The broken staff : Judaism through Christian eyes

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Bibliographic Information

The broken staff : Judaism through Christian eyes

Frank E. Manuel

Harvard University Press, 1992

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [349]-353) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In this history Manuel ranges over the centuries, from antiquity to recent times, analyzing the diverse responses of European Christendom - Catholic, Protestant, and freethinking - to the culture and religious thought of the Judaism that survived, even thrived, in its midst. It is a history of marked contrasts. Though prolific in the outpouring of diatribes, European writers never agreed about Jewish thought and religion. should the worlds embodying Jewish beliefs be burned or ignored? Should they be consulted for what might be learned from them? Manuel shows the "rediscovery" of historical Judaism by Renaissance humanists alongside the vicious attacks mounted by Reformation leaders. He surveys the Christian Hebraists in the period that followed: clergymen, university professors, and gentlemen-scholars who studied Jewish religious thought and Hebrew to further Christian purposes. And he discusses the many ends - missionary, political, eschatological, Judeophobic - to which Christian thinkers turned their learning. In the 18th century the English deists and French "philosophes" - notably Voltaire - virulently attacked what they described as a primitive oriental religion. Manuel's picture of writers in 19th-century Germany encompasses the learned research, negative image-making, and polemics of the period.

Table of Contents

  • Part 1 A gateway to the city of books. Part 2 Reknitting the severed connection: traces of medieval Christian Hebraists
  • Iberia - the facade of coexistence
  • the end of a thousand-year estrangement
  • the Italian printing house, chrysalis of Hebraica. Part 3 Rival interpreters in the Renaissance and Reformation: Pico Della Mirandola and his Jewish mentors
  • Johannes Reuchlin in defense of the Talmud
  • Martin Luther, Sebastian Munster and John Calvin
  • French Hebraists in a time of troubles
  • rabbinic transmitters and Christian receptors. Part 4 The flowering of Christian Hebraism: the third culture
  • scholars and popularizers
  • the Buxtorfs of Basel
  • Amsterdam, the New Jerusalem
  • Bartolocci among the Neophytes
  • the broad expanse of Judaica. Part 5 17th century uses of historical Judaism: conversion, the apostolic mission
  • anatomy of the republic of the Hebrews
  • biblical exegesis
  • latterday Christian cabbala
  • Judeophobia
  • eschatology. Part 6 Transition to the enlightenment: a brazen reappraisal
  • conformities of Judaism with Paganism
  • ancient and modern
  • Judaism supererogatory. Part 7 Assault of the English deists: uniqueness of Judaic monotheism denied
  • the universality of natural religious sentiment
  • prophecy and miracles reconsidered
  • the barbarous Hebrews
  • Bolingbroke's Lordly contempt
  • Thomas Morgan, the moral philosopher
  • dissolving the bond. Part 8 The French philosophes - an ambiguous record: Voltaire's obsession
  • Baron d'Holbach's synagogue
  • Diderot - a patchwork philosophy of the Jews
  • Rousseau on the tenacity of mosaic law
  • Montesquieu's spirit of Judaism. Part 9 Catholic vindications of Israel: residual Judeophobia in Italy and Spain
  • academic dissertations on Jewish antiquities
  • the biblical encyclopedism of Dom Augustin Calmet
  • Abbe Guenee, secretary of the Jews
  • Abbe Bergier - restoring the Judaic pillars of Christianity
  • Abbe Gregoire on the regeneration of the Jews
  • the revolutionary dispensation. Part 10 The German Janus: Juden in the Leipzig Lexicon
  • Michaelis' ethnology of the ancient Hebrews
  • the spirit of sacred Hebrew poetry - Lowth and Herder
  • birth of the Judenfrage
  • Dohm's final solution
  • the predicament of Moses Mendelssohn
  • the Euthanasia of Judaism
  • the flawed legacy of the enlightenment. Part 11 The aftermath of liberation: Judeophobia and antisemitism - the dark backdrop
  • the science of Judaism
  • the higher criticism
  • the origins of Christianity
  • the semites of Renan and Gobineau
  • David Strauss and the lives of Jesus
  • the Dead Sea scrolls
  • in search of a common ground.

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