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Historicizing Christianity and Profiat Duran’s Kelimat ha-Goyim (1397)
In: Medieval EncountersThis study of the Hebrew treatise Kelimat ha-Goyim (“Shame of the Gentiles,” 1397) by Profiat Duran exemplifies the stimulating impact medieval religious polemics exerted on the scholarly construction of Christian religious history. Besides explaining Jesus in his Jewish context, this Catalan author outlined in detail the emergence of the fundamental Christian dogmas during the apostolic, patristic, and medieval age and searched for the driving forces behind long-term religious transformation. While a common view holds that Duran’s method of New Testament study mirrored thirteenth-century Christian Talmudism, I underscore his originality as a historian of religion, whose clandestinely transmitted text still inspired early modern and nineteenth century attempts at critical scholarship. Duran’s proper context is the contemporary converso problem. A comparison with a Spanish Renaissance text, the Diálogos en Marruecos, strongly suggests that his historical representation of ex-Jews turned into Christian leaders not only addressed conversos, but actually meant to caricature them.
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1
Julius Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin: Reimer, 1905), 113; see Hans-Dieter Betz, “Wellhausen’s Dictum ‘Jesus Was not a Christian, but a Jew’ in the Light of Present Scholarship,” Studia Theologica 45 (1991): 83–110, here 84.
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4
Abraham Geiger, Isaak Troki, ein Apologet des Judenthums am Ende des 16ten Jahrhunderts (Breslau: Kern, 1853); Abraham Geiger, Leon da Modena, Rabbiner zu Venedig (1571–1648), und seine Stellung zur Kabbalah, zum Thalmud und zum Christenthume (Breslau: Kern, 1856).
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6
Adolf Posnanski, “Sefer Kelimat ha-Goyim,” Ha-Ṣofeh me-’Ereṣ Hagar 3 (1914): 99–113, 143–180, 4 (1915): 37–48, 81–96, 115–132, reprinted in Judah David Eisenstein, ed., Sefer Vikuḥim (Newark, nj: Y. D. Eisenstein, 1928), 2:260–288.
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9
Frank E. Talmage, “The Polemical Writings of Profiat Duran,” Immanuel 13 (1981): 69–85; reprinted in Talmage, Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: Studies in Medieval Jewish Exegesis and Polemics, ed. Barry Dov Walfish (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999), 281–297; Eleazar Gutwirth, “History and Apologetics in xvth Century Hispano-Jewish Thought,” Helmantica 35 (1984): 231–242; Jeremy Cohen, “Towards a Functional Classification of Jewish Anti-Christian Polemic in the High Middle Ages,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), 93–114, especially 110–112; Jeremy Cohen, “Profiat Duran’s The Reproach of the Gentiles and the Development of Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics,” in Shelomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume: Studies on the History of the Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Period, ed. Daniel Carpi et al. (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1993), 71–84; David Berger, “On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity: the Search for the Historical Jesus,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David N. Myers (Hanover, nh: Brandeis University Press, 1998), 25–39; Carlos del Valle Rodríguez, “La impugnación del cristianismo desde la perspectiva del Jesús histórico en la obra de Profiat Duran (s. xiv–xv),” Ibéria Judaica 2 (2010): 143–176.
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10
Ram Ben-Shalom, Mul tarbut noṣrit: Todaʾah hisṭorit ve-dimuyei ʿavar beqerev yehudei Sefarad u-Provens bi-mei ha-benayim (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2006), 204. An English translation appeared recently under the title Medieval Jews and the Christian Past: Jewish Historical Consciousness in Spain and Southern France (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015).
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13
José-Vicente Niclós, “La obra ‘Respuestas a los impostores,’ atribuida a Profiat Duran,” in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, vols. i–ii, ed. Judit Targarona Borrás and Angel Sáenz-Badillos (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 483–492, here 484, 489.
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15
See on this continuity Carsten Wilke, “Midrashim from Bordeaux: A Theological Controversy inside the Portuguese Jewish Diaspora at the Time of Spinoza’s Excommunication,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 6.2 (2012): 207–247, especially 209–211.
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16
Duran, Kitvei pulmus, 3; translation in Talmage, “Polemical Writings of Profiat Duran,” 286.
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17
Robert Chazan, “Christian Condemnation, Censorship, and Exploitation of the Talmud,” in Printing the Talmud from Bomberg to Schottenstein, ed. Sharon Liberman Mintz and Gabriel M. Goldstein (New York, ny: Yeshiva University Museum, 2005), 53–59, and the author’s earlier studies quoted here.
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22
Cohen, “Profiat,” 81; cf., Ben-Shalom, Mul tarbut noṣrit, 155; Ursula Ragacs, “Ein Leben im Dienst der Mission: Raimund Martini OP,” in Dominikaner und Juden, ed. Elias H. Füllenbach OP and Gianfranco Miletto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 87–114, at 108–109.
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23
Hyam Maccoby, Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993), 21: “If what is said about the Jews of France and of the other lands is true, no punishment would be sufficiently worthy of their crime. For they, so we have heard, are not content with the Old Law which God gave to Moses in writing: they even ignore it completely, and affirm that God gave another Law which is called ‘Talmud,’ that is ‘Teaching,’ handed down to Moses orally.”
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33
Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2:151–152.
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34
See Richard W. Emery, “New Light on Profayt Duran the Efodi,” Jewish Quarterly Review 58 (1967–68): 328–337; and likewise Maud N. Kozodoy, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia, pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 3–4.
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35
Eduard Feliu, “Profiat Duran: cet inconnu célèbre,” in L’Écriture de l’Histoire juive: Mélanges en l’honneur de Gérard Nahon, ed. Danièle Iancu-Agou and Carol Iancu (Paris and Louvain: Peeters, 2012), 205–220, see 208–209.
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42
Rolf Schmitz, “Jacob ben Rubén y su obra ‘Milḥamot ha-Šem,’” in Polémica judeo-cristiana: estudios, ed. Carlos del Valle-Rodríguez (Madrid: Aben Ezra Ediciones, 1992), 45–58, quote from p. 50.
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43
See the discussion by Robert Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 282–290. The author announces a “forthcoming” article titled “Sacred Literature Shared and Divergent: Medieval Christian and Jewish Polemical Thrusts” that has not yet appeared.
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46
Friedrich Niewöhner, Veritas sive varietas: Lessings Toleranzparabel und das Buch von den drei Betrügern (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1988), 285–304.
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63
Duran, Kitvei pulmus, 27–28, 41; cf., Gutwirth, “History and Apologetics,” 236.
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72
Duran, Kitvei pulmus, 64; cf., Gutwirth, “History and Apologetics,” 237–238.
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79
William Horbury, “The Revision of Shem Tob ibn Shaprut’s ‘Eben Bohan,’” Sefarad 43.2 (1983), 221–237; José-Vicente Niclos, ed. and trans., Sem Tob Ibn Saprut: “La Piedra de Toque” (Eben Bohan): Una obra de controversia judeo-cristiana (Madrid: csic, 1997).
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80
José-Vicente Niclós, “L’évangile en hébreu de Shem Tob ibn Shaprut: une traduction d’origine judéo-catalane due à un converti, replacée dans son ‘Sitz im Leben,’” Revue biblique 106:3 (1999), 358–407.
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81
Sina Rauschenbach, Josef Albo: Jüdische Philosophie und christliche Kontroverstheologie in der Frühen Neuzeit (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 142–156.
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84
Carsten L. Wilke, The Marrakesh Dialogues: A Gospel Critique and Jewish Apology from the Spanish Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2014). I have dealt with the historical background of this text in my article “Rencontres judéo-chrétiennes à Marrakech au lendemain de la bataille de Oued el-Makhazen,” in Présence juive au Maghreb: Hommage à Haïm Zafrani, ed. Nicole S. Serfaty and Joseph Tedghi (Paris: Bouchène, 2004), 227–242.
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99
Angelo Brelich, “Prolégomènes à une histoire des religions,” in Histoire des religions, ed. Henri-Charles Puech (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1970), 1:1–59, see p. 55: “Il est beaucoup plus utile de voir—et ceci ne peut être fait qu’au moyen de la comparaison – quels héritages primitifs réinterprétés ont servi de points de départ pour la formation des idées, des traditions, des institutions religieuses nouvelles; ils expliquent, du moins en partie, le caractère spécifique de toute religion.”
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100
Duran, Kitvei pulmus, 74, 76, 81–82; cf., Kozodoy, The Secret Faith, 139–140. On Pablo, see Heinz Schreckenberg, “Paulus von Burgos,” in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (bbkl), ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, vol. 7 (Hamm: Bautz, 1994), col. 57–60.
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101
Yosef Kaplan, “Foi et scepticisme dans la diaspora des nouveaux-chrétiens des débuts de l’époque moderne,” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian 48 (2004): 21–40.
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102
Ram Ben-Shalom, “The Social Context of Apostasy among Fifteenth-Century Spanish Jewry: the Dynamics of a New Religious Borderland,” in Rethinking European Jewish History, ed. Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009), 173–198.
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Historicizing Christianity and Profiat Duran’s Kelimat ha-Goyim (1397)
In: Medieval EncountersThis study of the Hebrew treatise Kelimat ha-Goyim (“Shame of the Gentiles,” 1397) by Profiat Duran exemplifies the stimulating impact medieval religious polemics exerted on the scholarly construction of Christian religious history. Besides explaining Jesus in his Jewish context, this Catalan author outlined in detail the emergence of the fundamental Christian dogmas during the apostolic, patristic, and medieval age and searched for the driving forces behind long-term religious transformation. While a common view holds that Duran’s method of New Testament study mirrored thirteenth-century Christian Talmudism, I underscore his originality as a historian of religion, whose clandestinely transmitted text still inspired early modern and nineteenth century attempts at critical scholarship. Duran’s proper context is the contemporary converso problem. A comparison with a Spanish Renaissance text, the Diálogos en Marruecos, strongly suggests that his historical representation of ex-Jews turned into Christian leaders not only addressed conversos, but actually meant to caricature them.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 323 | 52 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 245 | 7 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 51 | 15 | 1 |