8. The Didascalus Annas

Capucine Nemo-Pekelman, in ‘The Didascalus Annas: A Jewish Political and Intellectual Figure from the West’, explores the identity of a little-known fifth-century figure who managed to secure two legal victories for the Jewish community of Ravenna, both involving controversies over conversion. Annas’ title, didascalus, was one of several Latin and Greek titles used for Jewish legal experts, but it was also used by Christians. It was therefore not a synonym for rabbi. Nemo-Pekelman associates Annas with the same Jewish milieu that produced the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum. She also suggests, with some hesitation, that this Annas is also the author of the Epistola Anne ad Senecam.