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complex identities and challenge oversimplified, presentist labels, the
guiding principle I try to follow throughout the book in my choice of
labels (when the choice is indeed mine) is to use appellations that I
believe would have made sense to either the subject or the subject’s
neighbors, and ideally both.^85
Beyond the way in which my study bears on the historicity of the
arab Jew concept, I raise it here for another important reason as well.
the recent debate regarding the arab Jew has served as a welcome call
for greater self- consciousness in how we employ labels. as I argue in
this book, the ways in which people labeled others tell us something
about how they viewed and understood these individuals and groups.
this contention can be no more correct for the subjects of our schol-
arship than it is for the scholars who write about them. I thus pro-
ceed with caution but also with the conviction that so long as we are
aware of the challenge, we need not be paralyzed by it. as I hope this
book demonstrates, a new and fascinating view of this early encounter
emerges from a critical, self- aware reading of the sources.
(^85) Compare this discussion to the recent scholarship on the origins of the term Chris-
tian and the problematic distinction between Christian and Jew. See, e.g., townsend,
“Who Were the First christians?”