Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART ONE NEW LINES OF INVESTIGATION
- PART TWO THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
- PART THREE PRAYER AND POETRY
- PART FOUR THE WORLD OUTSIDE
- 13 Hebrew apologetic and polemical literature
- 14 Biblical commentaries and Christian influence: the case of Gersonides
- 15 Jewish scholarship and Christian tradition in late-medieval Catalonia: Profiat Duran on the art of memory
- Bibliography of the writings of Raphael Loewe
- Index of names
13 - Hebrew apologetic and polemical literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART ONE NEW LINES OF INVESTIGATION
- PART TWO THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
- PART THREE PRAYER AND POETRY
- PART FOUR THE WORLD OUTSIDE
- 13 Hebrew apologetic and polemical literature
- 14 Biblical commentaries and Christian influence: the case of Gersonides
- 15 Jewish scholarship and Christian tradition in late-medieval Catalonia: Profiat Duran on the art of memory
- Bibliography of the writings of Raphael Loewe
- Index of names
Summary
Like a row of thorns by a Cambridgeshire chalk-pit, this title masks a series of pitfalls with a steep drop. To begin with, the term ‘Hebrew’ does not always fully suit the medieval apologetic writings preserved in Hebrew. They arise in large part from literary composition and oral converse in languages shared by Jews and non-Jews, from Greek and Arabic to Italian. Thus a gem of this literature is the twelfth-century Kuzari of Judah ha-Levi, but its Hebrew form is a translation from Arabic. Moreover, ‘Hebrew’ does not quite invariably imply ‘Jewish. In almost all cases these writings defend Judaism, against Christianity or Islam, or both; but they include one or two works issued in Hebrew in the Christian interest, following a practice which seems already to be attested in thirteenth-century England, but is perhaps best known from Alphonsus of Valladolid, formerly Abner of Burgos, whose fourteenthcentury polemic circulated in both Hebrew and Castilian. Attention is focused below on Hebrew works in rebuttal of Christianity.
These glosses on the term ‘Hebrew’ have already verged on a question posed by the next three words of the title of this chapter: in what sense can this literature be called ‘apologetic’ or ‘polemical? These works were no doubt written in most cases with more than one end in view, and then as they circulated will have fulfilled a number of functions. Nevertheless, the two uses that have been to the fore in discussion of these texts are in fact well represented by ‘apologetic’ and ‘polemical’ respectively; for interpreters have often put the main emphasis either on defence and internal use, on the one hand, or on attack and external reference, on the other.
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- Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World , pp. 189 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001