- Journal Details
- Format
- Journal
- eISSN
- 2284-7308
- First Published
- 20 Sep 2012
- Publication timeframe
- 3 times per year
- Languages
- English
Search
- Open Access
De Pierre Le Vénérable À Eudes De Châteauroux: La Réception Du Talmud, Entre Hostilité Et Incompréhension
Page range: 3 - 20
Abstract
Cet article met en lumière la réception du Talmud parmi les érudits parisiens chrétiens entre 1140, avec la rédaction du
Keywords
- Talmud
- antijudaïsme
- Eudes de Cháteauroux
- N. Donin
- Pierre le Venerable
- Open Access
The Barcelona Disputation: Texts and Contexts
Page range: 21 - 39
Abstract
Scholars of Jewish history have paid consistent and devoted attention to the Barcelona Disputation of 1263. Records of this event preserve contemporary Jewish and Christian responses to the proceedings, which pitted Nahmanides, the most important exegete and teacher of the region, against a convert from Judaism to Christianity, took place in the royal court before an illustrious audience. This essay traces trends in scholarly treatments of the Barcelona Disputation from the early days of the Wissenschaft des Judentums to the present. By examining challenges of veracity posed by the documentary sources as well as foundational assumptions about what the medieval authors intended to achieve with their accounts, this article provides broad overview of the historiography that has developed around the Barcelona Disputation.
Keywords
- Nahmanides
- Barcelona Disputation
- polemics
- historiography
- Open Access
Dramaturgical and Theological Issues Involved in Producing and Staging a Play in Jerusalem about the Disputation of Barcelona
Page range: 41 - 61
Abstract
In the context of the launch of a new theater company whose mission is to bring entertaining theological content to audiences in and around Jerusalem, Roy Doliner’s
Keywords
- Disputation of Barcelona
- theater
- drama
- Orthodox Jews
- Jerusalem
- Open Access
Literatura De Controversia Religiosa Judío-Cristiana Medieval En Portugal (Siglos Xiii-Xv): Estado De La Cuestión. Discursos Y Motivaciones
Page range: 63 - 79
Abstract
The case study presented in this article is an analysis of Portuguese literary manuscripts which deal with religious Jewish controversies during the Middle Ages (13th to the 15th centuries). These documents came down to us through the subsequent centuries and are available in the Libraries of Portugal. The article is intended to make known variegated documents of religious controversies over three centuries, while, at the same time, we shall draft a brief presentation of their authors, except for anonymous works. In the second part, we shall proceed with a definition of this particlar literary genre as well as analyze the characteristics and also the common features of the different works. In the end, we shall investigaate the discourses, motivations, and the different authors who have influenced the writing of these medieval controversies.
Keywords
- Middle Ages
- Portugal
- 13th-15th centuries
- literature
- manuscripts
- Open Access
Nahmanides’ Astrological and Religious Thinking and the Views of the Contemporaneous Catalan Christian Sages
Page range: 81 - 95
Abstract
This paper examines the astrological and religious thinking of Moshe ben Nahman (also known as Ramban or Nahmanides) and the intellectual connections in this field with two of the most outstanding Christian thinkers of his time, Ramon Llull and Arnau de Vilanova. Nahmanides, like many medieval scholars, admitted an astral influence, but he did not accept astrology as a divinatory science. He incorporated astrological doctrines in his exegetical works, assuming that Israel is not determined by any star because it only responds to God. Yet the study of medieval medicine and its application cannot be separated from astrology practice because it was considered that the stars had a direct influence not only on the development of the human body, from birth to death, but also in the disease processes which affect it. Ramban and his disciple Solomon ben Adret accepted and practiced astrological medicine. Llull and de Vilanova also devoted themselves to this discipline. All of them agree on the influence of the stars on humankind but condemned astral magic. Like Ramban, Llull rejects other astrological methods considered non-scientific in his time, such as prediction through horoscope. Thus, these thinkers tried to develop an astrology that was not in contradiction with divine omnipotence or free will.
Keywords
- Moshe ben Nahman
- Medieval Jewish Astrology
- Medieval Christian Astrology
- Arnau de Vilanova
- Ramon Llull
- Open Access
The Hebrew Sources of Tortosa’s Disputation
Page range: 97 - 119
Abstract
The Disputation or Cathechesis of Tortosa with its sixty-nine sessions (February 7, 1413-November 12, 1413) was the longest of the Jewish Christian encounters in the Middle Age. Stirred by the Avignonesian Pope Benedict XIII, Geronimo de Sancta Fide, olim Yehoshua ha-Lorki, summoned a group of Catalan and Aragonese rabbis to inform them that the Messiah was already came. Not only the Papal notaries recorded the excruciating debates, but also two Hebrew sources: the anonymous and fragmentary letter published by Halberstam in 1868 and the chapter 40 of the Shebet Yehuda. They encompass the first nine sessions carried out orally, before the Pope requested for written texts to be debated lately. Since these sources disagree on many details, this paper aims at examining them anew. That examination has shown that the anonymous account is more accurate than the fictional report of the Shebet Yehuda as far as the internal chronology of the sessions, the speeches of the Jewish delegates and their identities are concerned. The internal evidence leads us to subscribe with Riera i Sans in ascribing its authorship to Bonastruc Desmestre from Girona, who was at Tortosa on request of the Pope. He probably knew other Jewish chronicle and added some new materials from the Vikkuach Ramban, Salomon Ibn Verga, the author of Shebet Yehuda, built upon this chronicle and created a fictional account around Vidal Benveniste or the ‘ideal’ portrait of the Pope and added some materials from the Latin Protocols or from unknown Jewish sources.
Keywords
- Disputation of Tortosa
- Messiah
- Jewish Christian Polemics
- Benedict XIII
- Shebet Yehuda