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Rhineland are portrayed as fasting intensely, to the point that "their skin shriveled on their bones and
became dry as wood," a direct citation from Lamentations 4:8. Similarly, the striking images of God
shutting out the prayers of the Jews and screening himself off with a cloud, so that no prayer might
pass through, are both taken from Lamentations 3. Invocation of this terminology reinforces the link
between the Jewish martyrs and the destroyed Temple, imparting the sense that the martyrs
possessed the strength to stand in God's sanctuary and hallow his Name.
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Let us note a number of further allusions to revered figures of the Jewish past. In describing the
Jewish reaction to the news of the crusading venture and its anti-Jewish implications, our editor
describes the following: "They afflicted themselves with hunger and thirst for three consecutive days,
night and day, above and beyond fasting daily." Embedded here are a number of interesting
intertextual allusions. In the first place, the notion of fasting three consecutive nights and days takes
us back to the biblical book of Esther, specifically the fourth chapter, where Esther, willing to endanger
herself on behalf of her fellow Jews, enjoins them to fast along with her in this unusual way.
Included in the editor's picture of Jewish fasting is reference to similar behavior on the part of
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another group of distinguished Jews. In depicting the daily fasting, above and beyond the extreme
three-consecutive-day total, the term used is hit anu, a somewhat unusual usage that takes us back to
the biblical book of Ezra. Chapters 7 and 8 depict the return of a group of Babylonian Jews to
Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra. After listing the constituents of his camp, Ezra says: "I
proclaimed a fast there by the Ahava River, to afflict ourselves [le-hit anot] before our God to beseech
him for a smooth journey for us and for our children and for all our possessions."[33] There is an
interesting irony here, in that the appeal invokes an image of Jews making their way peacefully to the
Holy City.
The same sentence upon which we have been focused includes yet another highly evocative
term inu nafsham, "they afflicted themselves." This important expression recurs repeatedly in the
descriptions of the Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus and Numbers.[34] Now, this ritual of affliction
is a critical element in the process of purification and atonement. The intertextual implication of this
term dovetails perfectly with the overt argument that the events of 1096 represent an atonement for
the unpunished guilt associated with the sin of the golden calf. As already noted, for our editor the
Rhineland Jews had been singled out for slaughter because "they had the strength and valor to stand
in his sanctuary and to do his bidding and to sanctify his great Name in his world." Thus the
self-affliction alludes to the atonement ritual, and the innovative twist imposed by our editor is that
the atonement ritual would eventually go far beyond fasting, that the remarkable behavior of the
martyrs of 1096 came to constitute an innovative and radical atonement ritual rooted in human
self-sacrifice.
Our editor concludes his prologue with verse 20 of Psalm 103. This psalm begins and ends with a
call in a variety of directions to praise the
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Lord, of whose goodness the psalmist sings. Its opening call is to the human soul: "Bless the Lord, O
my soul, all my being, his holy Name. Bless the Lord, O my soul and do not forget all his bounties."
The closing call to praise the Lord is addressed to the heavenly hosts and then to the totality of
creation, thus uniting all levels, from the human through the celestial. The call to the heavenly hosts
to praise the Lord is interpreted by our editor as a reference to the Rhineland martyrs: "Bless the Lord,
O his angels, mighty creatures who do his bidding, ever obedient to his bidding." Here the innovative
theodicy is expressed sharply. The Rhineland martyrs did not in fact suffer for their inadequacies; they
were singled out for their superhuman taken literally devotion to God. They were "angels& , ever
obedient to his bidding."
In referring Psalm 103:20 to these Rhineland martyrs, our editor ends his prologue by reevoking
the imagery of Exodus 32. The tangible sign of God's reconciliation to the Israelites after the sin of the
golden calf was to be the angel that would lead them. Now, as the Jews of the Rhineland prepare to
shoulder the burden of that sin because of their unique capacity to do so they are compared by the
author to angelic figures. They are the symbol, as it were, of divine reacceptance of the people of
Israel.
The prologue to the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle focuses on the Jewish hero figures; secondary
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