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"Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī's Treatise against the Jews offers rare and illuminating insight into Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations during the Crusader era, not from the perspective of western Crusaders, but from the frequently neglected viewpoint of the Oriental Orthodox tradition. Bar Ṣalībī, a distinguished hierarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church, lived in a turbulent time of heightened tensions in the Levant. The Treatise against the Jews, which forms part of the corpus of Syriac polemical works, investigates the prejudices of Christians and Jews towards each other during the 12 century AD.This edition and translation is based on all the available manuscripts of the text, accompanied by extensive introductions, notes and commentary as well as studies of its place in the field of Syriac Patristic polemics"--

The legend of Sergius Bahira in the light of Christian apologetics vis-a-vis Islam -- Muslim-Christian confrontation and counterhistory -- The Islamic Bahira -- The apocalypse of Bahira -- Bahira's teachings -- Breaking crosses -- God's word and his spirit-Bahira's christology -- Protection and recognition-Bahira and Q 5:82 -- The physics of heaven -- The Qur'an against Islam -- The legend outside the legend -- Bahira the source -- Bahira the heretic -- Bahira the false witness -- Bahira the victim -- Jewish traditions about Bahira -- Bahira the forecaster -- Concluding discussion -- Texts and translations -- The recensions and the manuscript tradition -- Some characteristics of the recensions -- Textual genealogy -- Manuscripts -- Conspectus siglorum -- Methodological considerations -- The East-Syrian recension -- The West-Syrian recension -- The short Arabic recension -- The long Arabic recension

Lisbeth S. Fried's insightful study investigates the impact of Achaemenid rule on the political power of local priesthoods during the 6th-4th centuries B.C.E. Scholars typically assume that, as long as tribute was sent to Susa, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, subject peoples remained autonomous. Fried's work challenges this assumption. She examines the inscriptions, coins, temple archives, and literary texts from Babylon, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Judah and concludes that there was no local autonomy. The only people with power in the Empire were Persians and their appointees, and this was true for Judah as well. The Judean priesthood achieved its longed-for independence only much later, under the Maccabees