Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
Unreliable Witnesses$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean

Ross Shepard Kraemer

Print publication date: 2010

Print ISBN-13: 9780199743186

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2011

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743186.001.0001

Artemisia of Minorca

Gender and the Conversion of the Jews in the Fifth Century

Chapter:
(p. 153 ) 5 Artemisia of Minorca
Source:
Unreliable Witnesses
Author(s):

Ross Shepard Kraemer (Contributor Webpage)

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743186.003.0005

In this chapter, Kraemer examines an account not considered in her earlier work: the Letter of Severus of Minorca on the Conversion of the Jews, which narrates the conversion of the entire Jewish population of the island in the space of one week in February, 418 c.e. Based on the text’s representation of women as the last to convert, some scholars have read it as a reliable account of Jewish women’s principled resistance to Christianity. Kraemer argues instead that Severus casts Jewish women as the last hold-outs against Christian pressure to convert, not to show us their courage and faithfulness, but rather so that he can depict Christians as models of proper gender relations (with women submissive to men, male bishops, Christ, and God), and Jews as paradigms of gender dis-order (with disobedient women, still the daughters of Eve, whose husbands are unable to control them).

Keywords:   Minorca, Severus, conversion, convert, resistance, Jewish women

Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .