Skip to content
ZAKHORIUM
PTEN

From Moses to Petrus: dialogue and convivencia

Date

1106CE

1106 to c. 1140approximate date

A Jew of al-Andalus baptized at Huesca in 1106, Petrus Alfonsi wrote the Dialogue between Moses and Petrus and mediated Arabic, Jewish and Latin learning. Skarsaune takes him as a central figure of twelfth-century intellectual convivencia, before convert polemicists of the Donin type.

Jewish believers in JesusReligious historyJewish philosophyArt and culture39.8567°N 4.0245°W
1000
1100
1200
1300
1400
1500
Under the Cross: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

5 statements

01Baptism and Dialogue

Petrus Alfonsi (formerly Moses), a Jew of Arabic culture from al-Andalus, was baptized at Huesca in 1106. His Dialogue between the Jewish self 'Moses' and the Christian self 'Petrus' is, for Skarsaune, better informed about Jewish faith and praxis than earlier adversus iudaeos tradition; he also translated from Arabic into Latin and mediated among the three worlds of Iberian convivencia. In this strand, 'Jewish believers in Jesus' means people Jewish by birth or by conversion who, somehow, held Jesus to be their savior. The criterion is ethnicity, not a single package of theology or praxis. That includes both those who kept a Jewish way of life and those who assimilated into mixed communities with a Gentile majority.

02Before Donin

These medieval and early modern converts and conversos are Jews (or descendants of Jews) linked to the Christian faith, in the ethnic sense of this strand. They do not, however, form a continuous 'Nazarene' church from antiquity: they are phenomena of mission, coercion, polemic and social pressure inside Latin Christendom, distinct from the patristic sects. Claiming unbroken communal continuity from ancient Nazarenes to contemporary Messianic Judaism is a fragile position. What historiography supports more securely is the recurrence, across centuries, of Jews who believed in Jesus, under different names and conditions.

Context

In Córdoba in the 850s the layman Paulus Alvarus supported the Mozarabic martyr movement. In a letter he stresses Jewish ancestors who encountered Jesus and recognized him as Messiah; Skarsaune cautiously includes him among Jewish believers of the Muslim period. There was little obvious social incentive to convert from Judaism to Christianity under the Caliphate, which makes Alvarus's self-presentation historically significant.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
▮ loading geography

§ 02Museum

Objects and images

Each item states whether it is an ancient object, a modern photograph or a later artistic interpretation.

§ 03Historiography

What scholars debate

Positions shown side by side, unranked, as the source reports them. The source’s own assessment appears separately.

Scholarly debate · 01

Does modern Messianic Judaism continue the ancient Jewish-believing sects?

2 positions · no single answer · take a seat →

  1. A

    Claimed communal continuity

    Some modern adherents

    Part of the modern movement claims continuity of community across the centuries in varied forms and places.

  2. B

    Recurrence without institutional lineage

    Pritz and this strand's critical historiography

    Unbroken continuity is hard to sustain. Julian of Toledo, Petrus Alfonsi, Donin, Levertoff and the Messianic renaming show Jews linked to faith in Jesus under different names and conditions, without an institutional lineage from Nazoraeans or Ebionites.

The source’s assessmentZakhorium places ancient sects, medieval converts and modern Messianic Judaism on the same thematic strand, but distinguishes periods and avoids merging fourth-century Nazarenes with Iberian conversos or with the 1970s movement.

§ 04Network

Connections

§ 05Bibliography

Further reading

  • Oskar Skarsaune, Jewish Believers in Jesus: Spain, 300-1300 C.E. (Oslo/Jerusalem, 2022).

    Jewish believers in Jesus in Spain (300 to 1300): Visigoths, al-Andalus and Reconquista · recommended in Skarsaune, p. 1

§ 06Apparatus

Sources on this page

  1. 01Skarsaune, p. 95; Skarsaune, p. 96; Skarsaune, p. 95inspect
  2. 02Skarsaune and Hvalvik, p. 3; Skarsaune and Hvalvik, p. 4inspect
  3. 03Pritz, p. 9; Pritz, p. 9; Skarsaune and Hvalvik, p. 3inspect
  4. 04Pritz, p. 9; Skarsaune and Hvalvik, p. 3inspect
  5. 05Skarsaune, p. 58; Skarsaune, p. 58inspect
  • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
  • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
  • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
  • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
  • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.