threshing floor, the landowner went out to thresh, the chaff
was scattered to the wind; he took the straw and threw it to the ground;
he took the stubble and burnt it; he took the wheat and piled it into a stack
and everybody kissed it. In like manner the nations, these say: ‘We are
Israel and for our sake was the world created.’ And these say: ‘We are
Israel and for our sake was the world created.’ Says Israel to them: ‘Wait
until the day of the Holy One, blessed be He, and we shall know for whom