Byzantine tales of Jewish image desecration: tracing a narrative.

This paper questions the significance and meaning behind the Byzantine legends of Jewish image desecration between the sixth and tenth centuries. The narrative of these tales, as historical and literary phenomena, uncover the uneasy equilibrium between the Christian theologians’ fear of idolatry and their need to gratify the Christian veneration of sacred images. It also confirms how doctrinal issues regarding types of images, their representation, real presence, worship and theological truth could be integrated into fictitious tale narratives about Jews to locate and define the Christian response to images at any given time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]