Te Byzantine Jewish Other Nicholas de Lange University of Cambridge En tant que peuple, les Juifs sont condamnés; c’est leur fonction. 1 Te Jew as Other Te Jew is perhaps the obvious case of the Byzantine Other. Te Byzantine Church made the otherness of the Jews a prominent part of its own self-identifcation and indeed its ideology. Byzantine Christians were encouraged, through liturgy, preaching, images, and texts, to view the Jews as alien, hateful, treacherous, antagonistic; in fact, as the inveterate and radical enemies of the whole Christian project. 2 Tis fact may seem so self-evident as not to require further investigation. In this essay I propose to explore some of the further questions raised by the otherness of the Jews. Leaving aside the theological issues, I should like to consider some of the real-life questions raised by the presence within Byzantium of a sometimes substantial Jewish minority. I have written a good deal over the years about this minority, its sense of Byzantine and Jewish identity, its distinctive culture, and its relationship with the Christian majority. 3 I shall attempt here to draw together some of the main 1 G. Dagron, “Judaïser,” TM 11 (1991) [reprinted in Juifs et chrétiens en Orient byzantin, ed. G. Dagron and V. Déroche (Paris, 2010), with the same pagination]: 359–380, at 361. 2 See most recently B. G. Bucur, “Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in Byzantine Hymnography: Exegetical and Teological Contextualization,” St Vladimir’s Teological Quarterly 61 (2017): 39–60. 3 Particularly relevant: N. de Lange, “Jews and Christians in the Byzantine Empire: Problems and Prospects,” in Christianity and Judaism, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1992), 15–32; idem, “Hebrews, Greeks or Romans? Jewish Identity in Byzantium,” in Strangers to Temselves: Te Byzantine Outsider. Papers from the Tirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, ed. D. C. Smythe (Aldershot, 2000), 105–118; idem, “Can We Speak of Jewish Orthodoxy in Byzantium?,” in Byzantine Orthodoxies: Papers from the Tirty-Sixth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Durham, 23–25 March 2002, ed. A. Louth and A. Casiday (Aldershot, 2006), 167–178; idem, “Refections on Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. R. S. Boustan et al.