6. Internal Frontiers between Jews, Christians, Muslims

This chapter looks at two “internal” frontiers of the Jesus cult. The first is the border between the Muslim and Christian subcults in the growing Ottoman Empire. Christians converted to Islam, even as both traditions fused together at a level beneath formal identity, as in Bektashism and Hurufism. Muslims used Christian baptism as a deodorant, or recognized the Persian mystic Fazlallah Astarabadi as Jesus, or claimed Jesus as a prophet equal to Mohammad. The second frontier divided Jews and Christians in Iberia—a border within a Christian society. In the Disputation at Tortosa, Christians seeking to convert Jews stressed the Bible's identification of Jesus as the messiah as well as the rational necessity of his incarnation. The Jewish leaders' counterarguments were often oriented towards the plain ken: Christians used an err-riddled translation of the Hebrew Bible, ignored historical context, and too quickly abandoned the literal meaning for the figurative. Taking the plain ken to history, the defenders of Judaism argued that material success, the kind the Jews lacked, was no guarantee of truth. Both frontiers witnessed social unrest and personal tragedy.