 Epstein's academic stance suggests that medieval Jewish and Christian visual culture as mutually interdependent.In his teaching and written work, he shows that there was a curiosity regarding Christian visual culture on the part of Jews both in Iberia and Franco-Germany, resulting in equal measures of reactive avoidance and fascinated emulation of that culture.His first book conceptualized Jewish iconography as almost inevitably polemicizing against Christian images, expressing "messages of protest and dreams of subversion," —a "love story in aggressive garb."