Abstract
The image of Jews, ancient and modern, underwent most substantial changes in the late 17th century in the eyes of Western intellectuals. Extremely negative views about Jews had been pervasive in the late middle ages and during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Jews were seen as most dangerous menaces to Christian society, but were also expected to play a critical role in the culmination of the Christian historical drama. On the first score, Jews, in denying that Jesus was the Messiah and denying the divinity of Jesus, could undermine the faith of Christians. Jews seen in this light were the sworn enemies of Christendom, who would go to any extremes to hurt Christians and Christianity, through usury, attacks on religious objects, blasphemies, kidnapping and killing Christian children, poisoning Christians through medical trickery etc. etc. etc. The negative images conjured up from all of this justified driving the Jews out of most of Western Europe, enclosing them in ghettoes and placing severe restrictions on their activities, especially vis-à-vis Christians.
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Notes
Blaise Pascal, Pensées in Oeuvres Complètes, ed. J Chevalier (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p.1236.
Cf. Popkin, “Jewish Christians and Christian Jews in Spain, 1492+”, Judaism 41 (1992), pp.247–267.
Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium, (New York: 1961), and Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1961).
R.H. Popkin, “Introduction” and Christopher Hill, “Till the Conversion of the Jews”, In R.H. Popkin, (ed.) Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought (Leiden, 1987), pp. 1–36.
See Popkin, “The Convertible Jew”, in L’Hérése spinoziste: la discussion sur la ‘Tractatus Theologico-politicus’ 1670–1677,et la réception immédiate du Spinozisme edited by P. Cristofolini, (Amsterdam and Maessen, 1995).
R.H. Popkin, “Les Caraites et l’,mancipation des Juifs”, Dix-Huitième Siècle 13 (1981), 137–47, and “The Lost Tribes, and the Caraites and the English Millenarians”, Journal of Jewish Studies, 37 (1986), pp.213–27; and Jan Van den Berg, “Proto-Protestants? The Image of the Karaites as a Mirror of the Catholic-Protestant Controvesy in the Seventeenth Century”, in Jewish-Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, edited by J. Van den Berg and E.G.E. van der Wall (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988).
Cf. Popkin, “Reason as the Rule of Faith in Castellio, the Early Socinians and the Jews”, in Aequitas, Aequalitas, Auctoritas, edited by Darne Letocha, (Paris, 1992), pp.195–203, and “Jewish Anti-Christian Arguments as a Source of Irreligion From the Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Century”, edited by Michael Hunter and David Wootton, Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, (Oxford, 1992), pp. 159–181.
On the discussion of the Lost Tribes, see Popkin, “The Lost Tribes, the Caraites and the English Millenarians,” and the introduction to Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel,edited by H. Méchoulan and G. Nahon, (Oxford, 1987), pp. 1–95.
This is discussed in the introduction by Méchoulan and Nahon to Menasseh, The Hope of Israel.
See J.P. Marana, Memoirs of a Turkish Spy living in Paris, published in French and English in eight volumes several times in the 1690s. Also see Popkin, “A Gentile Attempt to Convert the Jews to Judaism”, in Israel and the Nations. Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger, edited by Shmuel Almog et al (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. xxv-xlv.
See Popkin, “The Dispersion of Bodin’s Dialogues in England, Holland and Germany”, JHI, 49 (1988), pp. 157–160.
See Jean Bodin, Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime, translated with introduction and notes by Marion L.D. Kuntz, (Princeton: 1975).
Gerard Vosius, De Theoligia gentili et physiologia Christiana, sive de origine ac progressu idololatriae, deque naturae mirandus quibus homo adducitur ad Deum, (Amsterdam, 1641).
On Gerard Vossius, De Theoligia (Amsterdam, 1641), Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, (London, 1678).
See Cecil Roth, The Life of Menasseh ben Israel, Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society, 1834; and David S. Katz, Philo-Semitism in England, 1603–1655, (Oxford: OUP, 1982), p.205 and 234.
See D.S. Katz, “The Abendana Brothers and the Christian Hebraists of Seventeenth Century England”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40:(1989), pp.28–52.
C.S.M. Rademaker, The Life and Works of Gerardus Vossius (Assen, 1981), p.264–65.
This is discussed in Richard Kidder, A Demonstration of the Messias; in which the Truth of the Christian Religion is Proved Especially against the Jews (3 vols, London: 1684–1700), vol. 2, sigs A4-a4v, and vol.3, iii-iv. The preface to Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System cites a letter from Cudworth to Thurloe describing the former’ s outraged reaction to the manuscript he had received from Menasseh. See D.S. Katz, Philo-Semitism, p.234 and note.
Newton discussed this in his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended and his unpublished “Origins of Gentile Theology”, in the Yahuda manuscripts in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, 16.2 and 17.1 and 2.
On Maimonides’ role in 17th century Christian thought, see Popkin, “Newton and Maimonides”, in A Straight Path. Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture. Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, edited by Ruth Link-Salinger, et al., (Washington: 1988), pp.21629, and idem, “Some Further Comments on Newton and Maimonides”, in J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin, Essays on the Content,Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp.1–7.
See Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time. The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, (Chicago: 1984); and Popkin, “The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and Newton”, in Force and Popkin, Essays on Newton’s Theology, pp.9–25.
See Popkin, “Polytheism, Deism and Newton”, in Force and Popkin, op. cit. pp.27–42, and idem, “The Deist Challenge”, in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, edited by O.P. Grell et al (Oxford: OUP, 1991), pp.195–215; and Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, (Cambridge: CUP, 1992).
Dury’s introduction to Thomas Thorowgood, Jewes in America, or Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race (London, 1650). See Popkin, “Lost Tribes and Caraites”, p.218.
Cf. Popkin, “Some Aspects of Jewish-Christian Theological Interchanges in Holland and England 1640–1700”, in Van den Berg and Van der wall, op.cit., 3–32; and Katz, “The Abendana Brothers”.
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala Denudata (Sulzbach, 1677–8); Allison Coudert, “A Christian Platonist’s Kabbalist Nightmare”, JHI 35 (1975), pp.633–52: and Gershom Scholem, article “Knorr von Rosenrtoth”, Encyclopedia Judaica, 10; 1118.
Popkin, “The First College of Jewish Studies”, Revue des Etudes juives,143:(1984), pp. 351–364.
Leon of Modena, The History of the Present Jews Throughout the World. Being an Ample tho Succinct Account of their Customs, Ceremonies, and Manner of Living, at this time, trans. Simon Ockley, (London, 1707). The work first appeared in Italian, and was translated into French by Richard Simon in 1681.
Jacques Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, first published in 1707, translated into English in 1708, and reissued in an enlarged French edition, 1716. In Menasseh’s list of projects he was working on that appears in his last published work, Vindicae Judaeorum, 1656, he listed a continuation of Josephus’s History of the Jews.
In the English edition, Basnage said that the Second Coming “must be accomplished in the year 1716”. p. 751.
Cf. Popkin, “Spinoza, Neoplatonic Kabbalist?”, in Lenn Goodman, ed., NeoPlatonism and Jewish Thought, (Albany, New York, 1992), pp. 387–409.
Cf. Frank Manuel, The Broken Staff, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1992).
Cf. R.H. Popkin, “Notes from the Underground: The Marranos of Amsterdam”, New Republic, May 21, 1990, pp. 35–41. Also in The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought, (Leiden, 1992), pp.149–171.
Cf. Popkin, “Notes from Underground”.
What is referred to as “the oldest biography of Spinoza”, attributed to Jean-Maximillien Lucas, (published by Abraham Wolf, The Oldest Biography of Spinoza, (New York: 1928), lists amongst Spinoza’s effects after his death, an “Apologie de M. Spinosa”, which has been assumed to be his original answer to the Synagogue that has excommunicated him.
Benedictus Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, Elwes translation, (New York, 1968).
1bid., pp. 46–47.
Ibid., p. 56.
Spinoza, Theological-Politico Treatise, chapter. 3.
Pierre R, (ed.), Traité des trois imposteurs, (Saint-Etienne; Université de la Region Rhone-Alpes, 1973), p. 46.
Cf. Champion, op. cit., and Popkin, “The Deist Challenge”.
On Bayle see, Elisabeth Labrousse, Bayle,(Oxford Press, 1983); and Popkin, “Introduction” to Selections from Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, (Indianapolis: 1991), pp.viii-xxix.
See Popkin, “Pierre Bayle and the Conversions of the Jews,” in De l’Humanisme aux Lumières. Bayle et le protestantisme. Mélanges en l’honneur d’Elisabeth Labrousse, edited by M. Magdelaine, Maria-Christina Pitassi, Ruth Whelan and Antony McKenna (Paris and Oxford, 1996) pp.635–644.
Elisabeth Labrousse has written extensively after our discussion about the sad case of Nicholas Anthoine, based on the documents in Geneva.
Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews. The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism. (New York, 1968), p. 46.
See Richard Simon’s letter to Isaac La Peyrère,27 mai 1670, in Simon, Lettres choisies, (Rotterdam, 1702), Tome 2, pp. 12–17.
Manuel, The Broken Staff, p. 101.
Ibid., chap. 8.
On these works, see Hertzberg, op. cit., and Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism from Voltaire to Wagner, (New York, 1975).
Hume’s letter to Thomas Rous, 28 August 1767, published in Popkin, “Hume and Isaac de Pinto, II. Five New Letters” in W.B. Todd, Hume and the Enlightenment. Essays Presented to Ernest Campbell Mossner, (Edinburgh and Austin, 1974), p.104.
See Popkin, “Hume and Isaac de Pinto”, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 12 (1970), pp.417–30.
Manuel, op. cit.,p. 201.
C.F. Popkin, “The Christian Roots of Zionism”, Contentions, 2 (1993), pp.99–125.
See S.E. Bloemgarten, “De Amsterdamse Joden gedurende deerste Jaren can de Bataafse Republiek, 1795–98, ”Studia Rosenthaliana 2 (1968), pp.42–65.
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Popkin, R.H. (2001). The Image of Judaism in Seventeenth Century Europe. In: Crocker, R. (eds) Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Archives Internationales d’histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 180. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9777-7_10
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