Projects
The aim of this project is to trace the appearance of antisemitic and anti-Jewish charges – once voiced in specific local and temporal contexts – into modern times where again they are (re-)voiced in specific local and temporal contexts. One part of the project examines the ancient origins and institutional structures of anti-Jewish hostility and will shed new light on the evidence. The other part will focus on the reception, or rather the conscious use of ancient source material by modern scholars. It will show how modern scholarship has drawn on both pagan and Christian traditions when constructing the field now described as “Ancient Antisemitism.” Hence, the different streams of antisemitism come together in modern antisemitism and scholarship on ancient antisemitism, since such a field only took shape in the late 19th century, we show how modern frameworks still merge different historical streams of antisemitism — shaping both public discourse and academic research to this day.
Projektleitung
Dr. A. Judith Göppinger
E-Mail: agnes.goeppinger@uni-wuerzburg.de
project duration: 2026-2031
Projektbeschreibung
The first part of the project consists of a comprehensive re-examination of the well-known source material on anti-Jewish attitudes from the 4th century BCE to the 5th century CE. Building on Sartre’s observation that “if the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would need to invent him,” our approach shifts the analytical focus: rather than studying ancient Jews through hostile evidence, we investigate the authors, communities, and political conditions that produced such accusations. This change of perspective helps to reveal the contextual differences between local and broader imperial dynamics. For instance, documented expulsions of Jews stem exclusively from the city of Rome, whereas no such “official” decrees are transmitted for the empire as a whole or specific parts of the empire. Examining such distinctions allows us to trace how specific actors transmitted and reshaped anti-Jewish motifs, and to investigate if and how pagan and early Christian traditions gradually converged into what later became classical Christian anti-Judaism. The associated PhD projects contribute to this first research area and focus exclusively on Antiquity.
The second part of the project, led by the research group leader, explores how this ancient material was consciously used — or misused — in scholarship and public discourse between the 1870s and the 1920s. By examining different academic disciplines and their methodological frameworks, the project moves beyond the simple observation that modern research was partially antisemitic. Instead, it reconstructs the scholarly networks and methodological assumptions through which antisemitic perspectives were embedded in early “Ancient Antisemitism” studies. Distilling recurring motifs across disciplines will allow us to develop a more complete and differentiated account of antisemitism in antiquity — one that includes its long-lasting effects on modern research and public debates through the role of modern scholarship and its ‘invention’ of this research field (e.g., a panel on “Ancient Antisemitism” at the 2025 SBL Annual Meeting). This structural analysis also allows to shed light on Jewish scholarship and its responses to exclusionary practices in Classical Studies. The emergence of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, for example, is closely tied to the refusal to integrate Jewish history into established fields of the Altertumswissenschaften.
