The Jews as False Witnesses

The anti-Jewish theme of Jews as false witnesses comes up in the Persian Martyr Acts, a large Syriac collection of martyrologies, compilations that tell of Christian confrontations with the authorities that led to death in the name of religion. One such text is a late fourth- or early fifth-century CE account of a fourth-century martyrdom. Simeon bar Sabba‘e, a Christian bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, was martyred in 339 CE. His martyrology and that of his sister, Tarbo, both depict Jews as the instigators of their arrests. Both of the passages here also refer to an event in which the Jews followed a false messiah, a decision that ultimately led to a “destruction of many thousands.”