To Explain the First Crusade, Jews and Christians Turned to the Bible

Here and elsewhere, English is based on Shlomo Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders:  The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), but with many adjustments. This quote appears on p. 23. The pejorative reference to Jesus derives from the Jewish response to the virgin birth claim, namely, that Mary got pregnant outside of wedlock.

See discussion in Daniel Sperber, “פרק יב: מנהגי אבילות בתקופת ספירת העומר” [Ch. 12: Mourning Practices in the Period of the Counting of the Omer] in מנהגי ישראל: מקורות ותולדות [Jewish Customs: Their Origin and History] (Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook, 1989), 1.101–111 [108–110].

Robert Chazan, God, Humanity and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 26, 28.

Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 8. Paul E. Chevedden, “Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Goal of the Eastern Crusade: ‘To liberate Jerusalem’ or ‘To liberate the Church of God’?” Annuarium historiae conciliorum 37, (2005): 57-108; Idem, “Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence,” Annuarium historiae conciliorum 37, (2005): 253–322.

Nirmal Dass, The Deeds of the Franks and other Jerusalem-bound Pilgrims: The Earliest Chronicle of the First Crusades (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011), 2.

Robert Chazan (God, Humanity, and History, 211) already demonstrated the common objectives and narrative style of the Latin Gesta Francorum and the Hebrew Mainz Anonymous. In this piece, we will look at the commonalities between Robert the Monk’s Historia Hierosolymitana and the Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson composed some twenty years after. 

Chazan, God, Humanity, and History, 162.

Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders, 21. The phrase plays off the verse in Deuteronomy reflecting on the curses in chapter 28:

^{דברים כט:כ} וְהִבְדִּילוֹ יְ־הוָה לְרָעָה מִכֹּל שִׁבְטֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כְּכֹל אָלוֹת הַבְּרִית הַכְּתוּבָה בְּסֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה.

^{Deut 29:20} YHWH will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for misfortune, in accordance with all the sanctions of the covenant recorded in this book of Teaching.

The chronicler expresses that the crusades went even beyond the curses in Deuteronomy.

Carol Sweetenham, Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005), 79. The translations used archaic English for the biblical text, which has been modernized for ease of reading.

Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders, 22.

Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders, 23. Reciting the prayer known as the Shma has long been the ideal final words for Jews.

Soloveitchik states that a “process of reinterpretation began, of justifying the past in light of and by means of, the intellectual tools of the present.” Haym Soloveitchik, “Religious Law and Change:  The Medieval Ashkenazic Example,” AJS Review 12, No. 2 (1987): 211.

As Nirmal Dass writes “[A] book of history arose from, participated in, and elaborated on, the tradition of historiography that included… the Bible.” See Nirmal Dass, The Deeds of the Franks and other Jerusalem-bound Pilgrims: The Earliest Chronicle of the First Crusades (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011), 2.

This fits with the general trend, already in the New Testament and certainly in later Christian interpretation, to read passages from the Hebrew Bible as prophetic. See discussion in Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (HarperOne, 2020). 

Carol Sweetenham, Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005), 111-112. The translations used archaic English for the biblical text, which has been modernized for ease of reading.

The extensive quoting from Psalms may indicate some indirect influence of Christian biblical exegesis, in which Psalms held a central place, but is more likely rooted in the tradition of Jewish liturgy, which borrows liberally from Psalms.

The verse actually reads עֲבָדֶיךָ “Your servants.”

English is based on Shlomo Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders:  The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 47-49, but with many adjustments.

For more on Peter Abelard’s school, see David Edward Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: the Influence of Abelard's Thought in the Early Scholastic Period, Vol. 14, Cambridge University Press, 1969. Signer writes that “Hugh’s overarching concern with scriptural hermeneutics was to underline the importance of careful reading of scripture as the basis for theological reflection and meditation.” Signer emphasizes that for Hugh, all biblical study needed to be grounded in the “literal or historical sense,” and that, by reading the “historical” section of the Bible, the reader would “acquire the ‘means through which to admire God’s deeds.”.

Signer argues that narrative, which is “the construction of story, is central to defining the self and, by extension, one’s community.” Michael Signer, “Restoring the Narrative: Jewish and Christian Exegesis in the Twelfth Century,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry Walfish, and Joseph Ward (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003), 70-82 [p. 70].

Robert Harris states “...[B]iblical exegetes…during the twelfth-century Renaissance…“invent[ed]” the notion of literature through their contextual reading of biblical composition and their attention to…its literary qualities.” See Robert Harris, “Twelfth-Century Biblical Exegetes and the Invention of Literature”, 311.

Ibid., 71.

Ibid., 72. Rashi and the Victorine scholars sought to balance their respective rabbinic and patristic interpretations of the Bible with the “order of the biblical text.” Ibid., 77.