Seite - 9 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 05/01

ing and conveying how scholars belonging to different communities of faith per- formed their historical quest on such charged theological themes. Jewish and Catholic writers and Protestant scholars of various confessions left interesting traces of their understandings of Jesus’s lived historical context. Their work could achieve vast clandestine circulation and become part of a library shared by religious reformers and enlightened thinkers, not to mention fervid critics of Christianity. Our interest in this specific issue, the product of an intense exchange at the European Association for the Study of Religions conference for 2016, held in Helsinki, is intended to provide insight into the representation of Jesus in the early modern age and beyond, deliberately extending the focus to overlooked media. While we welcome analysis of textual traditions embedded in prints, manuscripts and marginalia, alongside authorized and authorial perspectives, we encouraged scholars to present counter-narratives and challenging views, focusing on other forms and fields of representation such as visual material or archival sources, in order to establish a more intricate picture of both multiple representations of and contrasting theories about the figure of Jesus. The collection of articles presented here contains various methodological lines of inquiry. At the same time, it brings together, albeit very selectively, the early modern and modern periods even up to the second half of the 20th cen- tury; we believe that this selection of case studies offers a composite view of varied, and often contrasting, practices of historiographical writing, which be- long to different religious, anti-religious and neutral traditions that span across the centuries. We sought to add an additional and new perspective based on communication theory, focusing on the relationship between different media and on their communicative potential and historical imagination. The emphasis on the medium – be it a manuscript, an illustration or a film – was intended to encourage new modes of representing historical themes, which, we hope, will allow new interpretations and an innovative evaluation of the impact of schol- arship on religion, shedding light on scholarship’s failures as well as on its ability to resonate with a wider public. Our perspective thus points to the role of media and also offers insight into often-neglected marginal or allegedly marginal narratives, such as, for exam- ple, Jewish voices on the life of Jesus and the rise of Christianity. Indeed, this themed issue opens with two articles on Jewish interpretations of Jesus before the emergence of a “scientific discourse” that were taken up in the early mod- ern period and used by different communities with diverse cultural agendas. Miriam Benfatto’s article is devoted to an early modern text on Jesus that has received too little attention thus far and to how we can understand reli- gious themes through polemical discourse. Her contribution seeks to uncover the figure of Jesus hidden by the polemical and apologetic strategy of a book known under the title Sefer Ḥizzuq Emunah (Strengthening of the Faith). This Editorial | 9www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1, 7–21