“Daniel in the Lions’ Den: Jewish-Christian Polemics in Medieval Text and Image”, in: Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures Studies in Honour of Daniel J. Lasker, eds. Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, and Shalom Sadik, De Gruyter 2021, pp. 413-434 (original) (raw)
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, who was on the editorial board of this journal in its earliest years, moved from Manchester in England to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1959 and served there for the remainder of his career as Philip W. Lown Professor of Jewish Philosophy and History of Ideas. Having been educated in Berlin at the Humboldt University and at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary, he brought with him to the United Kingdom, and then to the United States, the textual, linguistic, historical and philosophical methodology of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Studying with such central European giants of Jewish learning, who were rarely among the warmest or friendliest of teachers, was never an easy matter but those who could stay the course derived enormous benefit. Daniel J. Lasker, as a student of Altmann, was one of those who did so and, as Howard Kreisel writes, in the detailed but intimate appreciation of Lasker that opens this volume, 'there was simply no substitute for good, solid, old-fashioned scholarship, based on painstaking research and precision aimed at accurately reconstructing and analyzing the ideas conveyed in the texts in their historical context. Danny clearly took this lesson to heart from his earliest scholarly publications to his latest ones' (p. 5). Lasker emulated Altmann's scholarship but not his austere persona and cool detachment and has, throughout his
Jewish-Christian Polemics in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Period
Sceptical aspects in this workshop will focus on Jewish-Christian polemics from three different points of view: philosophical controversies in Halevi’s Kuzari; conversion as it appears in Abner of Burgos’ Teshovat Apikoros; and confessionalization in the early modern period. Judah Halevi lived most of his life under Islamic rule, and yet he engaged in anti-Christian polemics in his Kuzari. Although the Jewish critique of Christianity is usually considered a reaction to a Christian mission, much evidence indicates that such polemics are not solely a defensive measure. Jewish rationalists engaged in polemics against Christianity as part of their self-definition of Judaism, while Jews who eschewed rationalism, especially those in Christian Northern and Eastern Europe, usually did not engage in such criticisms of Christianity even when there were Christian provocations. The issue to be addressed is to what extent does Halevi’s anti-Christian polemics fit this Jewish rationalist paradigm. Abner of Burgos, the famous Jewish convert to Christianity from the 14th century, wrote extensively, after his conversion, praising his new faith and claiming it to be the true religion, while rejecting his birth faith. In many of his works, Abner harshly criticizes “Jewish” ideas, while at the same time, he puts a great effort to show that the Jewish Rabbis, in fact, accepted the fundamental principles of Christianity, but had to conceal this acceptance for political reasons. What is the meaning of “public” and “private” theological controversies between Jews and a Christians, and how do these two types of controversies differ? These questions will be approached via an examination of the 17th century anti-Christian Latin polemical work, "Porta veritatis" (1634-1640). In a way, the polemics contained in this work were “staged” for a very limited public--or for no public at all. What, then, was this work's real purpose? Certainly, it sought not only to establish the “truth” of one religion, or rather some of this religion’s tenets, with respect to the other. But also, it sought to demonstrate that a Jew could “actively” defend his/her religion, and to be present as an intellectual on the philosophical scene, a scene that was quite lively and even frantic in the century of Spinoza and Descartes.
In this paper, I examine the changing role of apostates in medieval Jewish-Christian polemic. Using three case studies, I suggest that Jewish converts to Christianity were not merely instruments in the hands of Christian theologians. Rather, they were self-conscious participants in the debate with their own aims and purposes. Far from disowning their Jewish past, they used it in order to mould the debate and influence Christian perceptions of post-biblical Judaism. Analysing their argumentation, it is thus possible to identify traces of conflict and dissonance within Jewish communities.
A Reevaluation of a Medieval Polemical Manuscript
AJS Review, 1976
Fragment A2 of MS Or. 53 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, though only five folios in length, provides the student of medieval Jewish history with fresh insights into the development of Jewish anti-Christian polemics. The manuscript appears to have been written in response to heightened anti-Jewish propaganda that emerged in Northern France as a result of the visit to that area by Paul Christian in 1269. The work is a compilation of arguments against Christianity drawn from the polemical traditions of Northern France, Germany and Provence. It also contains excerpts from the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaMBaN, the Hebrew account of the debate on the Talmud held in Barcelona in 1263. Analysis of the material indicates that the manuscript does not contain the record of a face-to-face disputation between Paul Christian and a Jew named Menaḥem, as has been suggested. Arguments assumed to be related to such a meeting can be traced back to extant literary sources that predate the 1260...