“Why have you come?” Emotionality and Jewish-Christian sameness in an Old Icelandic Theophilus fragment (AM 655 XIX)

Abstract

This article examines a potential function of Jews in Old Norse literature by examining a fragmented version of the Theophilus legend as preserved in AM 655 XIX. Rather than focusing on Jews as merely othered by medieval Christians or made absent by their communal nonpresence in medieval Iceland, I follow Adrienne Williams Boyarin in emphasizing the importance of sameness in medieval Christian thinking about Jews. I demonstrate that the emotive qualities of even the fragmented legend evoke a presence and a sameness between the text’s Jewish demonologist, the titular Christian Theophilus, and the Christian audience. This article shows that, though medieval Iceland did not have a “real” Jewish community, Iceland reproduced and maintained typical medieval Christian attitudes towards Jews that underlined sameness as key to both the cross-religious relationship and Christian self-identity at large.