Statement
The accounts in the Hebrew narratives include grim and disturbing descriptions that are, of course, impossible to verify and may be implausibly detailed given that those who lived through the events did not survive to tell them. Even so, the chronicles show a community caught between brutal violence and an equally radical ideology of religious martyrdom.
References
p. 196
supports · main text · ch. 7
Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman. The Jews: A History. 3rd edition. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
Verification anchor recorded · checked against the page text
p. 196
supports · main text · ch. 7
Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman. The Jews: A History. 3rd edition. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
Verification anchor recorded · checked against the page text
Scholarly debate
How reliable are the Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade?
2 positions · no single answer · take a seat →
- A
Testimony of widespread martyrdom
The traditional reading implicit in the chronicles
Many Jews killed themselves and their families to sanctify the Name rather than accept baptism.
- B
Later texts with ideological aims
The book's authors (justification and lack of choice); Jeremy Cohen and Avraham Grossman (voluntary conversion)
For the authors, the chronicles, sometimes written decades later, may have sought to justify acts hard to reconcile with Jewish law, and many Jews did not truly face a choice between baptism and death. Cohen and Grossman also suggest answering the growing threat of voluntary conversion to Christianity in the twelfth century.