The Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth-Century Spain: Exegesis, Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts investigates the relationship between the Bible and the cultural production of Iberian societies between the anti-Jewish riots of 1391 and the Expulsion of 1492. During this turbulent and transformative period, the Bible intersected with virtually all aspects of late medieval Iberian culture: its languages of expression, its material and artistic production, and its intellectual output in literary, philosophical, exegetic, and polemical spheres. The articles in this cross-cultural and interdisciplinary volume present instantiations of the Hebrew Bible’s deployment in textual and visual forms on diverse subjects (messianic exegesis, polemics,
converso liturgy, Bible translation, conversion narrative, etc.) and utilize a broad range of methodological approaches (from classical philology to Derridian analysis).
Jonathan Decter, Ph.D. (2002) in Medieval Jewish Studies, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, is Associate Professor and Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies at Brandeis University. He is author of
Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe (Indiana UP, 2007), which won the Salo W. Baron Prize for best first book in Jewish Studies.
Arturo Prats, Ph.D. (2004) in Semitic Philology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, is assistant professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has published on Hebrew literature of the fifteenth century focussing on the work of the poet Shelomoh Bonafed including
La disputa de Selomohh ben Reuben Bonafed con la aljama de Zaragoza (Granada 2010)
Introduction
Jonathan P. Decter and Arturo Prats I. Literature and Art Weeping Over Rachel´s Tomb: Literary Reelaborations of a
Midrashic Motif in
Medieval and Early Modern Spain
Luis M. Girón Negrón The First Murder: Picturing Polemic c. 1391
Tom Nickson Sephardic Illuminated Bibles: Jewish Patrons and Fifteenth-Century Christian Ateliers
Andreina Contessa II. Jewish Exegesis Abarbanel’s Exegetical Subversion of Maimonides’
‘Aqedah: Transforming a Knight of Intellectual Virtue into a Knight of Existential Faith
James Diamond ‘From My Flesh I Envision God’: Shem Tov Ibn Shaprut´s Exegesis of Job 19:25-27
Libby Garshowitz Messianic Interpretation of the Song of Songs in Late-Medieval Iberia
Maud Kozodoy III. Uses of Christian Exegesis Pro-Converso Apologetics and Biblical Exegesis
Claude B. Stuczynski A Father´s Bequest: Augustinian Typology and Personal Testimony in the Conversion Narrative of Solomon Halevi / Pablo de Santa María
Ryan Szpiech IV. Liturgy and Translation The Liturgy of Portuguese Conversos
Asher Salah The Relationship between Ladino Liturgical Texts and Spanish Bibles
Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald Translation and the Invention of Renaissance Jewish Culture: The Case of Judah Messer Leon and Judah Abravanel
Aaron W. Hughes
All those interested in inter-religious interaction in medieval Iberia, Jewish history, exegesis, and thought, fifteenth-century history, Sephardic Judaism,
converso studies, and the history of the Bible in the medieval period.