missionary religion in the early centuries of the Christian or common era, converting so-called proselytes, and thus competition for the religious loyalties of gentiles drove anti-Judaism. The debate and dialogue moved from polemic to bitter verbal and written attacks one against the other. However, since the last decades of the 20th century, the view that a proselytizing struggle between turn of the era Judaism and early Christianity may have been the main generator of anti-Jewish attitudes among early gentile believers in Jesus is eroding. Scholars have revisited the traditional claims about Jewish proselytizing and have largely concluded that active Jewish proselytizing was a later apologetic construct that does not reflect the reality of first century Judaism. To Tarfon (died 135 CE) is attributed a statement about whether scrolls could be left to burn in a fire on the Sabbath. A disputed interpretation identifies these books with the Gospels (see Gilyonim): "The Gospels must be burned for paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish faith as Jewish Christian sects." The anonymous Letter to Diognetus was the earliest apologetic work in the early Church to address Judaism. Saint Justin Martyr (died 165 CE) wrote the apologetic Dialogue with Trypho, a polemical debate giving the Christian assertions for the Messiahship of Jesus by making use of the Old Testament contrasted with counter-arguments from a fictionalized version of Tarphon. "For centuries defenders of Christ and the enemies of the Jews employed no other method" than these apologetics. Apologetics were difficult as gentile converts could not be expected to understand Hebrew; translations of the Septuagint into Greek prior to Aquila would serve as a flawed basis for such cross-cultural arguments, as demonstrated by Origen's difficulties debating Rabbi Simlai. Though Emperor Hadrian was an "enemy of the synagogue", the reign of Antonius began a period of Roman benevolence toward the Jewish faith. Meanwhile, imperial hostility toward Christianity continued to crystallize; after Decius, the empire was at war with it. An unequal power relationship between Jews and Christians in the context of the Greco-Roman world generated anti-Jewish feelings among the early Christians. Feelings of mutual hatred arose, driven in part by Judaism's legality in the Roman Empire; in Antioch, where the rivalry was most bitter, Jews most likely demanded the execution of Polycarp. From Constantine to the 8th century When Constantine and Licinius were issuing the Edict of Milan, the influence of Judaism was fading in