Artistic-rhetoric expressions of the Jewish-Christian debate in the medieval Hebrew fables: the dove and the raven as allegorical figures

Can historical reality affect artistic literary text? We know that there is an affinity between historicalreality and literary texts on a thematic level; for example, text can reflect and express political orsocial criticism. In the article, I would like to further develop this question and point out thatthe connection is not only thematic but also affects the modes of artistic design. I propose tofocus upon two artistic-literary means, the ‘allegory’ and ‘fable’, and show how they were used asrhetoric tools in medieval debates between Jews and Christians, corresponding with the literarytext and becoming a central artistic-literary instrument. I will also discuss how these two terms,‘allegory’ and ‘fable’, which served as components of the Christian commentary on the Bible andas rhetorical tools in debates, are expressed in secular Hebrew literature. This will be demonstratedby a discussion of the image of the raven and the dove as they manifest in the fourth gate of MeshalHaqadmoni, by Isaac Ibn Sahula (Castile, 1281).