¹ Newman's, L. I.Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925)Google Scholar is an important study, but it does not succeed in establishing the thesis implied by the title. See the discussion by Talmage, F., “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise,” HTR 60 (1967) 335–37Google Scholar. See also Scholem, G., Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala (Berlin: de Gruyter and Co., 1962) 206–10Google Scholar. Scholem has noted one clear reference by a Jewish polemicist to Christian “heretics who believe in two gods, one good and one evil” (Meir of Narbonne's Milḥemet Miẓvah [1245], cited in Scholem's, “Teʿudah Hadashah LeToledot Reshit HaQabbalah,” Sefer Bialik [Tel Aviv: 1934] 152)Google Scholar. On this reference, see note 36 below. On the possible relationship between Provençal kabbalah and Catharism, see also Shahar, Sh., “HaQattarim VeReshit HaQabbalah BeLanguedoc,” Tarbiẓ 40 (1971) 483–509.Google Scholar

² For a discussion of the impact of inquisitorial procedures on the Jews in a fairly early period, see Yerushalmi, Y., “The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui,” HTR 63 (1970) 317–77Google Scholar. The investigation and burning of the Talmud in the thirteenth century has been discussed most recently by Merchavia, Ch., HaTalmud BiReʾi HaNaẓrut (Jerusalem: 1970) 227–48Google Scholar. On the burning of the works of Maimonides in the 1230s, see Schochet, A., “Berurim BeParshat HaPulmus HaRishon al Sifrei HaRambam,” Zion 36 (1971) 27–60Google Scholar. It is especially noteworthy that a Hebrew manuscript alleges that a Christian missionary in 1272–73 threatened to demonstrate that the Jews have no faith and that, like the Bougres, they deserve to be burned; see Neubauer, A., “Literary Gleanings, IX,” JQR, o.s., 5 (1893) 714Google Scholar. R. Chazan's suggestion that one of the earliest large-scale persecutions of Jews in the high middle ages was related to the beginnings of heresy in the West is interesting although there is no concrete documentation to bear it out; see his “1007–1012: Initial Crisis for Northern European Jewry,” Proceedings of The American Academy for Jewish Research 38–39 (1970–1971) 101–17Google Scholar. For the charge of harboring heretics as well as a more general bibliographical discussion, see Baron, S., A Social and Religious History of the Jews (2d ed.; New York, London, and Philadelphia: Columbia University Press, 1965) 9. 59, 267–68.Google Scholar

³ See Parkes, J., The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (London: 1934; reprinted New York: Atheneum, 1969) 300–03.Google Scholar

⁴ See his Liber Qui Dicitur Gratissimus, ch. 37, PL 145. 153, and his De Sacramentis per Improbos Administratis, PL 145. 529, discussed in my “St. Peter Damian: His Attitude toward the Jews and the Old Testament,” Yavneh Review 4 (1965) 86–87, 89–90.Google Scholar

⁵ See my study, “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972) 104–05Google Scholar. See also Cassiodorus, PL 70. 74D (“Judaei vel Donatistae”); Hadrian I, PL 98. 1255–56; Humbert, PL 143. 1093C. Cf. Blumenkranz, B., Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental 430–1096 (Paris: 1960) xvi–xvii, and note 11 there, and see Baron, History, 58–60.Google Scholar

⁶ “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise, Anti-Cathar and Anti-Orthodox,” HTR 60 (1967) 323–48Google Scholar. The article contains a translation of the treatise; the Hebrew text appears in Milḥemet ḥovah (Constantinople: 1710) 13a–18b and in Talmage's, Sefer HaBerit u-Vikkuḥei Radaq im HaNazrut (Jerusalem: 1974)Google Scholar. In his introduction to the Hebrew text (15–16), Talmage reiterates the central thesis of the article.

⁷ Talmage's translation, 341.

⁸ He refers to C. Schmidt, Histoire et Doctrine des Cathares ou Albigeois 2. 41f.

⁹ “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise,” 327.

¹⁰ See Meiss, M., “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth Century Paintings,” The Art Bulletin 27 (1945) 175–81Google Scholar. Cf. also the brief reference in Robb, D. M., “The Iconography of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” The Art Bulletin 18 (1936) 523.Google Scholar

¹¹ Quoted in Hirn, Y., The Sacred Shrine (London: B. Franklin, 1912) 297Google Scholar, and in Jones, E., “The Madonna's Conception Through the Ear,” Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis (London: 1923; reprinted New York: International University Press, 1964) 2. 269.Google Scholar

¹² PL 183. 327, cited in Hirn, 298.

¹³ Cf. Hirn, 298. In the fifteenth century, a converso monk later suspected of judaizing asked about the channel through which Jesus was conceived, and one answer suggested to him (apparently by an orthodox colleague) was “per la oreja”; see Sicroff, A. A., “Clandestine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,” Studies in Honor of M. J. Benardete ed. by Langnas, I. and Sholod, B. (New York: 1965) 105–06.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Sefer Yosef Ha Meqanne, (ed. by Rosenthal, J.; Jerusalem: 1970) 104. This section of Joseph's work had never been published before Rosenthal's edition and was therefore unavailable to Talmage. The belief that Jesus was conceived “through the brain” was also reported by Yom Tov Lipmann Mühlhausen in his Sefer [Ha]Niẓẓaḥon (written at the very beginning of the fifteenth century; Amsterdam: 1709) section 8, 15a. He goes on to argue that Jesus should have emerged through the same passageway, and yet no one has ever maintained that the site of his birth was different from that of other infants.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Arlow, Jacob, “The Madonna's Conception through the Eyes,” The Psychoanalytic Study of Society 3 (1965) 13–25, esp. 20 (pointed out by my colleague at Brooklyn College, Prof. Elizabeth Brown).Google Scholar

¹⁶ The work was published with a Latin translation by J. Wagenseil, Tela Ignea Satanae (Altdorf: 1681) 2. 1–260. On the date, see Urbach, E., “Études sur la littérature polémique au moyen age,” Revue des Études Juives 100 (1935) 60, 76–77, and Rosenthal's introduction to Sefer Yosef HaMeqanne, 15. See also the introduction to my forthcoming critical edition, translation and commentary.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Tela Ignea Satanae, 167.

¹⁸ This argument is more elaborate and explicit with respect to the Christian identification of Cyrus with Jesus in Isaiah 45. See Tela, 102: “It is written, ‘That you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel’ (Isa 45:3). Thus, you say that this Cyrus whom you identify with Jesus did not know God until the point when all these things were done to him. In light of this, how can you say that the spirit of God entered Mary and took on flesh? If that were true, he certainly should have known God even before his birth.”

¹⁹ Cf. Tela, 7,210. See 201, where the author is apparently interested in proving from Christian sources that Jesus was born from the stomach; this too may be directed against the heretical view. His evidence consists of a quotation which is apparently an abridged and distorted version of Luke 2:5–11.

²⁰ See Borst, A., Die Katharer (Stuttgart: 1953) 103–04Google Scholar. Cf. also Wakefield, W. and Evans, A., Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969) 38–39.Google Scholar

²¹ Talmage's translation, 341–42.

²² It is not quite clear to me whether Talmage understood the argument in this fashion. He does express surprise (328) that the author should consider mother's milk harmful when all other medieval writers praise its quality.

²³ Talmage's translation of the vav which introduces the second clause as “so that” is precisely to the point. This is a corollary of the first clause rather than a continuing exposition of the straightforward Christian position.

²⁴ See Meir ben Simon of Narbonne (thirteenth century), Milḥemet Miẓvah, Parma manuscript, 26b–27a, 89a-b; Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, Tela Ignea Satanae, 213–15, 217–18, 224–26. The point was raised in connection with Matt 4:2 in Reuben's, Jacob benMilḥamot HaShem (ed. by Rosenthal, J.; Jerusalem: 1963) 144, and in the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 200.Google Scholar

²⁵ Such a Christian argument (although in a different context) is cited without direct refutation in the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 173: “You may then argue that he prayed and cried not because he wanted to be saved but because people normally pray when they are in trouble; thus, he too prayed because he behaved like an ordinary mortal in every respect.” Cf. Jerome, In Esaiam (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 73A) 706.

²⁶ For the argument that Jesus did not have to make pretenses in a private situation involving only “himself and his Father,” see the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 60. The author there is commenting on the Christian assertion that the addressee in Jeremiah 1 is Jesus (cf. Cyprian's Testimonia 1.5, PL 4. 691). If so, he argues, why does Jesus respond, “Ah, Lord God, I cannot speak,” so that God must tell him, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth” (Jer 1:6, 9)? “This implies,” he continues, “that up to that time he possessed no such power of speech and certainly not divinity. … Notice, then, their shame, for he was supposed to have been divine from birth, yet Jeremiah says that the divine word was granted him only now. If the Christian will respond by arguing that Jesus spoke this way [reading amar ken with the Munich manuscript rather than amar lah ken] because of his humility, refute him by asking why humility should be necessary in a conversation between himself and his Father.”

²⁷ “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise,” 328–29. Cf. also Wolfson, H. A., The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (2d ed.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1964) 1. 364.Google Scholar

²⁸ This last argument, based on Dan 8:12 (“And it cast down the truth to the ground”), was proposed by Meir of Narbonne, Milḥemet Miẓvah, Parma ms., 13b, 22b, 105b; cf. also Sefer Yosef HaMeqanne, 113. For Jewish explanations of the exile in polemic, see the additions to Joseph Kimḥi, Sefer HaBerit, in Milḥemet ḥovah, 36a, the Jew in the Dialogus of Rupert of Deutz, PL 170.606, the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 253–57, and Solomon de’ Rossi, ʿEdut HaShem Neʾemanah, in Rosenthal, J., Mehqarim u-Meqorot (Jerusalem: 1967) 1. 395–400 (= Sura 3 [1948] 260–64).Google Scholar

²⁹ This argument was applied to Ps 72:11 by Jacob ben Reuben (Milḥamot HaShem, 74), Naḥmanides (Vikkuaḥ, in Chavel, Ch., Ketavei Ramban [Jerusalem: 1963] 1. 311), and the author of the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 176. See also Meir of Narbonne, Milḥemet Miẓvah, Parma ms., 13b, and Jacob ben Reuben, Milḥamot HaShem, 38–39, 114. Cf. especially the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 237–38.Google Scholar

³⁰ “Cur etenim Deus, universitatis conditor, mundi totius gubernator … legem per Moysen uni populo dedisse credatur, et non omnibus gentibus attribuisse dicatur?” Q. S. F. Tertulliani Adversus Judaeos mit Einleitung und kritischem Kommentar (ed. by Tränkle, H.; Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1964) 4 (= PL 2. 599).Google Scholar

³¹ That Christian miracles should have been more impressive was asserted in Meir of Narbonne's Milḥemet Miẓvah, Parma ms., 121a-b, in the Vikkuaḥ Leha Radaq, Talmage's translation, 345, 347, and in the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 6, 90, 155, 159. The unfairness of punishing someone who refused to believe in the divinity of Jesus was emphasized by Joseph Kimhi, Sefer HaBerit, Milḥemet Hovah, 228.

³² Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, 211, 234–35.

³³ Ibid., 238.

³⁴ This is the preferable form in thirteenth-century French (the Hebrew transliteration is with a gimel); see Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, Dictionnaire Générale de la Langue Française, s.v. Albigeois.

³⁵ Liqqutim Meḥibburei R. Mordekhai ben Yosef MeAvignon (ed. by A. Posnanski, Hebrew University manuscript, Shelf Mark Heb 8° 769) 26. On Posnanski's unpublished transcriptions of Hebrew polemical manuscripts, see Simonsen, D., “Eine Sammlung polemischer und apologetischer Literatur,” Festschrift für Aron Freiman (Berlin: 1935) 114ff.Google Scholar

³⁶ On these doctrines, see Borst, Die Katharer, 162–67; Russell, J., Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1965) 203; Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 8, 48. Mordecai's reference to heretics is somewhat more significant than that of Meir of Narbonne (see above, note 1). Mordecai employs the specific terms Albigensians and Bogomils rather than the generic “heretics,” and the doctrines he cites are less obvious to the casual observer than the dualism mentioned by Meir. Finally, it is of considerable interest that while Meir contrasted heretics and orthodox Christians to the detriment of the former (Jewish law, he tells his orthodox listener, is far more favorably inclined toward orthodox Christians than it is toward dualists), Mordecai cites heresy with some approval as part of an attack against the Christian mainstream.Google Scholar

³⁷ On the date and place, see Rosenthal's, introduction to his edition of Milḥamot HaShem (Jerusalem: 1963)Google Scholar. The problems cited by Merhavya, Ch. (Kirjath Sepher 39 [1964] 144–48Google Scholar) are not sufficient, in my opinion, to cast substantial doubt upon the 1170 date in the colophon. On the translations from Matthew, see Rosenthal's, “Targum shel HaBesorah ʿal Pi Matti leYa ʿaqov ben Reuven,” Tarbiẓ 32 (1962) 48–66Google Scholar, and on the translation from Crispin, see my “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission of Medieval Polemic,” Speculum 49 (1974) 34–47.Google Scholar

³⁸ Milḥamot HaShem, 116–17. I have tried to provide an extremely literal translation. Despite Merhavya's suggestion to the contrary (op. cit., 146–47), it is quite clear that this Paul, who is a contemporary of the author, is not the same as the Paul mentioned in several earlier passages of Milḥamot HaShem. Even if that Paul is not the apostle (and he probably is), he is certainly no contemporary of the disputants since he is mentioned along with Jerome and Augustine as one of the founders of the Christian faith (p. 5).

³⁹ Whatever dualist elements may have influenced early Christianity (see Rosenthal's note ad loc.), it was clearly unacceptable for a twelfth-century Christian to say that there is evil in God.

⁴⁰ See Borst, Die Katharer, 89–108. Cf. also Russell, Dissent and Reform, 200, and Moore, R. I., “The Origins of Medieval Heresy,” History 55 (1970) 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ See the quotation in Baron, History, 58.

⁴² For the assertion by Abner of Burgos that evil in this passage does not mean evil, see Rosenthal's note ad loc.

⁴³ Milḥamot HaShem, 120–21.

⁴⁴ See Meir of Narbonne, Milḥemet Miẓvah, Parma ms., 30a-b, 49b-50a, 99a-101a; Moses of Salerno, Taʿanot, in Simon, S., Mose ben Salomo von Salerno und seine philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit den Lehren des Christentums (Breslau: 1932Google Scholar; Hebrew section)6, 15; Nahmanides, Vikkuaḥ, KetaveiRamban, 320; Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogus, PL 157. 606ff. On the early formulation of this interpretation of the trinity, see Wolfson, H., “The Muslim Attributes and the Christian Trinity,” HTR 49 (1956) 1–18.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See the references in Rosenthal's notes ad loc. Cf. also Nahmanides' Vikkuaḥ, 320.

⁴⁶ See Simon, Mose ben Salomo von Salerno (Heb. sec.) 6, and Naḥmanides' Vikkuaḥ, loc. cit. Baron (op. cit., 85), while incorrectly stating that Naḥmanides did not use this argument, refers to it as a “long-debated” matter. The extension of alleged trinitarian references in the Bible beyond three was also a rather common Jewish approach; see appendix 1 of my forthcoming edition of the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus.

⁴⁷ See the references in note 36, and cf. also Runciman, S., The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947) 148–49Google Scholar, and Thouzellier, C., Catharisme et Valdéisme en Languedoc à la Fin du XII^e et au Début du XIII^e Siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966) 61.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ It might be argued that all Paul meant is that Jews who maintain that there are more than three attributes must believe in extensive multiplicity within God; he himself, however, believes in only three hypostases. Aside from the fact that he never says this explicitly, his final comment that “there is no one (ein eḥad mikol hanivraʾim) who does not believe” in all these attributes as well as his remark that “this is the truth” make such a position very difficult to maintain. If Paul was a concealed heretic, these last remarks might have been insincere, but if he was an orthodox Christian, he should not have expressed himself in such a fashion.

Moreover, it should be noted that Paul's assertion of divine multiplicity in connection with the attributes of God (or, if our suspicions are correct, in connection with the attributes of the good God) is analogous to the reported views of a thirteenth-century heresiarch with respect to the evil god; in light of this, it is altogether possible that Paul meant what he said. According to the Summa of Rainerius Sacconi, John of Lugio maintained that “the first principle of evil is called by many names in the Holy Scriptures. It is called malice, iniquity, cupidity, impiety, sin, pride, death, hell, calumny, vanity, injustice, perdition, confusion, corruption, and fornication. And he also says that all the evils named are gods or goddesses, that they have their being from the malice which, he asserts, is a first cause, and that this first cause is signified from time to time by the vices named” (Wakefield and Evans, Heresies, 339).

⁴⁹ Milḥamot HaShem, 118.

⁵⁰ In light of the paucity of heretical texts from the middle ages, it seems worthwhile to point out explicitly that if this suggestion is correct, Jacob ben Reuben has indirectly provided what is in effect a medieval heretical document from a relatively early period.

⁵¹ Cf. note 19.