'Nothing in Our Histories': A Postcolonial Perspective on Twelfth-Century Christian Hebraism

This essay examines how twelfth-century Christian Hebraism, as an aspect of biblical exegesis, contributed to producing Christian knowledge of the Jewish Other. It argues that Christian Hebraism was symptomatic of strategies central to the formation of Christian identity, a process to which Jews were essential not only as foils, but as collaborators. An alternative approach to Christian Hebraism, its contributions to a volatile Christian identity, and its status as both a cause and an effect of changing relations between Jews and Christians in the period, is demonstrated by the application of postcolonial discourse analysis to the psalms commentary by Herbert of Bosham.