Le traité Adversus Judaeos de Tertullien. Essai sur ses auteurs et ses destinataires

Such dossiers exist about which it is difficult to be final. The arguments on both sides are so opposite, the disquisitions so fine and the debated points so hotly disputed that one is at a loss which side to grant one’s voice. Eventually one pretty often wonders whether it may not be possible to accord or deny all. The debates engaged by historians, philologists and patristicians over Tertullian’s treatise Adversus Judaeos perfectly illustrate the difficulty. Through both its subject-matter and its form, the treatise against the Jews raises even to day a number of questions. For instance, what credit to accord to the apologist’s purpose? Is the work the true account of a dialogue between a Christian and a pagan sympathiser of judaeism or a gross staging in aid of Tertullian’s rhetoric? In other words, is the treatise addressed to the jews, the Christians or even the Pagans? The rhetorical dimension inherent in the works of so vindictive an author as Tertullian leads one to question the text in order to make out its addressee or addressees and by way of consequence its aim or aims. Does the African author’s treatise Adversus Judaeos reflect a disputatio aiming at directly convincing the Jewish people of its errors or is it a discourse with a domestic bias seeking to comfort the faith of Christians and divert them from judaism? Lastly on a more formal plane, is the whole treatise to be attributed to the sole Tertullian or were the last five chapters added up without his knowledge? If chapters 9 to 14 are not under the Carthaginian’s signature, do they falsify the interpretation and general meaning of the treatise

Ethnology · Humanities · Sociology · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Studies and Legal History · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Philosophy

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