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Jewish-Christian Polemics at the Turning Point: Jewish Evidence from the Twelfth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Daniel J. Lasker
Daniel J. Lasker
Affiliation:
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
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Extract

In 1968 Amos Funkenstein published an article in Hebrew entitled “Changes in the Patterns of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the 12th Century.” In that article, Funkenstein argues that Christian attitudes toward Jews underwent a change in the twelfth century, a change discernable in the Christian polemical literature of the period. In contrast to the previous Christian strategy of polemicizing against Judaism through a battery of prooftexts, or testimonia, the innovative polemics introduced three important elements—the recourse to reason, the attack on the Talmud, and the use of the Talmud to prove the truth of Christianity. These innovations signaled the beginning of the end of the relative Christian tolerance of Jews and Judaism inspired by the writings of Augustine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 89 , Issue 2 , April 1996 , pp. 161 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1996

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References

1 Zion 33 (1968) 125–44Google Scholar. Funkenstein's article has been reprinted a number of times and in various forms; for an English translation, see Funkenstein, , Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 172–201Google Scholar.

2 Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1982) 21–32Google Scholar.

3 Berger, David, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages,” AHR 91 (1986) 576–91Google Scholar.

4 Chazan, Robert, Daggers of Faith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) 7–21Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 21–24. In a personal communication, Prof. Chazan informed me that he is, indeed, in basic sympathy with Funkenstein's position concerning the introduction of new polemical tactics into Christian anti-Jewish works in the twelfth century; see also Chazan, , “Joseph Kimhi's Sefer Ha-Berit: Pathbreaking Medieval Jewish Apologetics,” HTR 85 (1992) 418 nGoogle Scholar.

6 Funkenstein, Perceptions, 193 n. 66.

7 The most influential work in this respect was Anselm's Cur deus homo in Opera Omnia (ed. Francis S. Schmitt; 6 vols, Stuttgart: Fromann, 1968) 2. 37–133; see also Anselm De conceptu virginali et de peccato originali in ibid., 135–73, and idem, Epistola de incarnatione verbi in ibid., 1–35.

8 Abulafia, Anna Sapir, “An Attempt by Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, at Rational Argument in the Jewish-Christian Debate,” Studia Monastica 26 (1984) 55–74Google Scholar.

9 See Odo of Tournai, , On Original Sin and A Disputation with the Jew, Leo, Concerning the Advent of Christ, the Son of God (trans. Resnick, Irven M.; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see below, n. 40.

10 Pseudo-William of Champeaux, Dialogus inter Christianum et ludaeum de fide catholica, PL 163. 1045–72. See also Abulafia, Anna Sapir, “Jewish-Christian Disputations and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989) 105–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Funkenstein, Perceptions, 181–82; but compare Cohen, Friars, 25.

11 Abelard, Peter, A Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian (Mediaeval Sources in Translation 20; trans. Payer, Pierre J.; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979)Google Scholar; see also Liebeschütz, Hans, “The Significance of Judaism in Peter Abaelard's Dialogus,” JJS 12 (1961) 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Alfonsi also employed rational arguments in his polemic against Judaism. The Latin text of Peter Alfonsi's Dialogue can be found in PL 157. 527–672; and Mieth, Klaus-Peter, “Der Dialog des Petrus Alfonsi: seine Überlieferung im Druck und in den Handschriften: Textedition” (Ph.D. diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1982)Google Scholar. For two recent discussions of Alfonsi, see Hurwitz, Barbara Phyllis, “Fidei Causa et tui Amore: The Role of Petrus Alphonsi's Dialogues in the History of Jewish-Christian Debate” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983)Google Scholar; Tolan, John, Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993)Google Scholar. Peter the Venerable's anti-Jewish polemic is Adversus ludeorum inveteratam duritiem (ed. Friedman, Yvonne; Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 58; Turnhout: Brepols, 1985)Google Scholar. The two Peters are discussed in Merchavia, Chen, The Church versus Talmudic and Midrashic Literature (500–1248) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1970) 93–127Google Scholar, 128–52 [Hebrew]. The dependence of Peter the Venerable on Peter Alfonsi is demonstrated by Lieberman, Saul, Shkiin (2d ed.; Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1970) 27–42Google Scholar. See also Kniewasser, Manfred, “Die antijüdische Polemik des Petrus Alphonsi (getauft 1106) und des Abtes Petrus the Venerable von Cluny (+ 1156),” Kairos n.s. 2 (1980) 34–76Google Scholar.

13 Alan of Lille, De fide catholica contra haereticos liber quatuor 4.3, PL 210. 399–422; the passage in question is found in col. 410; see Funkenstein, Perceptions, 196–98; Merchavia, Talmud, 214–17.

14 For a detailed discussion of twelfth-century sources on Jews and Judaism and a general review of Christia.n controversial literature, see Abulafia, Anna Sapir, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also the material in Dahan, Gilbert, Les intellectuels Chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge (Paris: Cerf, 1990)Google Scholar; and Berger, “Mission.”

15 Cohen, Friars, 25–32.

16 “Chazan (Daggers of Faith, 185 n. 32), discussing the thirteenth century, mentions Alfonsi only once and Peter the Venerable does not fare much better (pp. 23–24, 29). For a more positive evaluation of Alfonsi's influence on later Christian writers, see Tolan, Alfonsi.

17 See Lasker, Daniel J., “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages,” PAAJR 57 (1991) 121–53Google Scholar; idem, “Judeo-Christian Polemics and Their Origins in Muslim Countries,” Pe˓amim 57 (1993) 4–16 [Hebrew].

18 Rosenthal, Erwin I. J., “Anti-Christian Polemic in Medieval Bible Commentaries,” JJS 11 (1960) 115–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grossman, Abraham, “The Jewish-Christian Polemic and Jewish Bible Exegesis in Twelfth-Century France,” Zion 51 (1986) 29–60Google Scholar [Hebrew]; Touitou, Eliezer, “The Exegetical Method of Rashbam in the Light of the Historical Reality of His Time,” in Gilat, Y. D., et al. , eds., Iyyunim be-Sifrut Ḥazal ba-Miqra u-ve-Toledot Yisra˒el (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1982) 8–74Google Scholar [Hebrew]; Kamin, Sarah, “The Polemic against Allegory in the Commentary of R. Joseph Bekhor Shor,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1983–84) 367–92Google Scholar [Hebrew]; idem, “Rashi's Commentary on the Song of Songs and Jewish-Christian Polemic,” in Shenaton la-Miqra u-le-ḥeqer ha-Mizraḥ ha-Qadmon 7–8 (1983–84) 218–48 [Hebrew]; Baer, Yitzhak, “Rashi and his Generation's Historical Reality,” Tarbiẓ 20 (1950) 320–32Google Scholar [Hebrew]; Shereshevsky, Esra, “Rashi and Christian Interpretations,” JQR 61 (1970–71) 76–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Grossman (“The Jewish-Christian Polemic”) makes the case that the desire to combat Christian exegesis was a strong motivating factor in Joseph Qara's (ca. 1060–1070) interpretations of biblical verses and religious hymns. Qara did not, however, write a separate treatise as did some of his thirteenth-century compatriots who discussed many of the same verses in their polemical works. In his article's notes, Grossman adduced parallels between Qara's specific interpretations and the polemical literature of the next century. See also Alexander M. Shapiro (“An Anti-Christian Polemic of the Twelfth Century,” Zion 56 [1991] 79–85 [Hebrew]) who presents an anti-Christian passage in the halakhic work of the twelfth-century's R. Eliezer b. Natan (Even ha-Ezer).

20 See Lasker, Daniel J. and Stroumsa, Sarah, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1996)Google Scholar, for an edition, translation, and commentary on all the relevant Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts.

21 See Pakuda, Bahya b. Joseph Ibn, The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart (trans. Mansoor, Menahem; London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1973)Google Scholar; Halevi, Judah, The Kuzari (trans. Hirschfeld, Hartwig; London: Routladge, 1906)Google Scholar.

22 Explicit citations of Nestor by Jacob b. Reuben in 1170 indicate its early provenance; see Lasker and Stroumsa (Nestor the Priest) for a full discussion.

23 Reuben, Jacob b., Sefer Milḥmot Ha-Shem (ed. Rosenthal, Judah; Jerusalem: Ha-Rav Kook, 1963)Google Scholar. Very little is known about Jacob b. Reuben; although he mentions his city of residence, there is a dispute as to whether that city is Huesca or Gascogne. See Judah Rosenthal's introduction to Milḥamot Ha-Shem, vii–xxv; Schmitz, Rolf, “Jacob ben Rubén y su obra Milḥamot ha-Šem,” in del Valle, Carlos, ed., Polémica Judeo-Cristiana Estudios (Madrid: Aben Ezra, 1992) 45–58Google Scholar; and Carlos del Valle, “Jacob ben Rubén de Huesca. Su patria y su época,” in ibid., 59–65. Whether or not Jacob b. Reuben was a refugee from Muslim Andalusia, his work is suffused with the Andalusian Jewish anti-Christian tradition; see Lasker, “Origins.” See also Chazan, Robert, “The Christian Position in Jacob Ben Reuben's Milḥamot Ha-Shem,” in Neusner, Jacob, et al. , eds., From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding. Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox (4 vols.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989) 2. 157–70Google Scholar.

24 Kimḥi's, Joseph, Sefer Ha-Berit (ed. Talmage, Frank; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974)Google Scholar; for an English translation, see Kimḥi, Joseph, The Book of the Covenant (trans. Talmage, Frank; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972)Google Scholar; references here follow the English translation. See also Robert Chazan, “Sefer Ha-Berit,” 417–32.

25 See Milḥamot, 154–56 for explicit references; other borrowed arguments appear on pp. 9–10, 153.

26 See Kimḥi, Book of the Covenant, 36–39; for Nestor's influence on later Jewish polemical works, see the commentary in Lasker and Stroumsa, Nestor the Priest; and Rembaum, Joel E., “The Influence of Sefer Nestor Hakomer on Medieval Jewish Polemics,” PAAJR 45 (1978) 155–85Google Scholar.

27 Jewish familiarity with the Christian emphasis on reason in the twelfth century may also be reflected in passages in Judah Halevi's Kmari (such as the opening speech of the Christian and the king's response in 1.4–5), demonstrating that the new Christian attitude toward reason may have been known in Muslim Spain as well.

28 In addition to finding Christian arguments reflected in Jewish polemical works, it is also possible to discern Jewish arguments in Christian polemical works. Sometimes those contentions appear in writing first in the Christian source. The claim that Jesus did not bring world peace, for example, is a theme that Christian treatises attributed to Jews in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but it occurs in Jewish ones only from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. See the references in Berger, David, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia: JPSA, 1979) 279–80Google Scholar.

29 Jacob b. Reuben translated both the New Testament and Christian polemical works; see Rosenthal, Judah, “Early Hebrew Translations of the Gospels,” Tarbiẓ 32 (1962–63) 48–66Google Scholar [Hebrew]; Berger, David, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben,” Speculum 49 (1974) 34–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 The meaning of the terms is unclear. Dahan (Les intellectuels, 345) understands this term to mean: “expert in theology and well versed in the spiritual sciences.” It should be remembered that Jacob b. Reuben was writing at a period when Hebrew philosophical terminology was still in flux, since the Hebrew of twelfth- and thirteenth-century translations rendered by the Ibn Tibbon family had not yet become standard.

31 Jacob b. Reuben, Milḥamot, 5. Compare Isa 44:18.

32 Kimḥi, Book of the Covenant, 27.

33 Jacob b. Reuben, Milḥamot, 13.

34 Peter the Venerable, Adversus Iudeorum, 57–58; compare Friedman, Yvonne, “Peter the Venerable: A Humanist of the Twelfth Century or an Anti-Semite,” in Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies: History of the Jews in Europe (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1981)Google Scholar Hebrew section, 1–8.

35 Jacob b. Reuben, Milḥamot, 7.

36 Alfonsi offered this analogy as an explanation of incarnation; see Dialogi, cols. 617–18; Hurwitz, Fidei Causa, 140. In Dialogi, col. 612, Alfonsi used the analogy of the priests' fingers in the priestly blessing for the Trinity. This image may be reflected in Jacob b. Reuben's (Milḥamot, 10) reference to a hand with five fingers. For a discussion of similar images of the Trinity, see Lasker, Daniel J., Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York: Ktav, 1977) 93–103Google Scholar.

37 Hugh of St. Victor, Apologia de verbe incarnata, PL 177. 305. There is some question as to the genuineness of this work's attribution to Hugh of St. Victor.

38 Abulafia, “Jewish-Christian Disputations,” 115–17; idem, Christians and Jews, 81–82; see also Lasker, Polemics, 157–58.

39 For the background for the imagery of virgin conception, see the discussion by Wood, Charles T., “The Doctors' Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,” Speculum 56 (1981) 710–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 On the possible influence of Crispin and Odo on Anselm, see Abulafia, “Attempt,” 68; and Odo, Disputation, 25–26. See also Alfonsi's defense of soteriology, Dialogi, cols. 639–46; Hurwitz, Fidei Causa, 141–49. The question of the reason for incarnation was central in twelfth-century Christian thought; see Abulafia, “Disputations,” 118–21.

41 Hurwitz, Fidei Causa, 903–120.

42 Jacob b. Reuben, Milḥamot, 157–85.

43 Alfonsi, Dialogi, cols. 555–57; Hurwitz, Fidei Causa, 107–9.

44 The influence of Jewish rationalism from the Islamic world is discernable as well in Jacob b. Reuben's use of Bahya ibn Paquda's arguments for the unity of God in Milḥamot, 9–10.

45 Kimḥi, Book of the Covenant, 28.

46 It should be noted that the use of the term “reason” in the twelfth century was non-Aristotelian. Thirteenth-century Christian philosophers did not invariably accept the results of twelfth-century theologizing as rational in a more rigorous sense.

47 See Frimer, Norman E. and Schwartz, Dov, The Life and Thought of Shem Tov Ibn Shaprut (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1992) 62Google Scholar [Hebrew].

48 See Chazan, Daggers.

49 Even if Jacob b. Reuben and Joseph Kimḥi did not respond directly to the twelfth-century Christian attack on rabbinic literature, they still may have been aware of some of its elements. It is possible that these authors understood the Christian attack on the midrash as part of the general accusation of Jewish irrationality and blasphemy. By asserting, therefore, that Christian doctrines were irrational and that incarnation was an affront to the divinity because of the indignities of gestation and birth, the Jewish polemicists may have been subtly answering the new Christian tactic.

50 See Jonathan, of Lunel, , The Commentary of R. Jonathan Ha-Kohen of Lunel on the Mishnah and Alfasi Tractate Bava Kamma (ed. Friedman, Shamma; Jerusalem/New York: Feldheim, 1969) 106Google Scholar; Blidstein, Gerald J., “Menahem Meiri's Attitude Toward Gentiles: Apologetics or Worldview?” Binah 3 (1994) 133Google Scholar n. 27. I would like to thank Prof. Blidstein for drawing this source to my attention.

51 Compare Abulafia's discussion of this issue in Christians and Jews.