Commentators have frequently noted the apparent Jewish-Christian tensions in ancient Smyrna reflected in three documents from the early Common Era: Revelation, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the Martyrdom of Pionius. These three texts have often been used as evidence of a continuing line of Jewish-inspired persecution that traversed three centuries, as if the situations mirrored in them were roughly parallel (cf. Lightfoot, Lane Fox, Hemer). E. Leigh Gibson rejoinders, “The characterization of Smyrnaean Jews as agents in the persecution of Christians, allegedly built upon the reinforcing testimony of three texts, Rev. 2:8-11, MPoly, and MPion needs reconsideration because circular reasoning has long defended it.” This paper answers the call for reconsideration by contrasting rather than paralleling the depiction of Jewish-Christian relationships in the MartPoly and the MartPion. On the one hand, the MartPion sought to remove Jewish worship as a religious option for those Christian lapsi seeking an alternative. The resultant depiction of Jewish views concerning Jesus resembles Talmudic materials, while acknowledging the Jewish worship of the one creator God and the Jewish refusal to participate in pagan sacrifice and even the consumption of sacrificial food (cf. Gibson). On the other hand, the depiction of the Jews and their “customs” in the MartPoly unites the Jews with the pagans in a manner that emphasizes their unified “otherness” and stretches historical plausibility. Like the pagans of Lucian’s Peregrinus, the Jews in the MartPoly falsely assume that Christians could give up the worship of Jesus for a secondary martyr. In sum, both martyr texts reflect concerns for the socio-communal identity formation and conservation of the Smyrnaean Christians, but their distinctive depictions of Jewish-Christian tension should not be merged in simplistic fashion but rather contrasted in historical context, authorial purpose, and literary construction.