Fantasmi dal passato. Brevi note sui rapporti tra ebrei e cristiani nella letteratura omiletica e agiografica copta, tra costruzione ideologica e falsi bersagli

The homiletic and hagiographic production written in the Coptic language conveys various episodes, encapsulated in wider narrative plots, which have as their object alleged clashes between the Christian and Jewish communities. On closer inspection, however, both the time of composition of these works (5th-8th centuries) and the vagueness of the arguments with which the Jews are accused of opposing orthodoxy reveal that the enemy so vehemently described is actually an unknown one, a sort of ghost that comes from the past, whose religious and liturgical traditions are substantially ignored. In this short article, we will briefly analyse the dossier relating to this “conflict which did not exist,” explaining the cultural and ideological reasons of the construction of such a false target.