Living letters of the law : ideas of the Jew in medieval Christianity
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Living letters of the law : ideas of the Jew in medieval Christianity
（S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies）
University of California Press, 1999
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
ISBN 9780520216808
Description
In "Living Letters of the Law", Jeremy Cohen investigates the images of Jews and Judaism in the works of medieval Christian theologians from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas. He reveals how - and why - medieval Christianity fashioned a Jew on the basis of its reading of the Bible, and how this hermeneutically crafted Jew assumed distinctive character and power in Christian thought and culture. Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, which constructed the Jews so as to mandate their survival in a properly ordered Christian world, is the starting point for this illuminating study. Cohen demonstrates how adaptations of this doctrine reflected change in the self-consciousness of early medieval civilization.After exploring the effect of twelfth-century Europe's encounter with Islam on the value of Augustine's Jewish witnesses, he concludes with a new assessment of the reception of Augustine's ideas among thirteenth-century popes and friars.
Consistently linking the medieval idea of the Jew with broader issues of textual criticism, anthropology, and the philosophy of history, this book demonstrates the complex significance of Christianity's "hermeneutical Jew" not only in the history of antisemitism but also in the broad scope of Western intellectual history.
- Volume
-
ISBN 9780520218703
Description
In "Living Letters of the Law", Jeremy Cohen investigates the images of Jews and Judaism in the works of medieval Christian theologians from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas. He reveals how - and why - medieval Christianity fashioned a Jew on the basis of its reading of the Bible, and how this hermeneutically crafted Jew assumed distinctive character and power in Christian thought and culture. Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, which constructed the Jews so as to mandate their survival in a properly ordered Christian world, is the starting point for this illuminating study. Cohen demonstrates how adaptations of this doctrine reflected change in the self-consciousness of early medieval civilization. After exploring the effect of twelfth-century Europe's encounter with Islam on the value of Augustine's Jewish witnesses, he concludes with a new assessment of the reception of Augustine's ideas among thirteenth-century popes and friars.
Consistently linking the medieval idea of the Jew with broader issues of textual criticism, anthropology, and the philosophy of history, this book demonstrates the complex significance of Christianity's 'hermeneutical Jew' not only in the history of antisemitism but also in the broad scope of Western intellectual history.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART ONE: AUGUSTINIAN FOUNDATIONS
I. The Doctrine of Jewish Witness
PART TWO: THE AUGUSTINIAN LEGACY IN THE
EARLY MIDDLE AGES: ADAPTATION, REINTERPRETATION, RESISTANCE
2. Gregory the Great: Between Sicut Iudaeis and Adversus Iudaeos
3* Isidore of Seville: Anti-Judaism and the Hermeneutics of Integration
4* Agobard of Lyons: Battling the Enemies of Christian Unity
PART THREE: RECONCEPTUALIZING JEWISH DISBELIEF IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY
5* Reason in Defense of the Faith: From Anselm of Canterbury to Peter Alfonsi
6. Against the Backdrop of Holy War: Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable
7* Renaissance Men and Their Dreams
PART FOUR: THE FRIARS RECONSIDERED
8. Judaism as Heresy: Thirteenth-Century Churchmen and the Talmud
9* Ambiguities of Thomistic Synthesis
Afterword
References
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"