Islam, Judeo-Christianity and Byzantine Iconoclasm

Abstract

This Chapter argues that Byzantine Iconoclasm was a response to the rise of Islam. That the evidence for the role of Islam in the genesis of Iconoclasm can, in fact, be refined and extended is shown in due course. Islam made Judeo-Christianity a polemically viable position, and accordingly the Judeo-Christians came out of hiding and began to recruit. The Judeo-Christians possessed knowledge of Christianity which the Jews themselves had not enjoyed for centuries, while at the same time they were sufficiently close to the Jews for knowledge to be exchanged between them. The case for the survival of the Judeo-Christian tradition thus rests entirely on the Judeo-Christian writings, in particular the account preserved by 'Abd al-Jabbar'. More-over, there is an anonymous author who combined the usual Judeo-Christian argument that Jesus was a Jew with an unusual insistence on the contention that Jesus endorsed retaliation.

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