Jacques le Juste, un Oblias parmi d'autres

Abstract

In his Church History, Eusebius quotes a passage from Hegesippus's lostMemoriesin which he relates the martyrdom of James the Just; according to this account, the latter was called ᾽Ωβλίας. This article proposes to examine this odd term whose precise meaning remains obscure. Beyond issues related to its signification, the analysis of this word is likely to shed new light on the milieu in which the tradition quoted by Hegesippus appeared. This study seeks to demonstrate through various examples that the figure of the ᾽Ωβλίας was particularly popular in Jewish literature following the destruction of the Second Temple.