Renaissance Studies Vol. 20 No. 1

© 2006 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2006 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKRESTRenaissance Studies0269-0213© 2006 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.201Original Article

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Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (eds.),

Hebraica Veritas? ChristianHebraists and the study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe.

Philadelphia: Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 2004. x + 316pp. £32.50. ISBN 0-8122-3761-7.

On his return to Italy in 1551 the Florentine scholar Petruccio Ubaldini reportedthat in England ‘the rich cause their sons and daughters to learn Latin, Greek andHebrew, for since this storm of heresy has invaded the land they hold it useful to readthe Scriptures in the original tongues’.

This claim, that Hebrew studies had permeated sixteenth-century intellectual lifeby becoming a recognized part of the educational system in England and on theContinent, is persuasive when we recognize four important motives. The first is thegrowing interest in the Kabbalah, which encouraged Christians to learn Hebrew fromJews. Others had preceded Pico della Mirandola in the study of Jewish mysticism, buthe was the first to explore it in any depth and draw from it some startling conclusionswith regard to the Christian faith. The task of working out Pico’s ideas fell to JohannReuchlin, who was acclaimed as the promoter and protector of Semitic studies. Thesecond is the desire of Renaissance humanists to bring about a

restitutio christianismi

.They harnessed the new learning to the task of revitalising the Church. Reform couldcome only through sound learning based on an appeal

ad fontes

. The rediscovery ofantiquity led to the Bible, which in turn led to the rediscovery of Hebrew. At theinstigation of Italian and German scholars, a knowledge of Hebrew was regardedas essential for all serious students of Scripture. The third is the demand of theProtestant reformers for vernacular translations of the Bible made from the originallanguages. The study of Hebrew led to the Hebraic tradition. Bible translators cameto appreciate Jewish explanations of textual difficulties. Finally there are the dictates ofdogma. In their efforts to maintain a distinctively Protestant position against Catholicteaching, participants in doctrinal disputations with the papal authorities turned tothe rabbis. They discovered that rabbinic expositions of key scriptural passages couldbe quoted in support of their own cause. The flowering of interest in Hebrew amongChristians led to close contact with Jews and an appreciation of rabbinic scholarship.Pico and Reuchlin had Jewish teachers. Biblical translators and exegetes consultedmediaeval Jewish commentaries.

This encounter between Jews and Christians in the early modern period is thesubject of

Hebraica Veritas?

, a volume of essays based on weekly seminars held at theUniversity of Pennsylvania’s Centre for Advanced Judaic Studies during the 1999–2000 session. Though the editors recognise that millenarianism, religious fervour andsocial unrest fostered anti-Judaism, their aim is to contribute further to the studies

98

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already made by other scholars of the successful interaction between Christians andtheir Jewish neighbours. In contrast to the ‘lachrymose’ view of Jewish history, whichcolours the work of many historians, the contributors to this volume emphasise thereintegration of the Jews into European society and consider the positive side of therelationship between Jews and Christians.

The book is divided into two parts containing six essays each. The first part isentitled ‘Negotiating Dialogue’ an is concerned with the tentative efforts made bymembers of both communities to establish mutual respect. The opening essay byMichael Signer provides an overview of twelfth-century Christian Hebraism. Thisserves as the background for the great strides made in textual scholarship by themendicant orders of the thirteenth century, and later by the Christian Hebraists ofthe Renaissance and Reformation. Moshe Idel demonstrates how Christian patronageof Jews affected both communities. It was his Jewish teachers who enabled Pico toincorporate elements of kabbalistic mysticism into this philosophy. Fabrizio Lelli con-tinues along similar lines by demonstrating how Italian humanists viewed biblicalfigures and how Jews adopted the same interpretations to express their identity. PeterMiller describes ‘the mechanics of Christian-Jewish intellectual collaboration inseventeenth-century Provence’. He discusses an intellectual friendship between a rabbiand a priest and shows how they collaborated to advance learning. In an essay on‘John Selden . . . and Religious Toleration’ Jason Rosenblatt provides an example ofa Christian engaging with rabbinic texts and recognising the humaneness of Jewishlaw. Because of his liberalism and inclusiveness, Selden was instrumental in buildinga bridge between two cultures. The final contribution in this section is by AmnonRaz-Krakotzkin who deals with the attitude of the Catholic Church to Hebrew Literaturein the sixteenth century. The results of the censorship of the Counter-Reformationwere not entirely negative. The elimination of polemical passages created a morefavourable climate for dialogue.

Because Christian attitudes towards Jews during this period were clearly ambivalent,the essays in the second part of the book come under the general title of ‘ImaginingDifferences’. Ora Limor and Israel Yuval discuss the fifteenth-century

Sefer ha-Nizzahon

, an important example of Jewish polemical reaction to Christianity. The textdemonstrates that the author, Yom Tov Lipmann, was well versed in Christiantheology; a knowledge gleaned through frequent conversations and disputationswith Christians. In an essay on Christian Hebraism among sixteenth-century GermanProtestants, Stephen Burnett seeks to relate ‘the activities of Christian Hebraists to widertrends’. Though these scholars made less use of Jews as teachers of Hebrew than theirpredecessors did, they relied on them for help in understanding the Kabbalah andfor the printing of Hebrew books. Yaacov Deutsch discusses the descriptions of YomKippur found in the writings of Christian Hebraists and Jewish converts to Christianity.The former emphasise the absurd and superstitious character of Jewish ceremonial,while the latter draw attention to its anti-Christian nature. He argues that it wasnot appreciation that persuaded Christians to visit synagogues on Yom Kippur anddescribe the ritual, as some have suggested, but the desire to discredit Judaism. Thetopic chosen by Michael Heyd is the Christian perception of Sabbatai Zevi as a ‘JewishQuaker’. Heyd demonstrates that Protestant ministers and intellectuals madecommon cause with Jewish rabbis as they all faced a common challenge posed by

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individuals claiming to be prophets and messiahs. Nils Roemer discusses the collisionbetween Jewish messianism and German scholarship in the eighteenth century.Among writers of the German Enlightenment, the idea of historical progressdisplaced that of a Jewish messiah. In the final essay Allison Coudert discusses thevarious reactions of a group of Christian Hebraists to the conversion of one of theirnumber, Johann Peter Späth, to Judaism. For some, this

cause célèbre

indicated howdetermined Christians should be to regard themselves as the new ‘chosen people’:for others it demonstrated the bankruptcy of revealed religion in general andfostered the process of secularisation.

The reader will find these essays both engaging and accessible. They demonstratethat Jewish-Christian encounters during the early modern period played an importantrole in Western culture. The editors are to be congratulated on assembling a team ofspecialists who have made a significant contribution to the study of Christian Hebraica.

University of Wales Bangor

Gareth Lloyd

Jones

Kenneth D. Farrow,

John Knox: Reformation Rhetoric and the Traditions of ScotsProse 1490–1570

. Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2004. 356 pp. £39 ISBN 3-03910-138-2

John Knox is one of the unavoidable figures of early modern Scotland. His antago-nism towards Mary, Queen of Scots (the other unavoidable Scottish figure), displayedin

The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

and

The Historieof the Reformatioun of Religioun in Scotland

, most commonly defines his reputation.However, as Dr Farrow sets out to prove, there is more to Knox’s literary legacy thanmisogynist polemic. After presenting a chapter offering a brief history of Scots prosebefore Knox, Farrow offers a sympathetic account of all of Knox’s work, including thepastoral and personal letters. He explores the rhetorical aspects of Knox’s work,examining how particular techniques underpin each text (it is significant that oneappendix deals with rhetorical terms and the other with Knox’s life events). Farrow’sapproach demonstrates how Knox’s training and experience as a preacher colours allhis work, since each text, including

The Historie of the Reformatioun of Religioun inScotland

, was designed to persuade the reader of Knox’s point of view.After an introductory chapter summarising previous examples of Scots prose,

Farrow takes each genre of Knox’s writing in turn, allocating two chapters to the

Historie

.He analyses the rhetorical organisation of a variety of Knox’s works, demonstratingthe preacher’s methods of moving an audience and making his points. It is fascinat-ing to see such close attention paid to the detail of the texts, since it extends previous,much shorter, treatments, at least in English. Moreover, Farrow’s account stresses thesimilarities across Knox’s writing, while pointing up the differences in tone betweenthe personal correspondence and the more obviously public material. There are twoparticular strengths in Farrow’s approach. Firstly, he constantly draws attention toKnox’s Biblical references, often citing the appropriate quotation from one of thecontemporary translations (either Coverdale’s or Tyndale’s or from the GenevaBible). While the centrality of the Bible to Reformist writing is well known, Knox’s