Bible, Emperor, Jew. The interplay of biblical exegesis and anti-Judaism in imperial propaganda under Macedonian rule

This project will investigate the ideological outreach and function of Byzantine literature and the interplay between biblical exegesis and anti-Jewish politics in a crucial period of Byzantine history. (a) A post-doc researcher will document, interpret and explain the role of biblical exegesis in the process of justifying anti-Jewish measures that were undertaken not out of religious but out of ideological reasons by emperors of the Macedonian dynasty. The central research object is a varied corpus of essentially non-exegetical Greek texts from the ninth to eleventh century. (b) A PhD student will investigate to what extent an anti-Jewish reading of the Bible was not just confined to texts supporting the anti-Jewish policy of the emperor but was continued in exegetical literature that supports his ideology. The central research object is a specific Greek commentary on the Psalms composed for emperor Constantine VII the Purple-born  (mid-tenth century).