FA S H I O N I N G J E W I S H I D E N T I T Y I N

M E D I E VA L W E S T E R N C H R I S T E N D O M

During the course of the twelfth century, increasing numbers of Jews

migrated into dynamically developing western Christendom from
Islamic lands. The vitality that attracted them also presented a chal-
lenge: Christianity – from early in its history – had proclaimed itself
heir to a failed Jewish community, and thus the vitality of western
Christendom was both appealing and threatening to the Jewish immi-
grants. Indeed, western Christendom was entering a phase of intense
missionizing activity, some of which was directed at the long-term
Jewish residents of Europe and the Jewish newcomers.
Jewish religious and intellectual leaders bore responsibility for pro-
viding guidance to Jews who were subjected to Christian pressures.
The writings of five such twelfth- and thirteenth-century leaders from
southern France and northern Spain constitute the first evidence of
Jewish anti-Christian polemics from within western Christendom.
These leaders were fully cognizant of the core Christian thrusts, de-
scribed them in detail for their co-religionists, and rebutted them care-
fully. This study recreates some of the clarification and rebuttal. It also
examines the techniques of persuasion adopted by the Jewish polemi-
cists in order to reassure their Jewish readers of the truth of Judaism
and the error of Christianity. At the very deepest level, these Jewish
authors sketched out for their fellow Jews a comparative portrait of
Christian and Jewish societies – the former powerful but irrational and
morally debased, the latter weak but reasonable and morally elevated –
urging that the obvious and sensible choice was Judaism.

rob e rt c h az an is Scheuer Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Stud-

ies, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York
University. His many publications in medieval Jewish history include
Medieval Jewry in Northern France (1974), Church, State, and Jew in the
Middle Ages (1980), European Jewry and the First Crusade (1987), Dag-
gers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and the Jewish
Response (1989), Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and
Its Aftermath (1992), Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism
(1997), and God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade
Narratives (2000).
 FA S H I O N I N G J E W I S H
IDENTITY IN MEDIEVAL
WESTERN CHRISTENDOM

RO B E R T C H A Z A N
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 For
Daniel and Ronit
Michael and Michelle
Rachel and Dan
 Contents

Foreword page ix
Short titles for frequently cited works xiv

Introduction 1

i. back drop
1. Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 25
2. Post-Gospel Christian argumentation: continuities and
expansions 46
3. Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 67

ii. d ata and found ations

4. The Jewish polemicists of southern France
and northern Spain 91
5. Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 122

iii. jesus as m essiah

6. Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 143
7. Biblical prophecy: the Messiah reviled and vindicated 162

iv. rejection of the messiah and rejection

of the jews
8. Biblical prophecy and empirical observation: displacement
of the Jews 181
vii
viii Contents
9. Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 198
10. Biblical prophecy and empirical observation: Christian
failures 215

v. the m essiah human and divine

11. Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 233
12. Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 250

vi. jewish polemicists on the at tack

13. Christian Scripture and Jesus 281
14. Comparative behaviors: Jewish achievement and Christian
shortcoming 298

vii. u nderlyin g i ssues

15. Techniques of persuasion 317
16. Fashioning identities – other and self 339

Bibliography 360
Index of subjects and proper names 373
Scripture index 377
 Foreword

Pre-modern Christians and Jews – as we shall see – utilized every available

intellectual tool to formulate and argue the truth of their faiths. Both
majority Christians and minority Jews were utterly convinced of the truth
claims of the tradition to which they belonged. Only in the rarest cases
did individual thinkers, particularly those with a philosophic bent, allow
themselves to view religious faiths in a more distanced manner, to compare
and contrast faiths, and to attempt the analysis of religious belief and
behavior in functional terms. Such thinkers constituted the smallest of
sub-groups on the pre-modern scene.
Within the modern academy, the study of religion has been one of the
slowest disciplines to emerge. The academic study of religion began with
intense focus on the Western monotheisms, which were taken to reflect the
“highest” level of religious thinking and practice. It was widely presumed
that religious studies should focus on belief systems, with the implication
of normative judgment, implicit evaluation, and subtle effort to win over
others. On these grounds, many American universities, particularly public
universities, have refused to include religious studies in their curricula. To
be sure, with the passage of time further foci of study and new modalities
of analysis have emerged. An increasingly broad range of religious systems,
both historic and contemporary, has been subjected to scrutiny. The new
modalities of study include the effort to identify the common roots of
religions, an effort that often masked an unspoken commitment to one
or another faith community. More genuinely dispassionate has been the
growing influence of anthropology. Anthropological study has tended to
focus on the functions that religious faiths play within societies. This has
led away from the earlier judgmental posture and toward an appreciation
of the diverse objectives of religious systems, with their relative successes
and failures.
The present study is very much a part of this newer anthropological thrust
in religious studies. This book deals with medieval Jewish perceptions of
ix
x Foreword
Christian truth claims, Jewish rebuttals of these perceived Christian truth
claims, and Jewish counter-attacks against Christianity. Thus, this work
focuses directly on divergent Christian and Jewish perceptions of religious
truth. While there is in such an undertaking considerable danger of the
author projecting himself or herself into the medieval debate by valorizing
the claims of one side or the other, I in fact wish to make no judgments
as to where truth lies, as to who was actually correct. I have tried to signal
this stance – to the extent possible – by overuse of words like “alleged,”
“ostensible,” and “purported” in depicting Christian assessments of Judaism
and Jewish assessments of Christianity. Where these words are missing
(excessive repetition can become tedious for author and reader), I would
ask the reader to insert them, for they are surely intended.
If I am not interested in identifying right and wrong parties to the me-
dieval Christian–Jewish religious dispute, what then am I interested in
doing? What is the point of a study like this, if it does not aim to portray
conflicting claims and adjudicate among them? There is indeed an alter-
native. I have chosen to do this book out of my ongoing interest in the
challenges medieval Jews faced and the ways in which they responded to
those challenges – whether the challenges were physical, economic, intel-
lectual, or spiritual.
I shall try to show that, at the onset of the period examined, that is the
middle decades of the twelfth century, the Christian majority in southern
France and northern Spain began to challenge intellectually and spiritually
its Jewish minority in ever more aggressive ways. The challenge was deeply
threatening to the Jewish minority, and Jewish leaders in this important
area responded by offering their followers valuable information on the
Christian challenge and guidelines for response. This study is intended to
clarify twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish perceptions of the Christian
challenge and projection of effective lines of rebuttal. Put differently, I am
not concerned with issues of correct and incorrect, of right and wrong.
I have set out to investigate – hopefully with a kind of anthropological
detachment – a pattern of challenge and response. I am not interested
in ascertaining who won the medieval Christian–Jewish debate detailed
herein; I am interested rather in the dynamics of the debate itself.
At a number of points in the following analysis, I will exhibit considerable
enthusiasm for one or another of the Jewish polemicists upon whom this
book focuses. I am clearly impressed with the commitment of Jacob ben
Reuben to presenting the Christian case with fullness and am likewise
impressed with the down-to-earth good sense of Rabbi Meir bar Simon of
Narbonne (his disorganization and tediousness notwithstanding). It should
 Foreword xi
be fairly obvious that my admiration for Rabbi Moses ben Nahman is
unbounded. I marvel at his exegetical sensitivity and at his superb writing
skills. I have, in an earlier work, argued that Rabbi Moses ben Nahman’s
account of the Barcelona disputation is a masterpiece of medieval Jewish
narrative and polemical writing. I will devote considerable attention in this
study to his Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, which I likewise find brilliant. To admire the
work of these polemicists is not to endorse their conclusions, however; it is
to highlight the thoughtfulness and power of their response to the difficult
challenges upon which this book is focused.
Clarification of these issues leads me to an important apology. As is the
case for much of what I write, I am keenly aware of a dual audience (indeed
of an audience yet more complex than simply two groupings – but that is
for another time). This double audience consists in large measure of readers
who approach the matters analyzed herein from their interest in the Jewish
past and present. This group tends to be quite well informed with respect
to medieval Jewish history, as well as to prior and subsequent developments
in the Jewish past.
The second group – smaller, but perhaps by not all that much – comes to
these issues from its concern with the Christian past and present. Christian
interest in the Jewish experience has burgeoned over the past half century,
spawning an enormous scholarly and popular literature. While much of
this interest is focused on the classical period of the Christian–Jewish re-
lationship – the period of the birth and spread of Christianity, there is
much curiosity with regard to medieval and modern developments as well.
This second group comes to a book like this quite well informed on the
Christian past and present.
Because I am aware of addressing both audiences simultaneously, I have
felt an obligation to supply requisite information to whoever might need
it. Thus, readers with rich knowledge of Judaism and Jewish history must
forgive me for information I supply that to them seems utterly superfluous.
In the same way, readers with extensive knowledge of Christianity and
Christian history will likewise have to be understanding of information I
supply that to them seems obvious. My apologies in advance to both camps.
Since the material in Chapters 1 through 3 is intended quite consciously
to convey requisite background material, on both the Christian side and
the Jewish side, some readers may prefer to skip or skim these chapters and
proceed to the heart of the study, which begins with Chapter 4.
I have now been writing and teaching in the Skirball Department of
Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University for more than a decade
and a half and have benefited enormously from the stimulation of colleagues
xii Foreword
and students. Over the past few years, I have twice taught a seminar in
medieval Jewish polemics that focused on the five authors discussed in this
study. I would like to thank the students who have read and discussed
these authors with me: Flora Cassen, Julie Stern Joseph, Joshua Levy, Brian
Ogren, Robert Sagerman, Wendy Schor-Haim, Bruce Smith, and Katya
Vehlow. Their active engagement with these authors, their writings, and
their thinking has much expanded my understanding and appreciation of
the Jewish polemical enterprise of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
As has been true for all my books of the past decade and a half, my col-
leagues on the faculty of the Skirball Department have offered invaluable
assistance. I suspect that, at one time or another, I have pestered almost
all of them with questions related to this project. I thank them all for
their assistance. Two of my colleagues and friends deserve special mention,
since their work focuses on the intellectual and spiritual life of medieval
Jews. Alfred Ivry is master of the medieval Jewish (and indeed Islamic)
philosophic corpus. He has patiently answered my questions about the
philosophic issues involved in the Jewish writings upon which this study
draws. Elliot Wolfson commands a vast body of materials in Jewish spir-
itual history. Both southern France and northern Spain fall well within
the purview of his wide-ranging interests, and he has shared freely of his
encyclopedic knowledge and his methodological sophistication.
Four colleagues and friends have read versions of the manuscript in its
entirety and have offered me the benefit of their erudition. Anna Sapir
Abulafia has published extensively on both Christian and Jewish reli-
gious argumentation during the twelfth century. Her comprehensive study,
Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, plays a special role
in the concluding chapter of this book. David Berger commands the en-
tire range of Christian and Jewish polemics and has written copiously on
many aspects of this historic encounter. Daniel Lasker has published widely
on the Jewish polemical stances that developed in the medieval Muslim
world. More than anyone else, he has drawn attention to the importance
of twelfth-century southern-French thinkers in the emergence of medieval
Jewish polemics. James Robinson has been a Dorot Post-Doctoral Fellow
in the Skirball Department for the past few years. His path-breaking work
on Samuel ibn Tibbon of twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France
will soon be widely available and widely appreciated. To all these four col-
leagues and friends I offer my deepest thanks. They have saved me from
many errors and have enriched various aspects of my presentation. They,
of course, bear no responsibility for the weaknesses that remain, for which
I alone am culpable.
 Foreword xiii
As always, these expressions of appreciation must end with acknowledg-
ment of family support, especially the support of my wife. We continue
to respect each other’s careers deeply and to share the satisfaction that our
work brings to each of us. She has recently completed a book of her own.
Absorption in her writing has in no way detracted from her longstanding
support of mine. Many years ago, I dedicated a book to our then young
children. It is now time to dedicate a book to our adult children – each one
highly accomplished – and their wonderful spouses.
 Short titles for frequently cited works
Adversus Judaeos
The Book of the Covenant
The Book of Redemption
City of God
Commentary on Psalms
De Civitate Dei
The Disputation at Barcelona
Augustine of Hippo, Adversus Judaeos,
in Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne
(Paris: J. P. Migne, 1844–86), 42:51–64.
Joseph Kimhi, The Book of the
Covenant, trans. Frank Ephraim
Talmage (Toronto: The Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972).
Moses ben Nahman, The Book of
Redemption, in Ramban: Writings and
Discourses, trans. Chaim Chavel, 2 vols.
(New York: Shilo Publishing, 1978),
ii: 558–650.
Augustine of Hippo, City of God, trans.
Henry Bettenson (Hammondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1972).
David Kimhi, Commentary on Psalms,
trans. Bernard H. Mehlman and Daniel
F. Polish, in Jewish Civilization: Essays
and Studies, ed. Ronald A. Brauner,
3 vols. (Philadelphia: Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College, 1979–85),
iii: 184–194.
Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei,
2 vols. (Turnholt: Brepols, 1955; Corpus
Christianorum, Series Latina).
Moses ben Nahman, The Disputation at
Barcelona, in Ramban: Writings and
Discourses, trans. Chaim Chavel, 2 vols.
(New York: Shilo Publishing, 1978),
ii: 256–296.
xiv
 List of short titles
In Answer to the Jews
Milh.amot ha-Shem
Milh.emet Miz.vah
Milh.emet Miz.vah,
ed. Blau
Milh.emet Miz.vah,
ed. Herskowitz
Perush Tehillim
Perush Yisha‘yahu 52–53
Sefer ha-Berit
Sefer ha-Ge’ulah
Vikuah. Barcelona
xv
Augustine of Hippo, In Answer to the
Jews, trans. Sister Marie Liguori, in
Saint Augustine: Treatises on Marriage
and Other Subjects, ed. Roy J. Deferrari
(Washington: Catholic University of
America Press, 1955; The Fathers of the
Church: A New Translation), 391–414.
Jacob ben Reuben, Milh.amot ha-Shem,
ed. Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Mossad
ha-Rav Kook, 1963).
Meir bar Simon, Milh.emet Miz.vah, Bib.
Pal. Parma, MS 2749.
Meir bar Simon, Milh.emet Miz.vah, in
Shitat ha-Kadmonim ‘al Masekhet Nazir,
ed. M. Y. Blau (New York: n.p., 1974),
305–357.
Meir bar Simon, Milh.emet Miz.vah, in
William Herskowitz, Judaeo-Christian
Dialogue in Provence As Reflected in
Milh.emet Miz.vah of R. Meir ha-Meili
(Doct. diss.: Yeshiva University, 1974).
David Kimhi, Ha-Perush ha-Shalem ‘al
Tehillim, ed. Avraham Darom
(Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1971).
Moses ben Nahman, Perush Yisha‘yahu
52–53, in Kitvei Rabbenu Moshe ben
Nah.man, ed. Chaim Chavel, 2 vols., rev.
ed. (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
1971), i: 322–326.
Joseph Kimhi, Sefer ha-Berit, ed. Frank
Ephraim Talmage (Jerusalem: Mossad
Bialik, 1974).
Moses ben Nahman, Sefer ha-Ge’ulah,
in Kitvei Rabbenu Moshe ben Nah.man,
ed. Chaim Chavel, 2 vols., rev. ed.
(Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1971),
i: 253–296.
Moses ben Nahman, Vikuah. Barcelona,
in Kitvei Rabbenu Moshe ben Nah.man,
ed. Chaim Chavel, 2 vols., rev. ed.
(Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1971),
1: 302–320.
 Introduction

Believers are usually driven to share their truths with others. This is partic-
ularly true for monotheistic believers. The conviction that there is only one
true deity in the universe heightens the sense of responsibility to share this
unique truth with others.1 There is almost a moral imperative associated
with this sharing. Given the conviction of truth, by what right can the
believer withhold that blessing from fellow-humans?2 To be sure, there is
a second and less altruistic side to the commitment to sharing truth, and
that involves the doubt and uncertainty associated with religious belief.
One of the simplest techniques for dealing with doubt and uncertainty
is to enhance the number of fellow-believers. Indeed, the very process of
addressing others with supposedly certain truth augments for those doing
the outreach the conviction of the veracity of their message.3

1 On the social consequences of monotheistic faiths, see Rodney Stark, Just One God: Historical Con-
sequences of Monotheism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). The very first of the social
consequences of monotheism that Stark addresses is the commitment to mission. As a striking con-
temporary expression of this sense of the relationship of faith and mission, we might note a letter
published on July 15, 2002, in the New York Times. Responding to an essay on religious bigotry
in Islam, on the one hand, and in American Christian circles on the other, R. Albert Mohler, Jr.,
President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote as follows: “In
the end, the great world religions stand or fall on the validity of their truth claims. This is especially
the case with Christianity and Islam, both of which stake their case on a claim of divine revelation.
Furthermore, both faiths make a universal claim to truth and seek to convert nonbelievers. An Islam
that settles for religious pluralism is not authentic Islam, and Christianity without zeal for conversion
is not true Christianity.”
2 On p. 35 of Just One God, Stark proposes the following analogy: “Imagine a society’s discovering a
vaccine against a deadly disease that has been ravaging its people and continues to ravage people in
neighboring societies, where the cause of the disease is incorrectly attributed to improper diet. What
would be the judgment on such a society if it withheld its vaccine on the grounds that it would be
ethnocentric to try to instruct members of another culture that their medical ideas are incorrect, and
to induce them to adopt the effective treatment? If one accepts that one has the good fortune to be
in possession of the true religion and thereby has access to the most valuable possible rewards, is one
not similarly obligated to spread this blessing to those less fortunate?”
3 Stark, in Just One God, does not introduce this less altruistic aspect of the compulsion to missionize.

1
2 Introduction
Christianity has been, of the three Western monotheisms, the one most
intensely committed to spreading its religious truth among others.4 Chris-
tianity’s early history and rise to power were entirely dependent on outreach
to a variety of others. Beginning as a tiny sectarian group in first-century
Palestine, Christianity spread via preaching to a multitude of audiences
throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. It was the attrac-
tion of increasingly large masses to the Christian faith that created the back-
drop to the decision of the fourth-century Emperor Constantine to cease the
persecution to which the young religion had been subjected and to set it on
the road to becoming the ruling religion of the entire empire. To be sure, at
that point the further spread of Christianity was conditioned by more than
simply preaching. The emphasis on preaching and on winning the hearts
and minds of non-believers was never lost, however, and remains a central
commitment of many Christian communities down to the present day.
Christian preaching to the Jews represents a very special and complex
aspect of Christian missionizing. In the earliest phases of Christian history,
when Jesus and his immediate followers were part and parcel of Palestinian
Jewry, his preaching was intra-communal exhortation to a particular un-
derstanding of the ancient covenant between God and Israel. Jesus reached
out to his fellow Jews in much the same way as a number of other Jewish
visionaries of the period. The message of the young faith community was
rapidly extended beyond its Palestinian Jewish matrix, winning large num-
bers of gentile followers. Eventually, the Christian community broke with
its Jewish origins, although claiming inheritance of the Israelite covenant
that Jesus had earlier interpreted.5 At this point of separation, preaching to
the Jews became a real and complicated issue.
There were reasonable – indeed compelling – considerations against
such preaching. Jesus, his immediate followers, and the crucially important
apostle Paul had all tried and failed to win significant support among
Jews. Why should subsequent followers repeat their efforts? How might
these followers succeed at an objective that had eluded their more divinely
inspired predecessors?6 Moreover, successful Christian proselytizing had
made the young religious community far larger than its older rival. Why
pursue an increasingly small set of potential converts, when much larger
4 I make this statement with considerable caution. No one has yet attempted a comparative evaluation
of the missionizing of the three Western monotheisms. Stark, in his discussion of mission in Just
One God, focuses heavily on Christian proselytizing. It is interesting to note that, as the modern age
of enlightenment and toleration dawned, spokesmen for Judaism emphasized heavily its purported
aversion to missionizing.
5 For further detail on this evolution along with bibliographic references, see below, Chap. 1.
6 As we shall see below, Chap. 13, medieval Jewish polemicists often made precisely this argument.
 Introduction 3
human communities remained to be addressed? Over the ages, there have
in fact been periods when Christian efforts to win Jews have been minimal.
At the same time, there remained powerful stimuli to Christian preach-
ing to the Jews. In the first place, the fact that the group from which Jesus
and his immediate followers had emerged remained obdurate in its refusal
to believe constituted an ongoing irritant and a constant danger. Since so
much of the Christian case for religious truth was rooted in the Hebrew
Bible, it was distressing that the people with whom that Hebrew Bible
was shared rejected the Christian reading. To be sure, Christian thinkers
explained the Jewish rejection in a variety of ways, including the errors of
Jewish tradition, the role of Jewish teachers in leading their followers astray,
Jewish blindness and willfulness, and divine intention. Nonetheless, Jewish
rejection remained deeply troubling. Indeed, Jewish rejection of Christian
reading of Scripture posed an element of danger. Christian believers them-
selves might be led to wonder which of the two alternative readings was
actually the correct one. They might, on occasion at least, question the
imagery of Jewish error. In addition, there was a strong Christian tradition
that spoke of eventual Jewish agreement to the truths of Christianity. That
eventual agreement was regularly associated with the onset of full messianic
advent. Thus, periods of religious exhilaration often saw augmented efforts
to reach out to the Jews. Overall, despite the seeming improbability of
successful missionizing among the Jews, there remained powerful induce-
ments to undertake the task. Just as there were periods of relative neglect
of this task, so, too, were there periods of intense preaching efforts aimed
at the Jews.
Our focus is precisely such a period. With the fall of the western portion
of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the onslaught of the Muslims
beginning in the early eighth century, the leadership of medieval western
Christendom had far more pressing issues with which to deal, and conver-
sion of the Jews was relatively neglected. However, with the invigoration of
medieval western Christendom, beginning in the late tenth and eleventh
centuries and increasingly realized during the twelfth century, the stage was
set for intensified appeal to the Jewish minority.7 By the middle decades
7 The fullest analysis of twelfth-century Christian missionizing or lack thereof can be found in David
Berger, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High
Middle Ages,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576–591. The Berger article will be discussed
shortly. Daniel J. Lasker argues in a forthcoming essay that the Christian pressures involved more
than overt proselytizing; Lasker suggests that Christian philosophical sophistication in and of itself
constituted an ongoing pressure on the Jews of southern France. See Lasker, “Christianity, Philosophy,
and Polemic in Jewish Provence” (Hebrew), forthcoming. My appreciation to Daniel Lasker for
sharing this essay with me.
4 Introduction
of the thirteenth century, the informal spiritual pressures of the twelfth
century evolved into a full-blown missionizing campaign, involving the
allocation of significant Church resources, the development of regularized
channels for confronting Jews with Christian argumentation, and the ad-
umbration of innovative argumentation intended to break down Jewish
defenses.8
The leadership of those Jewish communities living within the orbit of
Latin Christendom at this critical juncture had to take up the challenge
of countering majority Christian pressure. We shall study the responses
of major Jewish leaders of the late twelfth and early to mid thirteenth
centuries, as they strove to identify the central thrusts of Christian pressure
and to offer their followers convincing lines of rebuttal that would enable
their co-religionists to resist the forces working upon them and to remain
fully rooted in their Jewish community and identity.
The Christian challenge was surely pan-European, and we possess
twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish polemical works from all areas of
Latin Christendom – from the older southern regions of northern Spain,
southern France, and Italy and from the newer northern regions, such as
northern France.9 To be sure, the challenge was mounted somewhat dif-
ferently, was perceived somewhat differently, and was rebutted somewhat
differently in these diverse areas.10 Of these varied areas of twelfth- and

8 I have studied the thirteenth-century missionizing campaign in Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century

Christian Missionizing and the Jewish Response (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). In a
sense, I am proceeding backward in time in the present book, analyzing developments prior to those
studied in Daggers of Faith.
9 For a full bibliography of Jewish anti-Christian polemical works, see Judah Rosenthal, “The Anti-
Christian Polemical Literature to the End of the Eighteenth Century” (Hebrew), Areshet 2 (1960):130–
179. There is no full overview of the history of Jewish polemics. Broad synthesizing works include
Hans Joachim Schoeps, The Jewish–Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict, trans.
David E. Green (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1963), and Samuel Krauss, The Jewish–
Christian Controversy from the Earliest Times to 1789, ed. and rev. William Horbury (Tubingen: J.C.B.
Mohr, 1995). For a collection of sources organized thematically, see Frank Ephraim Talmage (ed.),
Disputation and Dialogue: Readings in the Jewish–Christian Encounter (New York: Ktav Publishing,
1975). For medieval Jewish polemics specifically, see Hanne Trautner-Kromann, Shield and Sword:
Jewish Polemics against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100–1500 (Tubingen:
J.C.B. Mohr, 1993); Jeremy Cohen, “Toward a Functional Classification of Jewish Anti-Christian
Polemic in the High Middle Ages,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. Bernard Lewis and
Friedrich Niewohner (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), 93–114; and Daniel J. Lasker, “Major
Themes of the Jewish–Christian Debate: God, Humanity, Messiah,” Solomon Goldman Lectures 7
(1999): 107–130. For full discussion of medieval Jewish philosophical polemics, see Daniel J. Lasker,
Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York: Ktav Publishing
House, 1977).
10 For an illuminating statement of these differences, note Daniel J. Lasker, “Jewish Polemics against
Christianity in Thirteenth-Century Italy,” in H . azon Nah.um: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought, and
History Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm, ed. Yaakov Elman and Jeffrey S. Gurock (New York: Yeshiva
 Introduction 5
thirteenth-century Latin Christendom, one stands out as the arena from
which we have the earliest and most persistent Jewish polemical writings.
That area is southern France and northern Spain. I have made the deci-
sion to focus on this one ambiance, rather than attempting a survey of
Jewish polemical writings from the entirety of twelfth- and thirteenth-
century Latin Christendom. In so doing, I am sacrificing comprehensive-
ness in favor of concentration on a relatively homogeneous socio-cultural
environment. Since I am committed to seeing the Jewish polemical enter-
prise in its communal and social setting, I believe that the advantages in
treating a relatively homogeneous socio-cultural environment outweigh the
liabilities.11

The Christian–Jewish relationship is deep and complex, with important

implications for the polemical interchange between the two faith communi-
ties. The complexities of this relationship have been beautifully captured by
David Berger, in an overview he has provided of Jewish–Christian polemics.
The intensity, persistence, and significance of Jewish–Christian polemics are in
large measure a function of the peculiar combination of intimacy and divergence
that marks the relationship between the two faiths. It is not merely the fact that
Christianity emerges out of Judaism; it is, further, the combination of the contin-
uing centrality of the Hebrew Bible for Christians together with the profundity of
the theological differences that separated Christians from Jews.12
The intimacy regularly led Christians to believe that immersion in the
Hebrew Bible should smoothly lead Jews to acknowledge Christian truth

University Press, 1997), 251–263. On p. 252, Lasker notes: “Most of the Jewish polemical activity
in the thirteenth century was concentrated in Iberia, Provence, France, and Germany, each Jewish
community responding to the Christian challenge in its own way.”
11 I shall argue shortly that there were significant differences between the various areas of Latin Chris-
tendom with respect to missionizing among the Jews, with southern France and northern Spain in
fact leading the way in this new endeavor. For a sense of the cultural cohesion of southern France
and northern Spain, see Joseph Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades (New York: Dial Press, 1971), 1–14.
Because the places mentioned are central to our investigation, it is worth noting the following in
Strayer: “The southern [French] tongue is very close to Catalan, fairly close to Castilian, and quite
remote from French. A merchant from Narbonne would have been easily understood in Barcelona,
while he would have needed an interpreter in Paris.” Strayer pursues the parallels between south-
ern France and northern Spain in a number of cultural, economic, and political domains. From
the Jewish perspective, note David Berger, “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early
Modern Times,” in Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration?, ed. Jacob J.
Schacter (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1997), 60–141. Berger treats what he sees as the critical period
in the relation of medieval Jews to the general culture around them in a section entitled “The Great
Struggle: Provence and Northern Spain from the Late Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Century”
(85–108).
12 David Berger, “Jewish–Christian Polemics,” The Encyclopedia of Religion, 16 vols. ed. Mircea Eliade
(New York: Collier Macmillan, 1987), xi: 389–395.
6 Introduction
and Jews to wonder at Christian misreading of these same sacred texts; the
divergence led to the dismay and often intense anger that each side felt
toward the other.
As twelfth- and thirteenth-century western Christendom began to exert
accelerating spiritual pressure upon its Jews, well-defined lines of majority
argumentation had long been in existence. From its inception, Christianity
has been engaged in argument with the Jewish matrix from which it
emerged, first as a dissident group within the Jewish community of first-
century Palestine and then as a separate church that claimed to supplant
and supersede the Jewish community and its religious vision. Much of
New Testament literature constitutes a running argument with Judaism
and the Jews.13 Beyond the New Testament, the adversus Judaeos literature
developed early, proliferated quickly, and remained a staple of Christian
intellectual creativity over the ages. This literature is diverse in its lines of
argumentation and rich in detail.14
It might be reasonably assumed that Judaism has a parallel adversus Chris-
tianos literature from its side – equally old, diverse, and rich. Such in fact
is not at all the case. Judaism of late antiquity and the first half of the
Middle Ages is relatively devoid of a literature that engages Christianity in
an extended and serious manner. The classics of rabbinic literature – the
Mishnah, the two Talmuds, and the early midrashic literature – offer only
the scantiest mention of Jesus and his faith. There is a folkish literature
called the Toldot Yeshu literature that retells the Gospel story in derogatory
terms. The history of this literature is obscure, and it does not in any case
represent serious engagement with Christianity and the challenges it poses.
The first genuine medieval Jewish engagement with Christianity came
in the Muslim sphere, where the majority of world Jewry was to be found
in the early centuries of the Middle Ages. This first genuine engagement is,
however, hardly extensive.15 We shall thus be studying the first protracted
and intensive Jewish engagement with Christian truth claims, with a fo-
cus on the geographic area of western Christendom in which the Jewish

13 For some detail on this running argument, see below, Chaps. 1 and 2.
14 For the fullest description of this adversus Judaeos literature, see Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christliche
Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.–11. Jh.), 4th ed. (Bern: Peter
Lang, 1999); idem, Die christliche Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld
(11.–13. Jh.), 3rd ed. (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997); idem, Die christliche Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr lit-
erarisches und historisches Umfeld (13.–20. Jh.) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1994). Also highly useful is Bernhard
Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens-latins du moyen âge sur les juifs and le judaı̈sme (Paris: Mouton,
1963). For discussion of some of the key lines of argumentation to be found in the earliest strata of
this literature, see Chap. 2.
15 For the pre-twelfth-century Jewish polemical literature, see below, Chap. 3.
 Introduction 7
engagement with Christian claims first surfaced and was most persistently
expressed.
It is not too difficult to understand the relative dearth of Jewish anti-
Christian polemics during the early centuries of the Middle Ages. The
explanations lie in the nature of the Christian–Jewish relationship and in
the demographic realities of Jewish life. Christianity as the challenger faith
had to make a constant case against the community it claimed to supersede
and supplant. This ongoing case against the Jews began with the New
Testament. Since this polemical concern inhered in the Christian situation
and was so deeply embedded in Christian Scripture, it was natural that the
adversus Judaeos literature would be maintained as an important Christian
literary genre. None of these factors were operative for the Jews. Jews did
not see for themselves the necessity of engaging Christianity, which they
envisioned simply as an offshoot and aberrant religious sect.16 To the extent
that Jews lived in the Muslim orbit, in which Christianity did not threaten
them in any significant way, they could remain relatively aloof from the
Christian–Jewish conflict.
As the center of the world Jewish population began to shift toward west-
ern Christendom, Jewish engagement with Christianity deepened consid-
erably.17 Toward the end of the 1160s, we encounter, for the first time,
full-blown Jewish anti-Christian polemical works composed in Christen-
dom.18 Probably the very first such work is a literary dialogue known as Sefer

16 See the brief but interesting discussion of this imagery in Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom
and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 23–26.
17 For a broad sense of this population shift, see Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews,
2nd ed., 18 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952–83), iv: 86–91, and Robert Chazan,
“Then and Now: Jewish Life at the End of the First and Second Christian Millenium,” Solomon
Goldman Lectures, 8 (2003): 51–70.
18 By “full-blown Jewish anti-Christian polemical works,” I mean works devoted directly and fully to
polemics, rather than the occasional anti-Christian references that might be found in earlier authors,
such as some of those treated in Chap. 3. For a sense of the newness of these works, see Daniel J.
Lasker, “Jewish–Christian Polemics at the Turning Point: Jewish Evidence from the Twelfth Century,”
Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996): 161–173, and Simon Schwarzfuchs, “Religion populaire et
polémique savante: le tournant de la polémique judeo-chrétienne au 12e siècle,” in Medieval Studies
in Honor of Avrom Saltman, ed. Bat-Sheva Albert et al. (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ian University Press, 1995),
189–206. It will be clear that there is much in the latter study with which I disagree. I have used
the term “polemics” broadly, not distinguishing between defensive thrusts, sometimes identified as
apologetic, and attacks on the opposing faith. With regard to the distinction between those works
intended for insiders and those for outsiders, I also use the inclusive term polemics, although I
sometimes tend to call the latter missionizing or proselytizing works. Due to the basic rules of Jewish
presence in medieval western Christendom, addressing Christians to convince them of the truth of
Judaism was out of the question, and thus there is simply no real Jewish polemical literature aimed
at Christians or – to use the alternative terminology – no real Jewish missionizing literature. With
respect to Christian polemical literature, it is often difficult to be sure whether it is intended for an
external Jewish or internal Christian audience.
8 Introduction
ha-Berit (The Book of the Covenant), written by a well-known Jewish gram-
marian and exegete, Joseph Kimhi of Narbonne.19 Only a few years later,
an unknown Jew, Jacob ben Reuben, writing probably in northern Spain,
composed a well-organized polemical manual, again in dialogue format,
entitled Milh.amot ha-Shem (The Wars of the Lord).
During the thirteenth century, Jewish polemical works multiplied all
across western Christendom. We possess such works from the old Jewish
community of Italy and from the much younger Jewish settlements of
northern Europe.20 Yet it was the Jewries of southern France and northern
Spain, which had produced the first two anti-Christian tracts just now
noted, that continued to produce the most extensive Jewish polemical
literature. Joseph Kimhi’s son, David, likewise of Narbonne, wrote early in
the thirteenth century one of the most popular Jewish Bible commentaries
of the Middle Ages, in which he engaged recurrently and at some length
Christian claims. These comments were perceived as so useful that they
were widely purveyed as a separate composition of anti-Christian polemic.
Over an extended period of time, from roughly the 1230s through the
1260s, Rabbi Meir bar Simon of Narbonne (again), composed a lengthy
and rambling collection of opuscules under the title Milh.emet Miz.vah (The
Obligatory War). Most of the elements in this wide-ranging collection are
polemical in nature. Finally, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman of Gerona, who
was the Jewish spokesman in the well-known Barcelona disputation of
1263, composed, in the wake of this major public engagement, a number
of works with obvious polemical objectives. Thus, the 1160s saw the very
beginnings of serious Jewish polemical writings in western Christendom,
located specifically in southern France and northern Spain. In this same
area, the new literary genre developed rapidly, with a set of important
writings already completed a century later.21

19 For this and the other works described in this paragraph and the next, full bibliographic and
background information will be provided in Chap. 4. On the Jewish community of Narbonne,
home to three of our five Jewish polemicists, see the classic study by Jean Régné, Etude sur la
condition des Juifs de Narbonne du Ve au XIVe siècle (Narbonne: F. Caillard, 1912).
20 For Italy, note Solomon ben Moses de Rossi’s ‘Edut ha-Shem Ne’emanah and Moses of Salerno’s
Ma’amar ha-Emunah. See again Lasker, “Jewish Polemics against Christianity in Thirteenth-Century
Italy.” For northern Europe, note Sefer Yosef ha-Mekane and the Sefer Niz.ah.on Yashan. See David
Berger, The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1979).
21 There is one further work that stems from southern France that might well have been included, and
that is the Sefer Mah.azik Emunah of Mordechai ben Jehosafa of Avignon. This work has been edited
and translated by a doctoral student at New York University, Yocheved Engelberg-Cohen. The work
is a bit later than the works of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, but not all that much later. I eventually
decided to leave this work out of the present study partly because of the appealing notion of treating
 Introduction 9
What explains the sudden and rapid development of this hitherto uncul-
tivated field of Jewish creativity and its striking geographic concentration?
The most obvious factor is the growing number of Jews who made their
way into Christendom, especially its southwestern sectors. The impres-
sive development of the more westerly sectors of medieval Christendom –
both southern and northern – began to attract Jewish immigrants at about
the turn of the millennium. Simultaneously, some of the upheavals in
the westernmost sectors of the Muslim world, especially North Africa
and the Iberian peninsula, caused Jews from these areas to make their
way into neighboring Christian northern Spain and southern France.22
The Kimhi family, mentioned above, is one such refugee family that
made a highly successful adjustment to a new home in Christian terri-
tory. Jews living in medieval Christendom were faced on a daily basis
with the challenge of Christianity and had to erect their defenses against
its blandishments. This is, of course, precisely the function of polemical
literature.
While Jewish population movement forms part of the explanation of the
efflorescence of Jewish polemical literature from the 1160s onward, it is by
no means the only – or even the dominant – factor. Equally or perhaps more
important was the stimulus provided by the Christian spiritual aggressive-
ness of the twelfth century. The issue of twelfth-century Christian mission-
izing has been most carefully addressed by David Berger. Focusing on the
important Christian adversus Judaeos tracts composed in northern Europe,
Berger concludes that, “despite the proliferation of Christian polemics in
the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, the evidence is overwhelming that
these works were not rooted in a new or continuing missionary impulse.”23
The conclusion Berger draws from his evidence seems to me compelling –
for northern Europe, the locus of the Christian polemical writing he exam-
ines. A focus on southern Europe and an alternative body of data suggests,
however, a different picture. The evidence supplied by the proliferation
of Jewish anti-Christian polemics in southern France and northern Spain
indicates that the Jews of this area felt themselves very much under spiritual

the 1160s through the 1260s and partly because the Mah.azik Emunah adds very little to the lines of
Christian argumentation perceived by our Jewish authors and equally little to the lines of Jewish
response projected.
22 For this major transition, the classic work is Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain,
2 vols, trans. Louis Schoffman et al. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1960–66), i: 39–110.
23 Berger, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish–Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High
Middle Ages,” 578. Berger further suggests that the proliferation of Christian polemical works can be
explained in terms of general intellectual stimulation and the specific challenges posed by contacts
with Jews.
10 Introduction
pressure. Further, one of the arguments noted by Berger for the existence
of twelfth-century proselytizing (which he, to be sure, rejects) is the evi-
dence of full-blown Christian missionizing during the middle decades of
the thirteenth century. My earlier study of the new missionizing suggests
that the center of this effort was southern France and northern Spain.24
Thus, it seems to me that Christian missionizing inclinations were indeed
relatively absent across northern Europe, but very much present in the
south. It was this new missionizing spirit in the south that gave rise to the
first Jewish anti-Christian polemical treatises in the 1160s and 1170s and that
accounts for the ongoing production of such materials through the ensuing
century.
The factors in the new Christian militancy toward the Jewish minority
within medieval western Christendom are complex. Here let us only note
that the Christian aggressiveness was the result of a curious combination
of impressive vigor and self-confidence, on the one hand, and considerable
doubt and uncertainty on the other.
The rapid development of western Christendom was in and of itself
the source of considerable Christian pride and self-confidence. This rapid
development led in turn to the crusading mood and venture. The suc-
cesses of the First Crusade served to expand the Christian sense of divine
favor; it also in a variety of ways accelerated the process of growth and
development within western Christendom. The area upon which we are
focused – southern France and northern Spain – had embarked, even prior
to the First Crusade, on a protracted military engagement with the Muslim
forces of the Iberian peninsula. This engagement eventually proved to be
far more successful that the grandiose expeditions to the Near East. Slowly,
the Christian forces conquered more and more of the peninsula and added
these rich areas to western Christendom.25 All this served to swell pride
further among the Christian population of Europe.
At the same time, the crusading movement in general and the successful
military operations on the Iberian peninsula served to enhance Christian
familiarity with the Muslim world, its depth and power, and its achieve-
ments. The unrealistic hubris engendered by the conquest of Jerusalem

24 Chazan, Daggers of Faith.

25 For an overview of what Christians saw as the re-conquest of the peninsula, see Joseph F. O’Callaghan,
A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 193–357. For briefer treatment,
see Bernard F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 90–189.
Because of our focus on areas belonging to the Crown of Aragon, see also T. N. Bisson, The Medieval
Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 31–85.
 Introduction 11
could hardly be sustained in the face of this greater familiarity with Muslim
realities. Moreover, some of the major achievements within Christian so-
ciety generated their own malaise. The increasingly powerful and wealthy
Roman Catholic Church produced discomfort among Christians for whom
the imagery of Jesus and his disciples involved meekness and poverty. As
alternative readings of the Christian message surfaced and were cruelly sup-
pressed, resentment intensified. Moreover, the intellectual flowering of the
twelfth century, involving new sources of knowledge and new sensitivi-
ties, raised new discomforts. A thriving society was beset with considerable
malaise.
The Jews, increasingly visible in western Christendom, were drawn into
the vortex of this Christian self-confidence and malaise. The Christian–
Jewish debate was, as noted, as old as Christianity itself. From its earliest
days, Christian leaders addressed themselves to Jews out of a conviction
that Jews – of all peoples – should readily recognize the truths obvious
in their own sacred writings. Thus, a confident twelfth- and thirteenth-
century western Christendom was inclined to bring its message to the
Jewish minority. At the same time, the selfsame conviction – that the sacred
writings of the Jews project Christian truth – left a residue of subtle doubt.
Might there be some possibility that Jews in fact read Scripture properly
and thus held fast to the authentic version of the divine–human covenant?
Is it conceivable that the original people of the covenant – the Jews – had
in fact remained God’s chosen partners?26
To the extent that the Christian majority of medieval western Chris-
tendom was genuinely convinced of the rectitude of its religious vision,
it looked askance at the Jewish minority that failed to comprehend ob-
vious truth. More significantly, to the extent that the Christian major-
ity was unsettled in its beliefs, the Jewish minority was perceived as a
dangerous spiritual threat, whose views had to be actively repulsed. The
result was ongoing engagement with Judaism as a religious system and
a marshaling of truth claims directed at Jews, which subtly intended at
the same time to reinforce majority certainty or to dissipate majority un-
certainty. It was precisely in the southwestern areas of western Christen-
dom, those areas most contiguous to Islamic territory and to the battle

26 Gavin I. Langmuir has regularly stressed the impact of Jews on the evocation of doubt within the
Christian population in western Christendom. He sees this evocation of doubt as the basis for the
increasingly irrational views of Jews that developed throughout this society. See the essays collected
in his Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) and his
History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
12 Introduction
against Islam, that the majority religious pressures were most intensely
exerted.27
Christian argumentation against Judaism and the Jews during this cru-
cial period has been analyzed rather extensively. During the past decade,
two major studies have synthesized this material. Gilbert Dahan’s Les intel-
lectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge and Anna Sapir Abulafia’s Christians
and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance are broad, balanced, and im-
portant works.28 Both authors set the Christian argumentation in a rich
societal perspective of change and dynamism; both authors use their analy-
sis to offer wide-ranging suggestions as to the decline in medieval imagery
of the Jews and ultimately of Jewish circumstances.29 In both cases, the
analysis of Christian argumentation is rich and illuminating. I shall note
throughout this study striking parallels between the vigorous Christian and
the equally vigorous Jewish polemical argumentation. These parallels will
involve specific points made in both camps and – more significant yet –
parallels in style of thinking and argumentation.30
While the story of majority certainty/uncertainty is fascinating, it is cor-
responding Jewish certainties and uncertainties upon which the present
study is focused. During the first half of the Middle Ages, the world
Jewish population was, as noted, centered in the Muslim sectors of the
western world. Beginning in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, the
Jewish population in western Christendom began to grow rapidly, partially
through Christian conquest of areas previously held by the Muslims and
partially through Jewish migration into areas perceived as rich with promise.
Everyday Jewish immersion in a dynamic and rapidly expanding western
Christendom would have been enough to generate considerable Jewish
27 To be sure, there is little Christian polemical literature that has survived from southern France
and northern Spain of this period. The works analyzed by Berger in his “Mission to the Jews and
Jewish–Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages” are entirely of
northern provenance. Note also M. H. Vicaire, “‘Contra Judaeos’ méridionaux au début du XIIIe
siècle: Alain de Lille, Evrard de Béthune, Guillaume de Bourges,” Juifs et judaisme de Languedoc
(Toulouse: Editions Privat, 1977), 269–293. It is striking that Vicaire cites three authors who are
basically northerners, with only tenuous ties to the south. I would suggest that this lack of written
polemic is simply a reflection of the concentration of intellectual leadership in the north. Aggressive
pressures were, despite this lack of written materials, in fact being exerted in the south.
28 Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1990);
Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London: Routledge,
1995). Mention should also be made of the pioneering essay of Amos Funkenstein, “Changes in
the Pattern of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Twelfth Century” (Hebrew), Zion 33 (1968):
125–144.
29 This emphasis is more pronounced in the Abulafia book.
30 There are, to be sure, significant differences as well. These include: the southern-European setting of
the Jewish writings as opposed to the northern-European setting for most of the important Christian
writings and the power of the Christian side as opposed to the powerlessness of the Jews.
 Introduction 13
questioning of majority and minority culture and faith. What much com-
plicated the situation was that the growing Jewish population of southern
France and northern Spain was subjected to accelerating intellectual and
spiritual pressure from its Christian neighbors. These pressures required a
marshaling of resources to meet the covert challenge of Christian vigor and
success and the even more threatening overt challenge of Christian spiritual
aggressiveness. It was precisely these challenges to which our five twelfth-
and thirteenth-century Jewish polemicists responded.
Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah, indicates clearly that the
Jewish leaders of southern France and northern Spain were correct in their
concern with the new spiritual pressures being brought to bear by the
Christian majority.31 In one segment of his diverse collection, Rabbi Meir
highlights the presence of learned apostates in the retinue of Archbishop
Guy Fulcodi, who served in Narbonne from 1259 through 1261, prior to
becoming Pope Clement IV in 1265. Indeed, the archbishop used this reality
to argue for further conversion among the Jews.
For there are, among your sages, men both wealthy and learned who have left your
faith and entered ours, as a result of having their eyes opened. In the past, when
only the retrograde left you, I would not have been concerned with them. Now,
however, when learned men convert, you can understand that they have found the
fruit and desire to cast off the rind, eating what is within. Thus, it behooves you
to learn from them.32
This evidence of accelerating conversion – indeed of wealthy and learned
Jews – alerts us to the dangers the new Christian spiritual pressure posed.
The Jews of medieval western Christendom were forced to formulate
regularly and persuasively their own truth claims and to identify – with all
due circumspection – the failings of the majority faith. This articulation
of Jewish truth claims was shaped by the historic legacy of Jewish ideas
and ideals (much of which was shared with the Christian majority), by
awareness of the central strands of the majority case for Christian truth
31 Again, see Chap. 4 for full details on this important work.
32 Milh.emet Miz.vah, 226b–227a. Note the specification that wealthy and learned Jews were converting.
This suggests of course that these new conversions were not the result of poverty or ignorance.
Nicholas Donin, who led the anti-Talmud campaign that began in the 1230s, and Friar Paul Christian,
who led the new missionizing effort that seems to have begun only slightly later, constitute highly
visible, but by no means unique examples of learned converts. For an overview of medieval Jewish
conversion in the northern areas of Europe, see Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from
Judaism in German, 1500–1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 11–32. A graduate student at
New York University, Chaviva Levin, is currently completing a doctoral study of Jewish conversion
to Christianity in medieval northern Europe. Such a full study of the southern area of western
Christendom is an important desideratum. The imagery of rind and fruit is common and will be
encountered recurrently in this study.
14 Introduction
and Jewish error, and by patterns of thinking and argumentation abroad
in society at large. The Jewish argumentation necessarily included both a
defense of Jewish belief and an assault on the Christian alternative.

A number of issues with regard to medieval Jewish polemical literature must

be properly addressed. The first has to do with the intended audience for
these works. Christian efforts to examine and repudiate Jewish truth claims
or to formulate arguments for the truth of Christianity could eventuate in
inwardly directed polemic (in fact the norm) or – occasionally – outwardly
directed missionizing. Parallel Jewish efforts could be internally channeled
only.33 The basic framework by which Jews were permitted to live within
medieval western Christendom precluded any Jewish effort to affect the
religious behavior and thinking of the Christian majority. The Jewish case
for Judaism and against Christianity was of necessity addressed only to
Jews, in an effort to reinforce their Jewish commitment and identity.
We must not allow ourselves to be misled by the dialogic format of much
of the Jewish polemical literature we shall encounter, with Jews seemingly
engaging Christians in religious give-and-take and attempting to prove to
their Christian contemporaries the truth of the Jewish faith or the vacuity
of Christianity. While informal discussions of this nature may well have
taken place on occasion, the rules of medieval society prohibited an open
exchange of such views or even open Jewish articulation of anti-Christian
sentiments.34 The literary works composed by Jewish authors – in Hebrew
at that – were obviously intended for Jewish eyes and ears only. When in
fact some of these works came to the attention of the Christian majority
(as a result of growing mastery of the Hebrew language), dire consequences
could and sometimes did ensue.35
Indeed, one of our earliest polemicists – the unknown but important
Jacob ben Reuben – indicates explicitly that his writing was intended for a
Jewish audience only. In introducing the eleventh chapter of his Milh.amot
ha-Shem, a brief but vigorous assault on the New Testament, Jacob indicates
33 Recall my use of the terms “polemic” and “missionizing,” specified above, n. 18.
34 There is, to be sure, evidence of considerable informal discussion of religious issues between Christians
and Jews. Well-known churchmen, including Gilbert Crispin, Odo of Tournai, and Joachim of
Fiore, make reference to such discussion. In his autobiographical memoir, the Jew Judah of Cologne
describes the process of his conversion, much of which ostensibly involved lengthy and warm
conversations with Christians.
35 Note for example some of the aftermath of the Barcelona disputation, triggered by Christian aware-
ness of the account of the confrontation penned by Rabbi Moses ben Nahman. See Robert Chazan,
Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992), 87–92.
 Introduction 15
his profound discomfort with penning such anti-Christian observations. In
the course of explaining himself, he makes some comments on the entirety
of his polemical tome. Jacob begins by noting poetically the circumstances
of Jews in medieval western Christendom and its implications.36
All who are wise will remain mute before them [the Christian majority],
Will be silent out of fear of their power.
For what can the persecuted say to the persecutor?
How can the subjugated turn upon the subjugator?
He continues with reflections on his undertaking.
And I, the aforementioned impecunious one,
Sold into poverty – 37
When my heart moved me to compose responses to their error38
And to compose questions based on the words of their Scripture,39
He who truly knows is aware [that I did not do so]
In order to debate with them or even to address them.
Rather, [I did so] in order to provide testimony for those truly committed,
While concealing it from the frivolous and mischievous.40
Our early polemicist tells us explicitly that his undertaking is necessarily
directed at a Jewish audience only.
The posture adopted in the Jewish polemical works in the works we shall
engage is heavily defensive.41 Medieval Jews within the Christian orbit in
general and the Jewish writers whom we shall be studying in particular
felt themselves under assault. In Jewish eyes, Christianity and Christians
were very much the aggressors. This purported Christian aggression was
both historic and contemporary. From the Jewish perspective, Christian-
ity represented historically an internal rebellion against normative Jewish
truth. Jesus and his followers were seen as breakaway Jews, renegades who
distorted the fundamental message of the tradition in which they had been
raised. This historic Christian aggression was perceived as reinforced by
contemporary assault as well. As the empowered majority, Christians were

36 Again, full information on Jacob and his treatise will be provided in Chap. 4.
37 This involves the special circumstances in which Jacob found himself, some kind of exile from his
native town.
38 These “responses to their errors” are the substance of chaps. 1 through 10 of Milh.amot ha-Shem.
39 These “questions based on their Scripture” are the substance of Chap. 11.
40 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 141.
41 This heavily defensive posture contrasts strikingly with the generally offensive posture of the Qis..sat
Mujā dalat al-Usquf and the Hebrew Sefer Nestor ha-Komer, which came out of the Muslim world
and will be discussed in Chap. 3.
16 Introduction
free to bring their message to the Jewish minority; indeed they were encour-
aged to do so. Conversely, as a tolerated minority Jews were forbidden to
challenge overtly the Christian majority. Thus, much of the exchange was
regularly seen by Jews as Christian thrust necessitating Jewish parry, and
much of the literary formulation which remains shows Jewish protagonists
on the defensive.42
Clearly, however, the line between a defensive posture and an offensive
posture was necessarily porous. Jews could hardly restrict themselves to de-
fensive stances only. In responding to Christian arguments, Jewish polemi-
cists inevitably went on the offensive as well. Christological readings of the
Hebrew Bible – a fundamental Christian thrust from the New Testament
into modernity – occasioned Jewish resistance to the proposed readings. At
the same time, Jewish authors went on to attack the fundamental assump-
tions of Christian exegesis.43 Likewise, when confronted with arguments
for the rationality of Christianity, Jews defended themselves, eventually
taking the offensive as well, arguing that in fact Christianity involved a
perversion of human reason.44 When challenged as to the meaning of
Jewish exile and suffering, Jews attempted to explain them, but proceeded
to examine critically Christian history as well, arguing that the degraded re-
alities of Christian past and present gainsay the truth claims of the Christian
faith.45
Especially striking among the anti-Christian thrusts is Jewish awareness
of and attack upon the New Testament. As noted already, Jacob ben Reuben,
one of the earliest of our polemicists, reluctantly marshaled evidence of
Christianity’s shortcomings from its own Scriptures. He was concerned
about committing these negative observations to writing, but in fact did so,
indicating that some Jews were conversant with Christian sacred literature,
especially the Gospels, and that – among themselves – they were highly
critical.46 While the Jewish writers and their audience were concerned
above all else with countering Christian thrusts and preserving traditional
beliefs within an endangered minority community, such an effort had to
spill over on occasion into negation of the majority alternative.

As modern historians have looked back at medieval polemics, they have

tended to be disparaging in their attitudes. In the wake of Enlightenment
42 This defensive posture will be widely reflected in Chaps. 6 through 8 and 11–12, although occasional
offensive thrusts will be noted throughout those chapters, especially in the last of them.
43 See especially Chap. 5. 44 See Chap. 12. 45 See Chap. 10.
46 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 141–156. A doctoral student at New York University, Joshua Levy, is currently
working on a critical edition, translation, and analysis of chap. 11 of Milh.amot ha-Shem. This material
will be fully engaged in Chap. 13.
 Introduction 17
repudiation of religious coercion, the effort to argue others into submis-
sion has come to seem misguided, indeed obnoxious. Moreover, medieval
polemics have come to seem fruitless, with only minimal evidence of any
success whatsoever. Finally, the enterprise has been increasingly viewed
as overwhelmingly stereotypic, intellectually limited and sterile, and ulti-
mately uncreative and uninteresting.
Since this study focuses on medieval Jewish polemics, each of these
negative modern perceptions demands brief attention. The first modern
objection to medieval spiritual aggression is, to be sure, persuasive. The
post-Enlightenment notion of religious freedom constitutes a considerable
advance over the medieval fusion of the spiritual and the political. The
place of religious polemic in this shift is, however, not so clear-cut. Not all
medieval religious polemic was aggressive, aimed at others. As already noted,
often for the Christian majority and always for the Jewish minority, religious
polemic represented in effect an effort at self-defense, a summoning up
of argumentation intended to reinforce believers in their faith and their
community. Such weighing of alternatives in a somewhat defensive manner
is a staple of human history, with examples from the altered circumstances
of modernity available in abundance.
The facile conclusion that medieval polemics were ultimately fruitless,
showing no significant evidence of success, is much overstated. In the first
place, there is considerable evidence of conversion to the majority faith
in all areas of the medieval world, including western Christendom, upon
which we are focused. By the fourteenth century, Jewish conversion to
Christianity was widespread, especially but not exclusively in the wake of
the riots of 1391.47 While it is often maintained that this conversion was
simply the result of Jewish exposure to violence, the picture is considerably
more complicated. It is difficult to assess the elements that played into the
wrenching decision made by numerous Jews to abandon ancestral family
and faith. It is not unlikely that more than a century of exposure to Christian
missionizing polemic had, in considerable measure, paved the way for the
decision to convert.
Even more important is the reality that much medieval religious polemic
was defensive in nature, both among the Christian majority and the Jew-
ish minority. Given this defensive objective, much medieval Christian and
Jewish polemical literature was highly effective and successful – not in
convincing the out-group of the truth of the in-group’s vision, but in con-
vincing Christians of Christian truth and Jews of Jewish truth. Simplistic

47 Again, see the overview provided in Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, ii: 95–169.
18 Introduction
assertion that medieval religious polemic achieved nothing fails to do justice
to complex human realities.
The modern criticism with which the present study most takes issue
has to do with the assessment of medieval polemics as intellectually sterile
and vapid. It is my hope that the works we shall engage in this book
will eventuate in quite a different view of the intellectual level and spiritual
creativity manifest in this first burst of medieval Jewish polemics.48 Viewing
these works in a social context as efforts to blunt the pressures exerted by a
powerful Christian majority society and to reinforce Jewish commitment
should shift evaluation of them. In the writings of Joseph Kimhi, Jacob
ben Reuben, David Kimhi, Rabbi Meir bar Simon, and Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman, we will discern – I believe – interesting and exciting Jewish
grappling with a potent new challenge, the challenge of an invigorated
Christian majority society.
To be sure, there were considerable constraints imposed on the polem-
ical enterprise. Obviously, it was not a truly open-ended intellectual en-
deavor. Our medieval Jewish polemicists were not really prepared to engage
Christian thinking in a disinterested way, with the possibility of being con-
vinced by Christian truth claims. They were writing as community leaders,
anxious to reinforce the commitment of their Jewish followers. Such a
committed posture, however, does not preclude active and sophisticated
ratiocination, the marshaling of ingenious and thoughtful arguments. We
shall encounter such ingenious and thoughtful arguments throughout this
study.49
A second factor that has strengthened the sense of intellectual sterility is
the traditional nature of much of the aggressive Christian and Jewish argu-
mentation. These two highly traditional communities naturally drew upon
classical texts and the prior lines of argumentation adumbrated therein. We
shall of necessity begin the body of this study by looking back into the his-
tory of Christian anti-Jewish and Jewish anti-Christian argumentation.50
Indeed, as new patterns of thinking made their way slowly into pre-modern
Western consciousness, they were inevitably garbed in older terminology,
since innovation at this time was feared, rather than prized. Traditional
patterns of argumentation and even traditional arguments should not be
48 There is a palpable sense in our texts of this initial creativity. With the passage of time, medieval
Jewish polemical literature becomes considerably more technical and often – it seems to me – more
sterile and repetitive.
49 Recall Berger’s suggestion of intimacy and divergence, noted above. While Christians and Jews
conducted much of their argumentation from the common ground of the Hebrew Bible, they were
committed in advance to divergent positions from which they were not willing to budge.
50 Chaps. 1 through 3.
 Introduction 19
allowed, however, to obscure the new and innovative. In a general way, the
medieval world – we increasingly realize – was nowhere near so static as has
sometimes been thought. What is true in a more general way is true in the
particular case of Christian anti-Jewish argumentation and in the Jewish
response that argumentation elicited.51
Let me be a bit more specific as regards the modern sense of medieval
polemic as intellectually sterile. The standard image of medieval Christian–
Jewish polemics involves argumentation over biblical proof-texts, with each
side insistent upon its own reading of these texts and utterly insouciant of
the alternative claims of the other side. A classic instance of such argumen-
tation involves Isaiah 7:14 – “Behold, the ‘almah is with child and about to
give birth to a son.” The sense has been that, for Christians, ‘almah means
a virgin, and thus the verse predicts the birth of Jesus. For Jews, on the
other hand, an ‘almah is a young woman, and the verse simply points to
the impending birth of the prince Hezekiah. Again, the perception often is
that each side simply dug in its heels and insisted on its reading, with no sig-
nificant interaction or reflection. This intransigent and mindless insistence
on one or another reading of biblical verses is often projected as the heart
of medieval Christian–Jewish polemics. In fact, however, this perception
of mindless intransigence is not at all accurate.
In the first place, we shall see in the course of the present study that dis-
pute over the meaning of biblical verses hardly constitutes the whole of the
medieval Christian–Jewish debate. The Christian side pointed in a variety
of additional directions. Especially noteworthy is the Christian argumen-
tation that highlighted the rationality – indeed the rational necessity –
of key Christian assertions and the claims rooted in close examination of
the contrast between Christian and Jewish circumstances. Both these lines
of argumentation reflect the vibrancy of western Christendom during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The former resulted from the accelerating
absorption of the Greco-Roman-Islamic legacy and the enhanced appeal to
reason; the latter resulted from the triumphalist Christian crusading men-
tality and its concomitant sense that Jewish failure – exile and degradation –
must mean divine repudiation. Christian claims rooted in reason or in his-
torical realities necessitated considerable new Jewish thinking along these
innovative lines.
To be sure, because of the shared sacred literature that lay at the core of
both Christianity and Judaism, there was necessarily considerable focus
51 Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1983), argues
extensively and successfully for changing patterns of biblical exegesis through the twelfth and on
into the thirteenth century.
20 Introduction
from both sides on the Hebrew Bible and its meaning. This did not
translate, however, into mindless wrangling. During this period, from the
mid-twelfth through the mid-thirteenth century, there was considerable
innovation in biblical exegesis. New insights as to lexicography, gram-
mar, and context abounded among the Christian majority and the Jewish
minority.52 Inevitably, these new tendencies made their appearance in the
realm of polemics as well. We shall encounter numerous examples of clever
and stimulating readings of a host of biblical verses and shall – I believe –
be impressed with the thoughtfulness of much of this exegesis.
Many modern observers have perceived the exchange around biblical
verses not only as stereotypic, but as random also. The key was to find
a verse – any verse – that could be projected as supportive of Christian
or Jewish claims. I shall argue, throughout this study, that in fact the
choice of biblical verses around which to argue was not at all random.
To the contrary, the verses around which contention swirled, while highly
traditional, involved key issues over which Christians and Jews disagreed
profoundly. The selection of biblical verses was anything but arbitrary;
it was carefully considered, intended to project an overarching picture of
Christian and Jewish theological views.
Indeed, this last point leads us to the deeper meaning of the Christian–
Jewish polemical engagement. While it may appear on the surface that the
two sides were simply trying to score points at one another’s expense, their
objectives were in fact far more serious. Underlying Jewish clarification
of perceived Christian thrusts, Jewish rebuttal of these thrusts, and the
Jewish counter-attack is a sense of precisely what the Christian world and
Christianity are all about. The intense polemical confrontation leads us in-
eluctably toward the Jewish construction of the Christian other and a con-
comitant construction of Jewish self-image. Precisely because the polemical
engagement is far from a desiccated intellectual enterprise, but is an intense
effort to maintain the identity of a beleaguered Jewish minority, our Jewish
polemicists ultimately aimed to project a contrastive portrait of medieval
Christians and Christianity and medieval Jews and Judaism.53
There is much comparative observation throughout the Jewish polem-
ical works. Out of the comparative details emerge contrasting identity
images. The basic elements in these contrasting identity images are many:
reasonableness, in both readings of Scriptural truth and in philosophic
speculation; alternative levels of moral achievement; divergent historical
fates. All these elements of identity imagery are grounded in the specifics

52 Ibid. 53 See Chap. 16.

 Introduction 21
of polemical argumentation. These specifics, however, slowly accumulate
in the Jewish polemical writings into a composite picture of a purportedly
irrational, immoral, violent Christendom and Christianity, whose seeming
successes (which in fact drew many migrating Jews into the Christian
sphere) would ultimately prove chimerical. In parallel fashion, the details
of the polemical case crystallized into an alternative image of Jewish reason-
ability, moral excellence, and capacity to withstand historic trials in a way
that would eventually win profound divine approbation and rich divine
reward.
This creation of alternate group images in the works we shall engage was
by no means an accidental or incidental outcome of the polemical exercise.
Rather, the creation of imagery of other and self represented the deepest level
of the effort to reassure Jews of the truth and dignity of their own tradition.
Ultimately, the issue posed by the polemicists to their Jewish audience came
down to a matter of choice. Given the competing alternatives, to which
would Jews choose to declare allegiance: to the ostensibly powerful but
deeply flawed Christian majority, or to the ostensibly weak but intellectually
and morally dignified Jewish minority? All the detailed argumentation
eventuated in this question, and we shall conclude this study by drawing
out the imagery created by the polemicists for both the Christian majority
and the Jewish minority. By seeing this exchange in a real social context of
flux, dynamism, and threat, we are in a position to discern the ultimate issue
the Jewish polemicists of twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France
addressed, as they attempted to reinforce the convictions and commitments
of co-religionists living under intense spiritual pressure.
Modern negative assessments of medieval polemics as intellectually ster-
ile result ultimately from the divorce of these polemical writings from their
social and communal context. Jacob Katz, the great twentieth-century so-
cial historian of the Jews, led the way toward integrating medieval Jewish
polemics into the social fabric of medieval Jewish life. In his important
and influential Exclusiveness and Tolerance, Katz included, among the types
adduced to illustrate the complexities of medieval Jewish views of the Chris-
tian world, what he called “The Disputant.”54 While Katz’s treatment of
medieval Jewish polemical writers and writings is hardly exhaustive,55 he
54 Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). For a valuable and
balanced assessment of this important study, see David Berger, “Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in
the Middle Ages,” in Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work, ed. Jay M. Harris (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 41–63. In note 1, Berger makes some useful observations on
the relationship of the English edition of Exclusiveness and Tolerance and Katz’s subsequent Hebrew
version.
55 Note the careful but ultimately appreciative criticisms leveled by Berger.
22 Introduction
does succeed in anchoring effectively medieval Jewish polemical writing
in its communal context. We shall treat our five Jewish polemicists as
important and perceptive communal leaders seeking to guide their follow-
ers. Seen this way, these authors and their writings will illuminate for us their
grasp of the Christian pressures being exerted on the Jews of late twelfth-
and thirteenth-century southern France and northern Spain and of the
hopefully successful lines of intellectual response that might be marshaled
against these pressures.
How significant were these intellectual responses to the resistance of
the Jews of southern France and northern Spain to Christian pressures
and to the maintenance of Jewish identity? On the one hand, we must of
course be leery of exaggerating the importance of these intellectual efforts.
Jewish life was lived on many planes; homes and schools were decisive in
preparing Jews to meet the challenges of their environment and to remain
firmly anchored in the Jewish community and faith.56 At the same time,
religious issues engaged the minds of all – both Christian majority and
Jewish minority. Christian argumentation was aimed – as we shall fully see –
at both the minds and the hearts of Jews. Such argumentation necessitated
Jewish rejoinders that would likewise address both mind and heart. Such
rejoinders, while hardly the only Jewish response to the challenges of the
late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, constituted an important, indeed a
crucial line of Jewish self-defense.
56 Note the observations on socialization of northern-European Jews by Simha Goldin, Uniqueness and
Togetherness: The Enigma of the Survival of the Jews in the Middle Ages (Hebrew), (Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv
University, 1997).
 part i
Backdrop
 chap t e r on e

Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts

Jesus is acknowledged by modern scholars to be an enigmatic and – to an

extent – irretrievable historical figure.1 It is now widely agreed that Chris-
tianity arose within the beleaguered and fragmented Jewish community
of first-century Palestine. Jesus and his immediate followers were clearly
Palestinian Jews. Living through a tumultuous period in Palestinian Jewish
history, Jesus and his disciples adumbrated their own special view of the
covenant between God and his people Israel – its essence, its dynamic, its
demands, and the special significance of the immediate historical moment.
To be sure, this formulation was but one of many competing first-century
Jewish perceptions of the divine–human covenant.2 Clearly, Jesus’ vision
did not win the day among his Palestinian Jewish contemporaries. How-
ever, exactly what he claimed and how they disputed these claims cannot
now be known with certainty.3
This very earliest set of views and commitments – whatever they might
have precisely been – proved attractive to groups beyond the original

1 There have been a number of quests for the historical Jesus. For a useful review of what is now
described as three quests for the historical Jesus, see Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest (Downers
Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995). The very diversity of the conclusions reached by the participants
in what Wattenberg calls the third quest reinforces the sense that Jesus is probably an irretrievable
historical figure.
2 All histories of first-century Palestinian Jewry emphasize the diversity of views within the Jewish
community. This sense of a religiously fragmented Jewish community was articulated clearly by the
first-century Jewish observer/historian Josephus; it has been much reinforced by the Dead Sea scrolls.
For two recent treatments of this diversity, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 124–173, and Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition
(Hoboken: Ktav Publishing House, 1991), 98–119.
3 A number of recent scholars have gone to great lengths to present Jesus against the backdrop of first-
century Jewish life in Palestine. Special note should be made of the work of Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew
(London: William Collins, 1973); E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London, Penguin Press,
1993); John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday,
1991–94); and Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
Two sets of essays edited by James H. Charlesworth are most useful in locating Jesus within the
context of first-century Palestinian Jewry – Jesus within Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 1988) and
The Messiah (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).

25
26 Backdrop
Palestinian Jewish matrix. We hear of a number of Diaspora Jews resi-
dent in Jerusalem who were attracted to the Jesus movement.4 Paul, one
such Diaspora Jew and a former persecutor of the young community, be-
came an important figure in the movement, disagreeing on key issues with
Jesus’ more immediate followers. For many recent scholars, Paul represents
the onset of a serious break between the new movement and its Jewish
matrix. For others, Paul remained fully anchored within the Jewish world,
seeing himself called upon for a special role as apostle to the gentiles, a role
that by no means contradicted his Jewishness or the important role of the
Jewish people.5
In yet a further evolutionary stage, the message of the young movement
attracted gentile followers inside and especially outside of Palestine. Paul
became a major – or perhaps even chief – spokesman to this new group.
The adherence of non-Jews to the movement had to create a host of vexing
issues. The account in the Acts of the Apostles suggests that these issues were
resolved speedily and amicably between the Jerusalem-based leaders of the
movement – the earliest followers of Jesus – and Paul as representative of
new tendencies within the loosely knit young community.6 Whatever the
dynamics of resolution, the decisive expansion of the young movement took
place outside of Palestine and within non-Jewish circles. What eventually
emerged was a gentile Christianity, to be sure insistent upon its continuity
with biblical Israel. More precisely, gentile Christianity asserted that Jewish
sinfulness forced God to replace the Jews in the divine–human covenant
with a new partner, the Christian Church. Christianity was thus claimed to
be simultaneously new and old, innovative and venerable. Precisely when
and where this critical break with the Jewish world and Judaism took place

4 There has much uncertainty as to the proper terminology for this early group, since the term Christians
is obviously inappropriate. Of late, the term “Jesus movement” has become widely used, and I shall
utilize it as well.
5 The debate over Paul and his relationship to Judaism and the Jews has produced a vast literature.
For a valuable review of the dispute, see the first two chapters of John Gager, Reinventing Paul (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000). While Gager is a strong proponent of one side of the dispute
(the side that sees Paul as more positively oriented to Judaism and the Jews), he offers a clear and
thorough presentation of the issues. Two sets of essays are useful for illuminating the issues and the
diversity of views – Cristina Grenholm and Daniel Patte (eds.), Reading Israel in Romans: Legitimacy
and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretations (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), and James
D. G. Dunn (ed.), Paul and the Mosaic Law (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996). Major
recent students of Paul have sought to place him more firmly within his Jewish context. See especially
W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980); E. P. Sanders,
Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977); idem, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish
People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).
6 Acts 15:1–35. Throughout this study, citations from the New Testament will be taken from the Revised
English Bible.
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 27
is subject to considerable dispute; that such a development took place is
not.
What modern scholars would most like to know is the precise think-
ing of Jesus himself, including the claims made to his fellow Jews and the
grounds upon which these claims were rejected by most of these Jewish
contemporaries. Modern scholars have concluded that, regrettably, no lit-
erature whatsoever survives from the first – and arguably most important –
phase of Christian history. So long as Jesus has to be reconstructed from late
sources, which inevitably bear the imprint of their altered gentile Christian
circumstances, there is little hope of reaching sound conclusions as to the
life and activities of Jesus and his immediate followers, including the mes-
sages projected to his fellow-Palestinian Jews and the responses generated
among them.7
The earliest surviving New Testament sources – in the eyes of modern
scholarship – are the epistles of Paul, surely an innovating figure in the
early history of the movement.8 There is widespread agreement that Paul
introduced a somewhat novel interpretation of Jesus, his activities, and his
meaning, an interpretation at odds to an extent with that held by Jesus’
original followers. As noted, the precise nature of Paul’s interpretation is
the subject of serious academic dispute. For modern scholars, the sources
that describe the lifetime of Jesus himself – the four Gospels – all stem
from the post-Pauline period and come out of circumstances increasingly
remote from the Galilean ambience of Jesus and his immediate disciples.9
The most obvious difference between Jesus and the Gospels is linguistic.
While Jesus surely communicated with his followers and detractors in Ara-
maic or Hebrew, the Gospel accounts are in Greek. This linguistic difference
is, however, only the beginning. While there is considerable disagreement
with regard to the provenance of each of the Gospels, much of this mate-
rial came out of gentile Christian settings and was intended for a gentile
Christian audience, far removed from the Palestinian Jewry within which
Jesus circulated. Although there is surely much in the Gospels that accu-
rately reflects the realities of Jesus’ lifetime, including material related to the
disagreements with his fellow-Jews, there is also considerable retrojection
from altered circumstances. Distinguishing the more or less accurate from
7 Note again the literature cited above, in n. 1 and 3.
8 Literature on each of the books of the New Testament is vast, and there are numerous introductions
to the New Testament as a whole. I will regularly cite Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the
New Testament (New York: Anchor, 1996; Anchor Bible Reference Library), partly because of the great
erudition of the author and partly for the generally moderate nature of his suggestions. On the Pauline
letters, see 409–584.
9 On the Gospels, see ibid., 99–382.
28 Backdrop
the later retrojections is the stumbling block that has regularly impeded all
quests for the historical Jesus – his life, his thinking, and his interactions
with Jewish contemporaries.
What has been depicted thus far reflects modern scholarly doubts and
questions. For medieval Christians and Jews, who are at the center of
this investigation, none of the foregoing ambiguities, uncertainties, and
doubts existed. For both medieval Christians and Jews, the Gospels were
authoritative and reliable accounts of the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth.
For medieval Christians, these accounts were divinely inspired, thoroughly
accurate, and richly allusive to profound religious truths. For medieval
Jews, these were reliable but flawed human records, close inspection of
which would convince unbiased readers of the nullity of the Christian
religious vision.
For both sets of readers, the great issues that divide Christians and Jews are
clearly adumbrated in the Gospels. These accounts of earliest Christianity
constituted for medieval Christians and Jews the beginning and foundation
of their historic debate. In these books – divine to one community, while hu-
man and errant to the other – could be found the earliest formulation of on-
going disagreement and a guide to subsequent argumentation pro and con.
The importance of the Gospels for Jewish understanding of Christianity
deserves special emphasis. For Jews over the ages, Christianity has been pri-
marily understood and defined by the Gospels. These are the texts translit-
erated and translated by Jews, quoted by Jews, and attacked by Jews. Jews
knew of Paul and his influential version of the Christian vision; they were
likewise well aware of later modifications in Christian thinking. Nonethe-
less, Christianity for Jews has meant first and foremost the Gospels –
the stories told of Jesus and his followers and the claims embedded in
those stories. The Jewish perceptions of and responses to Christianity that
we shall study are conditioned, in the first place, by Jewish knowledge and
understanding of the Gospels.

Despite the great gulf that separates modern scholars from the thinking of
the Middle Ages, there is considerable agreement as to the very broadest
outlines of Christian history among modern scholars, medieval Christians,
and medieval Jews. For all three of these disparate groups, Jesus and his
followers were part and parcel of first-century Palestinian Jewry, failing
ultimately to win a sizeable following among their contemporary Jewish
neighbors. The movement eventually turned outward toward a new and
different set of adherents. All three groups acknowledge that, as a result of
this historical trajectory, the Gospels contain much thinking that can be
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 29
traced back to Jesus’ first-century Palestinian Jewish ambience. Such think-
ing would be easily recognized, understood, and reacted to by medieval
Jews.10
Among the elements in the Gospel accounts of Jesus readily recognizable
to medieval Jews was – first of all – the narrative format. There are of course
many ways of laying out a compelling case for religious truth. Indeed, the
figure whose work constitutes the earliest surviving stratum in Christian
Scripture, Paul, chose a distinctly non-narrative format for his argumen-
tation. Strikingly, however, late first-century Christianity opted to make
its most telling arguments in the narrative mode. The acts and utterances
of Jesus were chosen as the most effective vehicle for presenting Christian
views and for arguing their truth. It hardly seems accidental that narrative
was precisely the format used by biblical Israel in presentation of its views
and its argumentation for their truth. Just as prior Hebrew Scripture had
gravitated to the narrative mode – the deeds and statements of the patri-
archs and Moses – in its presentation and argumentation, so too did later
Christian Scripture choose narration of the acts and utterances of Jesus as
the vehicle for enunciating and defending Christian faith. Medieval Jews
felt quite at home with the narrative format of the Gospels. Habituated to
parsing the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, they found it quite congenial
to continue such reading into Christian Scripture as well.
Moreover, many of the key themes in the Gospels, involving the most ba-
sic truth claims for Christianity, were quite familiar to medieval Jewish read-
ers. The centrality of miracles in the Gospel accounts’ truth claims would
have resonated comfortably among medieval Jews. The critical episodes in
the history of Israel, those events that were determinative of early Israelite
faith, show the same reliance on miracles evidenced in the Gospel accounts;
put differently, the Gospel miracle stories show considerable influence from
prior Israelite tradition.
Surely central to the early Israelite experience was a series of miraculous
incidents accompanying the exodus from Egypt. These miracles were seen
as shaping the entire history of the community. Moses’ encounter at the
burning bush, the signs accorded him for his encounter with Pharoah, the
plagues that afflicted the Egyptians while sparing the Israelites, the crossing
of the Red Sea on dry land, the drowning of the Egyptians attempting the
same traversal, the direct appearance of God to the people in its entirety at
Sinai – all these miraculous occurrences lie at the core of Israelite/Jewish
10 To be sure, medieval Jews believed that there was much innovation reflected in the New Testament,
i.e. much that diverged from the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. For that theme in the Jewish
polemical literature we shall study, see below, Chaps. 11 through 13.
30 Backdrop
faith. Thus, the notion of God’s intervention on behalf of his people and
his messengers was well rooted in prior Jewish tradition and constitutes
a line of argumentation that would surely have been understandable to a
Jewish audience. To be sure, specific claims could always be rejected, and
indeed were, both by Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries and by their medieval
successors. Nonetheless, Christian claims associated with Jesus’ miracles
were, in Jewish eyes, incorrect, but not incomprehensible. Miracles had an
acknowledged place in Jewish thinking of late antiquity and the Middle
Ages.
Likewise congenial to medieval Jewish thinking was veneration for the
utterances of the prophets of ancient Israel. Like argumentation from mir-
acles, claims based on fulfillment of prophetic prediction were well known
to the Jews of Jesus’ day and to later Jews as well. Among the writings
of the Qumran Jewish community, roughly contemporaneous with the
lifetime of Jesus, are a number of biblical commentaries that see events in
the life of the sect as fulfilling prophetic prediction, in a manner strikingly
parallel to that found in the Gospels. In fact, a leadership figure – the
Teacher of Righteousness – plays a central role in such fulfillment of ear-
lier prophecy.11 Once more, a familiar style of argumentation by no means
guaranteed acceptance of the specific case made by any group, whether the
Qumran sectarians or the early Christians. Nonetheless, first-century Jews
and twelfth-century Jews acknowledged the validity of biblical prophecy
and accepted the search for evidence of its fulfillment.
Related to the founding of claims on fulfillment of biblical prophecy was
the importance of later parallels to earlier biblical experience. Already in the
Hebrew Bible itself, we find repetition of experiences and motifs a common
phenomenon. The authenticity and importance of later figures and events
are regularly reinforced by parallels to earlier Israelite experience. Thus,
for example, much of the projected redemption envisioned by the latter
sections of the book of Isaiah was patterned after the exodus from Egypt that
loomed so large in Israelite memory. For Christians, the parallels between
earlier biblical experience and the lifetime of Jesus provided a sense of the
legitimacy of the latter. The very opening, for example, of the Gospel of
Luke abounds in earlier biblical motifs, suggesting the repetition of divine
intervention in the birth of John and Jesus in the same way that God had
intervened in the birth of such key biblical figures as Isaac and Samuel.12
11 On these pesharim, see Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1994), 223–241, and James VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 43–51.
12 Luke 1:5–38.
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 31
Again, this line of argumentation – for such it really is – would have
been comprehensible to Jews of all eras, although by no means necessarily
convincing in its details.
Yet another Gospel element that would have resonated for Jews of late
antiquity and the Middle Ages involves the complexity of religious law,
more specifically its potential for engendering hypocrisy and exploitation
and the clashes between alternative priorities that must be mediated in a
legal tradition. The nature of first-century Palestinian Jewish religiosity is
as difficult to reconstruct as the earliest phase of Christianity, for many of
the same reasons. Once again, there is the problem of reconstructing earlier
realities from later texts. In a very broad way, there is nonetheless a consensus
that religious law played a critical role in the life of this Jewry and that these
Jews were fully engaged with the problematic of such religious law, including
its propensity for fostering hypocritical exploitation of the system. The
prophets of Israel, whose writings were key to both Jewish and Christian
thinking, had regularly denounced such hypocrisy. The later (second- and
third-century) extant rabbinic materials suggest that the leaders of first-
century Palestinian Jewry were sensitive to this propensity and sought as
well to battle against it. Thus, again both they and their medieval heirs
would have been familiar with critiques of hypocritical legalism. Moreover,
the same later rabbinic sources suggest that first-century Palestinian Jews
knew well of clashes between diverse priorities in a legal system. Thus, they
and their successors would have readily recognized criticism of failure to
order religious priorities in the proper way, without necessarily agreeing
to the specific strictures purportedly leveled by Jesus against his Pharisaic
contemporaries.13
Finally, first-century and medieval Jews agreed that history was ultimately
the arena within which God made his will known to humanity. The Hebrew
Bible is, at its core, a historical saga devoted to explicating the actions
of God on the historical scene. The story itself was ordered in such a
way as to offer a key to understanding the vicissitudes of history. The
prophets of the Hebrew Bible regularly interpreted these vicissitudes. The
basic scheme adumbrated in both the biblical narrative and in prophetic
interpretation involves virtue and its rewards, on the one hand, and sin
and its punishment on the other. Much of prophetic consciousness was
directed toward the future, elaborating a system that attempted to foretell
in the broadest strokes divine plans for the human scene. Central to this
13 Extremely helpful in identifying rabbinic parallels to Jesus’ critiques of hypocrisy and misordered
legal priorities is Samuel Tobias Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament (Hoboken,
Ktav Publishing House, 1987).
32 Backdrop
sense of future developments was the notion of a messianic redeemer who
would, by divine fiat, appear on the historical scene and bring salvation
to God’s people. In the most basic way, this seems to have been the core
notion projected onto the image of Jesus. Once more, such imagery was
congenial to Jewish thinking in the Middle Ages. As always, the devil was
in the details, as groups and individuals were called upon to assess a specific
set of historical and messianic claims.
Thus, in many ways, medieval Christians and Jews were poised to argue
out of a shared legacy and with a shared set of assumptions. This is, of
course, hardly surprising, given the broad agreement already noted as to
the placement of Jesus and his immediate followers within first-century
Palestinian Jewry. What we must focus upon, however, are the points of
contention, those issues on which Jesus and his first-century Jewish con-
temporaries are portrayed as disagreeing. Modern scholarship has shown
us that we cannot know precisely what divided Jesus and his Jewish con-
temporaries. Medieval Christians and Jews, however, were willing to accept
the Gospel accounts at face value and to see therein the beginnings and the
backbone of the historic Christian–Jewish debate.

In even the most cursory reading of the Gospels, it is clear that Jesus’
main adherents and main opponents were Jews. It is Jews whom Jesus
attracted, and it is Jews with whom he contended. Curiously absent from
this Gospel picture are the Roman overlords of first-century Palestine, who
stand outside the orbit of Jesus’ activity, appearing as bemused if somewhat
sympathetic observers of internecine strife among their Jewish subjects.
This portrayal has come under considerable scrutiny and criticism of late.14
It is, however, the historical picture shared by both medieval Christians and
Jews, a picture that highlights disagreement from both sides – criticisms
leveled by Jesus and rebuttal by his fellow-Jews.15
The strongest case for belief in Jesus and his message made to Jewish
onlookers in the Gospel narratives seems to have involved the miraculous.
As noted, this theme accorded well with the legacy of biblical Israel, where
the miraculous was regularly adduced as indicative of truth. If we begin, for
example, with Mark as the earliest of the Gospels, we find a staccato series

14 This criticism is widely advanced in the scholarly literature. It is expressed with unusual impact
in James Carroll’s semi-popular Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2000), 79–88.
15 Christians over the ages have highlighted the criticisms, and Jews have highlighted the rebuttals. For
a helpful general discussion of Jewish responses to Jesus and his followers, see the opening chapters
of Claudia J. Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994).
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 33
of events highlighting Jesus’ capacity for the wondrous.16 Let us attempt to
glean some sense of this series through the following listing:
(1) 1:23–26 – an unclean spirit was exorcised by Jesus;
(2) 1:30–31 – Simon’s mother-in-law was healed from her fever by Jesus;
(3) 1:32–34 – wide-ranging healing by Jesus;
(4) 1:40–42 – a leper cured;
(5) 2:2–5 – a paralytic cured;
(6) 3:1–5 – a man with a withered arm healed;
(7) 3:10–11 – wide-ranging healing and exorcism;
(8) 4:35–39 – storm waters stilled;
(9) 5:1–13 – a lengthy story of exorcism;
(10) 5:21–24 and 35–42 – a young woman revived from death;
(11) 5: 25–34 – a woman cured of her hemorrhages.
These eleven incidents are taken from only the first five chapters of Mark.
The rest of Mark, Matthew, and Luke abounds in similar tales.17 Jesus’
ability to exorcise, to heal the sick, and to control the forces of nature are
advanced as central indices of the unique role accorded him and convincing
proof of the truth he brought to his followers.
A particularly striking passage in Luke reinforces this sense of the im-
portance of healing and miracles as proofs of the role and message of Jesus.
After two further story of miracles performed by Jesus, word reached John
the Baptist, who sent two of his disciples to Jesus with the following ques-
tion: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?”
These two disciples made their way to Jesus and asked as they had been
ordered. The story continues:
There and then he healed many sufferers from diseases, plagues, and evil spirits;
and on many blind people he bestowed sight. Then he gave them [John’s disciples]
this answer: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind regain
their sight, the lame walk, lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised
to life, the poor are brought good news. Happy is he who does not find me an
obstacle to his faith.”18
Here Jesus is made to note explicitly the implications of his wondrous
interventions for his role and, by extension, for the truth of his teaching.
It is no longer the narrator claiming the significance of the miraculous; it
is Jesus himself who is made to utter this claim.
16 I will generally try – where possible – to cite Mark, as the earliest of the Gospels. On the dating of
Mark, see Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 163–164.
17 I will generally cite Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, and omit John, which differs
markedly from them.
18 Luke 7:21–23.
34 Backdrop
In the Gospel accounts, many Jews are portrayed as moved by Jesus’
miraculous achievements. However, some – especially Jewish leaders – are
shown as skeptical. To be sure, skepticism over miracle-working is regularly
expressed in the Hebrew Bible. In the biblical legacy, there are recurrent sto-
ries about the wonder-working capacity of magicians, who do not perform
their deeds through divine intervention, but rather through the magical
arts. In most of these biblical stories, the wonder workers are made to fail
in competition with God’s true agents.19 Thus, it is not surprising that some
Jewish observers are portrayed as questioning the wonders performed by
Jesus. Such questioning is indicated in the Gospel of Mark in the following
terms:
When his [Jesus’] family heard about it, they set out to take charge of him. “He is
out of his mind,” they said. The scribes too, who had come down from Jerusalem,
said: “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He drives out demons by the prince of
demons.”20
This reflects rather standard questioning of miracles.
A slightly different and more intense Jewish opposition is reflected a
bit later, in Mark’s account of the Crucifixion. Here, with reference to
Jesus’ purported threat to pull down the Temple and rebuild it, passersby
(certainly intended to be understood as Jews) are depicted as jeeringly
proclaiming: “So you are the man who was to pull down the Temple and
rebuild it in three days! Save yourself and come down from the cross.”
The chief priests and scribes are portrayed as echoing that denigration:
“He saved others, but he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the king of
Israel, come down now from the cross. If we see that, we shall believe.”21
Here the opposition is to Jesus’ seeming lack of power at this critical
juncture. Implicit here is the sense that a miracle worker who cannot save
himself is surely no miracle worker.
Even more significant than the wonders performed by Jesus are the
miracles performed on his behalf. Every major milestone in Jesus’ life is
accompanied by what are for his followers unmistakable signs of direct
divine intervention. Thus, to begin with birth, the fullest birth tale is to be
found in Luke. It opens with miraculous conception by the aged Elizabeth
of John the Baptist, a conception announced by the angel Gabriel. In a
further angelic appearance, Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her of the yet
more miraculous virgin birth that will produce Jesus, who is to “be great

19 Recall, for example, the contest between Moses and the Egyptian magicians in Exodus 7:8–8:15 and
between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:19–40.
20 Mark 3:21–22. 21 Mark 15:29–31.
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 35
and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him
the throne of his ancestor David, and he will be king over Israel forever;
his reign shall never end.”22 Yet further miracles are associated with the
meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, with the birth of John the Baptist, the
birth of Jesus, and the family’s visit to Jerusalem to perform the post-birth
Temple obligations.
Mark tells of a particularly striking divine intervention during the bap-
tism of Jesus by John.
It was at this time that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in
the Jordan by John. As he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens
break open and the Spirit descend on him, like a dove. And a voice came from
heaven: “You are my beloved Son; in you I take delight.”23
Yet another life milestone attended by God’s presence and involvement.
Surely the most decisive divine intervention in the life of Jesus was the
miracle of his resurrection. Hints of such an eventuality, expressed prior
to the Crucifixion, abound throughout the Gospels. The fullest account
of the aftermath of the Crucifixion, that found in Luke, shows a set of
disciples sorely perplexed and distressed by the event, dismissive of the re-
ports of resurrection delivered by a number of women observers. Jesus is
portrayed as rebuking these disciples for their uncertainty. He makes his
resurrection the foundation of the message his disciples were enjoined to
bring to the world at large. With exhilaration, the apostles then take a new
kind of leave from their leader and proceed to embark on their worldwide
mission. Without the Resurrection, there would have been no Christianity;
it formed the cornerstone and capstone of the new faith. Thus, from be-
ginning to end, the lifetime of Jesus was studded with divine involvement,
meant to serve as irrefutable evidence of his mission and the truth of his
teachings.
Once again, Jews are portrayed regularly as challenging these miracles
purportedly performed on Jesus’ behalf. Interestingly, Christian claims as-
sociated with Jesus’ birth and baptism do not enter the arena of contention.
As important as these claims are in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and
in their case for the truth of his mission and teachings, the Gospels do not
portray overt argumentation between Jesus and his Jewish detractors over
this issue.
In contrast, Jesus speaks regularly of the significance of his death and his
subsequent resurrection, and Jews are made to deny that reality and hence its
22 Luke 1:32.
23 Mark 1:9–11. We shall see, in Chap. 13, a Jewish critique based on these verses.
36 Backdrop
significance. Jewish denigration of the claims of Jesus’ resurrection appears
prominently in Matthew. According to this report, at daybreak on the third
day after the Crucifixion, a violent earthquake shook the grave area, with
an angel appearing and rolling away the stone covering the site. The angel
reassured the female followers of Jesus, while terrifying the guards placed
there. The women hastened to convey their message.
While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and
reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. After meeting and
conferring with the elders, the chief priests offered the soldiers a substantial bribe
and told them to say, “His disciples came during the night and stole the body while
we were asleep.” They [the chief priests] added, “If this should reach the governor’s
ears, we will put matters right with him and see you do not suffer.” So they took
the money and did as they were told. Their story became widely known, and is
current in Jewish circles to this day.24
Reflected here are two stages of Jewish rejection of the major miracle as-
sociated with Jesus. Most Jews – not directly privy to the reports of the
guards – rejected the story of a resurrection, to be sure as a result of ma-
nipulation by their leaders. In many senses, these leaders were yet more
reprehensible from the Christian perspective, for they had the objective ev-
idence of the guards, dismissed it, and manipulated their fellow-Jews into
misguided disbelief.
Looking ahead to subsequent chapters in this study, one concluding
remark is in order with respect to the Gospel claims of great miracles
performed by Jesus and even greater miracles performed on his behalf.
Early Jewish rejection of these miracles made them problematic elements
in later Christian argumentation. If Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries dismissed
the evidence provided by the miracles performed in plain sight by and for
Jesus, there could be little hope of convincing latter-day Jews of Christian
truth by citing written testimony to those miracles. To the extent that
Christian polemical literature included evidence of the miraculous, such
argumentation was by and large addressed to believing Christians only. The
evidence of the miraculous does not play a major role in Jewish perceptions
of Christian truth claims or in Jewish refutation of those claims.25
A second central line of Christian argumentation in the Gospels por-
trays Jesus as fulfilling divinely revealed prophecies in Hebrew Scriptures.
The early Christians clearly shared the traditional Jewish sense that God’s

24 Matt. 28:11–15.
25 To be sure, Jews do utilize Jesus’ miracles, which they perceive as weak and inconclusive, as part of
their attack on Christian Scripture, as we shall see below, Chap. 13.
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 37
prophets had been given the power to foresee the future and had predicted
important events and developments to come. All the Gospels assert recur-
rently that Jesus fulfilled a series of such prophecies and that such fulfillment
of prophecy once more attests to the divine origins of Jesus’ mission and
the truth of his teaching.
For some sense of this line of argumentation, let us turn to Matthew,
who is richest in his presentation of it. The opening chapters of Matthew
are replete with a set of fascinating stories, the point of which is to show
Jesus as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Let us note this sequence:
(1) 1:18–23 – the story tells of Mary’s betrothal to Joseph, her pregnancy
through the Holy Spirit, Joseph’s inclination to set the marriage contract
aside in order to protect Mary, an angelic visitation via a dream telling
Joseph to take Mary as his wife and to name the child Jesus, “for he
will save his people from their sins;” all this is then taken as fulfillment
of Isaiah 7:14;
(2) 2:1–6 – Jesus was born in Bethlehem; reports of the birth of the king
of the Jews perturbed Herod, who inquired as to the birthplace of this
promised king; in reply he was cited Micah 5:2, which Matthew clearly
presents Jesus as fulfilling;
(3) 2:13–15 – in the face of Herod’s fear and wrath, Joseph was warned
through yet another angelic intervention via a dream to take his wife
and child to Egypt; in this way Jesus fulfilled Hosea 11:1;
(4) 2:16–18 – committed to slaying the promised king of the Jews, Herod
had all youngsters under two years of age massacred in the area of
Bethlehem; this set of events thus fulfilled Jeremiah 31:15;
(5) 2:19–23 – upon Herod’s death, Joseph intended to return to Bethlehem;
once more forewarned by a dream, he made his way to Galilee instead;
this fulfilled Isaiah 11:1;
(6) 3:1–3 – John the Baptist is introduced; he is taken as fulfillment of Isaiah
40:3.
It is possible to continue further through Matthew, but the point seems
clear enough. The events in Jesus’ life are regularly projected as fulfillment
of prophetic promise.
The concluding sections of the Luke narrative provide particularly strik-
ing expressions of this conviction, with Jesus himself proclaiming his ful-
fillment of prophecy. In the closing chapter of Luke, devoted entirely to the
aftermath of the Crucifixion, two of the apostles are portrayed as meeting
Jesus (without recognizing him) and describing uncertainly the events of
the prior few days, culminating in the report of resurrection. Jesus upbraids
them in the following terms:
38 Backdrop
“How dull you are! How slow to believe all that the prophets said! Was not the
Messiah bound to suffer in this way before entering upon his glory?” Then, starting
from Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in the whole of Scripture
the things that referred to himself.26
After these two apostles shared their news with the others, Jesus appeared
within the entire group. Disconcerted, the apostles were reassured by touch-
ing Jesus and eating with him. He then shared the following message with
them:
“This is what I meant by saying, when I was still with you, that everything written
about me in the prophets and psalms was bound to be fulfilled.” Then he opened
their minds to understand the Scriptures. “So you see,” he said, “that Scripture
foretells the sufferings of the Messiah and his rising from the dead on the third
day, and declares that in his name repentance bringing the forgiveness of sins is to
be proclaimed to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.”27
Again Jesus is himself projected as making the argument for his fulfillment
of prophecy, particularly the prophecies purported to foretell suffering,
resurrection, and conferral of forgiveness.
Obviously, these arguments for fulfillment of biblical prediction in the
life and activity of Jesus would be meaningful only to Jews. The premise
of this line of argumentation is that David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other
prophets of Israel spoke God’s truth. Although these claims are clearly
designed for a Jewish audience only, Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries are not
shown as deeply engaged with this line of Christian argumentation. The
claims are essentially developed in the third-person narrative and in Jesus’
conversation with his immediate disciples. Nonetheless, there are occasional
hints of this claim being voiced to a wider Jewish audience and rejected
by that audience. Mark depicts the arraignment of Jesus in the house of
the high priest, the questioning, and Jesus’ silence in the face of these
queries. Only when he is asked as to whether he is the Messiah, does Jesus
break his silence. His response – “I am, and you will see the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of the Almighty and coming with the clouds of
heaven” – is purported to occasion outrage and immediate conviction by
the Jewish leaders.28 Embedded within this brief statement by Jesus are two
important references to biblical prediction, that is to say two major claims of
impending fulfillment of prophetic prediction. Portrayal of the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of the Almighty is an obvious reference to Psalm
110; depiction of his coming with the clouds of heaven is a clear reference to

26 Luke 24:25–27. 27 Luke 24:44–47. 28 Mark 14:62–65.

 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 39
Daniel 7. With both images, Jesus is proclaiming himself the fulfillment of
biblical predictions. The Jewish response was hardly acquiescence; it was,
rather, intense agitation and rejection.
The miraculous and fulfillment of prophetic prediction surely lie at the
heart of the Gospel case for the truth of the new faith. They are perceived
by medieval Christians and Jews as the two central claims that Jesus’ Jewish
opponents rejected. We might note, however, two further themes in the
Gospel narratives that will emerge as well in the later Christian–Jewish
debate. The first of these involves the importance of the moral dimension in
religious life or – more accurately – the requisite balance between the ritual
and the moral in observance of God’s law. More specifically, the Gospels
portray Jesus as critical of the balance struck by the Jewish authorities of
his time between the ritual and the moral, implying error on their part
and truth on his. The second further theme projects history as the scene of
eventual reward and punishment, with the clear implication that, at a later
point in time, it will be obvious in retrospect where truth and error lie. The
emphasis in both these themes on error and truth made them amenable to
inclusion in the eventual cases made by both Christians and Jews over the
ages.
Let me begin with a brief disclaimer as regards the first of these two
themes. The issue of the ritual/legal versus the moral in the Gospels is
exceedingly complex, largely because it is caught up in the related problem
of the Law and its status in gentile Christianity. Both issues are reflected in
complex ways in the New Testament corpus and have given rise to recurrent
reevaluation and considerable debate in subsequent Christian thinking. A
major shift that took place within the early Christian community was the
abrogation of Jewish law for gentile converts to the movement. Obviously,
this change required considerable justification and would of necessity have
entailed a reconsideration of the overall nature and importance of the Law.
Of the truth claims embedded in the Gospels, this one may well show the
most significant alteration from Jesus’ own day down through the end of the
first century.29 In view of the complexity of this issue, I shall tread lightly,
attempting only to highlight the broadest lines of the argument purportedly
carried on by Jesus with his Jewish contemporaries on the issue of the
Law.
The significance accorded the Pauline effort to free gentile converts from
the demands of the Law suggests that, for Jesus’ original circle of Jewish
believers, those demands were simply a fact of life. Mention has already

29 See again the works cited above, n. 5.

40 Backdrop
been made, for example, of the family’s visit to Jerusalem, after Jesus’ birth,
to fulfill the sacrificial obligations associated with that birth. At the same
time, Jesus is described as regularly attacking certain kinds of problematic
fulfillment of the Law. Since it is not possible to treat in full measure the
complexities of this critique of Jewish law and ritual, I shall confine myself
to focusing on the two categories of such criticism already noted. The first is
concerned with intrusion of externals into religious observance, the second
with failure to order properly priorities associated with observance of the
Law. Again I shall draw my examples largely from Mark, as the earliest of
the Gospels. Most of the passages cited herein are in fact absorbed into the
later Gospel narratives.
At the simplest level, Jesus is portrayed as opposing the intrusion of
externals into the realm of the sacred, for example by cleansing the Temple
area of its moneychangers and provisioners.
He went into the Temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold there.
He upset the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of the dealers in pigeons;
and he would not allow anyone to carry goods through the Temple court. Then he
began to teach them and said: “Does not Scripture say, ‘My house shall be called
a house of prayer for all nations?’ But you have made it a robbers’ cave.”30

This is a trenchant critique of the necessary business dealings that surround

and compromise almost every religious shrine; it has a near universal quality
to it. Of course, the fact that business is necessary for fulfillment of major
rituals (Jewish, Christian, and other) remains. Nonetheless, distress at the
realities of this infringement of the sacred by the profane is intense. Special
note should be made of Jesus’ justification of his action by reference to
a scriptural verse that highlights prayer as the core of the Temple service.
According to the report in Mark, this initiative was widely applauded by
the Jewish populace, although it engendered anxiety and disquiet on the
part of the religious leadership in Jerusalem.
Yet another critique aimed at the impingement of externals onto the
essentials of religious life has to do with the likewise universal tendency of
religious leaders to flaunt their piety. Jesus warns against such behavior.
Beware of the scribes, who love to walk up and down in long robes and be greeted
respectfully in the street, to have the chief seats in the synagogues and places of
honor at feasts. Those who eat up the property of widows, while for appearance’s
sake they say long prayers, will receive a sentence all the more severe.31

30 Mark 11:15–17. The citation is from Isa. 56:7. 31 Mark 12:38–40.

 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 41
This is actually a conflated criticism. The initial level involves rebuke of
those who enjoy exhibiting their religiosity. Jesus then extends this attack
by combining lengthy prayer with oppression of widows, a more heinous
perversion of the religious realm, a perversion regularly decried by Israelite
prophets. Since this critique was delivered among his followers, the Gospel
account does not specify any broad Jewish response.
Yet another type of critique involves conflict of values, more specifically
the occasional conflict of ritual imperatives with moral imperatives. This
conflict is concretized in Mark by the issue of healing on the Sabbath. The
story is somewhat ambiguous.
There was a man in the congregation who had a withered arm; and they [the
Pharisees] were watching to see whether Jesus would heal him on the Sabbath, so
that they could bring a charge against him. He said to the man with the withered
arm, “Come and stand out here.” Then he turned to them: “Is it permitted to do
good or to do evil on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” They had nothing to
say; and, looking round at them with anger and sorrow at their obstinate stupidity,
he said to the man, “Stretch out your arm.” He stretched it out, and his arm was
restored.32
The Pharisees are portrayed here as stung to silence by Jesus’ critique. This
response is a bit curious in that the issue appears prominently in later
rabbinic literature.33
Indeed, the deeper meaning of ritual is recurrently cited. While this
theme appears in Mark, let us move for a moment to the Sermon on
the Mount in Matthew for a full sense of this, elegantly couched. The
middle of this extended sermon provides a series of six citations of prior
injunction, regularly beginning with a formulaic “You have heard that our
forefathers were told,” followed by elucidation of the deeper meaning of
the commandment. The first in this series, for example, begins by citing
the prohibition of murder. To this Jesus adds: “But what I tell you is this:
Anyone who nurses anger against his brother must be brought to justice.
Whoever calls his brother ‘good for nothing’ deserves the sentence of the
court; whoever calls him ‘fool’ deserves hell-fire.”34 Again, since this is a
discourse delivered to followers, there is no overt reference to broad Jewish
reaction.
Finally, there is wrestling with the priorities of religious life that takes
the form of attempted identification of the key to the system in its entirety.

32 Mark 3:1–5.
33 See the material gathered in Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, 199–200.
34 Matt. 5:22.
42 Backdrop
In one of Jesus’ skirmishes with the Jewish religious establishment, the
following episode is included:
Then one of the scribes, who had been listening to the discussions and had observed
how well Jesus answered, came forward and asked him, “Which is the first of all
the commandments?” He answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord is
our God, the Lord is one, and you must love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You
must love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than
these.”
The scribe said to him, “Well said, Teacher. You are right in saying that God is
one and beside him there is no other. And to love him with all your heart, all your
understanding, and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself – that
means far more than any whole-offerings and sacrifices.”
When Jesus saw how thoughtfully he answered, he said to him, “You are not far
from the kingdom of God.”35
The issue here is to identify the core of religious faith, which Jesus does by
citing Scripture. I have chosen to close this brief survey of his critiques by
adducing one in which a leading Jew is portrayed as responding positively
to the words of Jesus. As is true for most of the critiques leveled by Jesus, in
fact the thrust of these particular criticisms would hardly have been alien to
his Jewish contemporaries.36 To be sure, the Gospels generally portray Jesus’
Jewish contemporaries as benighted, insensitive to the moral concerns he
expresses and the religious insights he conveys.
One last item in the Gospels must be mentioned, and that involves the
warnings given to Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries of the punishment to befall
them for failure to recognize the Messiah sent by God. This is once again an
issue caught up in the rapid evolution of Christian thinking and in the fact
that the Gospels are late and derive from an altered ambience. Subsequent
Christian preaching to the gentiles involved wrestling with the issue of
the Law and disparagement of its importance. This later preaching also
had to deal with the dynamics and implications of the purported shift in
divine favor from the Jews to the new gentile Christian community. Since
much of the Gospel material was written out of and for a gentile Christian
audience, we might well expect once more significant contamination by
later perspectives. As with the issue of Jewish law, I shall therefore again
tread lightly.
To be sure, warnings of impending punishment are not all that common
in the Gospels. Nonetheless, such warnings are there and assume heightened
35 Mark 12:28–34.
36 See the rabbinic parallels brought by Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, 280–281.
 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 43
significance in the later Christian–Jewish debate. Mark, the earliest of the
Gospels, has only the briefest reference to this theme, with Jesus simply
indicating that the magnificence of the Jerusalem Temple should not be
misconstrued, that in fact “not one stone will be left upon another; they
will all be thrown down.”37 Such prediction would not have been all that
shocking to his Jewish contemporaries or to medieval Jews either. Jesus is
simply reiterating the stance earlier uttered by Jeremiah, indicating that the
sanctity of the Temple does not preclude divine punishment upon it as a
result of sinfulness.38
Luke’s reference in this same direction seems rooted in Mark, but is
far more explicit. Luke after all considerably postdated the destruction
of Jerusalem at Roman hands, which probably accounts for some of the
fullness of his report. Luke describes Jesus as weeping over Jerusalem and
lamenting in the following terms:
If only you had known this day the way that leads to peace! But no, it is hidden
from your sight. For a time will come upon you, when your enemies will set up
siege works against you. They will encircle you and hem you in at every point;
they will bring you to the ground, you and your children within your walls, and
not leave one stone standing on another, because you did not recognize the time
of God’s visitation.39

Particularly striking is the reference to Jewish failure to “recognize the time

of God’s visitation” as the basis for the destruction of the Temple. The
reality of that destruction then serves as ex post facto proof that the Jews
were thus punished, which in turn demonstrates that God’s visitation did
in fact take place.
Matthew’s treatment of this theme is fuller yet, with Jesus engaging
the chief priests and elders and delivering his warning directly to them.
This warning was couched initially in the form of a parable, involving a
landowner who prepared a vineyard and then let it out to vine-growers. At
the proper time, the landowner sent his servants to collect the produce due
him. These servants were maltreated, with one even killed. A larger number
of servants were then sent and similarly maltreated. The landowner then
opted to send his son, who was in turn killed. With this story spun out,
Jesus then asked his interlocutors what they thought the fate of the tenants
would be. Their purported answer was ominous: “He will bring those bad
men to a bad end and hand the vineyard over to other tenants, who will

37 Mark 13:2.
38 See the lengthy episode depicted in Jer. 26:1–19. 39 Luke 19:41–44.
44 Backdrop
give him his share of the crop when the season comes.” Building on this
response, Jesus then says:
Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The stone which the builders rejected has
become the main cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our
eyes.” Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and
given to a nation that yields the proper fruit.40
Here we may indeed have echoes of a later thrust, with another people
replacing the errant Jews.
Most important to our purposes, however, is the underlying presuppo-
sition of these warnings, the assumption that history is the arena in which
corporate sin and punishment are worked out. In all these warnings, the
shortcomings of the Jews are portrayed as calling down upon them divine
anger and eventual punishment, with destruction of the Jerusalem Tem-
ple a central manifestation of that punishment and loss of the covenant
a further possibility. Couched in terms of a Christian argument, the case
would run as follows: You Jews were warned of impending doom for your
rejection of Jesus as a divinely sent messenger; the doom has eventuated;
there can be no reasonable explanation other than the fact that Jesus was
in fact the divinely sent messenger, as claimed. Modern scholars may well
see these purported assertions by Jesus as contaminated by later perspec-
tives. Nonetheless, once more subsequent Christians and Jews would not
impose the doubts of modern research and would tend to see this as one
last – and powerful – element of dispute between Jesus and his Jewish
contemporaries.

The potent medieval Christian challenge to Jews was deeply rooted in the
Gospels. Key lines of anti-Jewish argumentation were set forth, with mean-
ing for believing Christians, for potential gentile converts to Christianity,
and for Jews. For medieval Jews, it was possible to see the bulk of the
Gospel argumentation in Jewishly meaningful terms. Christians claimed
divinely grounded miracles performed by and for Jesus, and Jews disagreed.
Christians claimed Jesus’ fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and Jews again
disagreed. Christians and Jews disagreed over the Law, its status, and its
abuse. Christians and Jews agreed that history was the scene in which the
divine plan was carried out, but disagreed in their reading of historical
realities.

40 Matt. 21:41–43. The citation is from Ps. 118:22–23.

 Jesus and the Jews: the Gospel accounts 45
To be sure, the key elements in the Gospel portrait of Christian–Jewish
argumentation could not and did not remain static. They were inevitably
embellished, expanded, and intensified. In order to understand properly
subsequent Jewish perceptions of the Christian challenge, let us turn briefly
to some of the early evolution of these key anti-Jewish arguments.
 chap t e r t wo

Post-Gospel Christian argumentation: continuities

and expansions

Christian argumentation – aimed at Christians, Jews, or pagans – was hardly

static. Changes developed rapidly and broadly. The most important early
innovator was Saul of Tarsus, become Paul, apostle to the gentiles. Identi-
fication of Paul’s innovations is, as already noted, a matter of considerable
dispute – internal Christian and modern scholarly. Since most modern
researchers have concluded that Jesus’ original message can no longer be
reliably reconstructed, the precise nature of Paul’s innovations can likewise
not be recaptured. Moreover, the uncertainties and complexities associated
with the purportedly Pauline epistles have obscured his message even more,
giving rise to protracted and intense scholarly debate.1
Perhaps the simplest starting point is our earlier observation that the
main engagement portrayed in the Gospels involved Jesus and his Jewish
contemporaries. As we move further into the evolution of the Jesus move-
ment into Christianity, through the epistles of Paul (the earliest surviving
stratum in the New Testament) and the narrative account in the Acts of
the Apostles, the scene changes rather dramatically. While Paul continues
to preach to his Jewish contemporaries, his fullest engagement is with gen-
tiles, whom he attempts to attract to a seemingly new vision of Jesus, his
mission, and his message.2
The shift from intra-Jewish engagement to involvement with the gen-
tile world brought a series of important changes in its wake. The most
obvious change – reflected in Paul’s own epistles and in the Acts of the
Apostles – involves Jewish law. The immediate issue was the applicability
of this law to the new gentile converts. Clearly, a number of perspectives on

1 For the complications with regard to the study of Jesus, see above, Chap. 1, nn. 1 and 2. For the un-
certainties with respect to authorship of the purported Pauline epistles, see again Brown, Introduction
to the New Testament, 409–584; for the complexities with regard to the Pauline message, see above,
Chap. 1, n. 5.
2 I have used “seemingly” out of deference to current scholarly uncertainties with respect to both Jesus
and Paul.

46
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 47
this vexing issue quickly emerged in the young community. Paul’s strong
stance negated gentile obligation toward the Law, and his view ultimately
triumphed. Precisely how far Paul went in his reevaluation of the Law is a
key element in the current scholarly dispute over his thinking. For some, his
reevaluation of the Law involved only its applicability to gentile believers;
for others, his reevaluation was more far-reaching, eventuating in dismissal
of the salvific significance of the Law subsequent to the advent of Jesus.
Related to this issue of the Law was the place of the Jewish people in
the world. Once again, there is considerable and intense scholarly dispute.
For some, Paul in fact came to no innovative conclusions with respect
to the place of the Jews in the cosmos; for others, he was the innovator
of the rejectionist-supersessionist view of the Jews. In this view, the Jews
were no longer threatened with “normal” punishment for failure to rec-
ognize the divinely predicted Messiah. Earlier Jewish sins, in this view,
had eventuated in “normal” punishments. The first-century Jewish sin of
failure to recognize and acknowledge the promised Messiah constituted,
in the rejectionist-supersessionist scheme, a sin of unique magnitude that
entailed unique punishment – rupture of the covenant itself. The special
Jewish place in the cosmic order was lost, transferred to the new Israel, the
Christian Church, now the bearer of the covenant. The implications of
this view were enormous – for the conception of the Church and its role,
for the internal structure of the Church as a gentile community, and for
Christian views of Judaism and the Jews.
Because of the uncertainties of Paul’s own writings and the scholarly
dispute that swirls around them, we shall not attempt engagement with
the Pauline epistles. We shall instead utilize the somewhat clearer book
of Acts in order to trace the initial post-Jesus stages in the evolution of
Christian–Jewish argumentation. Utilization of the book of Acts involves
an element of scholarly impropriety, for we will be using a later report on
Paul, rather than the words of Paul himself. In this instance, the scholarly
impropriety is more than justified. For our purpose is not to reconstruct
what Paul actually said and thought, but rather to illuminate what medieval
Christians and Jews believed Paul said and thought. For this purpose, the
later, simpler, and possibly distorted portrait in the Acts of the Apostles
is appropriate. It is the portrait that the Middle Ages adopted and then
imposed on the ambiguous and often contradictory Pauline epistles.
From the book of Acts, we shall proceed to a major subsequent milestone
in Christian–Jewish argumentation – the imposing Augustine of Hippo
and his views of Judaism and the Jews. By Augustine’s time, the view that
the Law and the Jewish people had been superseded – whether of Pauline
48 Backdrop
origin or not – had fully taken root in gentile Christian circles. We shall
defer observations on the vibrant thinking of the twelfth century and its
ramifications for Christian polemics to later chapters.

The Acts of the Apostles purports to be a direct continuation of the Gospel

of Luke, with both works seemingly written by the same author. In one
sense, the book of Acts is simpler than the Gospels – it comes in one
version only. The uncertainty created ab initio by the existence of alterna-
tive accounts of the life of Jesus does not exist for the succeeding period.
The Acts of the Apostles has the stage all to itself, and its narration has
been the authoritative version of mid-first-century Church history over the
ages. Recent scholarship, however, challenges the reliability of the ostensi-
bly straightforward reporting of the book of Acts. The newer scholarship
suggests that the Acts version of events represents a particular perspective –
to be sure a victorious perspective – on the development and organization
of the Church in the wake of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Moreover,
recent scholars have challenged even the accuracy of the portrayal of Paul
and his thinking. For our purposes, however, the accuracy of the reporting
is essentially inconsequential. Again, what is decisive for our investigation
is that the portrait sketched in the Acts of the Apostles became the authori-
tative version of early Church history. This authoritative history, as we shall
see, reinforces Gospel anti-Jewish argumentation, while at the same time
adding new twists and elements.3
The book of Acts has often been called the initial history of the Christian
Church. It is of course a history with a clear set of messages. The first is
the simple and straightforward message that the teachings of Jesus outlived
his disappearance from the earthly scene. Despite considerable difficulties,
his disciples persevered and bore his message in multiple directions, with
astonishing success. Beyond this most basic message, the book of Acts con-
stitutes a victory statement for the Pauline vision of Christianity. There is a
readily discernible rhythm to the book of Acts. At the outset, Peter and his
Jerusalem colleagues dominate the narrative; toward the middle of the story,
Paul appears and begins to interact with Peter and his Jerusalem colleagues;
3 On the book of Acts, see Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 279–332. See also Martin
Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1980); Colin J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1989); Daniel Marguerat, La première histoire du christianisme: Les Actes des apôtres (Paris: Cerf, 1999);
and Loveday Alexander, “The Acts of the Apostles as an Apologetic Text,” in Apologetics in the Roman
Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. Mark Edwards et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
15–44. On the relationship of the Acts portrait of Paul and Paul’s own epistles, see the interesting
observations of Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, 244–276.
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 49
by the end, Paul has achieved undisputed center stage. The argument of
the narrative is thus subtle, but highly effective. Ultimately, leadership in
the young Church – as portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles – has passed to
Paul; the composition of the Church has become overwhelmingly gentile;
the vision of the Church is that advanced by Paul.
From the outset of the book of Acts, the Jerusalem-based disciples are
portrayed as continuing along the lines sketched out for Jesus himself. They
perform impressive miracles and are, at the same time, the recipients of
direct divine favor. They are also projected as continuing to fulfill prophetic
prediction, in much the same way that Jesus himself had. The themes
of Jewish law and the fate of the Jews are somewhat muted in the early
chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. With the appearance and then growing
predominance of Paul, these latter issues take on new forms and heightened
significance.
For our purposes, especially useful and revealing are lengthy and rich
speeches made by key protagonists to different sets of Jewish audiences.
These speeches are generally more focused and fuller than the addresses
made by Jesus to his Jewish contemporaries. They are quite straightforward,
eschewing parable and elliptical expression. The addresses are put in the
mouths of Peter, of Stephen just prior to his martyrdom, and – in fullest
measure – of Paul. Just as Paul eventually dominates the action of the book
of Acts, so, too, do his addresses overshadow those of all others. These
illuminating speeches will enable us to track the continuities of anti-Jewish
argumentation, as well as the innovations.
Let us begin with the first of these lengthy addresses, attributed to Peter.
Early in the book of Acts, yet another miraculous event takes place, as the
assembled Galilean disciples of Jesus were filled with the Holy Spirit and
began to express themselves in all the tongues represented in the polyglot
city of Jerusalem. Jews visiting from all corners of the far-flung Roman
Empire were astonished at hearing these Galileans speak in such a variety
of languages. Once again, the positive response of some Jewish observers was
counterbalanced by the skepticism of others, who saw in the phenomenon
only drunken revelry.
It is at this point that Peter stepped forward to address the crowd. He
began his charge by presenting a biblical prophecy for this outpouring of
the Holy Spirit, again linking the miraculous with biblical prophecy.

Fellow-Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, listen and take note of what I say. These
people are not drunk, as you suppose; it is only nine in the morning! No, this is
what the prophet Joel spoke of: “In the last days, says God, I will pour out my
50 Backdrop
spirit on all mankind. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy; your young men
shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Yes, on my servants and
my handmaids I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.”4

This outpouring of the spirit, argues Peter to his Jerusalem audience, shows
a combination of the two claims central to the Gospel portrait of Jesus –
the miraculous and the fulfillment of prophecy.
What had just now occurred in Jerusalem was, however, for Peter a mere
footnote to the far more important miracles and fulfillments of prophecy
associated with Jesus. He thus proceeds immediately to turn back to the
exalted figure through whom the immediate miracle has taken place.
Men of Israel, hear me. I am speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, singled out by God
and made known to you through miracles, portents, and signs, which God worked
among you through him, as you well know. By the deliberate will and plan of God,
he was given into your power, and you killed him, using heathen men to crucify
him. But God raised him to life again, setting him free from the pangs of death,
because it could not be that death should keep him in its grasp. For David says
of him: “I foresaw that the Lord would be with me forever. With him at my right
hand, I cannot be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices.
Moreover, my flesh shall dwell in hope, for you will not abandon me to death, nor
let your faithful servant suffer corruption. You have shown me the paths of life;
your presence will fill me with joy.”5

This is a portrait of Jesus that accords nicely with our reconstruction of

Gospel argumentation to Jews. The lengthy quotation from Psalm 16 is
particularly striking.
What follows is an interesting case made by Peter for his reading of Psalm
16. This is the kind of close explication of a biblical text we shall encounter
regularly in our medieval texts. Peter carefully buttresses his claim for the
application of Psalm 16 to Jesus. According to Peter, the normal tendency
to read this psalm as referring to King David is in fact refuted by well-
recognized realities.
My friends, nobody can deny that the patriarch David died and was buried; we
have his tomb here to this very day. It is clear therefore that he spoke as a prophet,
who knew that God had sworn to him that one of his own direct descendants
should sit on his throne. And when he said he was not abandoned to death and his
flesh never saw corruption, he spoke with foreknowledge of the resurrection of the
Messiah. Exalted at God’s right hand, he received from the Father the promised
Holy Spirit, and all that you now see and hear flows from him.6

4 Acts 2:14–17, citing Joel 2:28–32. 5 Acts 2:22–28, citing Ps. 16:8–11. 6 Acts 2:29–33.
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 51
This reinforcement of his reading of Psalm 16 leads Peter to the citation
of yet one more verse from Psalms and its explication.
For it was not David who went up to heaven. His own words are: “The Lord said
to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’ ”
Let all Israel then accept as certain that God has made this same Jesus, whom you
crucified, both Lord and Messiah.7
Citation of Psalms 110:1 reminds us as readers of an earlier appearance of
this same citation, put by Luke in the mouth of Jesus himself.
He said to them: “How can they say that the Messiah is David’s son? For David
himself says in the book of Psalms: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right
hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ Thus David calls him ‘Lord.’
How then can he be David’s son?”8
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus seems to hint at his divinity by citing Psalm
110:1. What had been a hint in Luke becomes – in the mouth of Peter in
the Acts of the Apostles – a fully drawn case.
Yet another miracle occasions a further lengthy speech by Peter. This
latter miracle involved the healing of a well-known figure at one of the
Temple gates, a crippled beggar who was wont to seek alms every day at
the Gate of the Beautiful. The healing of this well-known figure produced
amazement among the Temple throngs. This amazement offered Peter
another opportunity to present his view of Jesus.
Men of Israel, why be surprised at this? Why stare at us as if we had made this man
walk by some power or godliness of our own? . . . The name of Jesus, by awakening
faith, has given strength to this man whom you see and know, and this faith has
made him completely well, as you can all see.9
Peter then proceeds to a more general point.
Now, my friends, I know quite well that you acted in ignorance [in crucifying Jesus],
as did your rulers. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all
the prophets – that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore and turn to God, so
that your sins may be wiped out. Then the Lord may grant you a time of recovery
and send the Messiah appointed for you, that is Jesus. He must be received into
heaven until the time comes for the universal restoration of which God has spoken
through his holy prophets from the beginning.10
The combination of miracle and prophecy is firm and intense in these
speeches, both addressed to Peter’s Jewish contemporaries in Jerusalem.

7 Acts 2:34–36, citing Ps. 110:1. 8 Luke 20:41–44. 9 Acts 3:12–16. 10 Acts 3:17–21.
52 Backdrop
While Peter and the former disciples of Jesus occupy center stage early
in the book of Acts, there is a slow and steady outward movement of
the Christian community depicted therein. The first new group identi-
fied consisted of Greek-speaking Jewish believers who were to be found
in Jerusalem. Seven men of this group were selected for special roles, and
Jesus’ earliest disciples laid their hands upon them. One of these seven,
Stephen, was particularly eloquent and “began to do great wonders and
signs among the people.”11 Running afoul of Jewish leadership, Stephen
was stoned. Purportedly present at this execution was another Greek-
speaking Jew present in Jerusalem, one who had aligned himself with
the Jewish leadership. Saul/Paul is mentioned twice during the stoning
of Stephen. In the first instance, it is noted that “the witnesses laid their
coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” The entire incident ends
with a curt observation – “Saul was among those who approved of the
execution.”12
In a more general way, Saul of Tarsus is initially portrayed as an intense
Pharisaic persecutor of the Christian community. His famous journey to
Damascus purportedly involved a mandate to arrest Christians and return
them to Jerusalem. Consonant with the emphasis on miracles noted recur-
rently, Saul was visited by a remarkable wonder on the road to Damascus.
He was stunned and blinded by a great light and heard the voice of Jesus
upbraiding him. The blinding caused by the light remained with him. He
was led to Damascus by his companions and remained there three days in
his sightless state. As a result of yet another set of miraculous interventions,
a Christian named Ananias was sent to Paul, laid hands upon him, and
thereby restored his sight. Convinced by these wonders, the erstwhile per-
secutor of Christians was baptized and quickly become a major spokesman
for the young movement.13 The latter chapters of the book of Acts are
studded with the speeches of Paul, in which we find a combination of prior
motifs and new emphases.
Paul and his associate Barnabas set forth on a missionizing journey that
took them from Antioch to Seleucia, Cyprus, Perga, and Pisidian Antioch.
In the last of these places, they went on the Sabbath to the local synagogue,
where they were invited to address the congregation. Paul responded with
the first of his lengthy speeches, indeed the first of the addresses recorded
in the book of Acts delivered outside the land of Israel. He opens with a
résumé of Israelite history, focused on the selection of David as king of
Israel and progenitor of Jesus, who had been sent to Israel as savior. Paul

11 Acts 6:8. 12 Acts 7:58 and 8:1. 13 Acts 9:1–22.

 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 53
then focuses on the activities of Jesus, his crucifixion, the miracle of his
resurrection, and the related predictions by the prophets of old.
The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus or understand
the words of the prophets that are read Sabbath by Sabbath; indeed, they fulfilled
them by condemning him. Though they failed to find grounds for the sentence of
death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all that
the Scriptures said about him, they took him down from the gibbet and laid him
in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and over a period of many days he
appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they
are now his witnesses before our people. We are here to give you the good news
that God, who made the promise to the fathers, has fulfilled it for the children by
raising Jesus from the dead, as indeed it stands written in the second Psalm: “You
are my son; this day I have begotten you.”14

Once more, the prior combination of miracle and prophecy.

Paul then adds further biblical citations to buttress the message grounded
in Jesus’ resurrection. The prophet Isaiah and a further verse from Psalms
are cited.
Again, that he raised him from the dead, never to be subjected to corruption, he
declares in these words: “I will give you the blessings promised to David, holy and
sure.” This is borne out by another passage: “You will not let your servant suffer
corruption.”15

This last citation, from Psalm 16, is by now familiar to us. We have seen it
cited initially by Jesus himself and then by Peter. Like Peter, Paul too offers
proof for his reading of Psalm 16.
As for David, when he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, he
died and was gathered to his fathers and suffered corruption. But the one whom
God raised up did not suffer corruption.16

Paul continues the emphasis on miracle and prediction already noted recur-
rently. Like Peter, he too provides careful exegesis of key prophetic verses.
To be sure, in this first lengthy address attributed to Paul, we also see
new themes emerge. The first involves the Law.
You must understand, my brothers, it is through him that forgiveness of sins is
now being proclaimed to you. It is through him that everyone who has faith is
acquitted of everything for which there is acquittal under the law of Moses.17

14 Acts 13:27–33, citing Ps. 2:7.

15 Acts 13:34–35, citing Isa. 55:3 and Ps. 16:10. 16 Acts 13:36–37. 17 Acts 13:39.
54 Backdrop
While details are not fully spelled out in this passage, there is here the
element of limitation in the Mosaic law, with indication that faith in Christ
provides far more.
Punishment for failure to acknowledge Jesus, either in his lifetime or
subsequently, is also indicated.
Beware, then, lest you bring down upon yourselves the doom proclaimed by the
prophets. “See this, you scoffers, marvel and be gone. For I am doing a deed in
your days, a deed which you will never believe, when you are told of it.”18
Just as so many other prophecies were fulfilled, in Paul’s eyes, for believers
in Jesus and his mission, so too will biblical prophecies of punishment be
fulfilled for unbelievers.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Barnabas returned to
the same synagogue the following Sabbath, this time with an enormous
crowd gathered. According to the narrative account, the Jewish listeners on
this second occasion were moved to a confrontational stance, contradicting
Paul abusively. This led Paul and Barnabas to a harsher posture of their
own.
“It was necessary,” they said, “that the word of God should be declared to you first.
But since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we now turn
to the gentiles. For these are our instructions from the Lord. ‘I have appointed you
to be a light for the gentiles and a means of salvation to earth’s farthest bounds.’ ”19
The turn to the gentiles on Paul’s part is here presented in dual fashion, as
both a positive and a negative. It is positive in that it reflects God’s prophecy,
uttered by Isaiah, which envisions the Servant of the Lord as a light to all
the nations. It is negative in that it is occasioned most immediately by
Jewish rejection of the message of Jesus. The Jews, to whom this message
was properly brought first, stand in danger of losing it and their preeminent
place in the cosmos.
This last theme is in fact the harsh note upon which the book of Acts
draws to its end. The final episode in the Acts of the Apostles portrays Paul
in Rome, attempting to attract Jews of that city to the Christian vision.
According to the author, “some were won over by his arguments; others
remained skeptical.” Before the group of Jews dispersed, Paul made a closing
statement to them:
How well the Holy Spirit spoke to your father through the prophet Isaiah when
he said: “Go to this people and say: ‘You may hear and hear but you will not

18 Acts 13:40–41, citing Hab. 1:5. 19 Acts 13:46–47, citing Isa. 49:6.
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 55
understand; you may look and look, but you will never see. For this people’s mind
has become gross; their ears are dulled, and their eyes are closed. Otherwise, their
eyes might see, their ears hear, and their mind understand, and then they might
turn again and I would heal them.” ’ Therefore, take note that this salvation of
God has been sent to the gentiles. The gentiles will listen.20
Thus, the closing note to the entire book is divine prediction that the
message of salvation would be dismissed by the Jews, with the concomitant
conclusion that this message would be transferred to others.
The prophetic element in this vigorous condemnation of Paul’s Jewish
contemporaries is drawn from Isaiah’s great vision of the divine throne
room, with God seeking an emissary to his erring people. It is worth recall-
ing a bit of the Isaiah vision. The prophet has agreed to serve as the Lord’s
messenger and has received the chilling message noted by Paul, a message
of divine anger so fierce that God precludes the understanding that might
lead to repentance. Seemingly stunned by the intensity of this divine wrath,
the prophet asks: “How long, my Lord?” How long will this dullness of
mind and spirit last? The divine answer is once more harsh in the extreme.
Till towns lie waste without inhabitants
And houses without people,
And the ground lies waste and desolate –
For the Lord will banish the population –
And deserted places are many
In the midst of the land.21
The Acts of the Apostles postdates the Roman-Jewish war, the defeat of the
Jews, and all the pain and dislocation that defeat entailed. The Isaiah passage
just cited seems to describe a situation of desolation that corresponds nicely
to the Christian perception of post-70 Jewry, a perception of destruction
and exile flowing from sinfulness. For the book of Acts, this Jewish sinfulness
was readily associated with rejection of the promised Messiah. It entailed
the destruction predicted by Isaiah, on the one hand, and transfer of the
covenant to a more receptive people on the other.
In his recurring emphasis on the miraculous and the fulfillment of divine
prediction, Paul is depicted in the book of Acts as continuing very much

20 Acts 28:25–28, citing Isa. 6:9–10. On this important Isaiah passage and its place in Christian thinking,
see A. E. Evans, To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6:9–10 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989).
21 Isa. 6:11–12. Throughout this study, citations from the Hebrew Bible will be taken from the Jewish
Publication Society’s Tanakh. Because the precise meaning of verses from the Hebrew Bible was
regularly disputed by Christians and Jews, I shall often leave key words untranslated, indicating
divergent Christian and Jewish views.
56 Backdrop
along the lines spelled out by the Gospels for Jesus himself and the lines
adumbrated for Peter in the book of Acts. At the same time, the depiction
of Paul introduces a new setting, a new audience, and some alteration
of the earlier Christian message. The new setting is the Roman Empire
outside of Palestine, and the new audience is gentile, groups of Roman
non-Jews responsive to his preaching. The reality of this new audience led
to suspension of Jewish law for at least part of the Christian community
and, beyond this immediate change, the beginning of a rethinking of the
significance of Jewish law. The reality of this new audience also led to a
reevaluation of the cosmic role of the Jewish people. Both positive and
negative considerations are adduced for carrying the message of salvation
outside the Jewish fold to the gentile world. The closing passage of the book
of Acts highlights the negative. Jewish intransigence – divinely predicted
in fact – necessitated total abandonment of the Jewish people in favor of a
new human partner to the covenant.22

We have already noted changes from the period of Jesus’ lifetime to that of
Paul in ambience and social composition of the Jesus movement, with im-
plications for both core religious views and anti-Jewish polemical stances.
As that movement evolved further, the changes in ambience and social
composition of what became the Christian Church were yet more pro-
nounced. The Church developed most powerfully outside of Palestine,
became predominantly gentile, and began to absorb important elements of
Greco-Roman culture.23
An interesting figure that reflects these changes is the second-century
Justin Martyr. Born in Palestine to gentile parents, Justin made his way
westward in order to immerse himself in philosophy. He studied at a num-
ber of the schools of Asia Minor, eventually finding himself disillusioned
by the disputes among these various schools. Subsequently, he came to
believe that Christianity represented the highest and truest form of philos-
ophy. Justin then became one of the first major philosophical apologists for

22 Again, I am not suggesting that this was necessarily the historical reality. I am once more indicating
that this is the way medieval Christians and Jews would have seen the views of Paul.
23 On general developments in Christian–Jewish polemic during the second and subsequent centuries,
see especially Robert MacLennan, Early Christian Texts on Jews and Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1990), Marcel Simon, Verus Israel, trans. H. McKeating (London: Oxford University Press, 1986),
and Miriam S. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). Two interesting works focus on both the Christian claims and the Jewish
counter-claims: Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Commentary in
Late Antiquity, trans. Batya Stein (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), and Herbert Basser, Studies in Exegesis:
Christian Critiques of Jewish Law and Rabbinic Responses, 70–300 (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 57
Christianity.24 Not coincidentally, he also wrote a major work of anti-Jewish
argumentation, his Dialogue with Trypho.25
Interestingly but not surprisingly, the emphasis on miracles noted in the
Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles disappears in Justin’s Dialogue.
The passage of time from the early Christian miracles to Justin’s own day
and the record of earlier Jewish rejection of these miracles combined to
remove them from a central role in Justin’s argumentation. By contrast,
the Christian case from Jesus’ fulfillment of prophetic prediction, rather
than diminishing, is much enhanced in Justin’s Dialogue. Justin was fully
aware that Jewish tradition or – in his terms – the Jewish teachers read
Scriptural prophecy in a different way. For Justin, this alternative exegesis
constitutes the basis for what he sees as the tragic Jewish failure to accept
Jesus and Christianity. Justin cites all the major verses from Psalms and the
prophets that we have already noted, augmenting these verses with scores
more not found in the New Testament. The style remains that which we
have already seen. Jesus is portrayed as fulfilling these verses in ways that
brook no misunderstanding. To be sure, there is one further twist added by
Justin, and that is prominent utilization of Jesus’ non-literal fulfillment of
biblical prophecy or paradigm. Justin introduces a set of precedents that –
he argues – constituted prefigurations of Jesus. Here we sense an important
innovation in the Christian reading of biblical texts.
Justin also focused on the issue of Jewish law. We discerned an intensi-
fication of the Christian case regarding Jewish law as we moved from the
Gospel portrait to that sketched in the book of Acts. In the former, the
critique of Jewish law was largely internally Jewish – the Law was abused
through human shortcoming. In the latter, the law of Moses is inherently
limited, with the salvific power of Christ exceeding that of the Law. Justin’s
presentation suggests that the Law must be seen in a radically new way – as
a symbolic precursor of the life and activities of Jesus and his disciples. In
the process of making the positive case, a new kind of negativism toward
the Law is implied.
24 On Justin Martyr, see L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967), and E. F. Osborne, Justin Martyr (Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1973).
25 There is a new critical edition of Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho prepared by Miroslave Marcovich
(Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1997), with valuable information on the text and on some of the difficult
issues relating to it. On the Dialogue with Trypho, see also MacLennan, “Justin: An Apologetic Essay,”
in Early Christian Texts on Jews and Judaism, 49–88; Michael Mach, “Justin Martyr’s Dialogus cum
Tryphone Iudaeo and the Development of Christian Anti-Judaism,” in Contra Judaeos, ed. Ora Limor
and Guy G. Stroumsa (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996), 27–47; Tessa Rajak, “Talking at Trypho:
Christian Apologetic as Anti-Judaism in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew,” in Apologetics in the
Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, 59–80; and T. J. Horner, Listening to Trypho (Louvain:
Peeters, 2001).
58 Backdrop
Finally, Justin also addressed the issue of historic Jewish fate. We again
saw some change from the Gospels to the book of Acts. With Justin, further
intensification is palpable. Trypho, the Jewish protagonist in Justin’s Dia-
logue, is a refugee from the debacle of the Bar Kokhba rebellion. Throughout
the Dialogue, there is regular emphasis on the exile and suffering of the Jews,
portrayed as occasioned by Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah. By contrast,
there is recurring positive reference to the spread of Christianity, which –
it is claimed – was intended to be a message for all people, was intended
to reach the ends of the earth, and in fact has done so. To be sure, Chris-
tianity was still being severely persecuted by the Roman authorities. Justin
himself was seemingly a victim of this persecution. Nonetheless, the sense
of Christian ascendancy and Jewish decline is manifest in Justin’s Dialogue.
Thus, throughout this pioneering work of anti-Jewish polemic most of the
pre-existent lines of Christian anti-Jewish argumentation are repeated and
in fact much intensified.
While Justin Martyr was hardly an insignificant figure in the early
Church, his stature was far exceeded by Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo
and pre-eminent thinker among the Church Fathers.26 Like Justin Martyr,
Augustine was steeped in Greco-Roman culture. He was a teacher of
rhetoric, found his way to Christianity very difficult in part because of
this immersion in Greco-Roman culture, and eventually managed to suf-
fuse his sense of Christianity with some of the treasures of that culture. The
richness of his synthesis ensured its long-term impact on the subsequent
Church.
There is a curious paradox with respect to Augustine and the Jews. On
the one hand, Augustine was seemingly little concerned with the Jews.
Among his voluminous writings, the Jews occupy no significant place. On
the other hand, his teachings with regard to the Jews came to dominate
all medieval thinking on the issue. The Augustinian doctrine of the Jews
as witness to Christian truth set the framework within which Jewish life
in western Christendom was lived out for over a millenium.27 With re-
spect to the debate between Christianity and Judaism, Augustine’s fullest
statements can be found in his magnum opus, The City of God, and in
his brief Adversus Judaeos, written toward the end of his life. These two

26 There is a vast literature on Saint Augustine. The authoritative work on Augustine is Peter Brown,
Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, new ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Brief but
highly illuminating is Garry Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Lipper/Viking, 1999).
27 Again, there is much literature on Augustine and the Jews. The definitive study is Jeremy Cohen,
Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999), 19–65.
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 59
works will constitute our final evidence for classical Christian anti-Jewish
argumentation.28
Augustine’s City of God is a monumental work, not at all easily catego-
rized. It is in part an attack on pagan Rome and pagan Roman history, in
part a defense against the charge that Christianization of the empire led
to its decline, in part a study of the evolution of the spiritual city embod-
ied in the Church, in part a rumination on a variety of critical issues. For
Augustine, the evolution of the spiritual city cannot be comprehended apart
from the record of divine-human contact provided by the Hebrew Bible
and the proper understanding of the prophecies and incidents contained
therein.
The history of biblical Israel and the overt prophecies contained therein
must, according to Augustine, be understood on a number of levels.
Augustine is explicit in Book xvii of the City of God about the nature
and interpretation of biblical prophecy. For him, biblical prophecies op-
erate at three different levels. They are in part intended to delineate the
future of the physical people of Israel, felicitous but limited and ultimately
unsuccessful; they, at the same time, are intended to clarify the fate of the
spiritual people of Israel, that is to say the Church; finally, biblical prophe-
cies on occasion can refer simultaneously to both. Augustine makes this
important point early in Book xvii.
Now, the divine oracles given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the other
prophetic signs or words found in previous sacred writings, refer partly to the
nation physically derived from Abraham, but partly to those descendants of his
in whom all nations are blessed as co-heirs of Christ through the new covenant,
so as to obtain possession of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven. The same
is true of the rest of the prophecies, from this period of the kings . . . There are,
however, some prophecies that are understood as referring to both – literally to the
bondmaid, symbolically to the free woman.29
Augustine proceeds immediately to indicate that these three referents
can be identified in more than prophecies only. They are to be discerned as
well in the biblical narrative. Speaking a bit further on of the third group
of prophecies, those that have a double referent, Augustine goes on to say:
28 The Latin text has been edited many times. I shall utilize the version found in the Corpus Chris-
tianorum, Series Latina, vols. 47–48. English translations likewise abound; I shall cite that of Henry
Bettenson (Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972). The text of Augustine’s Adversus Judaeos can be
found in the Patrologia Latina 42:51–64. I have utilized with minor changes the English translation
of Sister Marie Liguori, found in Saint Augustine: Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects, ed. Roy
J. Deferrari (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1955; The Fathers of the Church: A
New Translation), 391–414.
29 De Civitate Dei and City of God, xvii: 3
60 Backdrop
Now this class of prophecy, in which there is a compounding and commingling,
as it were, of both references, is of the greatest importance in the ancient canonical
books, which contain historical narratives; and it has exercised and still exercises
the wits of those who examine the sacred literature. And so, when we read of
prophecy and fulfillment in the story of Abraham’s physical descendants, we also
look for an allegorical meaning which is to be fulfilled in those descended from
Abraham in respect of faith.30
Thus, it is incumbent upon Augustine to parse both the prophecies
vouchsafed to Israel and the narrative history of Israel in order to illuminate
the evolution of the City of God. While the focus of the City of God is hardly
Judaism and the Jews, what he says in this work has enormous implication
for Judaism and the Jews. Once again – as throughout the Gospels, the book
of Acts, and Justin Martyr – the key to the Christian–Jewish disagreement
lies in accurate understanding of the Hebrew Bible, its prophecies and its
stories. In the eyes of Augustine, Jews read the biblical text in one key only
– the straightforward and material key. Christian truth and greatness lies
in the capacity to read the text in multiple ways, in particular by plumbing
its spiritual depths. Augustine, like Justin Martyr, stresses in particular the
importance of allegorical reading of the biblical text.
Related to this view of reading the biblical text is Augustine’s sense of
the divergent histories of the Jewish and Christian faith communities. For
Augustine, the history of the Jews must be seen in a number of different
ways. On the one hand, the successes of Jewish history offer an illuminating
contrast with the failures of Roman history. According to Augustine, “those
earthly blessings – the sole object of breathless desire for those who can
imagine nothing better – are dependent on the power of the one God, not
on that of the many false gods, whom the Romans believed they ought to
worship.”31 In order to prove his point, Augustine then offers the contrastive
portrait of Israel, whose people worshipped the one true God and whom
the one true God blessed. “The Israelites received from the one true God all
the blessings for which the Romans thought it necessary to pray to all the
host of false gods, and they received them [these blessings] in a far happier
manner.”32
This telling contrast of Jews and Romans – useful for Augustine’s im-
mediate purposes – could not be allowed to stand unmitigated. There
remained the Christian conviction of divine rejection of the Jews, which
had to be introduced into the picture as well. “If they [the Jews] had not
sinned against God by turning aside to the worship of strange gods and of

30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., iv: 34. 32 Ibid.

 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 61
idols, seduced by impious superstition as if by magic arts, if they had not
finally sinned by putting Christ to death, they would have continued in
possession of the same realm, a realm exceeding others in happiness, if not
in extent.”33 Augustine introduces positive elements in the Jewish past and
then depicts the Jews as forfeiting their blessings through abandonment of
the God whom they had been the first of humans to recognize. Of course,
Augustine was writing well after Paul and Justin Martyr. Whereas they were
writing with a conviction of eventual Christian successes, Augustine had
seen these successes and thus highlighted the contrast between them and
ongoing Jewish dispersal and degradation.
In Books xvi through xviii of the City of God, Augustine provides a
lengthy account of the Jewish past that is rich and dense, drawing extensively
upon the entire biblical corpus; he begins with Abraham and continues
the story down through the time of Christ. The basic notion of Jewish
virtue ultimately undone by Jewish sin remains in place, but Augustine
complicates the picture considerably. The roots of this complexity can be
noted already in the passage from Book iv of the City of God just now
cited. There, the blessedness of the Jews is depicted in distinctly earthly
terms. To recall Augustine’s central point, if the Jews had not erred, “they
would have continued in possession of the same realm [the land of Israel], a
realm exceeding others in happiness, if not in extent.” While this statement
serves the purpose of highlighting the distinction between the Jews and the
Romans, it still leaves the Jews as distinguished citizens of an earthly city.
Thus, the Jewish shortcomings were ultimately two-fold. The first and more
obvious was deviation from their original religious insights; the second
and more telling was their failure to achieve full understanding of these
religious insights, their failure to comprehend the true nature of religious
life and beatitude. Here, of course, Augustine was, in one sense, merely
restating the traditional Christian sense of the Jews as physical or carnal
Israel.
Augustine’s Adversus Judaeos maintains the dual focus on proper under-
standing of the Hebrew Bible and historic Jewish fate. The former lies at
the core of the tract. Once again, for Augustine the key to the Christian–
Jewish disagreement – or in his terms to Jewish error and Christian truth –
lies with the understanding of Scripture. Augustine locates what is for him
the critical Jewish shortcoming in defective Scriptural reading.

33 Ibid. Augustine continues this passage by noting the dispersion of the Jews and the role they play
thereby in bearing witness to the teachings of the prophets, thus in fact bearing witness to the truth
of Christianity.
62 Backdrop
When these Scriptural words are quoted to the Jews,34 they scorn the Gospel and
the Apostle. They do not listen to what we say, because they do not understand
what they read. Certainly, if they understood what the prophet, whom they read,
is foretelling: “I have given you to be the light of the gentiles, that you may be
my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth,”35 they would not be so blind
and so sick as not to recognize in Jesus Christ both light and salvation. Likewise,
if they understood to whom the prophecy refers which they sing so fruitlessly and
without meaning: “Their sound has gone forth into all the earth; and their words
unto the ends of the world,”36 they would awaken to the voice of the Apostles
and would sense that their words are divine. Consequently, testimonies are to be
selected from sacred Scripture, which has great authority among the Jews. If they
do not want to be cured by means of this advantage offered them, they can at least
be convicted by its evident truth.37
This is a rich statement. It reflects, first of all, the dual purpose to the
tract. The scriptural testimonies can be used to win over the Jews. At the
same time, they will indicate to the Christian audience the truth of
the Christian case, by which the Jews “can at least be convicted.” Moreover,
this statement illuminates what Augustine sees as the paradoxical problem
of the Jews. They are the original bearers of divine revelation; they read
regularly the texts that embody this revelation; they sing these texts as part
of their liturgy; yet, tragically for the Jews and to an extent happily for the
Christians, they fail to grasp the real meaning of these texts. If they could
only understand properly the texts they so deeply venerate, they would
quickly understand Christian truth and enjoy its rewards.
With this sense of correct reading of biblical text as the key to Christian
truth and Jewish error, Augustine presents a series of scriptural passages in
which he sees the message of Christianity clearly and irrefutably portrayed.
Not surprisingly, the book of Psalms and the utterances of the prophets
dominate. The first three texts advanced by Augustine are from Psalms.
They are specifically Psalm 45, Psalm 69, and Psalm 80. Augustine examines
each of these psalms at length and shows how Jesus is clearly adumbrated
in each. The first of the prophetic texts adduced is Jeremiah 31, with its
reference to “a new covenant with the house of Jacob.” Subsequently, he
treats in more limited fashion numerous verses from both Psalms and the
prophets.
Alongside this overarching theme of correct and incorrect reading of
Scripture, Augustine manages to introduce adroitly the two other issues we

34 The words of Paul in Romans, with which the tract opens.

35 Isa. 49:6. 36 Ps. 19:5.
37 Adversus Judaeos, 42:51–52; In Answer to the Jews, 392–393.
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 63
have seen emerging in the latter portion of the book of Acts and in Justin.38
The first involves Jewish law and its supersession. Indeed, Augustine por-
trays the Jews as taking immediately to the offensive with respect to this
issue. Right after his introductory remarks, he continues:
First of all, this error of theirs must be refuted, that the books of the Old Testament
do not concern us at all, because we observe the new sacraments and no longer
preserve the old. For they say to us: “What is the reading of the law and the prophets
doing among you, who do not want to follow the precepts contained in them?”
They base their complaint on the fact that we do not circumcise the foreskin of
the male, and we eat the flesh of animals that the law declares unclean, and we do
not observe the Sabbath, new moons, and festival days in a purely human way.”39
Not surprisingly, Augustine answers these Jewish charges by pointing
again to the issue of proper reading of scriptural text. He identifies all the
items of Jewish law as “the ancient sacraments that the Apostle classifies
under the general expression of shadows of things to come.”40 For both
Paul and Augustine, the “things to come” constitutes a reference to Jesus as
Christ. With his advent, the shadows have been removed, so that Christians
enjoy their uncovered light. The specific meanings of this generalization
are spelled out.
It would take too long, however, to dispute these charges one by one – how we are
circumcised by putting off the old man and in not despoiling our natural body; how
their abstinence from certain foods of animals corresponds to our mortification
in habits and morals; how we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
pleasing before God, before whom we intelligently pour forth our souls in holy
desires, instead of in blood.41
The underlying issue is again proper reading. Proper reading is what leads
Christians to fulfill the dictates of the law in the appropriate manner.42
The second additional issue raised by both Justin and Augustine involves
the disparate fates of the two communities – Christian success and Jewish
failure. Again, the issue is proper understanding of the Bible. Jews regularly
see themselves as the Israel of whom Psalms and the prophets speak, failing
to note the discrepancy between their fate and that depicted in these sacred
texts. Augustine focuses on Psalm 50, noting Jewish claims for themselves

38 Augustine, like Justin, does not really address the Gospel and Acts theme of miracles performed by
and for Jesus and his disciples.
39 Adversus Judaeos, 42:52; In Answer to the Jews, 393. I have chosen to omit some of Augustine’s further
instances of Christian divergence from biblical law, which include sacrifices and Passover celebration.
40 Col. 2:17. 41 Adversus Judaeos, 42:52; In Answer to the Jews, 393.
42 Augustine revisits the issue of the Law and its observance in his discussion of Jeremiah 31, with its
reference to a new covenant.
64 Backdrop
as the Israel of whom God says in verse 7: “Hear, O my people, and I will
speak to you, O Israel, and I will testify to you.” In so doing, the Jews
fail to attend properly to the opening verse of the Psalm. Augustine asks
ironically: “So you belong to that people whom ‘the God of gods has called
from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof?’”43 The Jews fail to
comprehend that they do not exhibit the characteristics spelled out in the
psalm; in fact it is the Christians, claims Augustine, who have been called
“from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.”
The Jews do not exhibit the characteristics of the true Israel as foretold in
Psalms. Rather, they exhibit the reverse of these characteristics, according
to Augustine. “You were not called there [the Land of Israel] from the
rising of the sun to its setting. Rather, from there [the Land of Israel]
you were dispersed from the rising of the sun to its setting.”44 The Jewish
circumstances thus fulfill a different verse in the book of Psalms: “My God
shall let me see over my enemies. Slay them not, lest at any time they forget
your law. Scatter them by your powers.”45 The Jews are not the people of
Israel addressed in Psalm 50; they are, rather, the enemy people depicted
in Psalm 59:12. The disparate fates of the two communities are clearly
adumbrated in Scripture. Once again, claims Augustine, Jewish failure to
read the biblical message aright mires them in their dolorous circumstances.
Augustine’s Adversus Judaeos is clearly intended for a Christian audience;
it is at its core a meditation on God’s severity and goodness, severity to
those in error and goodness to those who grasp the truth. The tract opens
with a central exhortatory theme – the importance of remaining faithful to
the true vision of the Christian faith. “The blessed Apostle Paul, the teacher
of the gentiles in faith and truth, admonishes us with precepts when he
exhorts us to remain firmly fixed in the same faith of which he was made
the fitting minister.” The Jews were – claims Augustine – prime examples
of the working of God’s “goodness and severity” in history. “By the just
severity of God, therefore, the unbelieving pride of the native branches is
broken away from the living patriarchal tree, and by the grace of divine
goodness the faithful humility of the wild olive is ingrafted.”46
This is likewise the note on which the tract ends. Augustine encourages
his audience to bring the message of Christian truth to the Jews “with great
love.” Jewish punishment and Christian success should not be the occasion
for arrogance, but should rather instill humility. “Let us not proudly glory
against the broken branches; let us rather reflect by whose grace it is, and

43 Adversus Judaeos, 42:57; In Answer to the Jews, 403. 44 Ibid.

45 Ps. 59:12. 46 Adversus Judaeos, 42:51; In Answer to the Jews, 391–392.
 Post-Gospel Christian argumentation 65
by much mercy, and on what root we have been ingrafted.” The decision
as to whether to acknowledge Christian truth of course lies with the Jews.
If they do so, they will enjoy divine grace; if they do not, they will continue
to suffer. “‘But I,’” the Church says to Christ, “‘as a fruitful olive tree in
the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of God forever, yea forever
and ever.’”47 Within this message of the need to maintain religious truth in
order to continue to merit divine blessing, the Jews serve, first and foremost,
as an example and a warning.
I noted that Augustine’s views on the Jews set the fundamental framework
that justified tolerance of the Jews within the Christian world through the
Middle Ages. This tolerance was grounded in the notion of Jewish utility.
This utility involved a number of factors, but two predominate. The first
is the notion that Jews proclaim to the world the truth of the Hebrew
Bible. To be sure, according to Augustine, the Jews do not comprehend
the deeper meanings of that truth, but they proclaim it nonetheless.48
Secondly, the Jews, through their sin and punishment, serve as an object
lesson to all viewers of divine justice at work in the world and of the truth
of the Christian faith.49 These are in fact the themes we have noted as
predominant in both the City of God and in the Adversus Judaeos.

Born within Palestinian Jewry and moving beyond it, Christianity’s argu-
ment with Judaism and the Jews was intense from the earliest history of
the new faith community; it was also an argument that constantly evolved
with changing Christian circumstances. Paul moved beyond the earlier ar-
gumentation found in the Gospels by emphasizing the issues of Jewish
law and Jewish fate in new ways. Justin Martyr and – much more signifi-
cantly – Augustine brought the Christian message into far greater contact
with Greco-Roman culture. Interestingly, their approach to the issues of
Judaism and the Jews does not introduce a truly philosophical dimension,
as will happen from the twelfth century onward. Both Justin Martyr and
Augustine do add and emphasize the importance of looser, more allegorical
reading of the Hebrew Bible. Christians grasp this style of reading; Jews

47 Adversus Judaeos, 42:64; In Answer to the Jews, 414.

48 See above, n. 33, for a sharp expression of this view in the City of God.
49 Jeremy Cohen, in his Living Letters of the Law, 41, provides an invaluable table of Augustine’s
utterances on the Jews and the necessity for their preservation. Cohen matches six different rationales
for preservation of the Jews with the fifteen extant texts in which Augustine deals with the Jews.
Only one of the six rationales identified by Cohen appears in all fifteen Augustinian texts, and that
is the rationale based on Jewish witness to the truth of Scripture, which they do not of course –
according to Augustine – properly understand. The next most common rationale, which appears in
ten of the fifteen texts, involves Jewish dispersion as an obvious sign of sin and divine punishment.
66 Backdrop
do not. Indeed, for both Justin and Augustine the issue of Jewish law was
readily subsumed under the broader rubric of proper reading of the Bible.
Christians understand properly the biblical laws as prefigurations of Jesus;
Jews fail to grasp the underlying meaning of these laws and insist instead
on seeing these laws in their literal sense only. Both Justin and Augustine
also highlight the dispersion of the Jews, which by Augustine’s time was
already a long-term reality, as divinely ordained punishment.
As noted already, during the first half of the Middle Ages the Jewish
population in Latin Christendom was quite limited, as was the Christian
engagement with Judaism and the Jews.50 With the invigoration of Latin
Christendom during the late eleventh century and – with accelerating
intensity – during the twelfth century, the pace of intellectual life quickened,
the number of Jews increased, and anti-Jewish argumentation developed
along old lines and in new directions.51 We will defer consideration of
this augmented Christian argumentation briefly, in order to introduce pre-
twelfth-century lines of Jewish anti-Christian polemics.

50 See above, in the introduction.

51 Jaroslav Pelikan, in his monumental A History of Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of
Doctrine, 5 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971–89), iii: 245, notes the extensive anti-
Jewish polemical literature produced during the twelfth century: “The twelfth century, therefore,
seems to have produced more treatises of Jewish–Christian disputation than any preceding century
of the Middle Ages, perhaps as many as all those centuries combined.”
 chap t e r t hre e

Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation

Newton’s Third Law (“for every action there is an equal and opposite reac-
tion”) would seem to suggest that Jews should have developed an equivalent
set of anti-Christian arguments. That, however, is not at all the case. Pre-
twelfth-century Jewish tradition is strikingly sparse in its anti-Christian ar-
gumentation, contrasting sharply with the richness of Christian anti-Jewish
argumentation. The sparseness of Jewish anti-Christian argumentation is
in large measure the result of demography. For much of late antiquity and
the first half of the Middle Ages, the centers of world Jewish population
were located in areas outside Christian population density and social con-
trol, where Jews were hardly pressured by Christian argumentation. To be
sure, even during this period of relative lack of contact, Christians regu-
larly produced anti-Jewish tracts.1 As we have noted, Christian Scripture
was suffused with anti-Jewish argumentation to a significant extent, and
Christian theology had to relate to the issues of Judaism and the Jews.2 For
the Jews, however, there was no such theological compulsion. Jews could
read the Hebrew Bible and see it wholly in their own terms; their post-
biblical sacred texts – the Mishnah and the two talmuds – contain, as we
shall shortly see, no significant concern with Christianity. As we shall see,
Jews did develop a set of anti-Christian arguments; these arguments pale,
however, in comparison with the rich and multi-faceted anti-Jewish output
of the Christian world.3
While there was no immediate stimulus moving Jews to defend
themselves against Christianity and no classical legacy that required
1 Again see Schreckenberg, Die christliche Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches
Umfeld (1.–11. Jh.), and Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens-latins du moyen âge sur les juifs and le
judaı̈sme.
2 A strong statement on the Christian need to rebut Jewish charges can be found in Taylor, Anti-Judaism
and Early Christian Identity.
3 Ora Limor, “Judaism Investigates Christianity,” Pe‘amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 75 (1998): 109–128,
argues that the Toldot Yeshu corpus and Sefer Nestor ha-Komer overturn the generalization concerning
lack of Jewish attention to Christianity prior to the twelfth century. I find the case unconvincing.

67
68 Backdrop
anti-Christian polemics, a body of anti-Christian thinking did develop, at
least from the ninth century on. We must attempt to gain some appreciation
of this legacy. Understanding the anti-Christian thinking that developed in
the Muslim sphere is especially important for us, since many of the Jews of
southern France and northern Spain were refugees from Islamic territories.
The legacy of Islamic Spain was potent among the Jewish communities
upon which we shall focus.4

th e talmud s and mid rashim

Daniel Boyarin, who has argued for ongoing and formative interaction
between Christians and Jews through the first centuries of the common era,
has noted nonetheless the lack of attention to Christianity in the talmudic
corpus, calling it “the most thunderous silence in Jewish history.”5 This
silence is rooted in a combination of factors – primarily demographic and
literary.
Let us probe a little into Boyarin’s “thunderous silence.” The Mishnah,
composed in Palestine in the early third century, shows almost no evidence
of Christianity, which is not surprising. At that time, the young Christian
community does not seem to have been much of a factor on the Pales-
tinian scene. Its greatest growth was taking place further westward, in the
major population centers of the Roman Empire. The Jerusalem Talmud,
composed in Palestine during the fourth century, was completed at a time
when Christianity was in the process of achieving hegemony in the Roman
world of which Palestine was a part. One might have expected fuller aware-
ness of the Christianity that had become a major factor on the Palestinian
scene. To a significant extent, however, the contents of the Jerusalem Tal-
mud were shaped by the Mishnah, upon which it was after all an extended
commentary. Thus, the lack of reference to Christianity in the Mishnah
had considerable impact on the directions of the talmudic discussions. The
4 The polemical legacy has been analyzed carefully by Daniel J. Lasker. See his “The Jewish Critique of
Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research
57 (1991): 121–153; “Saadya Gaon on Christianity and Islam,” in The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community,
Society, and Identity, ed. Daniel Frank (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 165–177; “Jewish–Christian Polemic
and Its Roots in the Islamic World” (Hebrew), Pe‘amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 57 (1994): 4–16;
and “The Jewish–Christian Debate in Transition: From the Lands of Ishmael to the Lands of Edom,”
Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication and Interaction: Essays in Honor of William M. Brinner,
ed. Benjamin H. Hary et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 53–65. David Berger, “Judaism and General Culture
in Medieval and Early Modern Times,” also focuses on the Jews of southern France and northern
Spain and their wrestling with the ideational legacy of Andalusian Jewry.
5 Boyarin, Dying for God, 20.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 69
Babylonian Talmud, composed yet later in the Mesopotamian academies,
was affected by the constraints imposed by the Mishnah and by its removal
from the sphere of greatest Christian influence. Finally, the lack of alterna-
tive literary formats for Jewish creativity played a role as well. As we shall
see, when the Jews of the Muslim world created for themselves new literary
formats, some of these new literary genres were particularly well suited to
engaging Christian truth claims.6
Investigation into the talmudic corpus for the material it holds on Chris-
tianity began as a serious scholarly enterprise in the early years of the twen-
tieth century.7 In 1903, R. Travers Herford published a path-breaking work
entitled Christianity in Talmud and Midrash.8 Herford claimed to have
been led to this work by his sense of the need to add Jewish sources to
the Christian sources so widely used for reconstructing the early history of
Christianity.9 To be sure, a bit further on, Herford indicates his doubts as
to the historicity of the rabbinic materials he has gathered and therefore
their value for reconstructing early Christian history. “Whether or not they
establish the fact that such and such an event took place, they at least estab-
lish the fact that such and such a belief was held in reference to the alleged
event, or the person concerned in it.”10 In other words, the rabbinic sources
gathered by Herford – of somewhat dubious value for reconstructing early
Christian history – have the potential at least to tell us something of Jewish
knowledge of and attitudes toward Christianity.
Herford’s organization of his materials was exemplary. He chose to begin
with passages from rabbinic literature that seem to relate to Jesus. From
this material, he proceeded to passages that relate to minim, a term that
technically refers to dissidents in general but sometimes refers to Christians.
Herford reasonably enough differentiated among passages that describe and
define minim, passages that describe encounters between Jews and minim,
and passages that allude to minim.
Herford’s exhaustive study of references to Jesus includes a number of
passages that are, as we shall see, quite questionable. The sum total of pas-
sages he cites, including the questionable ones, is twenty. Given the vast-
ness of the literature within which these twenty passages are embedded,

6 Recall the variety of literary formats of the polemical literature in which Christians engage Jews.
7 Medieval and early modern Christian attention to rabbinic materials on Jesus and Christianity
involved either the effort to attack the Talmud for blasphemy or to exploit rabbinic literature for
purported evidence of Jewish acceptance of Christian belief.
8 R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams & Norgate, 1903).
9 Ibid., vii–x. 10 Ibid., 31.
70 Backdrop
it is obvious that they constitute only the tiniest fraction of the rabbinic
sources examined by Herford.11 While Herford finds a higher number of
passages that refer to minim, the number of these passages that unequivo-
cally refer to Christians is yet more questionable. Once more, the sum total
constitutes only the merest fraction of the total rabbinic corpus. Yet more
important is the diffusion of this material. Nowhere do we find anything
like extended discussion of Jesus or Christianity. Rather, the references to
Jesus or to Christians in the passages advanced by Herford and those who
have followed him are all quite tangential to some more focused talmudic
or midrashic discussion. While the talmuds and the midrashim are highly
fluid in their organizational patterns, they do include extended discussions
of numerous issues. Jesus and Christianity are not among the topics upon
which rabbinic literature in any serious way focused.
As noted, not all these passages presented by Herford and others can be
clearly demonstrated to relate to Jesus or to Christians. The language is
often highly ambiguous, and the intended referent is often uncertain. For
example, a number of the passages cited by Herford involve the biblical
figure of Balaam, the seer who was hired to curse Israel but was unable to
do so. Regularly, Herford makes the case for seeing in these references to
Balaam hints – more or less explicit – to Jesus.12 These purported hints are
generally ambiguous and contestable. In many of these instances, it strains
the imagination to propose that these are references to Jesus.
The same ambiguity can be found in the passages devoted to minim.
Let us note, for example, a passage in which the term min actually appears.
Herford quotes from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Avodah Zarah, the
very brief story of Rabbi Abbahu, who has a drug applied to his leg by
someone called Jacob the Min.13 For Herford, this person designated a min
was in all likelihood a Christian, since Rabbi Abbahu lived in Caesarea and
was known to have been in extensive contact with Christians. This may
well be the case, but the identification is hardly foolproof.
Herford brings as his first rabbinic source for minim/Christians a lengthy
story in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sotah, that discusses the need for
a combination of acceptance and rejection on the part of teachers dealing
with students. Two examples are given, the first involving the biblical Gehazi

11 Johann Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudische Überlieferung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1978), adds a few further citations.
12 Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 63, 64, 67, 72, 75, 76; Maier cites ten Balaam sources
– Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudische Überlieferung, 68–103.
13 T. B., Avodah Zarah, 281; the passage is cited in Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 109
and discussed from pp. 109–111.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 71
and his mentor Elisha and the second involving Jesus the Nazarene and his
teacher Rabbi Joshua ben Perahiah (to be dealt with shortly).14 Since the
story of Gehazi and Elisha is followed by that of Jesus and Rabbi Joshua ben
Perahiah, Herford suggests that “there may be, under the figure of Gehazi,
a covert reference to some person associated with Jesus.”15 There may well
be, but then again there may well not be. The point is that the material
adduced by Herford and by others after him is hardly clear-cut. Many of
the passages are highly ambiguous.
Let us examine just a few passages that refer rather obviously to Jesus,
beginning with the story that illustrates the need for teachers to be both
disciplinary and supportive. As noted, after detailing the account of the
biblical Gehazi and his mentor Elisha, the passage proceeds to speak of Jesus
and his purported teacher, Rabbi Joshua ben Perahiah. The tale describes
the two returning to Jerusalem from a period of refuge in Egypt. They stop
at an inn, where Rabbi Joshua remarks on the beauty of the inn, in a way that
led Jesus to assume that he had been speaking of the inn-keeper. Enraged,
the rabbi allegedly excommunicated Jesus. Out of the intensifying cycle of
contention between teacher and pupil, Jesus was led astray and eventually
brought others after him.16 The point of the story is, again, the need for
teachers to be as careful as possible in the punitive measures they take with
their students. What does this story in fact tell us of Jesus or Christianity?
Really nothing substantive, beyond the bare fact of separation of Jesus and
his followers from the Jewish faith.
Much the same is the case with the well-known passage in the Babylonian
Talmud, tractate Gittin, in which a potential proselyte calls up three famous
enemy figures – Titus, Balaam, and then Jesus. The point of the story is that
all three indicate to the potential proselyte that God provides for the Jews
and that anyone who opposes them courts serious danger. Jesus purportedly
tells the potential proselyte: “Seek their good, seek not their harm. Anyone
who harms them is as if he injures the apple of his [God’s] eye.”17 While this
story identifies Jesus as a major enemy of the Jewish people, it tells nothing
of substance about his enmity or the details of the faith he founded.
The execution of Jesus is addressed in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate
Sanhedrin. It is noted that, “on the eve of Passover they hung Jesus the
14 T. B., Sotah 47a and Sanhedrin 107b; the passage is cited in Herford, Christianity in Talmud and
Midrash, 97–99 and discussed from pp. 99–103.
15 Ibid., 99.
16 T. B., Sanhedrin 107b; Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 50–54; Maier, Jesus von Nazareth
in der talmudische Überlieferung, 117–126.
17 T. B., Gittin, 56b-57a; Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 68–71; Maier, Jesus von Nazareth
in der talmudische Überlieferung, 94–100.
72 Backdrop
Nazarene. The crier went forth before him for forty days, [saying]: ‘Jesus
the Nazarene is going forth to be stoned, because he has practiced magic
and has led astray Israel. Anyone who knows something in his favor, let
him come and declare in his favor.’ They found nothing in his favor. Thus
they hung him on the eve of Passover.”18 While there is some recognizable
detail here, particularly the juxtaposition of hanging and Passover, there is
again no specific information on Jesus and Christianity beyond the broad
tropes of magic and leading others astray.
Finally, let us conclude with one more brief passage, from the Jerusalem
Talmud, tractate Taanit, a passage that seems to identify to an extent some
of the issues in contention between Jews and Christians. “Rabbi Abbahu
said: ‘If a man says to you – I am God, he is a liar. If [he says – I am] the
son of man [a reference to Daniel 7:13], in the end people will laugh at him.
If [he says] – I will go up to heaven, he says so, but shall not be able to do
it.’”19 Here at least we encounter some identifiable issues in the Christian–
Jewish debate. However, that said, the level does not proceed beyond simple
assertion. There is no attempt at sophisticated argumentation, indeed at
any kind of argumentation at all. Given the sense we have already gleaned
of the level of the sophisticated Christian argumentation encountered for
example in Justin Martyr and Augustine, this passage – while at least focused
– is primitive.
Thus, for our purposes the important points to be noted are, first, the
relative lack of concern in the talmudic corpus with the issues presented
by Christianity and, second, the fairly broad and primitive level at which
these issues – when occasionally engaged – are presented. It seems fair
to say that the corpus of rabbinic literature offered little to the Jews of
twelfth- and thirteenth-century western Christendom, as they encountered
an articulate and sophisticated Christian challenge. Guidance in the face of
this onslaught would have to come from a later stratum of Jewish materials,
and it eventually did.

toldot yeshu
Before proceeding to the more sophisticated argumentation that emerged
in the Muslim world from the ninth century onward, let us attend briefly to
the so-called Toldot Yeshu (History of Jesus) corpus. The amorphous Toldot
18 T. B., Sanhedrin, 43a; Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 84–90; Maier, Jesus von Nazareth
in der talmudische Überlieferung, 219–238.
19 T. J., Taanit, 65b; Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 62–64; Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in
der talmudische Überlieferung, 76–82.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 73
Yeshu corpus constitutes a Jewish retelling of the Gospel narrative of the
life of Jesus, a retelling intended to debunk – in Jewish eyes – the Gospel
accounts. In one sense, this corpus represents continuity with the talmu-
dic material. As we have seen, the slim talmudic material on Jesus and
Christianity focuses rather heavily, albeit tangentially, on events or pur-
ported events in the life of Jesus – his rejection by a distinguished rabbi, his
condemnation by the Jewish authorities, his execution. The Toldot Yeshu
literature maintains this focus on the life, activities, and death of Jesus.20
At the same time, this material represents a considerable advance over the
Jewish argumentation in the talmuds and midrashim in that it mounts a
focused assault on Christianity. Whereas the talmudic statements are dif-
fused in diverse locations, where they are introduced tangentially, the Toldot
Yeshu literature is concentrated fully on Christianity or, more accurately,
on the founding figure of Christianity.
The extant versions of Toldot Yeshu often vary considerably, and a large
part of the available literature consists of rather small fragments.21 No one
has successfully dated the origins of this literature; there is no suggestion
of an authorial hand. It seems fairly clear that this was a folk literature,
widely copied and readily amenable to change. Tellers of these tales and
copyists of these stories seemingly felt quite free to alter, subtract, or add
to the material at their disposal. This corpus, in its diverse forms, proba-
bly circulated widely all across the medieval Jewish world. It occasionally
came to the attention of Christians and, when it did, aroused their ire. As
Christian knowledge of Hebrew spread across western Christendom dur-
ing the thirteenth century and beyond, the Toldot Yeshu literature became
increasingly dangerous to copy and circulate.
To give a flavor of this corpus, let me cite the salient details in one of
the fullest accounts of the parentage and birth of Jesus.22 Since the Gospel
accounts begin with these issues and since the parentage and birth of Jesus
came to play such a critical role in Christian thinking, this is a reasonable
point with which to begin a counter-history of Jesus and Christianity. In a
general way, the Toldot Yeshu turns the story of virgin birth on its head. Jesus’
mother, Miriam, the daughter of a widow of Bethlehem, was affianced to a
20 Note more specifically the talmudic designation of Jesus as ben Pandera (son of Pandera), a designa-
tion prominent in the Toldot Yeshu corpus, and the imputation of magic to Jesus, likewise prominent
in the Toldot Yeshu corpus.
21 A number of versions of this material were published by Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen
Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902). For subsequent re-publications of some of the texts and publication
of recently discovered fragments, see Herbert W. Basser, “The Acts of Jesus,” in The Frank Talmage
Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish, 2 vols. (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1992–3) i: 273–282.
22 Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen, 38–39.
74 Backdrop
worthy young Bethlehemite Jew named Yohanan. Near the home of Miriam
and her mother lived another Judean, named Joseph Pandera.23 In contrast
to Miriam’s fiancé, Joseph Pandera was a villain of the worst sort. Smitten
with Miriam, Joseph was successful in bedding her through trickery, in fact
at a time when she was menstruating. Subsequently, when her pregnancy
became obvious, Yohanan fled Bethlehem, indeed fled Palestine altogether.
The story continues, but this much will suffice for our purposes.
Some years ago, Amos Funkenstein alerted us to a category of polemical
literature that he called “counter-history.”24 Funkenstein analyzed what
he calls counter-history in terms of function, method, and objective. He
argues that the function of counter-histories “is polemical. Their method
consists of the systematic exploitation of the adversary’s most trusted sources
against their grain – ‘die Geschichte gegen den Strich kammen.’ Their aim
is the distortion of the adversary’s self-image, of his identity, through the
deconstruction of his memory.”25 Funkenstein proceeded to adduce three
examples of counter-history from antiquity: the counter-history of the
Jews composed by the Egyptian Manetho (described in some detail); the
counter-history of Rome written by Saint Augustine; the counter-history
of Jesus and early Christianity found in the Jewish Sefer Toldot Yeshu.
The segment of Toldot Yeshu I have cited fits Funkenstein’s definition
of counter-history perfectly. It is certainly grounded in Christian sources.
There is identification of Bethlehem, of a mother named Miriam, of a
father named Joseph, of Miriam as betrothed, and of an unexpected and
problematic pregnancy. The key elements in the Christian story are, how-
ever, subverted. The pregnancy was not the result of conception through
the Holy Spirit; it was the result of debased human intercourse, with a
thoroughly reprehensible male gaining his objective through a ruse. The
child thus conceived was the opposite of holy; he was simply a bastard born
out of wedlock. The result of all this was thorough distortion of Christian
memory and identity, and the objective of all this was clearly polemical.
This story and the rest of the Toldot Yeshu corpus surely constitute an
anti-Christian statement, intended to buttress the belief of Jews by exposing
to them the “real” story of Jesus and thereby laying bare the fraudulent foun-
dations of Christianity. This tactic was arguably successful to a considerable

23 As noted, this name appears recurrently in the talmudic sources.

24 Amos Funkenstein, “History, Counterhistory, and Narrative,” in Probing the Limits of Representation:
Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1992), 66–81. Funkenstein included this essay as part of Chap. 2 of his Perceptions of Jewish History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
25 Funkenstein, “History, Counterhistory, and Narrative,” 69.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 75
extent. As noted, this material represents a far more focused engagement
with Christianity than was available from the classics of rabbinic literature
– the Mishnah, the two talmuds, and the early midrashim, although some
of its roots clearly lay in that rabbinic literature. At the same time, it must
be acknowledged that this kind of polemic is quite primitive and can be
utilized only in an environment of broad ignorance of and disengagement
from the “other.” As useful as counter-history may be for relatively isolated
communities, it is quite difficult to sustain this kind of polemical attack
when information on the “other” is widely and readily available. Jews living
in a dynamic and challenging Christian environment might have derived
some pleasure from the satire on Christianity, and some members of the
Jewish community may well have found this material useful in buttressing
their sense of identity. Overall, however, Jews being intensely challenged
by a vigorous Christianity would have gained little in the way of guidance
for defending themselves against sophisticated Christian thrusts.
Put differently, I would suggest that, when an increasingly large number
of Jews found themselves in the environment of medieval western Christen-
dom and when the Christian majority began to exert more potent religious
pressure on the Jewish minority, the kind of polemic represented by the
Toldot Yeshu literature ceased to have very much value. It is striking that,
while our Jewish polemicists from twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern
France and northern Spain do criticize Jesus (as we shall have ample oppor-
tunity to note), they do not generally include in their critiques the crude
materials of the Toldot Yeshu tradition. We shall, for example, have ample
opportunity to examine Jewish opposition to the doctrine of Incarnation.26
This opposition, however, is couched in sophisticated argumentation from
the Bible or from philosophic considerations; it does not include any of
the caricatures found in the Toldot Yeshu. Such materials would not have
served these Jewish polemicists well under the circumstances of direct con-
frontation with a dynamic Christian environment. A more reasoned and
more reasonable set of arguments had to be and was developed.
In general then, antiquity, with its rabbinic literature and its related
Toldot Yeshu traditions, hardly provided much guidance to the Jews of
twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and northern Spain, as
they encountered enhanced Christian pressures. The most these related
literatures provided was the sure sense that the giants of the rabbinic past
knew of Christianity and rejected it. Precise lines of argumentation for such
rejection were left unclear. Adumbration of these lines of argumentation

26 See below, Chaps. 11 and 12.

76 Backdrop
was a responsibility the successors of the talmudic rabbis would have to
fulfill. For the Jews of twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and
northern Spain, the void of guidance was, to a considerable extent, filled
by Jewish thinkers from the pre-twelfth-century Muslim sphere.

the development of jewish philosophy

Throughout late antiquity and on into the first half of the Middle Ages,
Jewish life was centered in the east, in Mesopotamia and along the eastern
rim of the Mediterranean Sea. With the Muslim conquests of the seventh
century and early eighth centuries, all these Jewish centers, as well as the
Jewries of north Africa and the Iberian peninsula, came under the rule of
the Muslims and the sway of their aggressive and exciting civilization. In
these vast areas, the Jews were hardly threatened by Christian pressures for
conversion.27 As dhimmi peoples, both Christians and Jews were prohibited
from attempting to win others to their faith. The pressure of conversionist
Christian propaganda was not a serious factor in Jewish life in the Muslim
sphere. At the same time, the Muslim world of the ninth through twelfth
centuries was extremely rich in intellectual stimulation. The sciences and
arts were cultivated, and human curiosity expressed itself in numerous
domains, including the domain of religious faith. This stimulation led to
the development among the Jews of new literary genres, genres in which
arguments concerning religious truth were appropriate, in fact required; it
also led to greater awareness of a wide range of religious views and growing
interest in probing these religious views.
The study of Jewish anti-Christian polemics in the Muslim world has
been pursued for some time now, with important new work undertaken
during the past few decades. Valuable texts have been published of late, and
an important survey of the field has been provided by Daniel J. Lasker.28
Lasker argues convincingly that “study of the Jewish critique of Christianity
under Islam shows that Jews could debate with Christians about Christian-
ity even in the absence of a real missionary threat.” For our purposes, the
crucial point in his study is the contention that, “by the time Jews in Chris-
tian countries began to polemicize in earnest against Christianity, most of
the elements of their arguments were already in place.”29 What the talmudic
27 This is not to say that conversion of Jews to Christianity or vice versa never took place. As we shall
see, much of the Jewish polemical literature was supposedly occasioned by intimate knowledge of
Christianity gained through living within the Christian fold.
28 Texts will be indicated along the way. The survey is found in Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of
Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages.”
29 Ibid., 137.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 77
period had failed to provide, namely a set of serious anti-Christian argu-
ments, the Jewish thinkers of the pre-twelfth-century Muslim world did
provide.
One of the new literary genres that lent itself readily to the consideration
of other religious traditions was philosophy. Medieval Islamic civilization
absorbed much of the science and philosophy of Greco-Roman antiquity.
This science and philosophy to an extent served as a challenge to patterns
of monotheistic thinking that inhered in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Muslim, Christian, and Jewish thinkers were moved to formulate their tra-
ditional legacies in ways that would minimize or eliminate the seeming
incompatability of science and philosophy on the one hand and tradi-
tional religious thinking on the other. This religio-philosophic literature
inevitably involved consideration of other faith systems as well, leading
inter alia to an interest in Christianity among philosophically inclined
Jews.30
Pride of place as the first of the medieval Jewish philosophers and – not
coincidentally – the first of the anti-Christian polemicists in the Muslim
realm has been accorded to Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammis., a ninth-
century Jew who lived in Syria and northern Iraq.31 Al-Muqammis. seems
to have been born Jewish, to have converted to Christianity for a period of
time, and to have returned to the Jewish fold.32 His experience as a Christian
seems to have furnished him with solid information on Christian thinking
and perhaps a desire to rebut that thinking as well. His literary oeuvre
was extensive, although much has been lost.33 Sarah Stroumsa, who has
published the major extant work of al-Muqammis., sums up his significance
in the following terms: “This list [of his writings] shows al-Muqammis. to
be innovatory in more than one way. His literary activity consisted of
the crystallization of a theological system in the service of Judaism, the
systematic exegetical effort intended to complement that theology, and
of the formulation of a Jewish response to other religious systems.”34 All
this reflects an inquisitive mind, an environment in which philosophy and
theology were important, and a world in which examination of a variety of
religious traditions was regularly undertaken.
In the ‘Ishrūn Maqāla (Twenty Chapters), which Stroumsa calls “al-
Muqammis.’s most important work to have survived in bulk,” significant

30 For a valuable overview of Jewish philosophical polemics, see again Lasker, Jewish Philosophical
Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages.
31 See Sarah Stroumsa, Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammis.’s Twenty Chapters (‘Ishrūn Magāla), (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1989).
32 Ibid., 15–16. 33 Ibid., 20–23. 34 Ibid., 23.
78 Backdrop
sections of chapter eight – on the unity of the Creator – are devoted to refut-
ing the Trinitarian views of Christianity. At the same time, al-Muqammis.
in the same chapter refutes the thinking of dualists as well. While there is
evidence of a specific anti-Christian thrust to al-Muqammis.’s thinking, his
interest in other faiths clearly extended beyond Christianity. Thus, while he
composed a work on the history of Christianity and a “Logical Refutation
of Christianity,” he also composed a book devoted to the refutation of
Buddhism.35 While his experience as a Christian may well have disposed
him to accord particular attention to that rival faith, al-Muqamissis.’s intel-
lectual interests were clearly diversified.
It is widely agreed that the tenth-century Saadia Gaon, who was born in
Egypt and eventually served as head of the prestigious academy of Sura in
Baghdad, was one of the political and intellectual giants of medieval Jewry.
He was, on the one hand, a leader on the traditional Jewish academic
scene, serving for a number of years as head of one of the two dominant
rabbinical academies of the Jewish world. At the same time, he was very
much involved in intra-Jewish communal activities and a major polemicist
against the schismatic Karaite community. It is striking that the same figure
could also be such an important innovator in a variety of cultural spheres.
In particular, he looms large as a key figure in the development of medieval
Jewish philosophy, which we shall discuss briefly here, and medieval Jewish
exegesis, to be addressed shortly.
Saadia’s critique of Christianity has been analyzed carefully by Daniel
J. Lasker. Let us note Lasker’s summary statement: “Saadya’s critique of
Christianity is concerned with three major topics, all of which he discusses
employing both exegetical and rational arguments. These three topics are
the nature of God (trinity versus unity and the possibility of incarnation);
the status of the messianic redemption (whether or not it has already oc-
curred); and the status of the Law at the present time (whether the laws of
the Torah are still applicable).”36 Our cursory look at Christian anti-Jewish
polemics has shown that these are in fact the issues perceived as critical
from the Christian perspective. The issues identified by Saadia will – not
surprisingly – constitute the central concerns of our twelfth- and thirteenth-
century Jewish polemicists of southern France and northern Spain as
well.
It should be noted, at the same time, that these issues flow ineluctably
from Saadia’s philosophic and exegetical priorities. His philosophic magnum
opus, the Kitāb al-alāmāt wa’l i‘tikādāt (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions),

35 Ibid., 20–21. 36 Lasker, “Saadya Gaon on Christianity and Islam,” 167.

 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 79
is much concerned with the issue of divine unity. The second book of Saa-
dia’s Beliefs and Opinions is devoted in its entirety to this issue. It is hardly
surprising that this extended consideration of divine unity should include
consideration of the Christian notion of Trinity. In examining the issue
of divine unity, Saadia – like al-Muqammis. – had to present and rebut
alternatives. The most obvious – although not the only – alternative for
both thinkers was the Christian notion of Trinity, as they understood it.
Since Islam, like Judaism, was rigorously monotheistic, there was nothing
to criticize within that faith system; it was the Christian sense of Incarna-
tion and Trinity – viewed by Christians as compatible with the unity of
God – that demanded and received treatment. The intellectual interests
and horizons of Jewish thinkers like Saadia within the Muslim world occa-
sioned the concern with and rebuttal of the Christian doctrine of Trinity,
even in the absence of an overt Christian challenge.
Much the same is true for the second and third issues identified by
Lasker as key to Saadia’s anti-Christian philosophic writings. For Saadia,
redemption in general and the future redemption of the Jews were integral
to his religious system. Thus, Saadia devotes the entire eighth book of his
masterpiece to the issue of redemption, necessarily engaging the Christian
view of a redemption that has already taken place at some length. Likewise
for the importance and eternality of Jewish law, addressed in the third
book of Saadia’s Beliefs and Opinions. Here too treatment of the general
issue required addressing the challenge represented by Christian views.37
In general, the philosophic interests of Jewish philosophers in the ninth-,
tenth-, and eleventh-century Muslim world led in a natural way to their
engagement with major Christian contentions.38 To an extent, this engage-
ment may have reflected some direct concern with Christianity; on the
37 Lasker, ibid., 168–176, argues against those who contend that the issue of the eternality of Jewish law
was directed against both Christians and Muslims.
38 One last major work might seem to belong here as well, and that is Judah ha-Levi’s mid-twelfth-
century Kitāb al-radd wa-’l-dalῑl fi’l-dῑn al-dhalῑl (The Book of Refutation and Proof in Defense of
the Despised Faith), widely known simply as the Kuzari. Presented as the efforts of a philosopher, a
Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew to convince the pagan king of the Khazars of the truth of their faiths,
this dialogic format would seem to have provided the perfect vehicle for extended polemics with these
three alternative monotheistic faiths. In fact, however, these expectations are disappointed in the
Kuzari.There really is no dialogue among the three monotheisms in this book. All the dialogue
takes place between the pagan Khazar king and the representatives of the three monotheistic faiths.
Indeed, the book is overwhelmingly composed of the presentation by the Jew and the responses of
the monarch. At no point do the various speakers engage one another, and at no point does the
author truly engage the views of Muslims and Christians. The dialogue turns out to be an extended
monologue, with little serious engagement with Christianity. Daniel J. Lasker, “Proselyte Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam in the Thought of Judah Halevy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 81 (1990): 75–92,
argues that the Kuzari shows a view – quite negative – of Christianity. While this seems accurate,
such a view does not really constitute polemical engagement.
80 Backdrop
other hand, it is readily explainable in terms of intellectual exploration.
The logic of inquiry into such issues as divine unity led ineluctably to ex-
tended consideration of key Christian doctrines. What should be noted in
closing is that this engagement moves us far beyond the talmudic legacy; it
is direct, forthright, and had the potential for guiding the Jews of western
Christendom in their confrontation with an aggressive Christian milieu. At
the same time, the concern with Christianity remained secondary, some-
thing authors dealt with in the course of their discussion of such matters
as divine unity, redemption, and the status of Jewish law. Nowhere do
we glean a sense of urgent consideration of matters that impinge directly
upon the lives of the Jews masses to which the Jewish intellectual bore
important responsibilities. In the Jewish philosophers, we do not yet find
an engagement with Christianity out of a sense of pressing societal need.

the development of jewish exegesis

Yet another new genre of literary creativity developed by the Jews in the
stimulating environment of the ninth- through twelfth-century Muslim
world was biblical exegesis. To be sure, the Bible had always stood at the
core of Jewish religious sensitivity, and the rabbinic classics – the Mishnah,
the two talmuds, and the ancient midrashim – were suffused with reverence
for the Hebrew Bible and the impulse to draw out its rich implications.
Much of that corpus can reasonably be called exegetical. Yet the exegetical
thrusts found in the rabbinic corpus were highly fluid; in many instances
it is extremely difficult to distinguish between exegesis and eisegesis. In
particular, there was little or no attention to lexicography, grammar, and
context. With the development of language study in the ninth, tenth, and
eleventh centuries, a new style of biblical exegesis emerged, with significant
focus on Hebrew lexicography and grammar and with keen sensitivity to
placing biblical passages within their immediate context.
Once again, Saadia Gaon was a major innovator. His translations of
and commentaries on the Hebrew Bible set the agenda for Jewish biblical
exegesis for many generations.39 While his biblical translations and com-
mentaries were “scientific” in a real sense, with heightened awareness of
lexicography, grammar, and context, they could not be divorced from the
numerous substantive issues with which Saadia was deeply involved as a

39 See Uriel Simon, Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms, trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1991), 1: “Although Saadiah Gaon was not the first commentator on
the Book of Psalms, all subsequent exegetes of that book are in a sense his descendants.”
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 81
Jewish leader.40 The simplest example for our purposes is his commentary
on the book of Daniel. As noted already, Saadia addressed the issue of re-
demption at length in his Beliefs and Opinions. In this discussion, he argued
against the Christian notion of a redemption that had already occurred.
This discussion revolved heavily around key verses in the biblical book of
Daniel, the biblical book in which predictions of the future are most promi-
nent.41 In his commentary on the book of Daniel, Saadia advanced and
disputed Christian understanding of these key verses at considerable length,
presenting his own view of the accurate meaning of the text, a meaning that
– not surprisingly – accorded with the Jewish sense of a redemption that
lay in the future.42 Once again, broad intellectual issues required Jewish
consideration of Christian claims, this time in the realm of biblical exegesis.
The wide-ranging intellectual activity of a thinker like Saadia Gaon moved
him to engagement with Christian biblical exegesis and to rebuttal of that
exegesis.
The Jewish philosophical interests that developed in the Muslim world
entered western Christendom during the twelfth century, with the im-
migration of refugees from the Iberian peninsula.43 By contrast, biblical
exegesis developed rather independently in northern Europe, within the
newly emerging Jewish communities of that area. As result of the general
vitalization of western Christendom, Jews were attracted to the heretofore
peripheral areas of the north – France and German at first, subsequently
England to the west and Poland to the east. Jewish cultural creativity in
these new areas of Jewish settlement differed markedly from that of the
Jewish centers in the Muslim world. Whereas the Jews of the Muslim realm
were long-time inhabitants and well integrated linguistically in their milieu,
the Jews in their newly emergent communities of northern Europe consti-
tuted small bands of obvious newcomers, far less fully integrated into the
majority environment and less involved in the general intellectual currents
of majority society.
The reasons for considerable social distance between the Jews of north-
ern Europe and their Christian neighbors were many and varied – so-
cial, economic, and cultural. Of great significance were the linguistic
40 Note, for example, Simon’s analysis of the relationship of Saadia’s commentary on Psalms to the
Karaite conflict, in ibid.
41 See below, Chap. 6.
42 On Saadia’s commentary to Daniel, see Lasker, “Saadya Gaon on Christianity and Islam,” 168, and
Robert Chazan, “Daniel 9:24–27: Exegesis and Polemics,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval
Polemics between Christians and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1996), 143–159.
43 Recall the Lasker essays indicated above, n. 3.
82 Backdrop
circumstances of the new Jewish communities. In the Muslim world, the
language of oral and written communication was Arabic, and the long-time
Jewish residents of the area were comfortable with both spoken and writ-
ten Arabic. As noted, one of Saadia’s great achievements was translation of
key biblical books into Arabic, obviously intended for a community where
knowledge of Arabic was common, often supplanting mastery of Hebrew.
In the newly developing Jewish communities of northern Europe, there
was a sharp disjuncture between the spoken language, which varied from
area to area, and the written language, which was Latin. While Jews had to
learn the spoken language and did so, they remained distanced from the
written language and thus from much of the high culture of the northern
areas of western Christendom.
The extent of Jewish isolation from the Christian majority of northern
Europe socially and culturally has, however, often been overdrawn. While
these Jews were newcomers and while removal from the Latin culture of
the area was real, the towns of the north in which Jews settled were quite
small, and the Jewish communities within which they lived were tiny.
Limited Jewish economic activities necessitated considerable contact with
Christian neighbors, at least for economic purposes.44 More generally, social
distance was not easy to maintain. In particular, the Jews of northern Europe
could hardly remain oblivious of the centrality of the Christian faith in the
lives of their neighbors. In a largely illiterate society, the ubiquitous public
monuments of the Church were intended to serve as tools of popular
education for those who could not read. These public monuments could
and did serve precisely the same function for the Jews of the area, who were
illiterate at least as far as Latin was concerned. The teachings of the Church
were readily available throughout the towns of northern Europe.
One of the first literary genres to be developed by the Jews of northern
Europe was biblical exegesis. While the Jewish exegetes of the north were
familiar to an extent with some of the writings from the Islamic sphere,
the phenomenon of northern-European Jewish exegesis seems to have been
largely home-grown. Two factors seem to have impinged decisively on the
development of the new exegesis. The first was the Christian propensity
at this period to search out the direct meaning of the biblical text, even
to the point of seeking assistance from Jews knowledgeable in Hebrew.
The second tendency, yet more germane to our purposes, was the religious
pressure exercised by the Christian majority on the Jewish minority. To

44 For a fine description of this economically grounded contact, see Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance:
Studies in Jewish–Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times, 24–36.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 83
a significant extent, the development of Jewish exegesis in the northern
sectors of western Christendom may well have been related to the need for
polemical defense against perceived Christian pressures.45
The innovator in this area seems to have been Solomon ben Isaac of
Troyes. In a remarkable way, Solomon ben Isaac, known generally to Jewish
tradition by his acronym Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac), was both an
innovator and – and at the same time – an enduring giant of the genre.
Rashi’s commentaries on the various books of the Hebrew Bible gained
lasting authority within the Jewish world of the Middle Ages and on into
modernity as well. The attraction of his commentaries has been analyzed
by numerous subsequent observers. The core of that attraction seems to
lie in the unusual combination of relatively straightforward exegesis with
an unerring sense of the needs of his community and the capacity to serve
those needs through the medium of his commentary.
Numerous modern scholars have identified the polemical thrust in many
of Rashi’s commentaries – in his commentaries to the Torah, to the book
of Psalms, to the Song of Songs.46 Polemicizing against Christian views
was clearly a major preoccupation of Rashi. The same is true of his twelfth-
century followers in the effort to present the simple and unadorned meaning
of the biblical text.47 The concern with Christianity was far more pervasive
than that found among the Jewish exegetes living in the Muslim sphere. This

45 For an excellent formulation of this need, see Avraham Grossman, “The Jewish–Christian Polemic
and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in Twelfth-Century France (On the attitude of R. Joseph Qara to
Polemic)” (Hebrew), Zion 51 (1985): 29–60. Recalling Berger, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish–
Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages,” I would indicate that the
Grossman article does not necessarily invalidate Berger’s claim of lack of overt Christian missionizing
in eleventh- and twelfth-century northern Europe. The Jewish need to respond to Christian claims
could have resulted from the simple exposure to Christian views, as just now noted.
46 A pioneer in exploring Rashi against his historical backdrop was Yitzhak Baer, “Rashi and the
Historical Realities of His Time” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 20 (1949): 320–332. For the commentaries of
Rashi on the Bible in general, see Judah Rosenthal, “Anti-Christian Polemic in the Commentaries
of Rashi on the Bible” (Hebrew), in Rashi: His Teachings and His Personality, ed. Simon Federbush
(New York: World Jewish Congress, 1958), 45–59. With regard to Rashi on the Torah, see Elazar
Touitou, “Rashi and His School: The Exegesis on the Halakhic Part of the Pentateuch in the Context
of the Judeo-Christian Controversy,” in Medieval Studies in Honour of Avrom Saltman, ed. Bat-Sheva
Albert et al. (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1995), 231–251. For Rashi on Psalms, see Avraham
Grossman, “The Commentary of Rashi on Psalms and the Jewish–Christian Polemic” (Hebrew), in
Studies in Bible and Education Presented to Professor Moshe Arend (Jerusalem: Touro College, 1996),
59–74. For Rashi on Song of Songs, see Sarah Kamin, “The Commentary on Song of Songs and the
Jewish–Christian Debate” (Hebrew), The Annual for Bible and Study of the Ancient Near East 7–8
(1983–84): 218–248.
47 See again Grossman, “The Jewish–Christian Polemic and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in Twelfth
Century France.” See also idem, “The School of Literal Jewish Exegesis in Northern France,” in
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Saebo, 2 vols. (Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996–2000) ii: 321–371.
84 Backdrop
difference is not at all difficult to explain. For the latter group, the claims of
Christianity constituted an interesting intellectual challenge; for the Jews
living within western Christendom, the challenge was far more intense,
and the dangers associated with Christian views were far more threatening.
At the same time, it should be noted that concern with Christianity in
pre-thirteenth-century northern Europe did not move the Jews of that area
to compose anti-Christian polemical works per se. As real as the Jewish
concern may have been, efforts to meet the challenge remained confined to
the exegetical domain. A genuine Jewish polemical literature in northern
Europe lay shortly beyond the time period covered in this study.48

q i s. s. at m u j ā d a l at a l - u s q u f and s e f e r n e s t o r h a - ko m e r
From the pre-twelfth-century period, there is in fact but one work of gen-
uine Jewish anti-Christian polemics, and that work was composed in Arabic
in the Muslim world and subsequently translated into Hebrew, the form
in which it circulated in the Christian world. That work is the Arabic
Qis..sat Mujādalat al-Usquf (The Account of the Disputation of the Priest),
translated into the Hebrew Sefer Nestor ha-Komer (The Book of Nestor the
Priest). The two texts have recently been accorded an excellent edition by
Daniel J. Lasker and Sarah Stroumsa, an edition provided with introduc-
tion, commentary, and annotated English translation.49 The importance
and complexity of these two seminal texts has been effectively demonstrated
by Lasker and Stroumsa.
The Qis..sa/Nestor was clearly a popular composition, widely copied and
disseminated.50 Like the Toldot Yeshu corpus, the popularity of the work
resulted in considerable freedom felt by copyists to add, subtract, and
alter. For much of her edition of the Qis..sa, Stroumsa, who edited the
Arabic version, provides parallel columns of text. The time frame for the
composition of the Arabic text is somewhat nebulous. Lasker and Stroumsa
suggest the middle of the ninth century.51 The location of composition is
unclear. It has proven impossible for Lasker and Stroumsa to say much

48 The first of these works was the Sefer Yosef ha-Mikane, composed shortly after the 1260s. For a brief
pre-thirteenth-century Ashkenazic polemical statement, preserved in the edition of Sefer ha-Berit,
see Robert Chazan, “An Ashkenazic Anti-Christian Treatise,” Journal of Jewish Studies, xxxiv (1983):
63–72.
49 Daniel J. Lasker and Sarah Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest, (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi
Institute, 1996). See also Joel Rembaum, “The Influence of Sefer Nestor hakomer on Medieval Jewish
Polemics,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978): 155–185.
50 Qis..sa/Nestor is a convention adopted by Lasker and Stroumsa, and it seems perfectly appropriate.
51 Lasker and Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest, i: 15–19.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 85
about the author. Indeed, the general lack of organization of the text led
the editors to suggest that, “although we have spoken up until now of an
‘author,’ it seems more appropriate to speak of a redactor, due to the rather
loosely connected elements.”52
The same uncertainties are the case for the Hebrew translation as well.
Here, too, copyists allowed themselves great latitude. Lasker’s problems in
editing the Hebrew text were yet more profound than Stroumsa’s, forcing
him to provide three different versions of Nestor. This Hebrew text is surely
related to the Arabic Qis..sa. However, since both the Arabic original and the
Hebrew translation were subject to considerable scribal freedom, precise
conclusions as to the relationship are impossible to reach. Stroumsa and
Lasker suggest that the Hebrew translation should be seen as part of the
early twelfth-century displacement of Andalusian Jews into the Christian
areas of northern Spain and southern France. Important translations of
Arabic works into Hebrew were undertaken at this critical juncture, and
the editors suggest that Nestor was one of the works so translated. The
translation must have been completed by 1170, for at that point in time
Jacob ben Reuben quotes Nestor.53
The Qis..sa/Nestor provides its Jewish readers or auditors with a wide-
ranging collection of anti-Christian arguments. It grounds these anti-
Christian arguments in both rational considerations and biblical verses;
it covers the spectrum of traditional Christian claims that we have encoun-
tered in the preceding two chapters; it generally takes an offensive posture,
attacking Christian views and claims. Lasker and Stroumsa depict the Qis..sa
in the following terms: “Qis..sat Mujādalat al-Usquf presents itself as a letter
written by an unnamed priest who has converted to Judaism and wishes
to explain his act to his former co-religionists. It is marked by both a good
knowledge of Christianity and by vulgarity of expression. The author often
quotes the New Testament and displays familiarity with Christian doc-
trines. The argumentation is thus that of an ‘insider.’ The author also uses
rudimentary philosophical arguments, but the level of debate is neither
inspiring nor particularly impressive.”54
Particularly problematic is the organizational structure of Qis..sa/Nestor.
Lasker and Stroumsa describe the compilation of arguments in the Qis..sa
with the following important observations:
The structure of the text and the comparison between manuscripts reveal the
building blocks of the treatise. It is constructed of some smaller units (topoi such

52 Ibid., 23. 53 Milhamot ha-Shem, 155–156.

.
54 Lasker and Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest, 15.
86 Backdrop
as Jesus’ sleeping or contradictions among the Gospels) and some larger ones (sus-
tained clusters of arguments of the same category). The units are often introduced
by set formulae, e.g. “Tell me now;” “Do you not know;” or “Are you not ashamed
to say that . . .” Each cluster has its own character: for example, a cluster dealing
with better candidates for divinity than Jesus (sections 9–24); a theological cluster
criticizing the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation (sections 25–32); discussions of
the validity of the Law (sections 33–36; 63–71; 120–138); arguments against Jesus’ di-
vinity (sections 37–62); New Testament contradictions (sections 69–119; 139–152);
an account of the crucifixion (sections 153–157; 180–184), and a cluster of biblical
proof-texts (sections 158–179) . . . The clusters, however, are not neatly separated
from each other, and arguments from each unit of this type are repeated several
times in the text, within other clusters as well as dispersed among them. There are,
for example, what one might call “floating motifs,” i.e., arguments which appear
in various manuscripts in different places or which are repeated several times in
the same manuscript.55
Put more simply, the Qis..sa/Nestor, rich in its range of argumentation, is
frustratingly cluttered and disorganized.
Thus, the Qis..sa/Nestor is, on the one hand, the first work of genuine
Jewish anti-Christian polemical literature encountered in Jewish history.
The range of anti-Christian arguments is sweeping. At the same time,
the work is, from many perspectives, quite deficient. Above all, it is not
couched in anything like an appealing and persuasive literary format. The
Qis..sa/Nestor is a rough guide to anti-Jewish claims, not a polished work
of polemical persuasion. Since we are by now familiar with early Christian
anti-Jewish polemics, we can note that by the 1160s the Jewish world – while
it had produced its first genuine polemical work – had produced nothing
on the order of Justin Martyr’s second-century Dialogue with Trypho.

the new and d iff erent

The Jewish literature from the talmudic period – so influential in many
realms of Jewish life – offered no real guidance to Jews subjected to serious
Christian religious pressures. The first useful guidance for such Jews came
from the philosophic and exegetical literature composed by the Jews living
in the Muslim sphere. This philosophic and exegetical literature addressed
the major issues in contention between Christians and Jews. Indeed, the
Jews in the Muslim realm even provided the first genuine Jewish anti-
Christian polemical work, which was translated into Hebrew and utilized by
the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish polemicists of southern France

55 Ibid., 23.
 Pre-twelfth-century Jewish argumentation 87
and northern Spain. Let us recall the important observations of Daniel
J. Lasker on Jewish anti-Christian polemics in the Muslim sphere. Lasker
argues that the Jews of the Muslim sphere provided their co-religionists in
western Christendom with all the requisite elements for their anti-Christian
argumentation. Our brief look at the pre-twelfth-century Jewish literary
legacy has in fact indicated a wide range of issues addressed by Jewish
authors, to be sure only in one case – the Qis..sa/Nestor – formulated in a
work that is distinctly polemical.
If the elements of argument were already in place, what then remained
for the Jewish polemicists in western Christendom to add? What then was
their contribution? In a real sense, this is the overarching question posed
in this study. Lasker notes that “a full-scale critique of Christianity had to
wait for an all-out Christian attack on Judaism in Christian countries.”56
We shall proceed directly to indicating that, in southern Europe, such
“an all-out Christian attack on Judaism” did in fact materialize during
the twelfth century and on into the thirteenth. Our question can thus
be further formulated in the following terms: How did this accelerating
all-out Christian attack shape the polemical literature composed by five
important intellectual leaders of the Jewish communities of southern France
and northern Spain? How did Jewish criticism of Christianity begun under
Islam evolve into “a full-scale critique of Christianity,” to use Lasker’s terms?

56 Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages,” 137.
 part ii
Data and foundations
 chap t e r fou r

The Jewish polemicists of southern France and

northern Spain

Throughout the first half of the Middle Ages, the Christian argumentation
against Judaism and the Jews we have delineated remained fairly static.
More important, there was no discernible effort to bring these arguments
to Jewish attention. This stasis gave way as a result of the invigoration
of medieval western Christendom that began during the late tenth and
eleventh centuries and ripened during the twelfth. An increasingly confi-
dent western Christendom was moved to win over others – primarily the
imposing Muslim enemy – by force of arms and by religious suasion.1 The
effort at religious suasion was directed also at the less powerful but older
monotheistic rival, the Jews. To be sure, there was more than aggressive
self-confidence at work; there was an element of malaise as well in the
effort to win over others through polemical argumentation.
The changes that invigorated the societies of western Christendom were
both exhilarating and unnerving.2 Political and ecclesiastical maturation
were prominent during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. This mat-
uration contributed significantly to the broad invigoration of western

1 For the juxtaposition of crusading and missionizing, see the important study of Benjamin Z. Kedar,
Crusade and Mission (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
2 There have been numerous important studies of the changing twelfth- and thirteenth-century cultural
scene, focusing on both the spiritual renewal and the intellectual renaissance. Valuable works include
R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953); idem, Saint
Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); idem, Scholastic
Humanism and the Unification of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); Giles Constable, Three Studies
in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); idem, The
Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Sapir Abulafia,
Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. Likewise useful are the essays collected in Robert
L. Benson and Giles Constable (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). Of late, there has been increasing consideration of the less
positive aspects of the period, rooted in the malaise occasioned by rapid societal change. The work that
opened this line of investigation is R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1987). Along these same lines, see the essays collected in Christendom and Its Discontents:
Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion 1000–1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).

91
92 Data and foundations
Christendom; it also proved distressing to many. Especially striking was
the perceived disjuncture between the newly powerful and wealthy Roman
Catholic Church and the New Testament imagery of an apostolic age of
humility and poverty. Likewise, new patterns of thinking were exciting and
liberating; they were also unsettling. The age-old sense of the Jews as posing
the danger of a closely related religious alternative surely played a role in
the desire to assert Christian religious superiority through argumentation
addressed in fact to both Christians and Jews.3
In many ways, it was the heretofore backward areas of the north that led
the way in the late eleventh- and twelfth-century invigoration of western
Christendom. Northern warriors formed the core of the crusading expedi-
tions to the Near East during this period, and the great intellectual advances
were centered in the monasteries and then the towns of the north. Charac-
teristically, one of the giant figures of this period, Anselm of Canterbury, left
his home in Italy for the stimulation of the learning centers of Normandy,
where he eventually became one the great leaders and innovators on the
intellectual scene.
Yet the older and more settled areas of the south experienced wide-
ranging change as well. In the south also, there was aggressive military
confrontation with the forces of Islam. While somewhat less romantic and
dramatic than the conquest of Jerusalem, the steady Christian conquest
of the Iberian peninsula proved a more lasting achievement.4 Much of
the important translation effort that brought new texts and new ideas
into western Christendom took place in the south.5 Likewise, much of
the spiritual ferment of the period spread across southern France and into
Italy, occasioning bloody reprisals that intensified dissatisfaction with the
Roman Catholic Church.6 With regard to the aggressive spiritual pressures

3 Recall Berger’s argument, in “Mission to the Jews and Jewish–Christian Contacts in the Polemical
Literature of the High Middle Ages,” that Jewish objections to Christianity occasioned much of
the internally directed Christian polemical literature of northern Europe. Coming from a somewhat
different perspective, R. W. Southern, in both Saint Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic
Life and Thought 1059–c. 1130 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966) and Saint Anselm: A
Portrait in a Landscape, saw in the Jews and their views a major goad to Anselm’s composition of the
Cur Deus Homo, a major milestone in medieval Christian thinking.
4 On the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula, see the works cited in the introduction, n. 25.
5 For this translation effort and the Jewish place within it, see David Romano, “La transmission des
sciences arabes par les Juifs en Languedoc,” Juifs et judaı̈sme de Languedoc (Toulouse: Editions Privat,
1977), 363–386, and the forthcoming study by James T. Robinson, “The Medieval Translator as
Cultural Type: The Ibn Tibbon Family of Southern France.”
6 For standard depictions of southern-French dissidence, see Arno Borst, Die Katharer (Stuttgart:
Anton Heirsemann, 1953), and Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). This
standard view, with its emphasis on dualistic notions imported from the East, has been challenged of
late by Mark Gregory Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 (Princeton:
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 93
that eventuated – by the middle decades of the thirteenth century – in a
vigorous missionizing campaign, it was the south, particularly the areas of
southern France and northern Spain, that very much led the way.7
The Jews of medieval western Christendom were, like their Christian
neighbors, living through a period of wide-ranging and intense change.
The most fundamental of the changes involved growing numbers, both in
the rapidly developing north and in the more settled south. In the latter
case, it was an influx of Jews from the Iberian peninsula, suffering under the
unusually harsh rule of the Almohades, that swelled the Jewish population.
In both cases, the burgeoning number of Jews brought the issue of Judaism
more forcefully into Christian consciousness. In the north, this resulted in
internally directed anti-Jewish polemics; in the south, the more conspicuous
Jewish presence was one of the factors in the emergent effort to confront
Jews with proofs of Christian truth.
The Jews immigrating into southern Europe brought with them the rich
legacy of Jewish life under Muslim rule. At the same time, they were en-
countering first hand the invigoration of medieval western Christendom.
In a real sense, the Jewish world of southern France and northern Spain was
in double flux, occasioned by the need to absorb both the riches of Jewish
creativity in the Muslim sphere and the new patterns of thought emerging
in western Christendom.8 In our analysis of the Jewish polemical enterprise

Princeton University Press, 2001). In studying closely the inquisitorial records of 1245–46, Pegg finds
no evidence of such imported ideas. There is an enormous literature on the suppression of southern-
French dissidence. See, inter alia, Philippe Wolff (ed.), Histoire de Languedoc, 2nd ed. (Toulouse:
Editions Privat, 2000), 147–234; Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades; James B. Given, Inquisition and
Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1997). Because of the centrality of Narbonne in our story, note also Richard W. Emery, Heresy and
Inquisition in Narbonne (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971). See also the important article
by Joseph Shatzmiller, “The Albigensian Heresy As Reflected in the Eyes of Contemporary Jewry,” in
Tarbut ve-H. evrah be-Toldot Yisra’el bi-Yeme ha-Benayim, ed. Robert Bonfils et al. (Jerusalem: Merkaz
Zalman Shazar, 1989), 333–352.
7 Recall my discussion in the introduction of the Berger essay, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish–
Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages,” my agreement that there is
no real evidence of genuine missionizing in the north, and my suggestion that the situation is different
in the south. Recall also Chazan, Daggers of Faith, for full analysis of the formalized missionizing
campaign that began in the 1240s.
8 For an overview of Jewish life in Christian Spain during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,
see Yithak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, i: 78–110. For an overview of Jewish life
in southern France, see Isadore Twersky, “Aspects of the Social and Cultural History of Provencal
Jewry,” in Social Life and Social Values of the Jewish People (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconnière, 1968:
Cahiers d’histoire mondiale), 185–207, and Shlomo Pick, The Jewish Community of Provence before the
Expulsion of 1306 (Doct. diss.: Bar-Ilan University, 1996). For a fine study of the cultural transition
from the Muslim environment of southern Spain to the Christian environment of the north, see
Bernard Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of the Ramah
(Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). Recall the studies of Daniel J. Lasker on the
94 Data and foundations
in southern France and northern Spain, we shall see a Jewish community
buffeted by the spiritual pressures exerted by a newly aggressive Christen-
dom, utilizing the full range of rapidly expanding intellectual resources at
its disposal.
The time has now come to introduce our five Jewish polemicists and their
works. We shall proceed chronologically, beginning with Joseph Kimhi of
Narbonne, the earliest of the group. We shall then proceed to Jacob ben
Reuben, David Kimhi of Narbonne (Joseph’s son), and Rabbi Meir ben
Simon of Narbonne. We shall conclude this survey with Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman of Gerona, one of the great luminaries of medieval Jewish
intellectual life. This chapter will introduce briefly each of the five Jewish
polemicists and their writings, which will provide the data for our analysis of
perceived Christian thrusts, Jewish counter-arguments, and Jewish attacks
on the Christian faith.

joseph kimhi
Joseph Kimhi fled with his family from the Iberian peninsula during the
difficult years of Almohade persecution – the 1140s – and resettled in the
venerable Jewish community of Narbonne.9 There he seems to have func-
tioned professionally as a teacher, while pursuing intellectual interests fo-
cused on the related fields of Hebrew linguistics and biblical exegesis. His
older son, Moses, has left similar works, but it was a younger son, David
(of whom more shortly), who was destined to become one of the most
famous of medieval Jewish linguists and exegetes. Joseph Kimhi’s linguistic
and exegetical interests seem to have led him quite naturally into the realm
of Christian–Jewish polemics.10

transmission of anti-Christian polemics by the migrating Jews, as cited above, Chap. 3, n. 3, and
Berger, “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times.” For the Jewish sense
of the disparity between Christian and native Jewish sophistication in southern France, see again
Lasker, “Christianity, Philosophy, and Polemic in Jewish Provence.”
9 On the Jewish community of Narbonne, recall the classic study of Jean Régné, cited above, Int.,
n. 19. For Narbonne in general during our period, see Jacques Michaud and Andre Cabanis (eds.).
Histoire de Narbonne (Toulouse: Editions Privat, 1988), 119–200.
10 Frank Ephraim Talmage has studied David Kimhi extensively in his David Kimhi: The Man and
the Commentaries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975). At the opening of the first
chapter, Talmage devotes attention to his subject’s father Joseph and older brother Moses. A similar
discussion can be found in the introduction to the Talmage edition and translation of Sefer ha-Berit,
to be cited fully in the next note. Talmage’s fullest consideration of Joseph Kimhi is in his “R. Joseph
Kimhi: From the Dispersion of Jerusalem in Sepharad to the Canaanites in Zarephath” (Hebrew), in
Tarbut ve-H. evrah be-Toldot Yisra’el bi-Yeme ha-Benayim, ed. Robert Bonfils et al. (Jerusalem: Merkaz
Zalman Shazar, 1989), 315–332. Additional studies on Joseph Kimhi include: Jacob Gil, “R. Joseph
Kimhi as a Biblical Exegete” (Hebrew), Bet Mikra 19 (1974): 265–285, and Mordechai Cohen, “The
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 95
Joseph Kimhi’s polemical work, Sefer ha-Berit, owes its survival to in-
clusion in an early eighteenth-century compilation of polemical treatises
entitled Milh.emet H . ovah. The editor of this collection (or perhaps the
copyist of the manuscript the editor utilized) did terrible violence to the
text. The opus published in the Milh.emet H . ovah as Sefer ha-Berit lacks
two opening poems known to us from another of Joseph Kimhi’s works,
includes three obvious interpolations, is broken off at a point of major tran-
sition, and concludes with considerable material that could not possibly
have stemmed from the pen of Joseph Kimhi.11
Despite this mangling of the original, it is possible to reconstruct out of
the eighteenth-century text Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit. After an intro-
ductory section that includes both poetry and prose, the three substantive
elements in the book are:
(1) a series of interchanges in which the Jew is very much the aggressor,
interchanges that move fluidly from reason as the grounding for reli-
gious truth to biblical authority as the grounding for religious truth to
the behavior patterns of religious communities as reflective of religious
truth;12
(2) a lengthy section involving Christian claims, based on biblical proof-
texts, for the divinity of Jesus and related matters, in each case followed
by extensive Jewish rebuttals;13
(3) a lost section involving Christian claims regarding Christian and Jewish
fate, similarly based on biblical proof-texts, and again followed by Jewish
rebuttals.14
The Hebrew Bible as a source of truth and conflicting Christian and Jewish
readings of that truth predominate in Sefer ha-Berit. Nonetheless, Joseph
Kimhi managed to adroitly introduce further elements into this biblically
based polemical work, especially in the opening segment of the book. The

Kimhi Family,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ii: 388–415. There
is no evidence of either Joseph Kimhi or his son David functioning in a rabbinic capacity, hence
I have refrained from identifying the two of them, along with Jacob ben Reuben, as rabbis. Meir
bar Simon of Narbonne and Moses ben Nahman of Gerona clearly served their communities in a
rabbinic capacity and have therefore been identified as rabbis.
11 Milh.emet H . ovah (Constantinople: n.p., 1710), 18b–38a. Sefer ha-Berit has been made available in a
modern edition by Frank Ephraim Talmage (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1974) based on the Milh.emet
H. ovah and in an English translation by Talmage entitled The Book of the Covenant (Toronto: The
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972). Throughout this study, references to Sefer ha-Berit
will cite the Talmage edition and translation, although all translations provided will be my own.
I have studied some of the textual problems in Sefer ha-Berit in “Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit:
Pathbreaking Medieval Jewish Apologetics,” Harvard Theological Review 85 (1992): 417–432.
12 Sefer ha-Berit, 21–31; Book of the Covenant, 28–43.
13 Sefer ha-Berit, 31–55; Book of the Covenant, 43–67.
14 For full discussion of this lost section, see Chazan, “Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit,” 421–427.
96 Data and foundations
result is an artfully crafted and diversified defense of Judaism and assault
on Christianity.
Given the dolorous state of the text transmitted in the Milh.emet H . ovah,
can we be certain of the attribution of even the reconstructed text to Joseph
Kimhi? Happily, we can. In a general way, Sefer ha-Berit reflects the broad
characteristics of the work of the Kimhis, father and sons. It is grounded in
a sharp sense of precise biblical readings, the niceties of Hebrew language,
and contextual reading of the Hebrew Bible. Time and again, the Jewish
protagonist in Sefer ha-Berit explicates biblical passages in their entirety,
insisting that a given verse can only be properly understood in its context.
Moreover, there is, throughout the work, an insistence on the dictates
of reason as guarantors of truth. A doctrine that is unreasonable (to be
sure, not defined with philosophic rigor) cannot be true. There is also
acknowledgment of a double audience for the Hebrew Bible – on one
level the broad populace, which cannot fathom philosophic verities, and
on another the sophisticated, who grasp the deeper truths embedded in
the biblical text. All this accords well with the general thrust of Kimhian
thinking.
More specifically, Joseph Kimhi’s linguistic work, Sefer ha-Galui, contains
material that dovetails nicely with the Sefer ha-Berit text available to us,
reinforcing the sense of Joseph Kimhi as author of the latter. In his Sefer ha-
Galui, Joseph Kimhi treats at considerable length Isaiah 7, with a focus on
the famous reference to an ‘almah conceiving and giving birth. His lengthy
treatment of the term ‘almah is parallel to the discussion of the same term
in the text of Sefer ha-Berit available to us. At the close of this lengthy
discussion in Sefer ha-Galui, Joseph Kimhi notes the following: “I have
already explained nicely all the responses to the Christians. I inscribed them
in Sefer ha-Berit, where I created statement and response – ‘the Christian
said’ and ‘the Jew said.’”15 This capsule description of Sefer ha-Berit by
Joseph Kimhi accords well with the text at our disposal.
Joseph Kimhi’s poetic and prose introductions tell us much of the author’s
intended audience and objectives. The poetic introduction, available to us
in Sefer ha-Galui, says the following:
Be strengthened, people of the Lord; let your heart be firm.
For there is hope for you and redemption.
If you ask yourselves about the wondrous end of days,
Turn and examine Sefer ha-Berit.16
15 Joseph Kimhi, Sefer ha-Galui, ed. H. J. Matthews (Berlin: Verein M’Kize Nirdamim, 1887), 135.
16 This poetic introduction is found in ibid., where a second and longer lost poetic introduction is
found as well.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 97
In this poetic introduction, Joseph Kimhi addresses a Jewish people beset
with doubt, especially over its ultimate fate. As noted, extensive examina-
tion of biblical verses dealing with redemption constituted the lost closing
section of the book.
In parallel fashion, three biblical verses that follow the poetic introduc-
tions reinforce the sense of a Jewish readership beset with questions and
doubts:17
Strengthen the hands that are slack;
Make firm the tottering knees!
Say to the anxious of heart:
“Be strong, fear not;
Behold your God!
Requital is coming,
The recompense of God;
He himself is coming to give you triumph.”18
As for you, be strong, do not be disheartened,
for there is reward for your labor.19
Be strong and of good courage,
All you who wait for the Lord.20
These verses make it clear once more that this polemical work is addressed
to Jews who endure doubt and despair. All three verses urge fortitude on
the part of these disheartened followers of the Lord, with the promise of
eventual redemption.
In his prose introduction, Joseph Kimhi clarifies the nature of the threat
his fellow-Jews face. The threat comes from Christians, depicted as rene-
gades who use the Hebrew Bible cunningly to buttress a set of beliefs that
in fact distort biblical truth. In the face of this challenge, a student has
requested his master to compose a collection of verses misread by Chris-
tians, to serve as a guide to Jews exposed to this pressure.21 At the end of
his extended consideration of verses that focus loosely on the issue of Jesus’
divinity, Joseph Kimhi urges his student to ponder well the examples he
has provided. This is tacit acknowledgment that the collection is far from
complete. What the student must do is study closely the examples pro-
vided by his teacher and use the Kimhi method to rebut any further verses
Christians might bring.22

17 Sefer ha-Berit, 21; Book of the Covenant, 27.

18 Isa. 35:3–4. 19 2 Chron. 15:7. 20 Ps. 31:25.
21 Sefer ha-Berit, 21; Book of the Covenant, 27.
22 Sefer ha-Berit, 55; Book of the Covenant, 67.
98 Data and foundations
The Kimhi method involves five discrete elements: (1) He scrutinizes
carefully the verse cited, to make certain that it has been cited accurately
and/or translated properly. (2) He examines the verse in its setting in order
to understand it properly; i.e. contextually. (3) He shows that the Christian
conclusions drawn from the given proof-text are contradicted by explicit
biblical teachings. (4) He argues that the conclusions drawn from the given
proof-text simply do not make sense. (5) He claims that the conclusions
drawn from the given proof-text do not even accord with Christian doctrine
or realities. This is the five-part methodology that Joseph Kimhi intends
his student to absorb and to use upon other Christian proof-texts, when
confronted with them.23
For Joseph Kimhi, the fundamental role of the Jewish polemicist is to
identify Christian challenges and meet them. This effort lies at the heart of
Joseph Kimhi’s enterprise in Sefer ha-Berit. To be sure, there is a bit more;
there is an aggressive thrust as well. While the obligation of the Jewish
polemicist begins with rebutting Christian challenges, it does not end with
such defensive maneuvers. The responsibility of medieval Jewish polemi-
cists, as perceived by Joseph Kimhi, extends to identifying weaknesses in
the opposing camp and bringing them forcefully to the attention of Jewish
readers. This aggressive thrust of medieval Jewish polemics is well docu-
mented in Sefer ha-Berit, and we shall cite this first of the polemical works
extensively in this connection. Joseph Kimhi was unsparing in his critique
of what he perceived as Christian shortcomings in both the intellectual and
moral spheres, shortcomings that for him serve as indices of the falsity of
Christian doctrine. For Joseph Kimhi, not only was Judaism obliviously
true – Christianity was obviously false as well.24

jacob ben reuben

Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit, a work by a prominent author, was not at
all well known during the Middle Ages. Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot
ha-Shem, a work by an unknown author, was in contrast widely read and
debated during the Middle Ages by both Christians and Jews.25 The reasons
for the popularity of Milh.amot ha-Shem are not at all difficult to fathom.
23 For full discussion of this five-part method, see below, Chap. 5. Frank Talmage, “R. David Kimhi
as Polemicist,” Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): 213–235, analyzes a somewhat similar five-
pronged approach on the part of Joseph’s son – see 215–222.
24 See below, Chaps. 12 and 14.
25 All that is known of Jacob ben Reuben can be found in Milh.amot ha-Shem itself and will be discussed
shortly. This important book is available in numerous manuscripts and in a recent critical edition
by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1963). The manuscripts are listed in the
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 99
The work is extremely rich and rigorous in its argumentation and is scrupu-
lously organized. It thus afforded medieval Jews a heavily detailed manual
of religious debate, a manual that informs Jewish readers of central Chris-
tian thrusts, provides meaningful Jewish rebuttals, and moves on to assault
Christianity as a religious alternative. For Christians, on the other hand,
this manual understandably became the source of considerable distress and
seemed to require full-scale rebuttal.26
Jacob ben Reuben, while an unknown, tells us interesting things about
himself and the circumstances of his book. In his introduction, he claims
that his knowledge of Christianity and his commitment to its refutation
emerged from the complexities of his life situation.
I shall explain in the light of what happened to me while I was in exile in Huesca. It
was my fate to dwell there among gentiles. There, where I lived, a certain Christian
took a liking to me. [He was] one of the leading citizens of the town and one of
the learned of the generation. He was a priest expert in logic and sophisticated in
esoteric wisdom. To be sure, our Creator, may his Name be blessed, obscured his
eyes from seeing and his heart from understanding. Thus, his soul clung to his
idolatry, and his will and his mind continued to serve his “sticks and stones.” While
I was regularly with him to learn from him wisdom and knowledge, he asked me
and said: “How long will you waver on the threshold, not allowing your heart to
understand and your eyes to see and your ears to hear. [This is true for] you and all
your brethren who are known by the name of Jacob. You become poorer and lower
and weaker in obvious ways; your numbers decline daily, both yesterday and to-
morrow. However, we become greater; our horn is ascendant. Our enemies are
trampled under our feet, while our friends are as resplendent as the sun as it goes
forth. Now, if there is sin in your hand, remove it; but if there is truth on your
lips, declare it. Speak freely, and fear not. I shall ask you, and you will inform
me.”27
I have translated the uncertain place name in this text as Huesca, in
northern Spain, in the light of a recent study by Carlos del Valle. The

Rosenthal edition, xxv–xxvi. Unfortunately, Rosenthal was not very clear on the manuscripts he
used for his edition. On Milh.amot ha-Shem, see also David Berger, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille,
and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission of Medieval Polemic,” Speculum 59 (1974):
34–47, and Robert Chazan, “The Christian Position in Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem,”
in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. Jacob Neusner et al.,
4 vols. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), ii: 157–170.
26 Milh.amot ha-Shem was discussed extensively by Shem Tov ibn Shaprut in his Even Boh.en. Chapter
eleven of Milh.amot ha-Shem was vigorously rebutted by Nicholas de Lyra, in his Responsio ad quendam
Iudeum ex verbis Evangelii secundum Mattheum contra Christum nequiter arguentem. As part of his
doctoral thesis noted in the introduction, n. 46, Joshua Levy is also studying the utilization of chapter
eleven of Milh.amot ha-Shem by Shem Tov ibn Shaprut and the rebuttal of that same chapter by
Nicholas de Lyra.
27 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 4–5.
100 Data and foundations
alternative suggestion is Gascony, in southern France.28 In either case, Jacob
ben Reuben’s home community, from which he was exiled, cannot be
identified, although it is likely to have been on the Iberian peninsula, in
all likelihood in Andalusia.29 His perceptions of Christian threat and his
proposed responses to that threat are strikingly parallel to those of our
other four Jewish polemicists. His work surely reflects the same intellectual
ambience as that of the Kimhis, père et fils: commitment to textual accuracy;
lexical precision; an emphasis on context; a commitment to reasonable
explication of the biblical text; and an overall emphasis on reason and
reasonability. Thus the parallels strongly suggest that he fits comfortably
into the broad geographic and cultural area of this study.
The reference to a cordial relationship with a prominent and learned
Christian is intriguing, but we can hardly be certain as to the accuracy
of this information. A purported setting of friendly exchange of views
is commonplace in polemical works.30 On the other hand, there is un-
usual detail here – the notion of some kind of exile and friendship with a
learned priest. Moreover, one of the distinctions of Milh.amot ha-Shem
is the richness of its knowledge of Christianity and the author’s com-
mitment to presenting a full, rather than a vitiated portrait of Christian
claims. Throughout the work, the Christian disputant is accorded ongo-
ing rebuttal. Unlike many Jewish polemical works, in which the Christian
disputant is merely a stick figure, to be quoted and derisively dismissed,
the Christian protagonist in Milh.amot ha-Shem is given a series of re-
sponses to Jewish rebuttals, in each instance deepening and strengthening
the Christian position.31 It is not at all unlikely that some kind of gen-
uine contact with a literate and sophisticated Christian lies behind the
dialogue.32

28 Carlos del Valle, “Jacob ben Rubén de Huesca. Polemista. Su patria y su época,” in Polémica Judeo-
Cristiana estudios, ed. Johann Maier et al. (Madrid: Aben Ezra Ediciones, 1992), 59–65. For the view
that the locale was Gascony, see the observations of Judah Rosenthal, in Milh.amot ha-Shem, ix.
29 Recall the studies by Lasker on the origins of Jewish anti-Christian argumentation in the Islamic
world, cited above, Chap. 3, n. 4. In his study, “Jewish–Christian Polemic and Its Roots in the Islamic
World,” 10–15, Lasker discusses the borrowings in Milh.amot ha-Shem from the Andalusian tradition.
30 Note such a setting, for example, in Gilbert Crispin’s late eleventh-century dialogue with a Jew of
Mainz, in Judah of Cologne’s twelfth-century memoir, and in Odo of Tournai’s twelfth-century
dialogue with a Jew named Leo. For interesting discussions of the phenomenon, see Irven M.
Resnick’s introductory observations to his translation of the Odo of Tournai dialogue (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 30–31, and Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle
Ages, 156–157. Both are quite accepting of the reality underlying claims of informal discussion between
a Christian and a Jew.
31 See Chazan, “The Christian Position in Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem.”
32 Recall Berger, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission
of Medieval Polemic,” which shows Jacob’s citation in Hebrew of an important Latin passage.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 101
From the outset, the focus around which the bulk of Milh.amot ha-Shem
revolves is Judaism’s monotheism versus Christianity’s alleged polytheism.
This focus is apparent all through the introduction, including the brief
segment already quoted, and on into the substantive chapters of the book.
The Jewish protagonist is called the meyah.ed – he who affirms the unity
of God; the Christian spokesman is designated the mekhah.ed – he who
denies, i.e. who denies the unity of God. The essential issue is God’s unity,
although – as we shall have ample opportunity to see – Jacob ben Reuben
addresses many further matters along the way.
Unlike Sefer ha-Berit, with its esthetically pleasing but potentially con-
fusing slippage from approach to approach and issue to issue, Milh.amot
ha-Shem is far more clearly organized, in ways that make it – as noted –
something like a handbook for argumentation. The author indicates in
his introduction that the Christian–Jewish dispute rests on twin founda-
tions of knowledge – reason and revelation. For him (as for the Kimhis),
Jewish truth is firmly anchored on these twin foundations. In his terms,
the Jewish belief in one God is thoroughly attested by “two trustworthy
witnesses – the first is true intellect and the second is sacred Scripture.”33
These twin foundations of religious truth set the framework for the bulk of
Milh.amot ha-Shem, with the mekhah.ed (the denier of God’s unity) accorded
the role of challenger and the meyah.ed (the affirmer of God’s unity) the
respondent.
Chapter One of Milh.amot ha-Shem is devoted to complex discussion of
the truth or falsity of Christianity as reflected in rational argumentation.34
The exchanges are protracted. As indicated, the Christian protagonist is far
from a stick figure, given merely an opening statement and then rebutted
decisively by the Jew. Rather, an issue is raised by the Christian, rebutted
by the Jew, reformulated by the Christian, and then attacked in its revised
form.35 Because of the comprehensiveness of these exchanges, we shall
engage them rather fully at a later point in this study.36 At this point, it
is enough to note in Milh.amot ha-Shem the critical position accorded to
argumentation from reason, the sophistication of the Christian spokesman

33 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 4. 34 Ibid., 7–22.

35 The doggedness of the exchange is somewhat reminiscent of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, where the
interlocutor Boso is accorded ongoing opportunity to pursue his argumentation. In an interesting
study, Daniel J. Lasker notes the general tendency of Jewish polemicists to present the Christian case
in the most cursory manner possible. See Daniel J. Lasker, “Teaching Christianity to Jews: The Case
of Medieval Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics,” in Judaism and Education: Essays in Honor of Walter I.
Ackerman, ed. Haim Marantz (Beer Sheba: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1998), 73–86.
To this broad tendency, Jacob ben Reuben was an exception.
36 See below, Chap. 12.
102 Data and foundations
in these matters, and the ultimate claim for Jewish superiority as regards
the appeal to reason.
With the second chapter, the stage shifts to argumentation based on
biblical truth. In fact, Chapters Two through Ten all focus on this kind of
argumentation. This emphasis implies that – despite acknowledgment of
the twin foundations of religious truth – the Jews whom Jacob ben Reuben
has undertaken to instruct were more likely to be affected by Christian
appeals to revelation than by Christian appeals to reason. In general, it
seems plausible to suggest that argumentation from reason, because of its
complex and technical nature, might often miss the mark in efforts to reach
either the Christian or Jewish masses. Jacob ben Reuben, like Joseph Kimhi,
seems to have recognized that the more common style of argumentation –
and hence the greater danger to the Jewish minority – involved an appeal
to the word of God as reflected in Scripture.
Chapter Two of Milh.amot ha-Shem begins with a fascinating discussion
of modalities of biblical interpretation. The Christian – still the challenger –
argues for non-literal interpretation, while the Jew argues for a far more con-
textual and delimited biblical exegesis. Once again, the argumentation on
both sides is highly sophisticated, with the Jewish author of course making
the Jewish protagonist eventually victorious. The length and sophistication
of the argumentation over methodology is unusual.37
With the second half of Chapter Two, the argumentation from revelation
proceeds to the substantive, with the following selection of biblical books
addressed:
Chapter Two (second half ) – the Pentateuch;
Chapter Three – Psalms;
Chapter Four – Jeremiah;
Chapter Five – Isaiah;
Chapter Six – Ezekiel;
Chapter Seven – the Minor Prophets;
Chapter Eight – Daniel;
Chapter Nine – Job;
Chapter Ten – Proverbs.
The order is sensible, moving from the Pentateuch to literature viewed by
Christians as prophetic and predictive of Jesus to some of the closing books
of the Hebrew Bible.38 Throughout, the same doggedness of exchange,
37 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 23–40.
38 Jacob’s decision to place argumentation from Psalms immediately after argumentation from the
Pentateuch is striking. Recall the centrality of Psalms in early Christian claims, as noted in Chaps. 1
and 2.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 103
the same sophistication accorded the Christian spokesman, and the same
eventual Jewish superiority are maintained.
The heart of Milh.amot ha-Shem is contained in these first ten chap-
ters, with the Christian portrayed as challenger and the Jew depicted as
respondent. The closing two chapters move in altogether different direc-
tions. In both, the dialogue format more or less disappears, because it is
no longer appropriate. Chapter Eleven of Milh.amot ha-Shem is quite re-
markable. The Jewish position moves from defensive to offensive. Jacob
ben Reuben shares with his Jewish readers lengthy Hebrew translations
from the Gospel of Matthew and levels against Christian Scripture a series
of biting criticisms. Gone is the argumentation from shared foundations,
whether reason or revelation. Here the focus lies with a body of material
that Jews do not acknowledge. The Jewish argument is simply that this
material is deficient and that its shortcomings betray the basic infirmities
of the Christian religious vision.39
The twelfth and closing chapter of Milh.amot ha-Shem addresses issues
associated with messianic times. The most important of these issues in-
volves the critical question of messianic advent – whether the Messiah has
already come or is yet to come. Related to this issue is of course the status of
the Jews, whether they are correct in anticipating the advent of the Messiah
or whether that advent has already taken place, with the Jews rejected by
God.40 We have seen this critical question already in Sefer ha-Berit and in
the brief citation from Jacob’s introduction to Milh.amot ha-Shem. It is of
course striking that Jacob ben Reuben chose to end his opus by address-
ing this issue, just as Joseph Kimhi had closed Sefer ha-Berit in the same
way.

d avid kimhi
We have already encountered Joseph Kimhi, the father; we now proceed to
David Kimhi, the son – a son who much surpassed his father in subsequent
fame. David Kimhi was one of the premier Hebrew linguists and biblical
exegetes of the Jewish Middle Ages. His work follows closely along the lines
adumbrated by his father and older brother, Moses, before him: careful at-
tention to textual accuracy; precise lexical and grammatical usage; attention

39 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 141–156. The intense Jewish objections to the Gospel elicited the objections of
Nicholas de Lyra, indicated above, n. 26.
40 The entire chapter is found in Milh.amot ha-Shem, 157–185. The issue of messianic advent can be
found there, 157–161. The rest of the chapter concerns bodily resurrection at the end of days and
philosophic issues associated with creation.
104 Data and foundations
to context; insistence upon the rational in exegesis and beyond exegesis.
The rationalist inclination of David Kimhi drew him into the unfortu-
nate conflict that broke out in southern-French Jewry over the thinking
of Maimonides, with David Kimhi of course ranged on the side of the
Maimunists.41
David Kimhi, so far as we know, composed no overtly polemical work.42
He did, however, introduce lengthy and important polemical observations
into his commentaries. The work most richly endowed with such observa-
tions is his commentary on Psalms. That commentary has been exceedingly
popular; it was among the earliest Hebrew books to be printed.43 Its lengthy
anti-Christian comments were surely among the reasons for the work’s en-
during popularity. In fact, a number of these lengthy comments have been
regularly circulated as a separate treatise.44 It is because the anti-Christian
observations in David Kimhi’s commentary on Psalms are so rich and have
in fact been subsequently accorded separate status by Jews that I have in-
cluded them in this study.45
David Kimhi’s emphasis on Christian claims based on the book of Psalms
should by now hardly be surprising. As seen earlier, the book of Psalms was
replete with verses associated already in the New Testament with Jesus,
his person, and his mission.46 We have just now noted that Jacob ben
Reuben, in ordering the nine biblically grounded chapters of his polemical
treatise, made the book of Psalms the second of these chapters – indication
of his own view of the importance of this particular biblical book to the
Christian–Jewish debate.

41 See again Talmage, David Kimhi, which is the fullest biographical study of any of the figures whose
writings we are analyzing. Recall also Talmage’s “R. David Kimhi as Polemicist,” in which he analyzes
the son’s approach to Christian claims based on biblical citations, an approach more or less parallel
to that of the father. See also Cohen, “The Kimhi Family.”
42 There is a polemical work attributed to David Kimhi, which Talmage published in Sefer ha-Berit,
83–96. Talmage himself argued that this work did not in fact come from the pen of David Kimhi.
See Frank Talmage, “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise: Anti-Cathar and Anti-Orthodox,” Harvard
Theological Review 61 (1967): 323–337.
43 It was first printed in Bologna, in 1477.
44 These comments were first printed as a separate treatise in 1644 and have been regularly reprinted since
then. Talmage included them in his edition of Sefer ha-Berit, 71–79. They have been translated and
studied by Bermard H. Mehlman and Daniel F. Polish, “The Response to the Christian Exegesis of
Psalms in the Teshuvot la-Nozrim of Rabbi David Qimhi,” in Jewish Civilization: Essays and Studies,
ed. Ronald A. Brauner, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 1979–1985): iii:
181–208.
45 For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to utilize the full edition of the Kimhi commentary, edited
by Avraham Darom, rather than the brief separate publication of the anti-Christian observations.
Similarly, the Mehlman and Polish translation is based upon the full edition as well. Both will be
cited, but once more all translations will be my own.
46 Again, see above, Chaps. 1 and 2.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 105
David Kimhi was obviously well aware of Christian utilization of a num-
ber of psalms as evidence of the messianic and divine role of Jesus. Many
of David Kimhi’s observations on individual psalms were intended to ob-
viate standard Christian readings. In some instances, David Kimhi attacks
only in passing Christian exegesis of specific verses. The most interesting
material, however, comes from a series of psalms for which he provides
explicit identification and rebuttal of Christian readings. For these psalms,
David Kimhi begins with his own lengthy exegesis, identifying the central
message of each psalm and then proceeding to verse by verse explication of
the text. At the end of his commentary on the given psalm, he then depicts
the Christian view and provides extended argumentation against it.47
Methodologically, David Kimhi’s observations on the book of Psalms
follow directly in the path laid out by his father. There are striking parallels
between some of the comments of the father and the son. In an ironic
way, however, the more extended observations of the father in his Sefer ha-
Berit never achieved anything like the overall impact of the more limited
observations of the son in his biblical commentary. Because of the general
popularity of David Kimhi’s commentaries and the separate publication of
his anti-Christian comments, David Kimhi’s observations became major
vehicles for the diffusion of Christian and anti-Christian argumentation
throughout the Jewish world.

rabbi meir bar simon

Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah is a sprawling collection of ma-
terials, of more than two hundred and fifty folios in manuscript. Polem-
ical concerns are but one component in this collection, albeit the domi-
nant component.48 The author of the diverse opuscules that constitute the
Milh.emet Miz.vah was a well-known intellectual, religious, and communal

47 Especially noteworthy in this regard are David Kimhi’s comments to Pss. 2, 7, 19, 21, 22, 45, 72, 87,
and 110. The separate publication noted above includes most of these psalms – specifically 2, 22, 45,
72, 87, and 110, omitting 7, 19, and 21.
48 Rabbi Meir’s collection is found in Bib. Pal. Parma, ms. 2749. Portions of the manuscript have been
edited by William Herskowitz, Judaeo-Christian Dialogue in Provence As Reflected in Milh.emet Miz.va
of R. Meir ha-Meili (Doct. diss.: Yeshiva University, 1974), and by M. Y. Blau, Shitat ha-Kadmonim
‘al Masekhet Nazir, (New York: n.p., 1974), 305–357. The fullest description of this collection can
be found in Siegfrid Stein, Jewish–Christian Disputations in Thirteenth-Century Narbonne (London:
H. K. Lewis, 1969). I have published a number of papers on individual segments of the Milh.emet
Miz.vah; these will be noted shortly. I have dealt with the broad polemical themes in the collection in
“Polemical Themes in the Milh.emet Miz.vah,” in Les Juifs au regard de l’histoire: Mélange en l’honneur
de Bernhard Blumenkranz, ed. Gilbert Dahan (Paris: Picard, 1985), 169–184, and in Daggers of Faith:
Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and the Jewish Response, 49–66.
106 Data and foundations
leader of early thirteenth-century southern-French Jewry. Rabbi Meir is
known, first of all, for his novellae on the Babylonian Talmud, a number
of which have been published over the past decades. He was clearly an
important student and teacher of the rabbinic corpus.49 In the Milh.emet
Miz.vah itself, Rabbi Meir makes clear his active role as a leader both within
the synagogue and outside it. One of the segments of the Milh.emet Miz.vah
we shall shortly engage is the record of a counter-sermon that Rabbi Meir
delivered in the synagogue of Narbonne in the wake of a formal Christian
conversionist sermon.50 Another segment of the collection – a segment
we shall not consider directly – is the record of a discussion between the
rabbi and Archbishop Guillaume de Broue of Narbonne over the issue
of Jewish usury.51 Yet another segment details wide-ranging talks between
Rabbi Meir and Archbishop Guy Fulcodi of Narbonne, who subsequently
became Pope Clement IV.52 Rabbi Meir seems to have been fully recog-
nized by his co-religionists and by the non-Jewish authorities as a leader
and spokesperson.
The Milh.emet Miz.vah differs in a number of ways from Sefer ha-Berit
and Milh.amot ha-Shem. In the first place, the middle decades of the thir-
teenth century constitute an altered ambience from the late twelfth and
early thirteenth century. What had been, during the late twelfth and early
thirteenth century, considerable but informal spiritual pressure, to which
Joseph Kimhi, Jacob ben Reuben, and David Kimhi responded, evolved
during the early thirteenth century into a set of formal and aggressive ec-
clesiastical initiatives.
Two of the new Church initiatives dominate in the Milh.emet Miz.vah.
The first was aimed at a major Jewish economic outlet, lending of money
at interest. Rabbi Meir argued vigorously – albeit unsuccessfully – against
many of the new Christian anti-usury steps.53 The second initiative reflected
extensively in the Milh.emet Miz.vah involves the technique of compelling
Jewish attendance at sermons designed to bring the message of Christianity
to Jewish audiences. In the pages of the Milh.emet Miz.vah, our author repeat-
edly introduces the issue of forced sermons, arguing strenuously – although
49 On Rabbi Meir’s talmudic commentaries, see Yisrael M. Ta-Shma, H . a-Sifrut ha-Parshanit la-Talmud,
2 vols. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999–2000), ii: 154–156. On Rabbi Meir bar Simon as a talmudic
scholar attracted to Maimonidean thinking, see Moshe Halbertal, Bein Torah le-H
. okhmah (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 2000), 116–133.
50 See Robert Chazan, “Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne: A Christian Sermon and a
Jewish Reply,” Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974): 437–457.
51 Idem, “Anti-Usury Efforts in Thirteenth-Century Narbonne and the Jewish Response,” Proceedings
of the American Academy for Jewish Research 41–42 (1973–74): 45–67.
52 Idem, “Archbishop Guy Fulcodi and His Jews,” Revue des études juives 132 (1973): 587–594.
53 Idem, “Anti-Usury Efforts in Thirteenth-Century Narbonne and the Jewish Response,” and “A
Jewish Plaint to Saint Louis,” Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974): 287–305.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 107
again vainly – on a number of grounds that this new practice is thoroughly
illegitimate.54 As noted, one of the most interesting segments of the col-
lection is in fact the rabbi’s response to a missionizing sermon delivered in
Rabbi Meir’s own synagogue of Narbonne.
In addition to the change in ambience, there is also a decided shift in
intellectual stance from the Kimhis and Jacob ben Reuben to Rabbi Meir bar
Simon. The emphasis on twin sources of truth – reason and revelation – in
the earlier polemical works gives way in the Milh.emet Miz.vah to a far more
focused concern with Scripture and its interpretation as the foundation
of all human knowledge.55 In the pages of the Milh.emet Miz.vah, there
is even early reflection of the new mid-thirteenth-century technique of
utilizing rabbinic materials as the basis for christological argumentation,
a technique that – like the forced sermon – formed an integral element
in the new missionizing campaign.56 For Rabbi Meir, reason does not
involve the rather technical issues found in the two Kimhis and Jacob ben
Reuben; rather, reason for him is reflected loosely in the reasonableness of
the teachings of a religious faith and – more importantly – in the behaviors
that a religious faith engenders in its followers.57
Finally, there is a pronounced shift in style from the earlier works to
the Milh.emet Miz.vah. In contrast to Joseph Kimhi, Jacob ben Reuben,
and David Kimhi, Rabbi Meir bar Simon is maddeningly disorganized
and prolix. Part i of the Milh.emet Miz.vah is a very odd conglomeration
of separate works, lacking any serious organizational framework. Indeed,
Rabbi Meir himself seems to have been aware of this problem, since he
indicates that he composed the second part of his collection “so that one
might find in it easily the responses [to Christian claims] that are in the first
part, in the sermons.” To be sure, Rabbi Meir – true to disorganized form
– tells us immediately that, in this second part, “I further added materials,
all of which is correct to the discerning and accurate to those seeking
wisdom.”58 In Part iii of the collection, Rabbi Meir regularly doubles back
to cover issues he has already addressed. Throughout the collection, the
tendency toward chaos and disorganization is manifest.59

54 Idem, Daggers of Faith, 39–43.

55 This is despite the evidence adduced by Halbertal, above, n. 49, for Rabbi Meir’s moderate Maimunist
position.
56 Chazan, Daggers of Faith, 69.
57 As a result of these concerns, Rabbi Meir will be cited extensively below, in Chaps. 14 and 16.
58 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 305.
59 Curiously, Rabbi Meir is much addicted to enumeration, which should normally serve as a tool for
careful organization. He divides his collection explicitly into five parts and, within the separate parts,
often provides lengthy numerical lists, e.g. his list of objections to Christianity. In Rabbi Meir’s case,
the enumeration really doesn’t mitigate the organizational chaos.
108 Data and foundations
Rabbi Meir is also repetitious and wordy in the extreme. In his sermon,
delivered in the wake of a Christian missionizing address, he apologizes for
delaying the Sabbbath lunch of his auditors, something of an acknowledg-
ment of his tendency toward wordiness.60 Ironically, this sermon may well
be the best organized and most efficiently presented of the pieces included
in the Milh.emet Miz.vah.
Because the Milh.emet Miz.vah is a complex and poorly organized collec-
tion of opuscula, we must orient ourselves by attempting to distinguish the
discrete elements in this composite work. Specification of separate units
is hampered to an extent by the dolorous state of the manuscript and to
an extent by Rabbi Meir’s own idiosyncratic style. At certain points, badly
preserved folios make identification of precise units a bit tentative; at other
points, it is Rabbi Meir himself who obscures the precise ending of one unit
and the beginning of a second. Overall, however, the picture is relatively
clear. Much more serious is the loss of the initial folios of the collection.61
This loss robs us, in all likelihood, of what might have been a broad state-
ment of authorial conceptualization of the entire work. It certainly deprives
us of Rabbi Meir’s introduction to Part i of the Milh.emet Miz.vah. The au-
thor who is so explicit as to the nature of Parts ii and iii of his collection
almost surely provided such an introduction to Part i as well. Loss of the
opening folios of the Milh.emet Miz.vah likewise denies us the opening of
the dialogue that constitutes the first segment of that Part i.
The first three parts of the Milh.emet Miz.vah are devoted almost ex-
clusively to Christian–Jewish polemics; the remaining segments are heavily
weighted toward internal issues in Jewish communal and religious life. Part i
of the Milh.emet Miz.vah is a mélange (mish-mash might be more accu-
rate) of polemical and practical-policy pieces. It comprises six elements:
(1) what seems to be an extended dialogue between the author and some
kind of Christian interlocutor (as noted, the opening of this dialogue has
been lost);62 (2) the record of a sermon that Rabbi Meir delivered in the
synagogue of Narbonne, in the wake of a missionizing address delivered
therein;63 (3) the record of a second sermon delivered by the author;64
(4) a set of issues that, for the author, make acceptance of Christianity un-
thinkable;65 (5) the protocol of a lengthy discussion on the issue of Jewish
60 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 25.
61 The present first folio begins in the midst of a Jewish reply to some sort of Christian thrust. See
ibid., 1.
62 Ibid., 1–25 and 102–144. 63 Ibid., 25–31.
64 Ibid., 61–65. Pages 32 through 60 are taken up by Herskowitz’s notes. The same is true for the other
gaps notable in Herskowitz’s edition of Part i of the Milh.emet Miz.vah.
65 Ibid., 65–75.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 109
usury between the archbishop of Narbonne and the rabbi;66 (6) a letter
that the author purportedly drew up for the king of France, arguing the
illegitimacy of the new royal initiatives against Jewish usury.67 While there
are polemical elements in the last two of these six elements, we shall omit
them from our discussion, since they focus more on matters of practical
policy than religious truth.
I have designated the opening segment in Part i of the Milh.emet Miz.vah
a dialogue, but the term is a bit misleading. In both Sefer ha-Berit and
Milh.amot ha-Shem, the dialogue format meant alternating statements by
the Christian and Jewish discussants. The lost portion of what I have
called a dialogue clearly began with a lengthy Christian statement. The
first material available to us is a string of Jewish rebuttals, each of which
begins with something like: “You have further said . . . ;” “What you have
said regarding . . . ;” “The proof you brought regarding . . . .” Rather than
individual units of give-and-take, there is evidence here of a protracted
Christian statement, followed by a sequence of Jewish rebuttals. To be
sure, these Jewish rebuttals are occasionally interrupted by give-and-take
between the Jew and the Christian. For example, one of the issues clearly
raised by the Christian protagonist in his lost opening remarks involved
the propriety of Jewish usury. The rabbi’s objections to the Christian case
evoked Christian opposition and considerable back-and-forth.68
The issues to which the Jewish protagonist responds in this first portion
of the dialogue are diverse and show no discernible pattern of organiza-
tion. The Jewish remarks address such matters as: the eternity of Jewish
law; the Trinity; Jewish exile; forced sermons; usury; Jewish fulfillment of
the commandments; baptism. There seems little rhyme or reason in the
organization of these issues. Indeed, these matters range randomly from
the practical to the theological, and the Jew recurrently shifts stance from
defending against Christian claims to attacks on Christianity. On two occa-
sions, the Jewish response to the earlier remarks by the Christian stimulates
some give-and-take. One instance, just now noted, involves Jewish usury;
the other involves baptism.
Midway through this material, the string of Jewish responses to the
earlier Christian statement comes to an end, and genuine dialogue – mean-
ing Christian thrust and Jewish response – begins.69 However, the gen-
uine dialogue, like the prior string of Jewish responses, shows no real sign
of meaningful organization. The issues addressed early on, for example,
are: paradise; Christian confession; Original Sin; three claimed essentials
66 Ibid., 93–101. 67 Ibid., 187–222. 68 Ibid., 4–10. 69 Ibid., 12.
110 Data and foundations
of Christianity – baptism, Trinity, and the Cross; Jewish exile; claimed
Christian miracles. Here to be sure the practical issues of usury and forced
sermons disappear, leaving only theological concerns in contention. How-
ever, organization of these concerns remains random, with the Jew shifting
regularly from a defensive position to an offensive position. This genuine
dialogue is inexplicably broken by the author’s insertion of his two sermons,
the set of objections to Christianity, and the discussion with the archbishop
of Narbonne about Jewish usury. The dialogue is resumed – as abruptly as
it was interrupted – toward the end of Part i of the Milh.emet Miz.vah. The
same random style is evident in the continuation of the dialogue after the
interpolations.70
This somewhat strange dialogue is interrupted by the records of two
sermons ostensibly delivered by the author himself. The first of the two
sermons is a fascinating document. Rabbi Meir’s introduction indicates that
he is paraphrasing “a sermon I preached after the preaching cleric who is not
of our faith expressed his views in the synagogue before the congregation.
With him were many non-Jews, great and respected. Within the sermon
were responses to his views, which he had expressed against us on that
occasion.”71 We have here direct evidence of the new preaching campaign
and a sense of a few of its features. This particular missionizing sermon
took place in the synagogue itself. While Jews were vigorously opposed to
the forced sermons, when there was no alternative they much preferred to
hear these messages within their own ambience, rather than in a Christian
setting. It seems highly likely that both the Christian and Jewish addresses
were delivered in the vernacular. Thus, the Hebrew record provided by
Rabbi Meir represents a paraphrase of remarks delivered originally in the
Romance dialect of Languedoc.
The presence of important non-Jews in the Narbonne synagogue is inter-
esting and significant. While the synagogue ambience may have provided
an element of comfort to the Jews exposed to the new proselytizing initia-
tive, the presence of so many influential Christians must have been quite
intimidating. It would seem, from some of the opening remarks in the
Jewish sermon as reported by Rabbi Meir, that these non-Jewish auditors
remained for his address as well. Rabbi Meir quotes himself as intending to
focus his sermon on an important pericope in the closing chapter of Song
of Songs. He continues: “By your will and with their permission, we shall
explain the matter of this verse and this pericope, with God’s help.” The

70 Ibid., 102–144. 71 Ibid., 25.

 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 111
rabbi then proceeds immediately to turn the phrase “with God’s help” into
more than a mere formula:
May the Lord, from whom proceeds proper response, assist our mouth and show
us what we should say, just as we find he promised Moses, when he sent him to
speak before the rulers of the land, its sages and its officers. Thus is it written:
“Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and teach you what to say.”72
The references to “their permission” and to Moses speaking “before the
rulers of the land” surely suggest a setting in which the Jewish leader finds
himself before powerful non-Jews. The presence of these powerful non-
Jews presented Rabbi Meir with a quandary. It was his responsibility to
reassure his Jewish followers, without however expressing himself in ways
that might prove offensive to the Christians in attendance.
Perhaps the most intriguing question of all concerns the identity of the
Dominican preacher whose missionizing sermon served as the backdrop to
the rabbi’s counter-address. Some time ago, I suggested that this preacher
may well have been the well-known Friar Paul Christian, subsequently
responsible for the dramatic encounter with Rabbi Moses ben Nahman in
Barcelona in 1263 and for the forced debate with the leaders of Parisian
Jewry in the late 1260s or early 1270s. My earlier suggestion was based on
evidence that Friar Paul was southern French in origin, on the reference
in the Hebrew account of the Barcelona disputation to Friar Paul’s earlier
preaching to the Jews of southern France, on the parallels between the
argumentation revealed in Rabbi Meir’s sermon of rebuttal and what we
know of Friar Paul’s thinking from Barcelona and Paris, and from the
reference by Rabbi Meir to “the preaching cleric who is not of our faith,”
which I took to mean of our blood but not of our faith.73 The first three
of these considerations would still lead me to suggest – with appropriate
tentativeness – that Friar Paul was the Christian preacher. I am now inclined,
however, to see the reference to “the preaching cleric who is not of our
faith” as merely highlighting the inappropriateness of his appearance in the
synagogue of Narbonne.
The specific contents of Rabbi Meir’s sermon, what it reveals of the
Christian attack, and how that assault was met will be deferred for a later
chapter.74 Suffice it to note for the moment that the rabbi’s careful explica-
tion of Song of Songs 8:8–10 makes a case for the lengthy Jewish exile and
its accompanying degradation as divinely predicted. He further argues for
inevitable redemption of the Jewish people, again as indicated in Scripture,
72 Ibid. The biblical citation is from Exod. 4:12.
73 Chazan, “Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne,” 456–457. 74 See below, Chap. 9.
112 Data and foundations
and for diverse rewards for the Jews, dependent on the level of their ongoing
faithfulness to the God of Israel. The rabbi’s contentions suggest that the
thrust of the Dominican’s remarks involved an attack on the Jews grounded
in their dire circumstances, a theme encountered repeatedly in the Milh.emet
Miz.vah (as well as in Sefer ha-Berit and Milh.amot ha-Shem). By focusing
so singlemindedly on the passage in Song of Songs, the rabbi was able
to communicate his message effectively, without ostensibly offending his
Christian auditors.
This fascinating sermon, preached under such unusual circumstances, is
immediately succeeded in the Milh.emet Miz.vah by yet another sermon, this
time provided with no specification of circumstances. Rabbi Meir calls it
simply “another sermon.” Nonetheless, polemical concerns dominate this
sermon as well. Once more, a set of biblical verses constitutes the backbone
of the sermon. These biblical verses illustrate two major contentions, first
that Jewish law is eternal and inviolable and second that the protracted exile
of the Jews proves nothing, since its length has been predicted. Indeed,
biblical prediction further assures the inevitable redemption of the Jewish
people.
The major problem with this second sermon lies with the precise ending
of the rabbi’s address. The sermonic quality of the opening paragraphs of
this section of Part i is unmistakable. However, Rabbi Meir then introduces
a set of related materials that treat these same issues, without ever bringing
his address to the kind of decisive ending that was manifest in the earlier
sermon, preached in the wake of the Christian message. The problematic
close of the second sermon should not be allowed to obscure the power of
this address, however. In this second sermon, the issue of historic Jewish
fate is engaged far more directly and Christian allegations are rejected more
explicitly. It seems highly likely that, in delivering this second sermon,
Rabbi Meir was not burdened with the presence of Christian auditors and
could express himself more freely and more negatively toward Christian-
ity. The sermon is cleverly constructed and shows considerable exegetical
acuity.
The fourth and final overtly polemical segment of Part i of the Milh.emet
Miz.vah consists of a sequence of fifteen attacks on Christianity. Rabbi
Meir identifies this segment as sparked by the claims of an adversary “who
disagrees with our religion and belief.” In response to the claims of this
adversary, Rabbi Meir indicates explicitly a number of bases for Jewish
refusal to acknowledge Jesus and the claims of the Christian faith. This
intense attack lacks the direct New Testament foundation encountered in
Milh.amot ha-Shem; it does include, however, careful consideration of many
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 113
facets of the life and career of Jesus. Toward the end of this sequence of
fifteen claims, the focus shifts to post-Jesus Christianity and its shortcom-
ings, including some interesting reflections on the thirteenth-century en-
vironment in which Rabbi Meir lived. Ever disorganized and garrulous,
Rabbi Meir concludes his list of fifteen flaws in Christian thinking by
adding yet another six shortcomings, drawn from prophetic predictions of
divine redemption not yet fulfilled.
Parts ii and iii of the Milh.emet Miz.vah are considerably simpler than
Part i, although hardly free of disorganization and repetition. As noted,
Rabbi Meir himself was aware of the rambling nature of Part i and set out to
rectify the situation somewhat in Part ii. He composed it “so that one might
find in it easily the responses [to Christian claims] that are in the first part,
in the sermons.”75 To be sure, he could not help but add further materials
as well. This material, old and new, is organized in the form of a quasi-
dialogue. It begins with a Christian challenging a Jew with the now familiar
issue of Jewish exile and degradation. The Jew expresses concern that his
comments should not be perceived as offensive, and the Christian urges
reassuringly that the Jew speak honestly and freely. With this, the Christian
disappears almost entirely. Only the Jew speaks in a substantive way. The
Jewish protagonist opens with a brief, but interesting defense of Judaism –
the rationality of its teachings and the morality of Jewish behavior. He then
begins to enumerate a set of one hundred Jewish objections to Christianity,
criticizing Christians beliefs and Christian behaviors. Like Joseph Kimhi,
he sees the moral level of a religious community as an important reflection
of the truth of its belief structure. Upon conclusion of these one hundred
arguments, Rabbi Meir provides yet another forty, to be succeeded by yet
another twenty. The Christian figure makes no appearance throughout the
entirety of this lengthy Jewish speech, resurfacing only in cursory fashion
at its conclusion.
Part iii of the Milh.emet Miz.vah looks much like what Joseph Kimhi
had promised as the closing section of Sefer ha-Berit; it was intended to
adduce a lengthy set of biblical verses that incontrovertibly indicate fu-
ture redemption for the Jewish people. These verses proceed sequentially
through the books of the prophets and a number of the closing books of the
Hebrew Bible. To be sure, Rabbi Meir is once again highly disorganized.
After completing observations on the prophetic books and a number of the
closing books of the Hebrew Bible, he doubles back and goes over most of
the same ground a second time. Also, in many cases, he loses his focus on

75 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 305.

114 Data and foundations
promised redemption and simply treats general polemical issues relative to
key verses.76
I have devoted considerable space to outlining the contents of the
Milh.emet Miz.vah, both because of its length and its lack of organization.
The stylistic deficiencies should by no means mislead us. The Milh.emet
Miz.vah is a treasure, providing rich evidence of mid-thirteenth century
intensification of Christian pressures, of Jewish perceptions of those pres-
sures, and of the efforts of a determined Jewish temporal and spiritual
leader to shore up the defenses of his beleaguered brethren. Rabbi Meir
clearly performed an important function in his thirteenth-century context,
although we cannot know how effective his sermons and writings actually
were among his fellow Jews. For us, his collection provides invaluable data
for investigation.

rabbi moses ben nahman

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides to the Western world; the Ramban
to the Jewish world) was a giant of medieval Jewish intellectual and spiritual
life, a giant whose creativity was expressed in a dazzling range of cultural
domains.77 Nahmanides was a master of talmudic literature, and his novel-
lae to the Talmud have remained influential over the generations.78 He
was yet more renowned for his commentary on the Bible, which became a
classic in its field. His biblical commentary is characterized by the breadth
of his learning and the closeness of his readings. Recent study has sug-
gested remarkable literary sensitivity as a central feature of Nahmanides’s
biblical exegesis.79 This same person was a pivotal figure in the emergence

76 The first set of observations can be found in Milh.emet Miz.vah, 129b through 152b; the second from
152b through 179b. Unlike Parts i and ii, Part iii has not yet been published. It certainly merits
publication.
77 We possess no modern scholarly biography of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, along the lines of Talmage’s
David Kimhi. For a number of recent traditional biographies, see Robert Chazan, Barcelona and
Beyond, 210, n. 41. A number of extremely valuable essays can be found in Isadore Twersky (ed.),
Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious Virtuosity (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1983). For interesting observations on the multi-faceted Nahmanides, see
Berger, “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times,” 98–99.
78 See again Ta-Shma, Ha-Sifrut ha-Parshanit la-Talmud, ii: 29–55. It is worth citing the opening
sentence of Ta-Shma’s lengthy treatment of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman as a commentator on the
Talmud: “With the activity of the Ramban, a new page was opened in the history of Torah study in
general in Spain and in the saga of rabbinic literature there in particular.” See also Moshe Halbertal,
“Nahmanides’ Conception of the History of Halakhah and the Minhag,” Zion 67 (2002): 25–56.
79 See Yaakov Elman, “Moses ben Nahman/Nahmanides (Ramban),” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament:
The History of Its Interpretation, 416–432, and Michelle Judi Levine, The Poetics of Characterization
in Nahmanides’ Commentary to Genesis (Doct. diss.: New York University, 2000).
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 115
of the new mystical tendencies on the Iberian peninsula. His reticence in
the area of mystical speculation has necessitated considerable conjecture
on the part of modern scholars as to his precise views and role. There is
unanimity, however, in assessment of Nahmanides as a seminal figure in
the development of medieval Spanish Kabbalah.80
At the same time, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman was recognized both within
and beyond the Jewish community of his age as an authoritative spokesman.
Within the Jewish community of medieval western Christendom, he played
a key role in mediating the painful internal controversy over the writings of
Maimonides. Obviously, his standing in all camps enabled him to play this
mediating role.81 Beyond the Jewish community, it hardly seems accidental
that Nahmanides was selected as the Jewish spokesman in the important
disputation of 1263, held in Barcelona under the auspices of King James
I of Aragon. There seems to have been a prior relationship between the
monarch and the rabbi of Gerona and considerable respect on the part of
the former toward the latter.82
In addition to all of this, Nahmanides was a dogged and brilliant de-
fender of the Jewish faith. His role in the Barcelona disputation of 1263
has long been acknowledged and celebrated. The innovative argumenta-
tion adumbrated by Friar Paul, utilizing rabbinic materials to show Jews
that their own religious authorities had long ago acknowledged Christian
truths, posed a new threat to the Jews of western Christendom. By the
middle of the thirteenth century, the Church had secured the backing of
many secular rulers for forced sermonizing. The innovative case developed
by Friar Paul was in effect given a public testing under the auspices of the
powerful king of Aragon, with Rabbi Moses ben Nahman called upon to

80 Among the major studies on the kabbalistic teachings of Nahmanides, see Efraim Gottlieb, “The
Ramban as a Kabbalist” (Hebrew), in Studies in the Kabbala Literature, ed. Joseph Hacker (Tel-Aviv:
Tel-Aviv University, 1976), 88–95; Moshe Idel, “We Have No Kabbalistic Tradition on This,” in Rabbi
Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious Virtuosity, 51–73; Elliot R. Wolfson, “‘By
Way of Truth’: Aspects of Nahmanides’ Kabbalistic Hermeneutic,” AJS Review 14 (1989): 103–178;
idem, “The Secret of the Garment in Nahmanides,” Daat 24 (1990): Eng. sect., xxv–xlix.
81 On the Maimonidean controversy, see the general overview provided by Daniel Jeremy Silver,
Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180–1240 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965). See
also the more focused studies of Azriel Shohet, “Clarifications of the First Controversy over the
Writings of Maimonides,” Zion 36 (1971): 27–60; Berger, “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval
and Early Modern Times,” esp. 98–100; idem, “How Did Nahmanides Propose to Resolve the
Maimonidean Controversy?,” Me’ah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of
Isadore Twersky ed. Ezra Fleischer et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 135–146: James T. Robinson,
Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes (Doct. diss.: Harvard University, 2002), 38–43.
There is much uncertainty about this controversy, due to the slanted stances of the surviving source
material.
82 I have treated at length the role of Nahmanides in the 1263 disputation in Barcelona and Beyond.
116 Data and foundations
answer the new claims. Nahmanides created a set of Jewish rebuttals to the
new Christian claims, using them at Barcelona to impede the momentum
of the new campaign. In addition, by writing up the narrative account
of his engagement with Friar Paul, he disseminated valuable information
on the new Christian claims and their deficiencies throughout European
Jewry. All of this constituted a major contribution to defending the Jewish
faith in the face of the new Christian missionizing campaign.
I have argued in an earlier context that, for all the impressiveness of
this achievement, the rabbi of Gerona actually did even more. It was and
remains my contention that his narrative account of the disputation of
1263 is, in fact, one of the most effective pieces of Jewish polemic ever
written. In other words, while disseminating valuable information on the
new missionizing argumentation and its rebuttal, Rabbi Moses’ narrative
constituted an appealing and effective case for the overall superiority of
Judaism and the overall deficiencies of Christianity.83
We can never truly know what transpired at Barcelona under royal aegis.
By setting out to prove Christian truth from rabbinic texts, the new mis-
sionizing argumentation in effect removed the truth of Christianity itself
from contention. From the Christian perspective, the very worst possible
outcome of the engagement with Rabbi Moses ben Nahman would have
been that Christian truth could not be proven on the basis of rabbinic
sources. Such a conclusion would in no way have reflected negatively on
the veracity of Christianity. The Latin protocol of the disputation highlights
this corollary of the new argumentation.
Deliberation was undertaken with the lord king and with certain Dominican and
Franciscans who were present, not that the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ – which
because of its certitude cannot be placed in dispute – be put in the center of
attention with the Jews as uncertain, but that the truth of that faith be made
manifest in order to destroy the Jews’ errors and to shake the confidence of many
Jews.84
Were the ground rules of the debate carefully enforced, there would have
been no opportunity for the rabbi to raise any question whatsoever about
the veracity of the Christian faith. He would have been rigorously restricted
to responding to the claims that rabbinic sources indicate Jewish acceptance
of key Christian doctrines. We have no way of knowing whether or not
these ground rules were in fact scrupulously observed.
83 I have discussed both the informational and polemical import of the Nahmanidean narrative in
ibid., 100–141.
84 For a convenient edition of this passage, see Yitzhak Baer, “The Disputations of R. Yehiel of Paris
and Nahmanides” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 2 (1930–31): 185.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 117
What we do know is that Nahmanides’s narrative portrays him as regu-
larly breaking the ground rules and attacking core beliefs of Christianity.
For our present purposes, whether this presentation is historically accurate
or not is beside the point. What is of overriding significance is the cre-
ation of a narrative that has drama, appealing personalities, and a series of
anti-Christian thrusts that cut to the heart of the Christian–Jewish debate.
Nahmanides accomplishes these broader objectives by attributing to
himself lengthy speeches in which he insists on addressing the direct mean-
ing of biblical verses brought into play by Friar Paul in order to highlight
rabbinic explication of these verses. Thus, Rabbi Moses portrays himself as
moving the discussion back into the realm of proper comprehension of bib-
lical truth. In the speeches he attributes to himself, he in addition assaults
key Christian beliefs as hopelessly irrational and criticizes bitingly the moral
level and historic achievements of Christendom. It may well have been in
fact impossible to say such things publicly in Barcelona. By committing
them to writing in an ostensibly accurate narrative of the events that took
place in 1263, Rabbi Moses accomplished a major polemical objective. He
brought these important arguments to the attention of Jewish readers over
the ages.85
We shall examine along the way a number of these crucial observa-
tions by the rabbi of Gerona. Indeed, the Barcelona engagement moved
Nahmanides to write more than just his remarkable narrative account. As
noted, this narrative account has the Jewish protagonist doing far more
than fending off Friar Paul’s claims based on rabbinic statements. In the

85 In a lengthy review of Barcelona and Beyond, David Berger took me to task gently for suggesting
that Nahmanides fabricated in his narrative – AJS Review 20 (1995): 379–388. Because of my deep
respect for David Berger, I have tried to rethink my earlier conclusions. However, I emerged from
this rethinking still convinced that many of the statements that Nahmanides attributes to himself
could not have been uttered in the public setting of 1263. Let me add two observations to this
amicable disagreement. First, in depicting the foolishness of Friar Paul, Nahmanides has him saying
the following in the wake of the address on the Trinity by Friar Raymond of Penyaforte: “This is a
very profound matter, which even the angels and the heavenly forces do not comprehend.” To this the
rabbi purportedly replied: “It is obvious that one cannot believe what one does not understand. Thus,
the angels cannot believe in the Trinity.” Now, the notion that one cannot believe what one does
not understand hardly comports with the mystically inclined rabbi of Gerona. Moreover, Berger
himself points to an interesting instance in which the needs generated by certain circumstances
moved Rabbi Moses to compromise his personal views of the truth. In his “Judaism and General
Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times,” 99–100, Berger notes the letter of Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman to the rabbis of northern France. In this letter, the rabbi inter alia suggests that “the
pursuit of philosophy should be discouraged entirely.” Berger then notes: “The discouragement of
philosophical study even for the elite goes beyond Nahmanides’ position as it appears in his other
writings, and it is likely that he adopted it because of the needs of the moment.” In my view, the
needs of the moment caused the rabbi to distort a bit the realities of 1263 as well, to be sure for
important ends.
118 Data and foundations
narrative, the Jewish spokesman keeps attempting to move the discussion
back to the biblical foundations of the rabbinic statements cited by the Do-
minican friar. This is particularly true with respect to two major Christian
proof-texts – Isaiah 52:13–53:12 and Daniel 9:24–27.
Friar Paul introduced Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the lengthiest of the Isaiah pas-
sages that depicts the Suffering Servant of the Lord, on the first day of
the debate. His utilization of this passage was adroit. He began by asking
the rabbi: “Do you believe that this passage speaks of the Messiah?” Rabbi
Moses ben Nahman reports himself replying in guarded terms: “According
to its true meaning, it speaks only of the people of Israel in its entirety.”
This led Friar Paul – so claims Nahmanides – to then say: “I shall show
from the words of your sages that it [this passage] speaks of the Messiah.”
Rabbi Moses makes no effort to contest the friar’s claim that the rabbis
occasionally attach this important passage to the Messiah.
Now, in terms of the technical rules of the disputation, Nahmanides
should have ended here, for these rabbinic statements constituted the core of
the new Dominican case. In fact, however, Nahmanides – at least according
to his own account – by no means stopped at this point. Rather, he plunges
ahead into the heart of the issue. He first argues that, even if the rabbis speak
of the Messiah in terms of the Suffering Servant of the Lord, they never
suggest his death at the hands of his enemies, as was the case with Jesus.
“I shall explicate the entire passage – should you wish – clearly and fully.
There is no indication in it that the Messiah will be killed, as occurred with
your Messiah.” Again, Nahmanides – at least as depicted in the narrative –
has exceeded the ground rules, moving back to the bedrock of Scripture and
very much putting Christian belief in question. Nahmanides the narrator
concludes his account of this exchange drily: “They did not wish to hear.”86
The narrative report alone constitutes a highly effective piece of polemic,
suggesting that Christians regularly misread the important Isaiah passage
about the Suffering Servant of the Lord. Nahmanides, however, did not
leave the matter at that. In the wake of the disputation, he provided for
his Jewish readership full explication of the Isaiah passage that he claims
to have offered his Barcelona audience. This brief analysis of Isaiah 52:13–
53:12 shows us Nahmanides the exegete at his very best, moving from verse
86 Nahmanides’s narrative account of the Barcelona disputation has been published numerous times and
has been translated into a number of languages. For a complete listing of the editions and translations,
see Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, 244. I shall cite the readily accessible version published by Chaim
Chavel in Kitvei Rabbenu Moshe ben Nah.man, 2 vols.; rev ed. (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
1971), i: 302–320 and the translation of Chaim Chavel, Ramban: Writings and Discourses, 2 vols.
(Shilo Publishing, 1978), ii: 256–296. Again, all translations will be my own. This passage can be
found in Vikuah. Barcelona, 307, and in The Disputation at Barcelona, 666–667.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 119
to verse in order to explain every image in this rich pericope. This brief
treatise is yet another important Nahmanidean piece of polemic, and we
shall consider it in some detail at a later point.87
A second passage that occasions a Nahmanidean offer of exegesis of a
difficult and controversial biblical text revolves about Daniel 9:24–27. The
exchange over Daniel 9:24–27 is one of the lengthiest depicted in the narra-
tive of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman. It begins innocently enough with Friar
Paul citing the opening verse in the passage. “Seventy weeks have been de-
creed for your people and your holy city, until the measure of transgression
is filled and that of sin is complete, until iniquity is expiated and eternal
righteousness ushered in, until prophetic vision is ratified and the Holy of
Holies anointed.” Friar Paul suggests non-controversially that the seventy
weeks must be years; he suggests that the end of the process, involving
anointing of the Holy of Holies, is a reference to Jesus. According to Friar
Paul, rabbinic chronology posits seventy years for the Babylonian exile and
420 years for the Second Jewish Commonwealth, giving a sum of 490 years
as a total. Thus, argues Friar Paul, rabbinic chronology combined with the
plain sense of Daniel 9:24 suggests that the rabbis themselves through their
chronology supported – knowingly or unknowingly – Christian claims.
As with the case erected by Friar Paul upon rabbinic interpretation of
Isaiah 52:13–53:12, here, too, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman makes no response
to the rabbinic material, thus tacitly accepting it. Rather, what he does is
to hone in immediately upon the biblical verse itself, arguing that the re-
demption promised in Daniel 9:24, as interpreted by Friar Paul, simply does
not square with the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians
project as their Redeemer. Specifically, argues Rabbi Moses, Jesus appeared
many decades before completion of four hundred ninety years indicated in
Daniel 9:24.
This reply by Nahmanides, which should, in any case, have been out of
bounds, leads Friar Paul to explicate Daniel 9:25 in a way that Nahmanides
instantaneously dismisses. Once more, the rabbi of Gerona turns to his
audience and offers to provide complete explication of this difficult Daniel
passage. “Now, I shall explicate for you the entire pericope fully, if you and
these associates of yours desire to learn or have the heart to understand.”
Unlike the prior instance, Nahmanides portrays himself as launching im-
mediately into an explanation of Daniel 9:24–27, affording his Christian
auditors no opportunity to stop him. Again, this explication of the biblical
87 This Nahmanidean composition, like the previous one, has been published a number of times. See
the list in Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, 244–245. I shall cite from Chavel, Kitvei Rabbenu Moshe
ben Nah.man, i: 322–326.
120 Data and foundations
text, with its anti-Christian conclusion, was not supposed to be voiced in
the public engagement. Whether it was so voiced or not we cannot know;
that the Nahmanidean narrative served to alert Jews to what its author
perceived as the error of Christian exegesis is patent.88
Once again, Nahmanides felt in the wake of the public disputation that
the issues raised in his narrative required further explication, leading him to
compose yet another post-1263 treatise, entitled Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, devoted to
the entire issue of biblical promises of redemption.89 We have already seen
– in the lost segments of Sefer ha-Berit, in the closing chapter of Milh.amot
ha-Shem, and in the Milh.emet Miz.vah – extended Jewish attention to these
issues. To be sure, the Nahmanidean treatment goes beyond anything we
have yet encountered. We shall engage Sefer ha-Ge’ulah rather fully at a later
point in this study.90 For the moment, we must simply note it as a third
and final composition in the impressive Nahmanidean polemical corpus.

At the conclusion of this review of the materials available to us from late

twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and northern Spain, we
can count ourselves fortunate in the quantity and diversity of the Jewish
polemical writings that have been preserved. They involve considerable
material, were composed over a lengthy stretch of time, stem from the pens
of a diverse group of Jewish intellectual and spiritual leaders, and were
couched in a variety of literary formats.
Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit probably dates from the 1160s; Jacob ben
Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem is dated 1170; David Kimhi’s commentaries
were composed during the closing decades of the twelfth century and the
early decades of the thirteenth; Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah
moves us into the middle decades of the thirteenth century; Nahmanides
wrote his narrative, his study of the Servant of the Lord passage, and his
Sefer ha-Ge’ulah during the 1260s, in the aftermath of the disputation of
1263.91
Moreover, the mindsets of these five authors and leaders were hardly
identical. To be sure, all five were masters of the traditional materials of the
medieval Jewish curriculum, meaning both the biblical and rabbinic corpus.
They were all likewise more or less committed to the new learning, that
88 The entire set of exchanges can be found in Vikuah. Barcelona, 312–315, and The Disputation at
Barcelona, 677–682.
89 For the various editions, see Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, 245. I shall cite from Chavel, Kitvei
Rabbenu Moshe ben Nah.man, i: 253–296 and from Chavel, Ramban: Writings and Discourses ii:
558–650. Again, all translations will be my own.
90 See below, Chap. 9.
91 Given the death of Nahmanides in 1270, none of these writings can postdate that year.
 Polemicists of southern France and northern Spain 121
is to say the science and philosophy that Andalusian Jewry had absorbed
and bequeathed. Yet, at the same time, there is a clear sense of distinction
between the Kimhis and Jacob ben Reuben, on the one hand, and Rabbi
Meir ben Simon on the other. The former were more fully immersed in
the new thinking that emanated from Andalusian Jewry; the latter shows
us a more rabbinic and traditional bent of mind. Our last and fifth leader
– Nahmanides – defies easy categorization; it is hardly accidental that he
serves as a moderating figure in the quarrel between the Maimunists and the
anti-Maimunists. Finally, we are fortunate in having at our disposal such
a wide range of literary genres – biblical commentary, sermons, dialogues
contrived and perhaps real, narratives, and treatises.
From the 1160s through the 1260s the Jewish communities of southern
France and northern Spain seem to have been exposed to intense Christian
pressures. The leaders of these Jewish communities were called upon to
clarify and rebut these Christian challenges. In the process, they became
trail-blazers in the creation of a previously missing Jewish polemical litera-
ture. The quantity and range of the materials created during this century of
literary activity provide a secure base for our analysis of these Jewish percep-
tions and rebuttals. The diversity of times, personalities, and literary genres
guarantees that we will not be led too far astray by the idiosyncrasies of one
decade, one personality, or one literary format. These variegated polemical
writings afford us a firm foundation for analysis of Jewish perceptions of
heightened Christian polemical thrusts, Jewish responses to these thrusts,
and Jewish assaults on the ruling faith.
 chap t e r five

Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation

Medieval polemical argumentation and literature must be approached from

a number of perspectives. These include: the issues under debate, the
grounds of argumentation, and the literary format in which the polem-
ical case is made. Our cursory look at early Christian polemics focused on
the grounds of that anti-Jewish argumentation; the coming chapters will be
organized in terms of key issues in the Christian–Jewish debate; at the close
of this study, we shall devote some attention to the literary formats chosen
by our Jewish authors.1 Prior to embarking on the analysis of key issues in
dispute, we must pause to ask whether our Jewish authors were sensitive
to the foundations upon which Christian argumentation was based and
whether they chose to challenge any of those foundations.

Our brief review of the foundations of Christian anti-Jewish polemic has

suggested that the central mode of argumentation from the Christian side
involved citation of biblical verses that Jesus and his followers were pur-
ported to have fulfilled. We have seen that, in the Gospels themselves, the
miracles performed by and on behalf of Jesus played a key role in the presen-
tation of Christian claims to Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries. However, with
the passage of time, the immediacy of these miracles was lost, at least for the
purposes of convincing Jews, whose ancestors had seemingly rejected these
wonders. Thus, the predictions of Israel’s prophets – likewise central to
Gospel argumentation – came to dominate the Christian case as made to
Jews.
Our sketch of the five late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish polemi-
cists from southern France and northern Spain has indicated that Christian
thrusts from biblical citation were in fact perceived by Jews of this period
as the cornerstone of Christian argumentation. While claims from reason
1 The cursory look at early Christian views can be found in Chaps. 1 and 2; the chapters organized
along the issues at stake in the Christian–Jewish debate are Chaps. 6 through 14; the chapter in which
we shall discuss the literary formats is Chap. 15.

122
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 123
were advanced, along with arguments from historical fate and moral stan-
dards, it was the truth embedded in Scripture that was seen as central.
This truth was seemingly perceived by Christians to be the most effec-
tive tool for overcoming Jewish recalcitrance. The writings of each of our
five Jewish polemicists show central concern with Christian argumenta-
tion from Scripture. Perhaps most impressive of all is Jacob ben Reuben’s
Milh.amot ha-Shem. Precisely because Jacob begins with extensive presen-
tation of the Christian case based on reason (chapter one), the centrality of
argumentation from the Hebrew Bible is especially striking (chapters two
through ten).2
While Christians and Jews shared a common Scripture and built much
of their religious argumentation on that common literary corpus, in fact
the two communities were not reading precisely the same text. For Jews,
the shared sacred literature was the Hebrew Bible in its original language.
Jews were deeply committed to the biblical text in its Hebrew format. To
be sure, Jews from early on translated their Bible into a variety of languages.
Nonetheless, their liturgy and popular usage maintained the centrality of
the Hebrew text. In the world of western Christendom, the Jewish focus
on the Hebrew version of the Bible was exclusive. No strong tradition of
utilization of biblical translations emerged in this particular sphere of Jewish
life and culture.3 Throughout the works of our five Jewish polemicists, it
is the Hebrew text to which they regularly have recourse.
The situation was somewhat different on the Christian side. With the
expansion of Christianity into the Roman Empire and its evolution into
a gentile faith community, the Hebrew original of the biblical books lost
its preeminence. The dominant version of the Hebrew Bible used in the
early Church was the Greek Septuagint. Since every translation is ulti-
mately an interpretation, Christians were at one remove from the Hebrew
original, with its power and its problems. To be sure, legend suggested
divine assistance with the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek.
Nonetheless, awareness of the problems associated with the Greek transla-
tion/translations is clearly reflected in the mammoth scholarly undertaking
of the third-century Church Father Origen.
Origen makes clear the role of Christian–Jewish controversy in his un-
dertaking, alerting us in the process to some of the issues we shall regularly
encounter in this study.

2 See above, Chap. 4.

3 Recall the commitment of a great scholar like Saadia Gaon to the translation of the Hebrew Bible
into Arabic, as noted in Chap. 3.
124 Data and foundations
I make it my endeavor not to be ignorant of their various readings, so that in my
controversies with the Jews I may avoid quoting to them what is not found in
their copies and also may be able to make positive use of what is found there, even
when it is not to be found in our Scriptures. If we are prepared for our discussions
with them in this way, they will no longer be able, as so often happens, to laugh
scornfully at gentile believers for their ignorance of the true readings which they
have.4
Origen’s great undertaking, designated the Hexapla because of its six-
column arrangement, involved collation of the Hebrew original of the bib-
lical text, the transliteration of this Hebrew original into Greek characters,
then the Greek translations of Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and
Theodotion. This endeavor – that seems to have run to some 6,500 pages
in all – represented a herculean effort to make available to the Christian
world a range of texts, in order to build a secure base for interpretation of
the Hebrew segment of Christian Scripture.5 We shall encounter medieval
Jewish awareness of this undertaking, not surprisingly couched in negative
terms.
The second critical figure in shaping medieval western Christendom’s
approach to the Hebrew Bible was the fourth-century Jerome. Jerome was
a complex figure, who lived a rich and diversified life. He was born in 346
in the Balkans, spent considerable time in Trier, Rome, Constantinople,
Antioch, and Alexandria, and was involved in a wide range of Church
activities – often highly controversial – in these diverse locales. From 386
until his death in 420, Jerome lived and worked in Bethlehem. Despite the
range of his activities, it seems clear enough that his greatest contribution
lay in his biblical studies, including both translation and commentary.6
Jerome was motivated, in much the same way as Origen, by a desire
to clarify the biblical underpinnings of the Christian faith. With papal
support, Jerome undertook a reworking of the old Latin version of Scripture
in its entirety. For the Hebrew Bible segment of the project, he initially
worked on a revision of the early Latin version via the Greek translation.
For this effort, he seems to have made considerable use of Origen’s Hexapla.
Subsequent to his arrival in Bethlehem, however, he by and large abandoned
the effort to revise the old Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible in favor
of an audacious effort to effect a new translation, based on the Hebrew
4 This citation from a letter by Origen is found in M. F. Wiles, “Origen as Biblical Scholar,” in The
Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963–70), i: 456.
5 For useful treatment of Origen and the Hexapla, see the Wiles essay cited just now, in The Cambridge
History of the Bible, i: 454–489, and Alison Salvesen (ed.), Origen’s Hexapla and Fragments (Tubingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1998).
6 A full biography of Jerome is available in J. N. D. Kelley, Jerome (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1975).
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 125
original. Sometime earlier in his studies, he had begun to master Hebrew,
and he augmented this prior knowledge by turning to Jews for assistance
with his project. The result of his labors was a new Latin translation of the
Hebrew Bible, which became western Christendom’s standard version of
that sacred text.7 The decision to abandon revision of an earlier translation
based on the Greek Septuagint was clearly sober and responsible, and Jerome
provided western Christendom with a version of the Hebrew Bible far more
reliable than previously available. Nonetheless, his translation was once
more an interpretation, and we shall see our Jewish polemicists regularly
attacking Jerome as creator of misreadings of the Hebrew text and thus the
source of misguided Christian thinking.
In addition to this difference in precise text utilized by Christian and
Jewish thinkers, there was also considerable distinction in modes of reading
these two texts. The centrality of argumentation from Scripture meant of
necessity Christian concern with the ways in which the Hebrew Bible should
be read. We have noted, for example, in the book of Acts, the beginning
of reasoned exegesis of important biblical verses. In his lengthy Pentecost
speech, Peter cites two important psalms – 16 and 110 – and interprets
them. What is important for his purposes is to show – briefly, to be sure
– that these psalms cannot possibly be read as references to King David
and must therefore be seen as adumbrations of Jesus. Paul does much the
same thing in his address to the Jews in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch.
Throughout the Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr goes to considerable
lengths to substantiate his Christological readings of a wide range of verses
from the Hebrew Bible. The force of Justin’s argument lies in part in what
he perceives as the simplicity and accuracy of each of his interpretations
and in part in the cumulative weight of so many biblical texts that he sees as
buttressing the Christian case. The same thrust is apparent in Augustine’s
Adversus Judaeos.8
Fairly early on, the Christian community adopted a further reading style,
a set of distinctly non-literal interpretations. We have noted the role played
by these non-literal readings in the argumentation advanced by Augustine.9
Non-literal reading became increasingly popular in the Church, both be-
cause of its inherent suggestiveness and appeal and because it allowed the
Church to grapple effectively with a number of serious problems. The in-
herent appeal of these non-literal interpretations was an outgrowth of the

7 On Jerome’s translation, see Kelley, Jerome, 153–167, and H. F. D. Sparks, “Jerome as Biblical Scholar,”
in The Cambridge History of the Bible, i: 510–541.
8 See above, Chap. 2. 9 Again, see above, Chap. 2.
126 Data and foundations
profound Christian conviction that the New Testament augments and ful-
fills in diverse ways the Old Testament. This deeply held conviction led to
an ever-expanding search for such augmentation and fulfillment.10
Our medieval Jewish polemical works show considerable familiarity with
Christian views of the centrality of the Hebrew Bible to the Christian–
Jewish dispute and the importance of proper reading of biblical texts. In
the most general way, these Jewish polemical works are replete with attacks
grounded in Christian readings of the Hebrew Bible. Such attacks consti-
tute the bulk of the two earliest polemical writings – Sefer ha-Berit and
Milh.amot ha-Shem. Throughout David Kimhi’s commentary on Psalms,
there is recurrent citation of Christian exegesis, often with considerable
detail. Despite the general disorganization of the various opuscules of the
Milh.emet Miz.vah, it is replete with suggested Christian readings of biblical
verses. Even though the Barcelona disputation was supposed to focus on
rabbinic exegesis of the biblical corpus, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman – as we
have seen – claims to have regularly driven the discussion back to the biblical
text itself, presenting and contesting Christian readings of Scripture.
Our Jewish polemicists were well aware that, in the eyes of their Christian
neighbors, a “straightforward” reading of many biblical passages would nec-
essarily entail recognition of Christian truth claims. For example, Joseph
Kimhi, the first of the five Jewish polemicists, has his Christian protago-
nist adducing a sequence of biblical verses, six in all, which he believed
substantiated key Christian teachings. Kimhi’s Jewish protagonist negates
each of these six passages. In exasperation, the Christian is made to say the
following.
All your words are wearisome. However, I shall advance a pericope in Isaiah that
you will be unable to deny. For it prophesies about Jesus and Mary. This is the
pericope that says: “Behold a virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son. You
shall name him Immanuel [i.e., God is with us].” There has been no virgin ever
who gave birth, except for Mary. Thus Jesus is the Son of God. Therefore he was
named Immanuel [meaning that God is with us, i.e. among us, human like us].11
The sense imputed to the Christian protagonist is that there can be no avoid-
ing the obvious meaning of this straightforward biblical verse. To be sure,
10 At the same time, the non-literal interpretations helped the young Christian community address
a series of vexing issues, including, for example, the meaning of the details of the Law, now that
the Law was no longer operative. Allegorical readings also help to efface some of the discomfort
that those educated in the Greco-Roman literary tradition – like Augustine – felt with some of
the material in the Hebrew Bible. For a set of valuable essays on non-literal interpretative style in
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, see Jon Whitman (ed.), Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the
Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
11 Sefer ha-Berit, 43; The Book of the Covenant, 53.
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 127
the Jew will immediately launch a rebuttal, denying the Christian reading
of Isaiah 7:14. Nonetheless, Joseph Kimhi captures for us Jewish aware-
ness of Christian confidence in the simple and convincing Christological
meaning of key biblical verses.
Jacob ben Reuben conveys precisely the same sense in his Christian’s
remarks that introduce the case he will make from the Suffering Servant
passage in Isaiah 52:13–53:13.
Behold all these verses, from the first letter to the last, are clear and obvious
testimony that our teachings concerning our Messiah are correct. It goes without
saying that each and every verse reveals his [the Christian Messiah’s] secrets and
features and indicates and explicates the essence of those actions he undertook. Not
a single element in this entire testimony, which the prophet testified concerning
him, remains unfulfilled.12
Christians were extremely confident of the implications of many biblical
verses; Jews were fully aware of this confidence.
The Christian propensity toward non-literal interpretation, which we
noted in Justin Martyr and Augustine, attracted special Jewish attention.
This issue is presented in our very first work, Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit.
Early on, Joseph Kimhi has his Christian protagonist advance his point of
view in the following manner:
You [Jews] understand most of the Torah in its literal sense . . . We [Christians],
however, understand it allegorically, which is called figura. Indeed, you [Jews] are
like one who pecks at the bone, while we [eat] the marrow, which is the essence.
You are like the beast that eats the chaff, while we eat the grain.13
This view of contrasting Christian and Jewish approaches to the biblical
text is by and large rooted in reality. That is to say, the Christians in
our polemical works are regularly presented as inclined toward non-literal
readings of the biblical text, while their Jewish peers are generally portrayed
as insisting upon the literal sense of the text. The distinction, however, is
by no means hard and fast. On occasion, Christians will advance a literal
reading of biblical verses, with Jews insisting on the need to understand
biblical language allegorically.14
Jacob ben Reuben accords far fuller attention to this special kind of
reading. The entire first half of chapter two of his Milh.amot ha-Shem is
devoted to a protracted argument over the modalities of reading Scripture,
with the Christian making an extended case for treating the Hebrew Bible in

12 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 103.

13 Sefer ha-Berit, 37–38; The Book of the Covenant, 46–47. 14 On these complications, see below.
128 Data and foundations
allegorical fashion. An unusually lengthy speech is accorded the Christian
at the beginning of the second chapter of the Milh.amot ha-Shem. This
speech begins with general observations about the Torah of Moses.
All the words of Moses are true and proper to those who comprehend. His Torah
and his testimony are trustworthy, and his word is accurate. The sophisticated
must understand these matters rationally and must fulfill properly all the com-
mandments. For if we do not comprehend properly the words of the Torah, but
[only understand them] literally, many issues will prove problematic.15
Clearly, Jacob’s Christian spokesman contrasts propriety in biblical exegesis
with literalism. Literalism is – in his eyes – the wrong way in which to
read the truth bequeathed by Moses. Understanding the non-literal and
deeper meaning of Scripture is, for Jacob’s Christian protagonist, the key
to plumbing the truths of the biblical corpus.
Jacob ben Reuben’s Christian protagonist is made to identify four biblical
passages that – he claims – present insuperable problems when taken in
their literal sense. The first involves the seeming contradiction between
divine injunction to Adam in Genesis 2:15 and Genesis 2:17. The second
involves the seeming contradiction between the divine reaction to creation
in Genesis 1:31 – “And God saw all that he had made and it was very
good” – and the prohibition of an entire set of animals both for eating and
for contact in Leviticus 31. The third difficulty advanced by the Christian
protagonist involves the specification that the altar to God be built of stone
(Exodus 20:21–22), and the subsequent reality of altars of gold and copper
(Exodus 37:25–26 and 38:1–2). The last of the difficulties involves the puzzle
in understanding the Mosaic prohibition of grazing an ox and a donkey
together. In all these cases, claims the Christian, literal understanding of
the biblical text is in fact impossible, necessitating recourse to its allegorical
meaning.16
The Christian protagonist then spells out what he sees as the only rea-
sonable alternative to a literal reading.
I have said to you that there have been many exegetes who have explained for us
your Torah and your Scripture and who have revealed for us all the secrets of your
commandments. They have explained to us all the matters that are metaphorical
and allegorical. Indeed, Jerome, who was one of the translators, spoke and wrote
at length in order to order and explicate all of Scripture in a metaphorical and
allegorical sense.17

15 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 24.

16 In his “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission of Medieval
Polemic,” David Berger traces the transmission of this passage from Gilbert Crispin and Alan of
Lille to Jacob ben Reuben.
17 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 26.
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 129
The Christian proceeds to show how each of the four difficult passages
has a profound allegorical meaning. Jacob ben Reuben is fully aware of
the Christian sense of the problematics of Scripture and of allegory as the
answer to many of these problems.
Let us examine briefly only one of these Christian allegorical expla-
nations, the one that contrasts divine satisfaction with creation and the
command to abstain from contact with and consumption of the pig. The
Christian spokesman notes Jerome’s suggestion that the Jews, in abstaining
from the flesh of the pig, “take only the husk of Scripture, leaving the root
and the branch.”18 More specifically, they fail to address properly the di-
vine sense of satisfaction embodied in Genesis 1:31. By contrast, Christians
read Genesis as permitting the consumption of the flesh of the pig. The
Leviticus prohibition is then interpreted as a divine injunction to avoid
the disgusting behavior patterns of the pig. By interpreting the Leviticus
prohibition in this metaphorical fashion, Jerome thus removes the seem-
ing contradiction between two biblical passages, a contradiction that the
literal Jewish sense simply does not address, in the Christian view. Again,
this constitutes Jewish awareness of the special style of Christian reading of
Scripture, a style that the Jewish polemicists will by and large reject.19
The Christian challenge as to proper modalities of biblical exegesis was
intense and multi-faceted and was well recognized by our Jewish polemi-
cists. On the one hand, Christians regularly advanced a host of biblical
verses, claiming that Jesus, his immediate followers, and the Church he
founded clearly and obviously fulfilled the predictions embedded in these
verses. This Christian insistence forced Jewish polemicists to devote consid-
erable attention to the proper modalities of eliciting the “straightforward”
meaning of biblical texts. At the same time, the non-literal readings of
Scripture so popular in Christian circles posed a further challenge. Jewish
polemicists were called upon to advance a position with regard to such
readings. Since Jewish tradition had to an extent developed its own non-
literal readings of Scripture, the polemical response had to be nuanced and
sophisticated.

Let us begin with Jewish responses to “straightforward” biblical exegesis,

with Jewish efforts to combat fairly direct Christological readings of the
Hebrew Bible. While we shall eventually examine in detail Jewish rebuttal
of a number of key Christian claims grounded in biblical exegesis, here we
shall attempt to glean more abstractly some of the principles of exegesis

18 Ibid., 27.
19 Again, some of the complications in this picture will be introduced later in this chapter.
130 Data and foundations
advanced by our Jewish polemicists. In identifying these lines of Jewish
response, we shall make use of the first of our Jewish polemicists, Joseph
Kimhi, because of his place in the chronological chain of Jewish authors
and his sensitivity to issues of biblical interpretation.20
We have already noted a five-part approach on the part of Joseph Kimhi
to the Christian argumentation based on biblical verses.21 The most basic
of these five elements involves accuracy in citation of the text. Conclusions
drawn from inaccurately quoted verses are necessarily erroneous. Again, it
should be recalled that Joseph Kimhi was, first and foremost, a student of
the biblical text and Hebrew grammar. Not surprisingly, he was very much
concerned with textual accuracy and sees in such accuracy the beginning of
responsible exegesis and likewise the foundation of the polemical enterprise.
The very first verse introduced by the Christian protagonist in Sefer
ha-Berit is, as already noted, Isaiah 9:5. This verse appears in the midst
of a message of redemption delivered by the prophet. At the core of this
prophecy lies the birth of a child.
For child has been born to us,
A son has been given to us,
And authority has settled on his shoulders.
The Christian reads the second half of Isaiah 9:5 as follows: “His name
shall be called Wondrous Councilor, Mighty Hero, Eternal Father, Prince
of Peace.” This leads the Christian protagonist to a simple conclusion:
“These names are not possible for a human being. It [the verse] therefore
forces me to believe in the Son [i.e., in Jesus as the divine Son].”22
The Jewish spokesman’s rebuttal begins with the text itself.
This verse that you have brought as a proof from the prophecy of Isaiah shows an
error committed by your translator Jerome. For the vocalization [of the Hebrew
original] does not read yikare’ [“shall be named,” in the passive voice].23 Rather,
[it reads:] “The Wondrous Councilor, the Mighty Hero, The Eternal Father will
name him Prince of Peace.”24
Reading yikare’ in the passive voice meant, for the Christian, that there
was one being designated in the verse – a child given four appellations,
designations that could only be understood as signifying divinity. For the

20 I am, of course, by no means suggesting that the rest of our Jewish polemicists were insensitive to
issues of biblical interpretation.
21 See above, Chap. 4. 22 Sefer ha-Berit, 22; The Book of the Covenant, 29.
23 Jerome has: “et vocabitur nomen eius Admirabilis consiliarius Deus fortis Pater futuri saeculi Princeps
pacis.”
24 Sefer ha-Berit, 22; The Book of the Covenant, 29.
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 131
Jew, reading yikra’ in the active voice meant that there are two beings cited
in the verse – a subject and an object. The subject is God, designated by
three appellations that quite clearly indicate divinity; the object is the child,
who is human and who is designated Prince of Peace. This last designation,
while splendid, is nonetheless human. The Jew additionally proceeds to ex-
plain why each of the specific divine epithets was used in the verse. In each
case, the epithet reflects key divine actions at this particular point in time.
Thus, according to Joseph Kimhi, careful exegete and meticulous gram-
marian, Christian use of Isaiah 9:5 is grounded in a simple but devastating
misreading of the text.
Accurate textual reading and grammatical propriety are, according to
Joseph Kimhi, critical elements in proper exegesis. The same is true for
lexical precision. At a later juncture, Joseph Kimhi challenges Christian
understanding of a key biblical term. In the midst of the exchanges con-
cerning important biblical verses, Kimhi’s Christian spokesman turns his
attention to Isaiah 7:14. As already noted, impatient with Jewish recalci-
trance, he indicates that he was now going to “advance a pericope in Isaiah
that you will be unable to deny.”
The Jewish rebuttal begins with the issue of precise word meaning.
Kimhi’s Jewish protagonist once again cites Jerome as the miscreant re-
sponsible for misreading the straightforward biblical verse.
There is no [verse] in the Bible such as you quoted. Rather, Jerome your translator
misled you. “May he rest in the company of ghosts.”25 You quoted: “Behold a
virgin shall conceive.”26 However, in the Bible it says: “Behold an ‘almah shall
conceive.” Now the term ‘almah means a young woman, whether a virgin or not.
[It means] a virgin [in the verse:] “And the young woman who goes forth to draw
water.”27 [It means a young woman] who is not a virgin [in the verse:] “The way
of a man with a young woman.”28 Likewise, a young man is called an ‘elem, as is
said with respect to David: “Whose son is this ‘elem,”29 as though he said: “Whose
son is this lad?”30
The problem here is not grammatical; it is lexical. The culprit, however,
is once again Jerome, and the result is misleading reading and unfounded
truth claims.
In fact, Joseph Kimhi makes a slightly more complex case for erroneous
translation. He notes that behind Jerome’s translation lies the prior work

25 Prov. 21:16. The full verse reads: “A man who strays from the path of wisdom will rest in the company
of ghosts.”
26 Jerome has: “ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium.”
27 Gen. 24:43. 28 Prov. 30:19. 29 1 Sam. 17:56.
30 Sefer ha-Berit, 43–44; The Book of the Covenant, 54.
132 Data and foundations
of Origen, who compiled the Hexapla, upon which Jerome depended for
his opus. According to the Jewish spokesman, Origen was “the father,
the teacher, the earliest . . . and from him was translated your book [i.e.
your Latin Bible]. Everything depends upon him.” The Jew then connects
Jerome to Origen: “Upon him [Origen] Jerome the translator depended,
and from him he translated, and in him he believed, except for a few words
which he could not comprehend or which contradicted his beliefs and
which he altered.”31 Thus, the Vulgate, upon which western Christendom
depended for its knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, is triply flawed. It is
excessively dependent upon the work of one individual – Origen – in com-
piling the Hexapla, upon the translation effort of yet another individual –
Jerome, and upon a translation process that on occasion involved conscious
manipulation of text to serve belief. This is a thoroughgoing Jewish assault
on the textual grounding of Christian readings of the Hebrew Bible and
upon use of those readings in polemical engagement.
For Joseph Kimhi, responsible understanding of the Hebrew Bible begins
with grammatical and lexical accuracy. In addition, exegesis of a biblical text
must also place the given text within its immediate context. No text can be
responsibly removed from its setting. Thus, in combating Christian exegesis
of Isaiah 7:14, Joseph Kimhi proceeds to argue further that the traditional
Christian exegesis fails to parse the verse in its immediate context, i.e. the
set of events depicted in Isaiah 7.
Now, what kind of sign was it [the virgin birth of Jesus] for King Ahaz of Judah in
regard to his problems with the kings who had massed against him – the King of
Samaria Pekah ben Remaliah and Rezin King of Aram? The verse says: “His heart
and the hearts of his people trembled as trees of the forest sway before a wind.” At
that moment, the Holy One, blessed be he, said to Isaiah the prophet: “Go out to
meet Ahaz . . . and say to him: ‘Do not be afraid and do not lose heart on account
of the two smoking stubs of firebrand.’” Subsequently, the prophet said to Ahaz:
“Ask a sign from the Lord your God, anywhere down to Sheol or above,” i.e. in
the heavens or the earth below. Ahaz replied: “I will not ask, and I will not test
the Lord.” His thinking was evil, for he did not believe that the Creator could give
him a sign. Then the prophet said to him: “Is it not enough for you to treat men as
helpless that you also treat my God as helpless? Therefore the Lord will give a sign
of his own accord. Behold, the young woman [‘almah] is with child and is about
to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.” Now this matter is clear and
obvious. This sign was for Ahaz, so that his heart – which was troubled – might
be firm. Now, if this sign was, as you say, a reference to Jesus, what kind of sign is
this for Ahaz, who never saw him and who did not live in his days?32
31 Sefer ha-Berit, 44; The Book of the Covenant, 54.
32 Sefer ha-Berit, 44–45; The Book of the Covenant, 54–55.
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 133
I have taken the trouble to cite the passage completely, including Kimhi’s
extensive citations from Isaiah 7, in order to highlight the Jewish polemicist’s
method. A verse must be seen in its context; the Christian explication of
Isaiah 7:14 makes no contextual sense whatsoever. Indeed, ripping the verse
from its immediate setting constitutes, for Kimhi, violence against Scripture
and its straightforward meaning.
For Joseph Kimhi, contextual reading involves a micro-context, i.e. the
relevant biblical passage in its entirety, and a macro-context, that is to say
the complete biblical corpus. Yet another weakness of Christian exegesis –
he argues – is its inconsistency within the larger biblical corpus. Responsible
exegesis must take account of the entire Hebrew Bible, making certain that
explication of one verse does not result in eventual contradiction elsewhere.
One of the verses cited by Kimhi’s Christian protagonist is Deuteronomy
18:15: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your
own people, like myself; him shall you heed.” The Christian spokesman in
fact draws out a fuller case, indicating that a subsequent verse spells out the
gravity of transgressing the directives of this prophecy: “If anyone fails to
heed the words he speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.”
The implications of this threat are quickly interpreted by the Christian
protagonist. “You who did not heed his [Jesus’] work and who rebelled
against him – ‘now comes the reckoning for his blood.’ For you are in exile
under the nations from that day [i.e., from the time of Jewish rejection of
Jesus].”33
The Jewish response to this claim – or set of claims – is, as usual for
Joseph Kimhi, multifaceted. The Jewish spokesman, first of all, finds the
Christian conclusion elicited from Deuteronomy 18:15 quite surprising.
The Christian, he notes, had begun by arguing for Jesus’ divinity. What
then is the point of claiming his prophetic powers?34 Indeed, making Jesus a
prophet introduces serious internal biblical problems for the Christian side.
A close look at Deuteronomy 34:10 indicates that, granting for the moment
Jesus’ prophetic power, Jesus the prophet must necessarily be inferior to
Moses, about whom no claims of divinity have ever been lodged. For that
later verse says explicitly, with respect to Moses, “never again did there
arise in Israel a prophet like Moses – whom the Lord singled out, face to
face.”
Joseph Kimhi, ever the attentive biblical commentator, makes certain
that Deuteronomy 34:10 is fully and properly understood. One might

33 Sefer ha-Berit, 37; The Book of the Covenant, 46.

34 Sefer ha-Berit, 37; The Book of the Covenant, 46.
134 Data and foundations
seemingly take this verse to mean that Moses was the greatest of the prophets
who ever existed up to his time, indicating that a later prophet like Jesus
might supersede him. Kimhi rejects this possibility, on the grounds that
Moses was in fact the first – as well as the greatest – of the prophets. All the
prophets of whom we know, e.g. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, followed
Moses in time, while exceeded by him in stature. Kimhi the grammarian
assures us that use of the past tense for future occurrences is altogether
common in biblical parlance. Thus, the force of Deuteronomy 34:10 is
to indicate that Moses would be the greatest of all prophets, thereby re-
ducing the stature of Jesus the prophet to a measure that Christians can
surely not accept.35 Again, exegesis must satisfy the criteria of consistency
within a given pericope and consistency within the larger biblical corpus as
well.
According to Joseph Kimhi, responsible exegesis must also satisfy yet
another criterion – it must simply make good sense. Biblical exegesis that
reaches absurd conclusions cannot be accurate, since the dispenser of re-
vealed truth via the Bible was totally committed to the rational, according
to Joseph Kimhi and his son David as well. After the Christian protago-
nist cites his very first verse, which we recall was Isaiah 9:5, and after the
Jewish spokesman attacks the grammatical accuracy of the Christian read-
ing, the Jewish spokesman then levels an attack on the claimed irrationality
of the doctrine of Incarnation, an attack we shall examine closely in a later
chapter.36 While Joseph Kimhi adduces a number of biblical verses that
seemingly contradict the notion of God incarnate, the heart of his objec-
tion lies in what he perceives to be the utter irrationality of the doctrine of
Incarnation.
Finally, on occasion Joseph Kimhi’s Jewish spokesman argues that
Christian interpretation of biblical verses leads to contradiction of Christian
doctrine or Christian realities. We have noted already the Jewish argument
that Christian exegesis of Deuteronomy 18:15, exegesis that seems to argue
for Jesus’ prophetic powers, in fact leads to conflict with the more pervasive
Christian sense of Jesus as divine. Let us note one more example along
these lines, an example in which Christian exegesis leads to disjuncture
between the verse and subsequent Christian realities. Toward the end of
Sefer ha-Berit, the Christian protagonist introduces Psalm 72, arguing that
the entire psalm can only be understood by reading it as a paean of praise
to Jesus. The Jewish respondent makes a number of points, as always. One
points to the disparity between the psalm and Christian history.

35 Sefer ha-Berit, 37; The Book of the Covenant, 46. 36 See below, Chap. 12.
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 135
How can you explain it [the psalm] as referring to Jesus? For it is said in the psalm:
“All kings shall bow down to him; all nations shall serve him.” Now, we have seen
that all kings did not bow down to him nor did all nations serve him. For the
Muslims and the Jews did not serve him and in fact deny him.37
According to Joseph Kimhi, Christian exegesis and Christian realities part
company in a decisive way. The exegesis must, therefore, be faulty.
Jewish polemicists were well aware of the importance of biblical interpre-
tation to the spiritual pressures their co-religionists were suffering during
the closing decades of the twelfth century and on into the thirteenth. They
responded vigorously to these Christian pressures, developing in the process
a series of procedural stances with regard to the straightforward meaning
of biblical verses. We will encounter these stances regularly in our discus-
sion of Christian argumentation for prior messianic advent, for Jesus as the
suffering and redeemed Messiah, for divine rejection of the Jews, and for
Jesus as both human and divine.

Christian argumentation began with purportedly straightforward exegesis

of Scripture. It often proceeded beyond the straightforward, into the realm
of the metaphorical and the allegorical. We have noted that such non-
literal exegesis served a number of important purposes for the evolving
Church. It eventually became a staple of Christian argumentation with
Jews. Our Jewish polemicists were keenly aware of such Christian readings
of the biblical text and were committed to combating them. This rebuttal
of Christian metaphor and allegory, however, was tempered by recognition
that Jewish tradition in fact occasionally made a place for such readings
as well. The most obvious case of such allegorization by Jews involved
the biblical Song of Songs. Acceptance of a straightforward reading of
these love poems was as impossible for Jews as it was for Christians. Each
faith community read Song of Songs as an allegory of God’s relationship
with itself. For Jews, this tendency toward non-literal reading – restrained
though it might be – meant that rejection of Christian allegorization had
to be carefully and precisely articulated.38
We noted earlier the Christian case for non-literal reading made in Jacob
ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem. Jacob has his Christian protagonist iden-
tify four biblical passages or combinations of passages that can supposedly

37 Sefer ha-Berit, 49; The Book of the Covenant, 61.

38 For important discussions of Jewish polemical stances on non-literal understanding of the Hebrew
Bible, see Berger, The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, 355–361, and “Judaism
and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times,” 85–108, and Lasker, “Christianity,
Philosophy, and Polemic in Jewish Provence,” 16–23.
136 Data and foundations
not be explained via straightforward exegesis. Jacob’s Christian protagonist
then proceeds to show the non-literal meaning of some of these passages,
as part of his case for the need to allegorize. Interestingly, the Jewish re-
buttal advanced in Milh.amot ha-Shem limits itself to arguing that the four
passages or combination of passages can and must all be understood via
normal exegetical procedures. The argumentation is lengthy and detailed.
What Jacob does not do, however, is wrestle with the Jewish tendency to
read some biblical materials in a manner other than straightforward.39
This more complex task Joseph Kimhi took upon himself in Sefer ha-
Berit. Kimhi begins his consideration of the occasional need for non-literal
reading of Scripture early on. One of the very first verses cited by the
Christian protagonist in Sefer ha-Berit is Genesis 6:8, in which God expresses
his disappointment with humanity and his decision to obliterate “men
together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky, for I regret
that I made them.” The Christian reading of this verse was intended to
lay the foundation for the eventual claim of divine reconsideration of the
covenant with the Jews and the divine decision to abandon the Jews in
favor of Christianity.
Interestingly enough, this verse occasions a switch of normal positions,
with the Christian urging straightforward reading of the text and the Jew
arguing that it cannot be understood in its plain sense. Joseph Kimhi has
his Jewish protagonist make the following interesting statement.
In truth, the Creator, may he be blessed, did not regret [his creation of humanity].
Rather, it is the way of the Torah to speak in the language of [everyday] people.
Likewise, Scripture speaks of the eyes of the Lord, the ears of the Lord, the mouth
of the Lord, the hand of the Lord, the foot of the Lord. All this is metaphorical,
so that [everyday] people might be properly trained . . . This tendency will bring
no harm to the wise, for they will understand the truth of the matter. They will
remove the husk and eat the fruit.40
This is a fascinating reversal, with the imagery of the husk and the fruit,
which we have already seen the Christian use, now utilized by the Jew for
his sophisticated reading of the biblical text.
The issue of metaphorical and allegorical reading is raised once again at
a slightly later point in Sefer ha-Berit, during the protracted consideration
of Deuteronomy 18:16. In the midst of that discussion, Joseph Kimhi intro-
duces an interesting digression in which the Christian focuses ostensibly on
the modalities of reading the biblical text. Just as the Jewish spokesman had

39 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 26–40. 40 Sefer ha-Berit, 34; The Book of the Covenant, 42.
 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 137
argued that the Bible must be read in terms of its message to the sophisti-
cated, so too the Christian protagonist claims that there are differing ways
of reading the biblical texts, with Christians reading properly and creatively
and Jews failing to do so. We have already noted the contrast drawn be-
tween Jewish literal reading and Christian allegorical reading. The contrast
is depicted in the following terms: “You [Jews] are like one who pecks at
the bone, while we [eat] the marrow, which is the essence. You are like the
beast who eats the chaff, while we eat the grain.”41
The Jewish response is again multifaceted. At the outset, Joseph Kimhi re-
turns to the prior principle of internal consistency within the entire Hebrew
Bible. He asks whether Moses himself, the transmitter of the Torah, taught
it literally or figuratively. For Joseph Kimhi, there could be no real doubt as
to the answer to this question. All evidence (recall Joseph Kimhi’s emphasis
on the broad biblical context against which all claims had to be measured)
points to the fact that Moses taught the commandments in a literal sense
and obviously intended them to be carried out in a literal sense. Indeed,
all Moses’ successors as leaders of the Israelite people clearly understood
the Mosaic statutes in literal terms, insisting on full observance of these
statutes.42
Nonetheless, since he had already noted the need to read the Bible care-
fully and sometimes non-literally (the “eyes of God” and God’s regret are
not to be taken literally, for example), Joseph Kimhi could not rest com-
fortably with this simple response. He immediately proceeds to complicate
matters.
Know in truth that the Torah is not entirely [to be taken] literally nor entirely
[to be taken] figuratively. An issue that cannot be explained in its literal sense, we
explain figuratively. For if a man says to his servant, “Take the horse and ride it in
the water” – in such a case we must attempt to interpret figuratively.43 Likewise if
he said to him, “Board the ship and traverse dry land in it.” [However,] if he said to
him, “Board the ship and traverse the sea,” there is no need here for an allegory.44
Knowing when to use the appropriate modality is a function of the nature
of the particular text itself. When the text is readily understandable on the
literal level, it is to be understood literally. Only when the text cannot be
understood on the literal level must its allegorical meaning be plumbed.45

41 See above. 42 Sefer ha-Berit, 38; The Book of the Covenant, 47.
43 Joseph Kimhi had obviously not seen any Western movies, with horses and riders dashing madly
into rivers.
44 Sefer ha-Berit, 38; The Book of the Covenant, 47–48.
45 Interestingly, Joseph Kimhi’s Jew comes out sounding much like Jacob ben Reuben’s Christian.
138 Data and foundations
While Kimhi does not introduce at this point his prior example, we can
readily suggest that reference to God’s eyes and ears cannot be understood
literally, but must be plumbed for their metaphorical or allegorical meaning.
Kimhi himself uses circumcision as an example of imagery that can be on
some occasions taken literally and on others must be addressed figuratively.
References to circumcision of the flesh can and must be taken literally,
according to Kimhi; references to circumcision of the heart cannot be
taken literally and must be read allegorically. This leads the Jew to deliver
a slashing attack on his Christian contemporaries, who are – he claims –
uncircumcised of both flesh and heart.46
Thus, the case laid out by Joseph Kimhi turns out to be somewhat more
complicated than we might expect. The simple distinction between Jewish
literalism and Christian figurative reading does not in fact cover the com-
plexity of the situation. Both faith communities could insist on straightfor-
ward reading of Scripture; likewise, both could insist on metaphorical or
allegorical reading. To an extent, the proper modality of reading was deter-
mined by the conclusions that each group wished to draw. Joseph Kimhi,
to be sure, argued for a more principled distinction, suggesting that the
proper modality of reading should in fact be determined by the text itself.
To the extent that a biblical text could be read literally, it should be read
in that way. When a literal reading of the text leads, however, to internal
contradiction or to unreasonable results, then metaphorical or allegorical
reading constitutes the only acceptable alternative.

The Hebrew Bible lay at the center of the Christian–Jewish argument,

from its earliest stages through the period of our concern and indeed on
into the present. Our medieval Jewish polemicists were keenly aware of this
centrality and sought to establish principles of scriptural exegesis for their
engagement with Christian claims. To be sure, even in the realm of biblical
argumentation, there was more involved than simply understanding the
biblical text. These biblical texts had to be correlated with the realities
they purportedly predicted. For example, we have seen that the Christian
case presented by Joseph Kimhi in Sefer ha-Berit was based on Christian
claims for Jesus’ fulfillment of the predictions embodied in Psalm 72. The
Jewish response was to argue that the history of Jesus and the Church he
founded by no means shows fulfillment of those predictions. To be sure, the
methodology for properly assessing historical and contemporary realities

46 Sefer ha-Berit, 38–39; The Book of the Covenant, 48.

 Scriptural and alternative lines of argumentation 139
was not subjected to the kind of sophistication we saw in the reading of
and argumentation over the Hebrew Bible.47
Our review of early Christian polemics showed two further lines of ar-
gumentation, one focused on reward and punishment in history, the other
on the moral and ethical component of religious life. These lines of argu-
mentation were pursued by both sides during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. However, they are accompanied by nothing like the sophistica-
tion of analysis we have encountered in the arena of biblical interpretation.48

Somewhat surprising is the lack of sophisticated analysis as regards the

utilization of human reason for polemical purposes. There was, to be sure,
no real evidence of such argumentation in the New Testament. As we have
seen, Justin Martyr and Augustine illustrated for us the Christian effort to
claim the philosophic truth of Christianity, important as the young Church
won an increasing number of adherents throughout the Greco-Roman
world. With the re-emergence of philosophic texts and the philosophic
inclination in twelfth-century western Christendom, it was inevitable that
this new learning and this new commitment would be harnessed to the
defense and propagation of Christian faith. As we shall see, our Jewish
authors were keenly aware of this newer line of argumentation, perceived a
number of philosophic Christian thrusts, and adumbrated lines of vigorous
rebuttal. Once again, however, we cannot help but be struck by the lack
of sophisticated analysis of this line of argumentation. At no point do
our Jewish polemicists subject the use of reason to the kind of careful
scrutiny that we have seen in the area of biblical exegesis. The guidelines
for distinguishing the rational from the irrational or the reasonable from
the unreasonable are not discussed in the same way as the modalities for
proper reading of the biblical text.49
Christian–Jewish argumentation was grounded largely in understanding
of divine revelation, sometimes in and of itself and sometimes presented in

47 The combination of biblical prediction and assessment of reality will dominate in Chap. 10; it will
surface to a limited extent in Chaps. 6, 7, and 8.
48 Simple observation of historical realities will play a role in Chaps. 8 and 10; direct observation of
moral achievement will be central to Chap. 14.
49 Philosophic reasoning will be featured in Chap. 12. Again note the overview provided by Lasker, Jewish
Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages. Throughout the ensuing discussion, I
shall use the terms “rational/irrational” and “reasonable/ unreasonable” interchangeably. Both terms
are key to the efforts to argue on the basis of human reason. At the same time, “rational”/“reasonable”
reading of Scripture and history will be primary to both the Christian and Jewish views we shall
examine. As we shall see, “rationality”/“reasonability” was extended to examination of behaviors as
well.
140 Data and foundations
tandem with perceived historical realities. Our Jewish authors, while using
a variety of styles of argumentation – including claims rooted in history,
comparative morality, and reason, tended to concentrate above all on bibli-
cally grounded Christian claims and Jewish rebuttals. This concentration is
reflected quantitatively, in the sheer volume of space accorded this biblical
argumentation. There is, however, an additional dimension to this central-
ity. As we shall see more fully, all other styles of argumentation are, in one
way or another, ultimately linked to the Bible. In assessing the evidence
of empirical observation as to historical circumstances and moral levels,
the Bible lurks consistently in the background, establishing the framework
within which the empirical data are interpreted. Even the central Jewish ob-
jection to arguments grounded in reason for the divinity of Jesus – that such
doctrine is “unthinkable” – generally means that, in Jewish eyes, it conflicts
with the central tenets of biblical faith, as Jews read them. As a result of
the centrality of biblically grounded claims, our Jewish authors devoted –
as we have seen – great attention to the proprieties of such argumentation.
Having identified the foundations for argumentation, we must now turn
to a number of major issues as they played themselves out in polemical give-
and-take.
 part iii
Jesus as Messiah
 chap t e r s ix

Biblical prophecy: messianic advent

Jesus as the promised Messiah is surely central to the Gospels and to other
classical formulations of Christian thinking, although he plays other impor-
tant roles as well. Classical and medieval Christianity shared with Judaism
belief in a messianic redeemer and the conviction that the appearance of
this Messiah was clearly foretold by God’s prophetic messengers. We have
seen ample evidence of these views in both the Gospels and the Acts of
the Apostles. In these classical sources, the prophetic citations are not or-
ganized into a tight argument for Jesus’ fulfillment of messianic prophecy;
with the passage of time, Christian thinkers would make that argument
with increasing fullness and rigor. The Christian case for Jesus’ messianic
role was composed of many elements. One of the simplest involved the
claim that Jesus’ appearance on earth corresponded precisely to the times
predicted in Scripture. While not a sufficient proof in and of itself for Jesus
as Messiah, this claim constituted a powerful element in the Christian
case.
As Christians argued that Jesus appeared at exactly the historical juncture
prophesied in Scripture, one book in the Hebrew Bible came necessarily to
the fore – the book of Daniel. This strange and complicated book projects
the most precise timings of the advent of the Messiah to be found in the
biblical corpus. To be sure, the predictions of messianic appearance found
in Daniel are extremely difficult to decipher; they are purposely couched in
exceedingly opaque language and imagery. Nonetheless, a number of Daniel
passages became central to the Christian effort to argue that the timing was
perfect, that Jesus appeared at precisely the point predicted in Daniel for
messianic advent. Such Christian argumentation predictably encountered
Jewish counter-claims that in fact the passages cited from the book of
Daniel indicate nothing about the timing of messianic advent or suggest
an altogether different time frame for messianic appearance, proving that
Jesus could not possibly have been the Messiah predicted therein. We shall
review briefly the structure and message of the book of Daniel, examine
143
144 Jesus as Messiah
some aspects of Christian usage of the book, and analyze patterns of Jewish
rebuttal.

The book of Daniel is one of the more curious compositions in the Hebrew
Bible. It is written in two different languages, partly in Hebrew and partly
in Aramaic. Moreover, it breaks down into two clearly distinguishable seg-
ments, both consisting of six chapters. To make matters more confusing
yet, the two languages and the two parts of the book do not coincide.
Both segments of the bifurcated work show alternations of Hebrew and
Aramaic.1
The first half of the book of Daniel is a narrative account of the challenges
faced by four gifted young Jews exiled from Judea into Babylonia after the
destruction of the First Temple. These four young men remained steadfastly
committed to the demands of Jewish law and tradition and, facing a series
of dangers, were regularly saved through direct divine intervention. One
of the four, Daniel, was blessed with the ability to interpret dreams and
signs, with divine assistance. This ability brought him to the attention of
the royal court, for which he interpreted visions and omens, thereby fore-
telling future developments for the Babylonian monarchy, developments
with more universal implications as well. The overall message of this first
part of Daniel is the one true God’s control of human history, the need
for steadfast loyalty to that one true God, and the rewards such loyalty
entails.
As we proceed into the second half of the book of Daniel, much changes.
The narrative mode disappears, as do Daniel’s three associates. Daniel him-
self is no longer the interpreter of the dreams and visions of others; he
himself becomes the dreamer and visionary, requiring angelic assistance to
understand the complex images vouchsafed him. Present-day students of
the book of Daniel agree that these closing chapters were composed much
later than the opening half. It is generally assumed that these last six chapters
are in fact among the latest segments in the Hebrew Bible, stemming in all
likelihood from the second century b.c.e., the period of the Jewish rebellion

1 There is a vast literature on the book of Daniel. Among the items most helpful to me have been
Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977; The
Anchor Bible); John J. Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993;
Hermenia); Harry Louis Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1948);
Elias Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible (New York: Schocken Books, 1967); John J. Collins,
The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977); idem, The Apocalyptic
Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans,
1998); Jonathan Goldstein, Peoples of an Almighty God: Competing Religions in the Ancient World (New
York: Doubleday, 2002; Anchor Bible Reference Library).
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 145
against Seleucid oppression. The opaque but ultimately hopeful imagery
of Daniel’s visions is seen by present-day scholars as encouragement to the
desperate Jewish rebels in the face of trying circumstances.2
The book of Daniel has had a variety of meanings for subsequent Jewish
and Christian readers. At its simplest level, it portrays God’s control of
human history and the need for steadfast devotion to the God of Israel,
even at the risk of life and limb. For both Jews and Christians, these related
messages were crucial at times of religious persecution.3 Indeed, the stories
of the first half of Daniel suggest strongly that God regularly intercedes
on behalf of those deeply devoted to him. At another and more difficult
level, the book of Daniel provides some of the most graphic imagery of
the divine to be found in the biblical corpus. Not surprisingly, a number
of these potent images appear at critical points in the New Testament
portrayal of Jesus.4 Finally, the visions of the book of Daniel focus on the
unfolding of human history, with projection of some kind of denouement
at the end of this process. They have thus been accorded a central role
in Jewish and Christian messianic speculation. As unique expressions of
the predicted time of messianic deliverance, the Daniel visions have been
prized by Christians and Jews alike, though they have been viewed quite
differently in the two camps. The opacity of their language and imagery
has set the stage for radically divergent Christian and Jewish readings of
this difficult text and its messianic message.
The apocalyptic visions of the book of Daniel are found in chapters
2, 7, 8, 9, and 10–12. Only the very first of these apocalyptic messages
appears in the first half of the book, and it is quite likely that this early
vision played a role in the grafting of the second half of the extant book
onto the earlier layer found in the first six chapters. This first apocalyptic
vision (chapter 2) includes no specification of the time period intended by
God for persecution or deliverance. The four apocalyptic messages of the
second half of the book do include some numerical specification, each in
terms that are exceedingly difficult to comprehend. Of these four numerical
specifications – with attendant imagery, it is the numbers and images of
chapter 9 that became the focus of most intense Christian–Jewish debate,
and it is thus chapter 9 upon which we shall focus.

2 See the items cited in n. 1.

3 Note, for example, the repeated citation of Daniel and his associates in the Hebrew First Crusade
narratives, which I have analyzed in some detail in God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First
Crusade Narratives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
4 Recall the New Testament invocation of imagery from Dan. 7, with the coming of “one like a human
being with the clouds of heaven.”
146 Jesus as Messiah
Since we shall focus on Daniel 9, let me identify briefly the content of
the other four apocalyptic passages. Chapter 2 presents the royal dream of
a great statue:
The head of the statue was of fine gold; its breast and arms were of silver; its belly
and thighs of bronze; its legs were of iron and its feet part iron and part clay. As you
[the king] looked on, a stone was hewn out, not by hands, and struck the statue on
its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. All at once, the iron, clay, bronze, silver,
and gold were crushed, and became like chaff on the threshing floors of summer;
a wind carried them off until no trace of them was left. But the stone that struck
the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.5
Daniel reconstructs the dream and explicates it as well, indicating a
series of kingdoms, to be succeeded by establishment of “a kingdom that
will never be destroyed, a kingdom that shall not be transferred to another
people. It will crush and wipe out all those kingdoms, but shall itself last
forever – just as you saw how a stone was hewn from the mountain, not
by hands, and crushed the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold.”6 Thus, this
dream establishes a basic reality of successive kingdoms, to be superseded
by a divinely ordained monarchy instituted by God himself. The dream
and its interpretation reveal little about the timing of the eventual kingdom
of God, except insofar as one might possibly explicate the details of the four
kingdoms that were eventually to be replaced.
The vision in chapter 7 is manifestly related to the earlier royal dream
of chapter 2. It likewise foretells a succession of four kingdoms, this time
identified as four beasts emerging from the sea. The first was lion-like; the
second bear-like; the third leopard-like; the fourth unspecified, depicted
as “fearsome, dreadful, and very powerful, with great iron teeth.”7 In fact,
the vision focuses heavily on the complexities and fate of this fourth beast.
Again, the vision ends with the establishment of divinely ordained rule.
One like a human being came with the clouds of heaven; he reached the Ancient
of Days and was presented to him. Dominion, glory, and kingship were given to
him; all peoples and nations of every language must serve him. His dominion is
an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall
not be destroyed.8
There is brief mention of a period of persecution that will last “for a time,
times, and half a time,” to be succeeded by everlasting dominion for God’s
chosen people.9
The vision of chapter 8 is somewhat simpler than its two predecessors.
It involves two beasts in conflict, a powerful ram in the east and a he-goat
5 Dan. 2:32–35. 6 Dan. 2:44–45. 7 Dan. 7:7. 8 Dan. 7:13–14. 9 Dan. 7:25.
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 147
coming from the west, with the latter victorious. Out of the four horns of
the he-goat emerged a small horn that became oppressive, involving inter
alia suspension of the holy offerings. Once again, there is numerical speci-
fication of the period of persecution. “For twenty-three hundred evenings
and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.”10
The final two projections of the unfolding of human history move us
from the visual to the auditory. Chapter 9 and chapters 10–12 of the book
of Daniel both report lengthy oracles delivered to Daniel. In both cases,
the angelically delivered oracle constitutes a response to Daniel’s wrenching
petitions. The lengthier of the two oracles, found in chapters 10–12, begins
with Daniel’s fasting and mourning, rewarded with the appearance of an
angelic being, who gives him a divinely approved message about the future.
This message begins once more with the replacement of Persian rule by that
of Greece. Again, the concern lay with the disintegration of the unified
Greek empire and the devolution of power among a number of smaller
successor states. The focus is upon a lengthy war between the king of the
south and the king of the north and upon “a time of trouble, the likes of
which has never been seen since the nation came into being.” This time
of terrible trouble will eventually be succeeded by redemption, when “the
knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky, and those who
lead the many to righteousness will be like stars forever and ever.”11
Once again, there is concern with the precise time period involved in
the suffering and eventual redemption. Daniel overhears the conversation
of a number of celestial beings, one of whom asks: “How long until the end
of these awful things?” The enigmatic answer – reminiscent of the dating
indicated earlier in chapter 7 – goes as follows: “For a time, times, and half
a time; and when the breaking of the power of the holy people comes to
an end, then shall all these things be fulfilled.”12 Daniel cannot understand
what he has heard and therefore asks clarification of his informant. He is
enigmatically informed: “From the time the regular offering is abolished
and an appalling abomination is set up will be a thousand two hundred and
ninety days. Happy the one who waits and reaches one thousand three hun-
dred and thirty-five days.”13 What exactly this curious statement means and
how it might be reconciled with the twice specified “time, times, and half
a time” or with the earlier twenty-three hundred mornings and evenings
have divided Christian and Jewish exegetes over the ages. In fact, reconcilia-
tion of these disparate reckonings has puzzled exegetes within the Christian
and Jewish camps, moving them to alternative understandings even among

10 Dan. 8:14. 11 Dan. 12:1 and 3. 12 Dan. 12:7. 13 Dan. 12:11–12.

148 Jesus as Messiah
themselves. These alternative understandings have been somewhat more
prominent among Jewish exegetes, because of their focus on a messianic
advent yet to come.
Daniel 9 has been the most widely discussed of the book’s surveys of the
future, the most commonly cited by Christians as proof for the advent of
Jesus as predicted Messiah, and the most vigorously contested by Jews. On
the face of things, Daniel 9 is the simplest of the apocalyptic messages to
comprehend. There is no visionary element, and the setting of the chapter
is straightforward in the extreme. Indeed, unlike all four of the other apoc-
alyptic messages, it is accorded no explication – ostensibly it needs none.
This sense of a simple and direct message, however, is misleading. The four
verses that portray the future are extraordinarily dense, ambiguous, and
problematic.14
Chapter 9 of the book of Daniel opens with Daniel meditating on
Jeremiah’s prediction of seventy years of desolation for Jerusalem. Jeremiah,
in chapters 25 and 29 of his prophecies, had spoken of a seventy-year period
of devastation and Babylonian overlordship, to be terminated by divine de-
struction of Babylonia and Jewish return to the land and the city.15 Daniel
was ostensibly living during that seventy-year period and was ruminating
on what was to occur in the fairly near future. Daniel’s ruminations led him
to intone a lengthy and moving petition for redemption of his people and
his city. According to our account, Daniel’s pleas elicited divine response –
revelation of aspects of Israel’s fate. The angel Gabriel was sent to Daniel to
tell him of divine favor: “Daniel, I have just come forth to give you under-
standing. A word went forth as you began your plea, and I have come to
tell it, for you are precious. So mark the word and understand the vision.”16
In the broadest sense, Gabriel revealed to Daniel that his people’s suffering
was to last far longer than a simple reading of Jeremiah would seem to
suggest. Precisely how long this protracted period of Jewish suffering was
to last, what was to occur during that lengthy period, and how it was to
end constitute the message of Daniel 9:24–27 and its uncertainties.
Let me begin with an apology and a warning. The issues we now address
are complicated and convoluted. I will make every effort to simplify to
the extent possible, but a considerable measure of detail and complexity
14 There is a full literature on Dan. 9 alone. See especially Roger T. Beckwirth, “Daniel 9 and the Date of
the Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharasaic, Zealot, and Early Christian Computation,”
Revue de Qumran 40 (1981): 521–542; William Adler, “The Apocalyptic Survey of History Adapted by
Christians: Daniel’s Prophecy of 70 Weeks,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity,
ed. James C. VanderKam and William Adler (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996), 201–238; and Robert
Chazan, “Daniel 9:24–27: Exegesis and Polemics.”
15 Jer. 25:11 and 29:10. 16 Dan. 9:23.
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 149
is unavoidable. While I am apologizing for the detail and complexity of
the coming discussion, they in fact inhere in the Christian–Jewish debate
and should be conveyed. This debate was not a simpleminded digging in
of heels on both sides; it was rooted in genuinely perplexing sources and
issues and was carried on with a high level of intellectual energy. Again, it
is my task to simplify to the extent possible, while yet remaining faithful
to the Christian–Jewish exchange and conveying accurately the sense of an
intellectually challenging and rigorous encounter.
The four-verse illumination provided to Daniel by the angel Gabriel
is excruciatingly difficult to understand. The verses are in Hebrew; the
words are relatively straightforward, although a few are not all that easy to
decipher; the combinations of words into phrases and clauses become highly
problematic; the organization of the sentences and the central images raise
serious issues. Ultimately, the message is nearly impenetrable and can be
read in multiple ways. There is really no effective technique for adequately
conveying the difficulty of the Hebrew original of Daniel 9:24–27. Every
translation of course represents an effort to render an original meaningful;
translations inevitably smooth over the painful uncertainties encountered
in the Hebrew original of our verses. I shall try to highlight the difficulty of
these verses by sketching the structure of the four-verse message and some
of its complications. Of course, literal understanding of the four verses is
only the beginning of the process. Clearly, this oracle was intended to point
beyond itself, to make a guarded statement about the future. To proceed
beyond the literal meaning of the four verses to an understanding of its
underlying message is yet more difficult and provides the grounds for the
contrasting Christian and Jewish readings of this opaque text.
Daniel 9:24–27 seems to break down into two identifiable components.
Verse 24 seems to constitute an overview of the period under consideration.
It begins in 24a on a relatively clear note, indicating that the seventy years
of Jeremiah 25 and 29 are not to be understood in only a literal sense. To
be sure, they do indicate a period of seventy years between Babylonian
destruction of Jerusalem and Jewish return to it. However, that is far from
the whole story of Jewish suffering and redemption. Rather, Jeremiah’s
seventy years must be understood in further terms as well; it foretells a
lengthier period of seventy weeks, almost certainly weeks of years. Jewish
suffering was destined to last far longer than a straightforward reading of
the prophet Jeremiah might suggest. So far so good, more or less.
Aspects of this unexpectedly lengthy period are sketched in 24b, al-
though the meaning of this half-verse is highly ambiguous. The half-verse
provides a sequence of seven infinitives that suggest something about the
150 Jesus as Messiah
seventy weeks of years. The seven infinitives may define a series of events
that would take place during the lengthy seventy-week period: the lengthy
period had been appointed until A might be achieved, until B might be
achieved, until C might be achieved. etc. Alternatively, the seven infinitives
may suggest that this period was to set in motion a series of events: they
had been appointed in order to set in motion A, B, C, etc. Precisely what
these defining events are is extremely difficult to understand. While many
of the terms are clear enough, there is considerable ambiguity in the combi-
nations and sequencing. This ambiguity leaves ample room for alternative
understandings of the events that were to take place during or beyond the
seventy weeks and hence of the fundamental contours and definition of the
seventy-week period and its aftermath.17
The second component, Daniel 9:25–27, then seems to break the pe-
riod of seventy weeks into a number of sub-units. Three numbers are
mentioned – seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one week. How these num-
bers are to be combined is problematic and a source of contention. The
Jewish masoretic text suggests a unit of seven weeks, followed by a unit
of sixty-two weeks. “From the issuance of the word to restore and rebuild
Jerusalem until the [time of the] anointed leader is seven weeks; for sixty-
two weeks it will be rebuilt, square and moat.” By contrast, the Greek
translation – the Septuagint – and the Latin translation – the Vulgate –
both suggest an initial period of seven and sixty-two weeks. “From the is-
suance of the word that Jerusalem be rebuilt until Christ the prince will be
seven weeks and sixty two weeks; the squares and walls will be rebuilt in an-
guished times.”18 Obviously, the lumping of these numbers into divergent
units reflects radically different readings of the opaque Daniel 9:25.
Likewise embedded within this disagreement in readings are divergent
understandings of the Hebrew mashiah. nagid of Daniel 9:25, with Jewish
comprehension involving an anointed ruler of some kind and with Chris-
tian comprehension involving a messianic redeemer. Finally, there is con-
siderable uncertainty and disagreement concerning the overall thrust of
the activities of the seventy-week period spelled out in 9:25–27. For Jewish
readers, these developments involve considerable emphasis on betrayal and
destruction; for Christian readers the betrayal and destruction are the corol-
laries of a pronounced move in the direction of redemption.
We have thus noted considerable difficulty in each of the two elements
in Daniel 9:24–27. One last complication must yet be introduced. This
17 Again, see the literature cited above, n. 14.
18 The Vulgate has: “Scito ergo et animadverte ab exitu sermonis ut iterum aedificetur Hierusalem usque
ad christem ducem ebdomades septem et ebdomades sexaginta duae erunt.”
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 151
final difficulty involves the relationship of Daniel 9:24–27 to the four other
apocalyptic visions that have been briefly identified. In every one of the
other four visions or oracles – Daniel 2, 7, 8, 10–12, the focus lies heavily
upon the eventually positive outcome of the events projected. A new world
order is in the offing, with righteousness and a righteous ruler in place and
with the guarantee that this new world order will be everlasting. While
there are fleeting hints of such redemption in Daniel 9:24–27, the lack of
clarity with respect to this new order – especially in Daniel 9:25-27 – is
noteworthy and puzzling. These dissonances will offer considerable grist
for the exegetical mill.

Medieval Christian exegetes were profoundly convinced that the scheme

laid out in the book of Daniel in fact fit precisely the mission of Jesus of
Nazareth. Much in the opaque imagery of Daniel 9:24–27 lent support to
such a conviction. Critical to Christian exegesis of this difficult passage was
the broad sense of a time period from the destruction of the First Temple
down through some sort of redemptive event or events. Daniel had, after
all, asked God for information and speedy redemption for his people. For
Christian exegetes, God had indicated that the promised redemption would
take place over a period far longer than seventy years; the predicted point
of arrival of the redeemer figure, in Christian eyes, fit perfectly the time
frame of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
To be sure, medieval Christian exegesis was profoundly influenced by
the appearance of citations from this difficult pericope at a critical point in
the Gospel accounts of the impending death of Jesus. This citation can be
found in both Mark and Matthew. Let us attend to the former. There, in
chapter 13, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple, eliciting from his
disciples the question of when such a cataclysmic event will take place. He
replies by depicting a period of tribulations, with both human and natural
calamities. “For nation will war against nation, kingdom against kingdom;
there will be earthquakes in many places; there will be famines. These are
the birth-pangs of the new age.” Jesus warns his disciples that they will suffer
grave persecution as they carry their message to all nations. They should
take all these troubles in their stride. “But when you see ‘the abomination
of desolation’ usurping a place which is not his (let the reader understand),
then those who are in Judea must take to the hills.”19 In other words, the
appearance of the “abomination of desolation” predicted in Daniel 9:27
will serve as an indication that the true end is at hand, with salvation in

19 Mark 13:7–20.
152 Jesus as Messiah
the offing. Thus, Jesus is portrayed as situating himself squarely within the
context of Daniel 9:24–27.
Jerome’s commentary on the book of Daniel is remarkable in its focus
on Daniel 9:24–27 and in the wide range of authorities cited. Clearly, this
passage was, for Jerome, both extremely important and extremely difficult
to understand.20 A wide-ranging and important recent study of the exegesis
of Daniel 9:24–27, by William Adler, substantiates the sense provided in
Jerome of a range of views of the passage, some historical (focusing on
Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection) and some eschatological (focusing on
the Second Coming). According to Adler, with the passage of time and the
dimming of the sense of immediate return by Jesus, the historical explication
of Daniel 9:24–27 came to dominate. From the early third century on, this
passage was regularly cited in historical and apologetic works as clear-cut
indication of the fulfillment by Jesus of important prophecies uttered by
the prophets of Israel.21
Key to subsequent Christian wrestling with Daniel 9:24–27 was the con-
viction that its two segments, Daniel 9:24 and 9:25–27, were synonymous,
with both spelling out in alternate ways the movement toward redemption
that would take place during the seventy-week period. Daniel 9:24 indi-
cated, for Christian readers, the broad sweep of the redemptive process,
involving expiation of sin, fulfillment of prophecy, and anointing of Jesus
as the holy of holies. Daniel 9:25–27 then proceeds, in the Christian view,
to spell out the details – Jewish return to the land, the rebuilding of the
Temple, peaceful circumstances, subsequent disruption, and redemption.
More specifically, the reference in 9:26 to the disappearance and vanish-
ing of the anointed leader after sixty-nine of the seventy weeks seemed to
Christian exegetes to fit nicely the chronology of Jesus’ ministry and his
crucifixion. The closing reference to destruction could then be comfortably
read as a reference to the Roman assault on Jerusalem, destruction of the
city, and burning of its sanctuary, events seen in Christian tradition as
the outcomes of Jewish rejection of the promised Messiah. Thus, despite
the uncertainties identified in our earlier discussion, Christian exegetes
could and did make a case for Daniel 9:24–27 as critical evidence for Jesus’
fulfillment of a major prediction contained in that enigmatic book. Daniel
provided a clearly demarcated time frame for the appearance of the divinely
appointed redeemer, and Jesus of Nazareth fit – for Christian readers – that
time frame perfectly.

20 Jerome, S. Hieronymi presbyteri opera: Opera exegetica, 9 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958–2000; Corpus
Christianorum, series latina), v: 865–889.
21 See again Adler, “The Apocalyptic Survey of History Adapted by Christians.”
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 153
Our Jewish polemicists indicate considerable familiarity with this Chris-
tian sense of Daniel 9:24–27. This important yet problematic pericope
appears prominently in Sefer ha-Berit, in Milh.amot ha-Shem, in Rabbi
Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah, in Nahmanides’s narrative account of
the Barcelona disputation, and in his Sefer ha-Ge’ulah. Indeed, in most
of these sources, Daniel 9:24–27 constitutes the only reference to the
book of Daniel.22 Particularly noteworthy is Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot
ha-Shem. As we recall, in chapters two through ten of that manual-like
work, Jacob proceeds through major books of the Bible, identifying and
rebutting Christian claims made from key verses in each book. For Jacob,
Daniel 9:24–27 is the only citation made from that important book. Clearly,
for Jacob this difficult passage constitutes the Christian challenge mounted
from the book of Daniel.
For a sense of the specifics of the perceived Christian challenge and Jewish
response, let us turn first to Milh.amot ha-Shem, which is on a number of
counts a bit strange in its treatment of the book of Daniel. We might
begin by noting that chapters eight, nine, and ten of Milh.amot ha-Shem –
the chapters that treat Daniel, Job, and Proverbs – are all exceedingly brief,
each consisting of two pages in the printed edition. Chapter eight is entitled
“Proofs He Brought from Daniel, from Things That Never Appeared to
Him [to Daniel].” The chapter opens with the Christian citing a verse
that purportedly says: “When the holy of holies comes, your Messiah will
be suspended.” The Christian then asks: “Who is the holy of holies, with
whose coming your Messiah was suspended and would never be? Was it
not with the coming of our Messiah, who is the holy of holies and the king
of kings, concerning whom all the prophets prophesied in the books of
prophecy?” The Christian is made to suggest that Daniel 9:24–27 is but the
most obvious of the references to Jesus in that book. He does not cite these
further proof-texts, “because I do not wish to be lengthy, since I know that
you will not believe me and will not heed my voice.”23
Embedded within this Christian case are a number of elements. The
simplest seems to be a reference to Daniel 9:24. The last of the seven
infinitives that spell out events associated with the seventy weeks speaks
of the anointing of the holy of holies. Thus, at the most basic level, Jacob
ben Reuben’s Christian seems to be identifying Jesus with that last element
in the sequence of Daniel 9:24. Seventy weeks of years were to pass until
Jesus would be anointed as the holy of holies. To be sure, there is a further
element in the Christian statement – a repetition of the familiar notion that,
with the coming of Jesus as Messiah, the Jewish world had lost all hope

22 The exception is the Milh.emet Miz.vah. 23 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 135.

154 Jesus as Messiah
for future redemption. Our cursory examination of the polemical works at
our disposal highlighted the centrality of this theme.24 According to Jacob
ben Reuben’s Christian protagonist, Daniel predicted that, with the arrival
of Jesus as holy of holies, i.e. as the promised Messiah, Jews would lose all
hope of messianic redemption. It is this additional element that the Jewish
respondent highlights and negates.
The Jewish rebuttal begins with outraged denial of the text cited by
the Christian protagonist, a denial reflected in the title given this chapter
by Jacob ben Reuben. The Jewish rebuttal begins: “Daniel himself calls
loudly: ‘Verily, I never uttered this verse, nor did it ever occur to me.’”
The Jewish protagonist challenges his Christian counterpart to seek such a
verse “in your books or in our books or in the book that Jerome translated.”
According to Jacob, “he [the Christian protagonist] sought and did not find
it.” Jacob’s Jewish protagonist attributes this fanciful version of a Daniel
verse to Augustine, “who wrote additions and other items into the text and
attributed his words to Daniel.”25
At this point, however, Jacob does a most curious thing. He notes that
there are, of course, further Christian thrusts associated with the book of
Daniel. “They [the Christians] ask further questions and [raise] further is-
sues, including the periods of seventy weeks and the time, times, and half a
time, claiming that these times and periods have passed.” He, however, ex-
cuses himself from consideration of these weighty matters – a most unusual
tack for Jacob ben Reuben to take.
I did not wish to undertake matters too great and weighty for me, to answer
all these claims. For I have seen that Rabbi Saadia Gaon, replied to them and
computed the years and periods in his book, in profound ways. The learned and
noble R. Abraham bar Hiyya followed him and said that it [Saadia’s computation]
was erroneous. Likewise, the learned R. Abraham ibn Ezra subsequently came
and argued that he [Abraham bar Hiyya] had computed and erred in his many
computations. Therefore I said: “Who am I and who is my house? Indeed, I am
from the smallest of the tribes of Israel and my family is the youngest of all the
families of my clan. How can I respond to their words [the words of Saadia,
Abraham bar Hiyya, and Abraham ibn Ezra] and their comments? One must
neither add to nor detract from their words.”26
24 See above, Chap. 4. This theme will be examined in detail in Chap. 8.
25 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 135–136. In Part iii of the Milh.emet Miz.vah, Rabbi Meir bar Simon addresses
these verses from Daniel, notes that the misreading cannot be found in Jerome, and also attributes it
to Augustine. Rabbi Meir’s responses are by and large along the lines we shall meet in Joseph Kimhi
and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman. See Milh.emet Miz.vah, 148b–149a.
26 Ibid., 136. Recall Lasker, “Jewish–Christian Polemic and Its Roots in the Islamic World,” who notes
numerous examples of Jacob ben Reuben’s citation of key figures such as these from the Islamic
world.
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 155
It is not at all difficult to fathom – from one perspective – Jacob’s humility
here. The Daniel material is exceedingly difficult, and Jewish interpreters
over the ages have disagreed among themselves over it. However, it is un-
usual for Jacob to forget, for the moment, his polemical obligation. By
virtue of his unusual humility, he in fact leaves his Jewish readers high and
dry. He put in the mouth of the Christian an exceedingly weak statement
and rebutted that statement thoroughly. In the process, however, he alluded
to the reality of weightier Christian arguments, both in his Christian’s state-
ment and in his Jew’s rebuttal. His unwillingness to tackle the difficulties
of the book of Daniel had to leave his Jewish readers with an awareness of
serious Christian claims associated with the opaque imagery of that book,
but with no defenses against such claims. As noted, this is a highly unusual
stance for Jacob ben Reuben. The best we can do is attribute this highly
unusual stance to the complexities of the biblical book of Daniel.
Interestingly, Joseph Kimhi begins his treatment of Daniel 9 in precisely
the same manner as Jacob ben Reuben, but proceeds in alternative and – for
his Jewish readers – far more satisfying directions. Joseph Kimhi also opens
with his Christian citing the same non-existent verse: “With the coming of
the holy of holies, your Messiah will be cut off.” Kimhi’s Christian reaches
a conclusion parallel to that of Jacob ben Reuben’s Christian: “From the
time Jesus came, you have lost your dominion and lost your Messiah.”27
Joseph Kimhi – generally less fully informed about Christianity than
Jacob ben Reuben – does not identify the source of this misquote, as
does the latter. Instead, he proceeds through Daniel 9 and identifies the
elements contained in the false verse. He notes the source of the holy of
holies element in Daniel 9:24, cites the reference to an anointed figure in
Daniel 9:25, and then indicates the reference to an anointed figure who is
cut off in Daniel 9:26. He claims forcefully that the purported Daniel verse
cited by his opponent is simply an erroneous conflation of Daniel 9:24
and 9:26.28 He further suggests that in fact his Christian opponent does
not begin to understand the sequence of events in Daniel 9. Joseph by no
means shirks his responsibility to parse this difficult passage, immediately
providing extended explication of the entire pericope.
Joseph Kimhi’s lengthy and careful explication of Daniel 9:24–27 ad-
dresses both segments of the passage – the broad overview presented in 9:24
and the more detailed outline presented in 9:25–27. Since Joseph Kimhi
begins with the latter, we shall do so as well. For Joseph Kimhi, the key

27 Sefer ha-Berit, 39; The Book of the Covenant, 49.

28 Sefer ha-Berit, 39; The Book of the Covenant, 49–50.
156 Jesus as Messiah
Christian error in this set of three verses involves reading the two instances
of a mashiah. (9:25 and 9:26) – broadly an anointed figure – as referring to
precisely the same figure, with that figure understood to be the Messiah,
i.e. Jesus. For Kimhi, therein lies the heart of the Christian misreading of
Daniel 9:25–27. In fact, claims Joseph Kimhi, these three verses spell out
three segmented periods – the first of seven weeks, the second of sixty-two
weeks, and the third of one week.29 Each of the first two periods ends with
an event involving a mashiah.. These two anointed figures are hardly one
and the same personage; they are in fact separated by sixty-two weeks of
years or 434 years and differ radically from one another.
The first of the two anointed figures was, according to Joseph Kimhi,
Cyrus the Persian ruler. Daniel 9:25 indicates that, “from issuance of the
decree to the anointed prince (i.e. Cyrus, according to Joseph Kimhi) will
be seven weeks (i.e. roughly forty-nine years).” For Kimhi, as for most
Jewish commentators, this chronology of the fall of Babylonia and the
rise of Persia is perfectly sensible. To be sure, there might be some sense of
discomfort with identification of Cyrus, a gentile ruler, as the mashiah. cited
in Daniel 9:25. Joseph Kimhi immediately assures his Jewish readers that
there is nothing untoward about such an identification. He cites Isaiah 45:1:
“Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, his anointed one.” The Isaiah verse indicates
that there is nothing problematic in Daniel’s identification of Cyrus as a
mashiah..
With the passage of sixty-two weeks, yet another mashiah. appears, this
time in Daniel 9:26. The circumstances are far less happy; the reference
involves the cutting off of an anointed figure and his total disappearance.
For Joseph Kimhi, as for most Jewish commentators, this second anointed
figure was Agrippa, briefly thrust into a position of rule by the Romans dur-
ing the middle decades of the first century and then removed from power.
Kimhi notes the special force of this disappearance of the anointed figure.
According to Daniel, he will be cut off ve-en lo’, suggesting a thorough
removal. The Christian had noted this also, suggesting that, with the ap-
pearance of Jesus, Jews had lost forever their hopes for messianic redemp-
tion. Kimhi does not overlook the decisive nature of the ve-en lo’. He
suggests that the thorough removal indicated in the text is a reference to
the reality that, from that time forth, Jews have in fact enjoyed no temporal
ruler (a mashiah. in the non-messianic sense).30
Joseph Kimhi next turns his attention to the first part of the prediction,
the difficult 9:24. The Christian had explained this problematic verse as

29 Recall the alternative reading of the Septuagint and the Vulgate, cited above.
30 Sefer ha-Berit, 41; The Book of the Covenant, 50–51.
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 157
a sequence of events culminating in the anointing of the holy of holies,
with the sense that holy of holies could only mean divinity, i.e. Jesus as
divine redeemer. Kimhi contests this sense of holy of holies, arguing again
as the careful lexicographer that the altar and the vessels of the sanctuary
are identified in Exodus as “holy of holies.” Thus, Daniel 9:24 requires
no sense of a divine figure; the sacred vessels of the to-be-rebuilt temple
could comfortably serve as the referents for this final item in the sequence
of infinitives in Daniel 9:24.
The issue, contends Kimhi, goes far beyond this single identification.
For Joseph Kimhi, the sequence of events spelled out enigmatically in
Daniel 9:24 did not, in fact, take place during the period of seventy weeks
between the destruction of the First Temple and the subsequent destruction
of the Second Temple. Particularly noteworthy is the failure to achieve the
eternal righteousness indicated in this sequence. Kimhi insists that the
world he and his Christian opponent inhabit is split among a number of
religious visions – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The truly redemptive
state involves a world in which there will be total acknowledgment of
the one true God by all of humanity. Thus, the Christian reading of the
Daniel 9:24 sequence is fundamentally flawed. The infinitives of Daniel 9:24
are not intended to refer to a sequence of events that were to take place
between the destruction of the two sanctuaries. Rather, these infinitives
were to highlight the sequence of events to be initiated by completion of
the seventy weeks that were to extend from the destruction of the First
Temple to the destruction of the Second Temple.
For Joseph Kimhi, Daniel’s vision was of course correct – seventy weeks
of years did elapse between the two destructions. Christians misread the
meaning of these seventy weeks, however, in their insistence that this period
was to culminate in the appearance of the Messiah and the achievement
of eternal righteousness. The lack of the latter – eternal righteousness –
serves as clear proof of the lack of the former – the advent of the messianic
redeemer. The seventy-week period must perforce be read in alternative
ways. The elapsing of this period was to initiate a lengthier process that
would eventuate in the achievement of eternal righteousness and all the
other bounties promised in Daniel 9:24. What Joseph Kimhi thus did
(which Jacob ben Reuben had failed to do) was provide his Jewish readers
with an extended and well-grounded alternative Jewish reading to this
difficult pericope.31
This same Daniel pericope was addressed extensively by Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman, in his report on the Barcelona disputation and in his Sefer

31 Sefer ha-Berit, 42–43; The Book of the Covenant, 51–53.

158 Jesus as Messiah
ha-Ge’ulah. As earlier noted, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman was faced with
a new challenge. He was responding to the effort of the former Jew and
now Dominican Friar Paul to use rabbinic material to show that the Jewish
religious authorities themselves espoused – knowingly or unknowingly –
Christian views. In theory, the Barcelona disputation was supposed to have
been confined to Friar Paul’s efforts to thus use rabbinic materials and
to Nahmanides’s efforts to derail this new missionizing tack. As already
indicated, Nahmanides, in his narrative record of the disputation, shows
himself forcing the discussion time and again back into the broader issue
of religious truth.
In this narrative account, the Daniel 9:24–27 pericope is accorded lengthy
discussion in the report on the second day of the Barcelona proceedings.
Friar Paul opens smoothly with citation of Daniel 9:24. He notes that the
verse speaks of seventy weeks, at the end of which the anointing of the
holy of holies will take place. Innocently enough, he suggests that the sev-
enty weeks must refer to weeks of years. He then proceeds to argue that
widely accepted Jewish chronology shows the rabbis reinforcing Christian
views of the verse as positing messianic advent at the time of Jesus. The
Jewish chronology introduced by Friar Paul stipulates the period of Baby-
lonian exile, i.e. from the destruction of the First Temple to the building
of the Second Temple, as 70 years and the period of the Second Temple as
420 years. Thus, the entire span covered from the destruction of the First
Temple to the destruction of the Second Temple is a perfect 490 years, i.e.
the seventy weeks of years indicated in Daniel 9:24. The reference to the
anointing of the holy of holies is for Friar Paul surely a reference to Jesus.
The rabbinic element here is the chronology of 70 and 420 years, indicating
once more – according to Friar Paul – rabbinic reinforcement of Christian
views.32
Nahmanides does not even relate for a moment to the rabbinic element
of chronology, which he obviously accepts. Rather, he immediately attacks
the Christological conclusion, arguing that Jesus simply does not fit the
time scheme constructed by the friar. According to Jewish chronology, notes
Rabbi Moses, Jesus appeared more than thirty weeks of years (i.e. more than
210 years) prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Even according to
Christian chronology, claims Nahmanides, Jesus appeared more than ten
weeks (seventy years) prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. What
Nahmanides portrays himself as doing successfully is once more bringing
the discussion back to biblical bedrock. Further skirmishing on technical

32 Vikuah. Barcelona, 312; The Disputation at Barcelona, 677.

 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 159
details of Daniel 9:24–27 follows, skirmishing that is interesting in its own
right, but peripheral to our concerns.33
Eventually, according to the Nahmanidean narrative, the rabbi embarked
on extended discussion of the apocalyptic predictions in the book of Daniel.
Whether or not he was actually able to do this in the Barcelona setting is
an interesting question; the polemical value of the speech he portrays is,
in any case, immense. Nahmanides claims that Daniel 9 contains no nu-
merical prediction of messianic advent whatsoever. While this is hardly a
revolutionary position for a Jewish exegete to espouse, Nahmanides goes
considerably further. He argues that in fact the entire book of Daniel con-
tains but one numerical prediction of messianic advent, and that is provided
in the very closing verses of the book – Daniel 12:11–12. Thus Christian in-
terpretations of Daniel 9:24–27 thoroughly miss the mark; they seek to
establish a reckoning of messianic advent that the text simply cannot bear.
According to Nahmanides, only one passage in the entire book projects
a date for messianic advent, and that passage – Daniel 12:11–12 – sets a
date more than a millenium beyond the appearance of Jesus.34 Interest-
ingly, while insisting that Daniel 9:24–27 does not provide dating for mes-
sianic advent, Nahmanides makes no extended effort to inform his Jewish
readers what this important passage does mean. In his Sefer ha-Ge’ulah,
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman fills in this lacuna, while at the same time
revising somewhat the stance he had taken in his report on the Barcelona
disputation.
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman seems to have been moved by the Barcelona
experience to re-immerse himself in a number of issues raised in the course of
the disputation. He obviously concluded that the issue of messianic advent
was central to the new Christian polemicizing and missionizing effort and
that further guidance was needed by his Jewish brethren in the face of
these potent pressures. This concern generated his extended study of divine
promises of redemption in Sefer ha-Ge’ulah (The Book of Redemption). This
powerful book has as its ultimate objective reassuring Jewish readers of wide-
ranging biblical promises of redemption, leaving no possibility of doubt for
Jews of the inevitability of that redemption. Since a core element in the new
missionizing campaign was the claim that the Messiah has already come,
thus leaving no Jewish hope for future deliverance, Nahmanides clearly felt
called upon to buttress Jewish convictions of such future deliverance.35
33 Vikuah. Barcelona, 312–313; The Disputation at Barcelona, 678–679.
34 Vikuah. Barcelona, 313–314; The Disputation at Barcelona, 679–680.
35 For the more wide-ranging case made by Nahmanides, see below, Chap. 9. Here we shall confine
ourselves to his discussion in Sefer ha-Ge’ulah of Dan. 9.
160 Jesus as Messiah
Sefer ha-Ge’ulah is divided into four chapters. The first two chapters
are devoted to close analysis of promises of redemption found throughout
the utterances of Moses and on into the declamations of prophets such
as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Strikingly, the second pair of chapters is
entirely devoted to one book of the Bible only, not surprisingly the book of
Daniel. Further, the third chapter revolves heavily about Daniel 9, with the
fourth and last chapter devoted to the verses in the latter part of Daniel that
provide explicit indication of the dating of redemption. While our focus
will be on the third chapter of Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, we shall eventually note
the way in which Nahmanides’s closing chapter reinforces the conclusions
of chapter three.
Nahmanides, careful exegete that he was, insists that Daniel 9:24–27 can
only be understood against the backdrop of the rest of Daniel 9. In the
verses that precede 24–27, Daniel – ruminating upon Jeremiah’s prediction
of seventy years of Babylonian rule – utters a series of petitions for divine
forgiveness for his people. In these petitions, he acknowledges his people’s
shortcomings and God’s justice in meting out the punishment of Baby-
lonian exile. Nonetheless, he pleads repeatedly and movingly for divine
mercy, for full forgiveness of Israel’s sins, and for full redemption as the
seventy years stipulated by Jeremiah draw to a close. Daniel found favor in
divine eyes and was vouchsafed a message as to the future. The message –
unfortunately for Daniel and his people – was not an immediately happy
one.
What Daniel learns in 9:24, says Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, is that
Jeremiah’s seventy years was not to serve as the end of expiation for prior
sin and the onset of true redemption. The process of expiation was intended
to stretch out for a far longer time span, a span of seven times seventy years,
i.e. throughout the entire period of the Second Temple and more. Thus,
the period initiated by the return to the land and the building of the Second
Temple was not intended to culminate in the ultimate redemption; rather,
it was intended to continue the process of expiation and thus pave the way
for the eventual redemption. More specifically, the first half of verse 24
suggests that a lengthy period of 490 years – including the seventy years of
exile already suffered – had been decreed upon the land and people. The
second half of the verse then projects the deliverance that conclusion of the
490 years will set in motion. That ultimate deliverance – full expiation of
sin, fulfillment of prophecy, rebuilding of a third and lasting sanctuary, and
advent of the true Messiah – will take place only after a protracted period
of further exile. Daniel 9:25–27 does not, according to Nahmanides, relate
at all to this eventual salvation. It addresses only the developments that
 Biblical prophecy: messianic advent 161
would take place during the period of the Second Temple, developments
that would conclude with renewed destruction and exile, out of which last-
ing deliverance will eventually emerge. Here then, Nahmanides provided
his Jewish readers with full explication of Daniel 9:24–27, removing all
possibility of Christological interpretation.36
At this point, a brief word is in order regarding the closing chapter
of Sefer ha-Ge’ulah. What Nahmanides does in this closing chapter is to
buttress his reading of Daniel 9, a reading that claims no messianic dating
in that important chapter, by arguing that specification of messianic advent
abounds throughout chapters 7, 8, and 10–12 and that all this specification
points unmistakably to a date far beyond that of Jesus.37 In other words,
the broader context of the book reinforces strongly the claim that Daniel 9
offers no hint whatsoever of the precise time of the coming of the messianic
redeemer.
Looking back over the wrestling of Jacob ben Reuben, of Joseph Kimhi,
and of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman with Daniel 9, we can see full Jewish
awareness of Christian usage of this powerful chapter in the biblical book
that most focuses on the unfolding of history and the onset of messianic
advent. Jewish polemicists understood the importance of this chapter and
the need to provide their Jewish contemporaries with rebuttal of Christian
readings and with alternative Jewish explication. While Jacob ben Reuben
was uncharacteristically limited in his counsel on this verse, Joseph Kimhi
treated it in extenso and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman discussed it even more
fully. Careful and talented exegetes both, they provided Jewish readers with
detailed and reasoned alternatives to the Christian readings.

36 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 281–283; The Book of Redemption, 609–615.

37 For full discussion of the closing sections of Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, see below, Chap. 9.
 chap t e r s eve n

Biblical prophecy: the Messiah reviled

and vindicated

In the previous chapter, we have seen Christian claims that the appear-
ance of Jesus coincided perfectly with messianic advent as predicted in the
important biblical book of Daniel, Jewish awareness of these claims, and
Jewish rebuttal of these Christian contentions. Efforts to portray Jesus as
the prophetically predicted Messiah proceeded far beyond the mere timing
of his appearance. Ultimately more important were the characteristics of
Jesus, the extent to which he embodied qualities associated with the
prophetically predicted Messiah.
Of these messianic qualities, none was more important than the suffering
attributed by the prophet Isaiah to a critical figure whom he designated the
Servant of the Lord. The reasons for the importance of this set of prophetic
images are many. In a general way, the images are striking, especially in their
contrast of a despised figure that would eventually achieve universal recog-
nition and acknowledgment. More specifically, one of the central Jewish
critiques of Christianity (leveled by others as well) involves the discrep-
ancy between a supposed messianic redeemer and seemingly ignominious
death upon the cross. Were precisely such a surprising combination in
fact predicted by God’s prophetic messengers, then criticism, disbelief, and
rejection must give way to admiration, adulation, and acceptance.
In examining this theme, we shall follow the same procedure employed
in the previous chapter. We shall first examine as concisely as possible
the biblical material, thereby familiarizing ourselves with the texts over
which Christians and Jews disagreed. We shall then proceed to Christian
utilization of these texts and Jewish argumentation against the Christian
reading of these important passages.

The book of Isaiah includes four so-called Servant of the Lord passages –
Isaiah 42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–11; and 52:13–53:12. These four passages are strik-
ing, richly allusive, tantalizingly problematic, and widely cited by Christians
as evidence of divine intentions with respect to Jesus. What must be
162
 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 163
emphasized is the difficulty – once again – associated with these famous
passages. Modern scholars have raised a host of issues with respect to them,
beginning with the precise dimensions of each. Beyond disputing the very
definition of the passages, scholars are divided with respect to the unity
of these four messages – do they in fact stem from one hand and reflect a
consistent view of the Servant figure? This issue of consistency is addressed,
first of all, from the standpoint of language and then from an analysis of
content. Beyond these elemental disagreements, there is considerable un-
certainty with regard to a number of further issues, including the identity of
the Servant figure, the nature of his mission, and the characteristics he was
to exhibit. The precise details of this considerable scholarly disagreement lie
beyond our concern. What is important for us is that the passages have given
rise to such protracted scholarly debate, which points to major ambiguities
and problems within the texts themselves.1 That such problematic texts
have become the focus of centuries of Christian–Jewish argumentation is
not at all hard to fathom. The combination of problematic texts, complex
and sensitive issues, pre-existent assumptions on both sides, and selective
reading easily explains the fact that Christians and Jews could, over the
ages, argue with deep passion that their – and only their – understanding
of these scriptural passages is the correct one.
The central emphasis in Isaiah 42:1–4 is upon the role of the Servant
of the Lord in spreading knowledge of the true way, the way of justice,
throughout the world. The opening verse sets the tone:
This is my servant, whom I uphold,
My chosen one, in whom I delight.
I have put my spirit upon him;
He shall bring justice among the nations.

The remaining three verses add little that is substantive; they merely elab-
orate the central theme of the Servant’s purveying knowledge of justice all
across the world.
The second Servant of the Lord passage – Isaiah 49:1–6 – is somewhat
richer in imagery and themes, although the core thrust is surely consonant
with Isaiah 42:1–4. In both cases, the message involves the spread of the

1 There is an extensive literature on the Suffering Servant image. Among the most helpful studies to
me were: Christopher R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah: An Historical and Critical
Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948); Harry M. Orlinsky and Norman H. Snaith, Studies on
the Second Part of the Book of Isaiah (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977); William H. Bellinger, Jr. and William
R. Farmer (eds.), Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Harrisburg: Trinity
Press International, 1998).
164 Jesus as Messiah
ways of the Lord throughout the world. This second passage opens with
the Servant addressing the nations:
Listen to me, O you islands;
Pay heed, you people far distant.
The Servant wants to inform these far-flung peoples of the special mission
entrusted to him:
The Lord appointed me before I was born,
He named me while I was in my mother’s womb.
He made my mouth like a sharpened blade
And hid me in the shadow of his hand.
He made me like a polished arrow,
In his quiver he concealed me.
He said to me: “You are my Servant,
Israel in whom I glory.”
The mission entrusted to the Servant of the Lord was a difficult one,
and, as a result, he despaired. Ultimately, however, the Servant knows that
God has reaffirmed his resolve to bring his people Israel back to him.
What is more, the mission has in fact been broadened. God is portrayed as
announcing the following:
It is too light a task for you as my Servant
To restore the tribes of Jacob
And to bring back the survivors of Israel.
I shall also make you a light to the nations,
So that my salvation extend to the end of the earth.
Thus, the closing note – the affording of salvation to the far-flung nations
of the world – echoes the central theme of the first Servant of the Lord
passage, emphasizing the evolution from an Israel-based mission to one
that is universal.
The third of these passages – Isaiah 50:4–11 – maintains the imagery of
the Servant of the Lord, as indicated overtly in 50:10. However, the details
of the imagery and the thrust of this passage are somewhat different from
its predecessors. Introduced into the imagery of the Servant of the Lord is
the notion of his suffering.
I offered my back to the floggers,
And my cheeks to those who tore out my beard.
I did not hide my face from insult and spittle.2

2 Isa. 50:6.
 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 165
In the face of this mistreatment, the Servant remains firm in his conviction
and his mission. That mission shows an additional new element as well.
While continuing to urge adherence to the Lord, this third Servant passage
also addresses itself to those who reject the divine message, depicting the
dire punishments awaiting them.
The last Servant of the Lord passage – Isaiah 52:13–53:12 – is the lengthiest,
the richest in imagery, and the most controversial of the four. It is the passage
around which our description of Jewish awareness of Christian exegesis and
Jewish rebuttal of that exegesis will revolve. The passage begins and ends on
a triumphant note. At the outset, the prophet announces that the Servant
of the Lord will ultimately be vindicated, in a manner that will shock all
observers.
Indeed, my Servant shall prosper;
He shall be exalted and reach great heights.
Just as the many were appalled at him –
So marred was his appearance, unlike that of man,
His form beyond human semblance –
Just so he shall startle many nations.
After describing the suffering of the Servant, the prophet concludes:
Assuredly, I will give him the many as his portion;
He shall receive the multitude as his portion.3
The bulk of the lengthy passage is taken up with a description of the
suffering of the Servant. For our purposes, it is necessary to have some sense
of this description.
He was despised, shunned by men,
A man of suffering, familiar with disease.
As one who hid his face from us,
He was despised; we held him of no account. . . .4
He was maltreated, yet he was submissive;
He did not open his mouth;
Like a sheep being led to slaughter,
Like a ewe dumb before those who shear her,
He did not open his mouth.
By oppressive judgment he was taken away. . . .
His grave was set among the wicked, . . .
Though he had done no injustice
And had spoken no falsehood.5

3 Isa. 52: 13–15 and 53:12.

4 Verses 4 through 6, omitted here, will be introduced shortly. 5 Isa. 53:3 and 7–9.
166 Jesus as Messiah
Now, all this suffering, which earned the Servant the contumely of
observers, was, in normal human terms, utterly undeserved. The Servant
had committed no sins that would have justified such a harsh fate. Rather,
the Servant had been accorded the role of bearing the punishment for the
sins of others; he was designated to carry their burden.
Yet it was our sickness that he bore,
Our suffering that he endured.
We considered him smitten,
Struck, and afflicted by God;
But he was wounded because of our sins,
Crushed because of our iniquities.
The chastisement that healed us he bore;
Through his bruises we were healed.6
Thus, the intensity of the Servant’s suffering bore no relationship to his
own shortcomings; he suffered as vicarious atonement for his people. The
special quality of the Servant’s suffering explains the opening and closing
juxtaposition of degradation and exaltation. In human eyes, the Servant was
an object of derision; in a deeper sense, however, his suffering had profound
meaning and purpose and would eventuate in total vindication. Clearly,
in the imagery and message of this fourth and last Servant passage, there
is much that is reminiscent of the Gospel conception of Jesus. Given the
additional notion of a message intended for Israel and beyond, a message
ultimately addressed to all humanity, the resonance is yet deeper.

The authors of the Gospels were profoundly aware of the Servant of the
Lord passages. The references to these passages are interesting in their
immediate settings and always serve, at the same time, to conjure up the
broader imagery and messages of the Servant passages in their totality. In
a section of Matthew devoted to Jesus’ healing and the opposition to him,
there is a lengthy citation from the first Servant passage. Jesus is portrayed in
his healing function, while enjoining those privy to his success to maintain
silence. This occasions a lengthy citation from Isaiah 42 which emphasizes
not only the message of bringing just teaching to the world, but notes
specifically the quiet manner in which this mission will be accomplished.
While focused on but one minor aspect of the Servant imagery, this citation
of course serves at the same time to call up echoes of the complex as a
whole.7
The more central message of both the first and second Servant of the Lord
passages – the mission to bring God’s word to all nations – is emphasized
6 Isa. 53:4–6. 7 Matt. 12:18–21.
 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 167
in a striking story in the Acts of the Apostles. We have already noted
Paul’s teaching in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch. The message of Jesus’
miracles and his fulfillment of prophecy elicited, according to Acts, an
invitation to return to the synagogue on the following Sabbath and to
engage in ongoing discussion with both Jews and gentiles. According to
Acts, the following Sabbath saw “almost the whole city” gathered to hear
Paul’s message, “to the intense displeasure of some of the Jews.” This led
Paul and Barnabas to speak out harshly in the following terms:
It was necessary that the word of God be declared to you first. But since you reject
it and declare yourself unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the gentiles. For
these are our instructions from the Lord: “I shall also make you a light to the
nations, so that my salvation extend to the end of the earth.”8
To be sure, in this passage, the Servant of the Lord would seem to be the
disciples of Jesus, who in their turn were subjected to humiliation and
persecution. Alternatively, of course, this might be understood to imply
simply the continuation of the mission entrusted originally to Jesus himself.
It is, not surprisingly, the fourth and fullest Servant of the Lord passage
that finds greatest resonance in the Gospels. A seemingly minimalist invo-
cation of Isaiah 52:13–53:12 can be found in John 12. There, John emphasizes
the failure of the Jews to attend to the message that Jesus brought. All this,
he insists, involved the fulfillment of prophecy, citing two passages from
Isaiah. The first of the two citations is from Isaiah 53:1. While ostensibly
simply indicating God’s intention that his message go unheeded (a some-
what forced reading of Isaiah 53:1), in fact the John passage was probably
intended to conjure up the larger sense of the entire fourth Servant of the
Lord passage as well.9
Early in Matthew, there is a reference to Isaiah 52–53 that connects Jesus’
healing power to the Servant of the Lord imagery. Matthew 8 begins with a
series of healing incidents, projected as fulfillment of prophetic prediction:
That evening they brought to him many who were possessed by demons; and he
drove the spirits out with a word and healed all who were sick, to fulfill the prophecy
of Isaiah: “He took our sickness from us and carried away our suffering.”10
Here Jesus as healer is seen as foretold in the fourth Servant of the Lord
passage.
There is a slight shift in meaning introduced in this Matthew passage
that is worth noting for our purposes. In its original context, the Isaiah
verse that speaks of sickness and suffering seems rather clearly to mean a
spiritual bearing of the sickness of others, as translated above: “Yet it was
8 Acts 13:46–47. 9 John 12:36–38. 10 Matt. 8:16–17.
168 Jesus as Messiah
our sickness that he bore, our suffering that he endured.” In the Matthew
passage, this straightforward meaning has been altered somewhat, making
the verse a prediction of Jesus’ healing power: “He took our sickness from
us and carried away our suffering.” One of the features of the application
of prophetic verses – or indeed biblical verses in general – to subsequent
situations is fluidity in meaning. It is over what was deemed to be the proper
and precise meaning of the cited texts that Christians and Jews so often
clashed.
We have seen the Servant of the Lord passages cited thus far on a number
of issues, some tangential to their core meaning (Jesus’ healing power and
God’s dulling the minds of the Jews) and some central (the quiet authority
with which the Servant’s mission would be accomplished and the orienta-
tion of that mission beyond the Jews to a larger worldwide audience). It is
Jesus’ death and resurrection, however, that constitute the most important
events to be illuminated by the Servant of the Lord passages, in particular
the fourth and lengthiest of them.
Luke cites the fourth Servant of the Lord passage at a critical juncture
in his depiction of the Last Supper. This entire episode is suffused with a
sense of crisis and impending change. In their closing exchange, Jesus tells
his disciples that things would not be as they had been theretofore.
He said to them, “When I sent you out barefoot without purse or pack, were
you ever short of anything?” “No,” they answered. “It is different now,” he said;
“whoever has a purse had better take it with him, and his pack too; and if he has no
sword, let him sell his cloak to buy one. For Scripture says, ‘And he was reckoned
among the transgressors.’ This, I tell you, must be fulfilled in me; indeed, all that
is written of me is reaching its fulfillment.”11
Now, the brief citation used to explain Jesus’ admonitions is taken from
the closing verse of the fourth Servant of the Lord passage, a verse in which
many themes of the message are reiterated for one last time.
Assuredly, I will give him the many as his portion;
He shall receive the multitude as his spoil.
For he exposed himself to death
And was reckoned among the transgressors,
Whereas he bore the guilt of the many
And made intercession for sinners.12
Included here are the central themes of Isaiah 52:13–53:12. The Servant
suffered, was reckoned among the transgressors, was in fact blameless, bore

11 Luke 22:35–37. 12 Isa. 53:11–12.

 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 169
the sins of the community, and was ultimately fated for great reward.
Given the events that lay ahead in Luke, the entire Isaiah passage would
seem to have predicted crucifixion, resurrection, and its aftermath. More
specifically, the imagery of being reckoned among the transgressors would
seem to presage the inclusion of Jesus among the prisoners who might have
been set free and his crucifixion along with two other condemned. Indeed,
once these associations are set loose, a number of further images cited
earlier quickly surface – unjust trial, a grave among the wicked, eventual
exoneration.
Just as the Servant of the Lord imagery is cited in the important Luke
passage that presages the death of Jesus, so too does it underlie the closing
passages in that same Gospel, passages that reflect upon the meaning of
Jesus’ death and resurrection. In a series of encounters, the disciples of
Jesus are confronted with their leader and teacher, are admonished for their
lack of faith, and are taught the meaning of the events that they are only
slowly assimilating. The first of these encounters took place on the road to
Emmaeus and involved two of the disciples. Joined by Jesus, whom they
failed to recognize, they recounted the story of the Crucifixion and the
Resurrection, which they had not fully absorbed. For this Jesus upbraided
them:
How dull you are! How slow to believe all that the prophets said! Was not the
Messiah bound to suffer in this way before entering upon his glory?”13
While the imagery of Isaiah 52–53 is not cited specifically, that passage
clearly lies at the core of the notion of suffering to be succeeded by glory.
This sense of Jesus as the suffering, mistreated, yet ultimately vindicated
Servant of the Lord is reflected more fully in the sequel to the appearance of
Jesus on the road to Emmaeus. Moved by their encounter, the two disciples
made their way immediately back to Jerusalem, where they found the rest of
their colleagues assembled, now prepared to believe the Resurrection. The
two reported their experience, and – as it was being discussed – Jesus ap-
peared once more, reassuring the entire band of his presence. Once more he
explained the foretelling of death and resurrection, with our Isaiah passage
obviously at the core of these predictions. In a passage cited earlier, Jesus
reminds his followers of his prior assertion that “everything written about
me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms was bound to be
fulfilled.” Specifically, he cites imagery that incorporates all the Servant of
the Lord passages.

13 Luke 24:25–26.
170 Jesus as Messiah
“So you see,” he said, “that scripture foretells the sufferings of the Messiah and his
rising from the dead on the third day and declares that in his name repentance
bringing the forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations beginning from
Jerusalem.”14
Both before and after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the Servant of
the Lord passages stand at the heart of Jesus’ illumination of his fate and
role.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we can further see the role of these passages,
especially the fourth and fullest of them, in the spread of Christian doctrine
far and wide. This role is captured nicely in a striking incident involving the
disciple Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch, “a high official of the Kandrake,
or queen, of Ethiopia, in charge of all her treasure.” This high official had
been in Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. Returning home to Ethiopia, he was
reading from Isaiah on his journey. Philip was told by the Holy Spirit to
meet the Ethiopian’s carriage.
When Philip ran up, he heard him reading from the prophet Isaiah and asked,
“Do you understand what you are reading?”
He said, “How can I, without someone to guide me?” and invited Philip to get
in and sit beside him.
The passage he was reading was this: “Like a sheep being led to slaughter, like a
ewe dumb before those who shear her, he did not open his mouth. By oppressive
judgment he was taken away. Who will be able to speak of his posterity? For he is
cut off from the world of the living.”
“Please tell me,” said the eunuch to Philip, “who is it that the prophet is speaking
about here; himself or someone else?”
Then Philip began and, starting from this passage, he told him the good news
of Jesus.15
The “good news of Jesus” so moved the Ethiopian that he was immediately
baptized. Note, by the way, the Ethiopian’s uncertainty as to the referent of
the passage – whether it alluded to the prophet or someone else. When con-
vinced of its application to Jesus, belief was instantaneous. The centrality
of this Isaiah passage was hardly accidental; it formed a major cornerstone
in classical and subsequent Christian argumentation.

Jews could hardly remain oblivious to the importance of the Servant of the
Lord passages in general and the last and fullest in particular. Let us begin
with the extensive treatment of this passage in Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot
ha-Shem. In chapter five, a fairly lengthy chapter devoted to numerous

14 Luke 24:46–47. 15 Acts 8:30–35.

 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 171
Christian proofs derived from Isaiah, considerable attention is lavished on
the fourth and richest of the Servant of the Lord passages. Isaiah 52:13–
53:12 is quoted in its entirety. After completing the quotation, the Christian
disputant, in a passage noted earlier, indicates clearly how confident he
is that this passage can only be understood as prophesying Jesus.16 This
statement, attributed by the Jewish author to his Christian protagonist,
indicates how fully medieval Jews were cognizant of the importance to
their adversaries of this fourth and fullest Servant of the Lord passage.
The response of Jacob ben Reuben reinforces the importance of this
verse, for the Jewish rebuttal is lengthy and detailed. The case advanced by
Jacob is multi-faceted and vigorous. The Jewish author turns in three major
directions. He argues – through his Jewish spokesman – that identifying
the Servant of the Lord as Jesus, understood in the Christian sense, is
precluded by a close reading of the Isaiah text; that such identification
creates contradictions between Christian understanding of this passage and
Christian exegesis of other important biblical texts; and, finally, that such
identification leads to theologically unacceptable conclusions.
According to Jacob ben Reuben, close reading of the Isaiah passage in
its own right shows that it cannot possibly be applied to Jesus, as he is
known and depicted in the New Testament. While this passage speaks of
the dreadful illness of the Servant of the Lord, there is nothing in Christian
Scripture – claims the Jew – that portrays Jesus as in any way ailing. Like-
wise, to move from the negative to the positive, the Isaiah passage closes
by portraying the eventual resurgence of the Servant of the Lord, noting
specifically that he would “see offspring and have a long life,” eventualities
that are nowhere documented for Jesus, according to the Jewish protago-
nist. The Jesus depicted in classical Christian sources cannot be projected
as Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord.17
Jacob ben Reuben further argues – through his Jewish protagonist – that
identification of the Servant of the Lord as Jesus creates for Christians insur-
mountable exegetical problems as well. For example, the Jewish protagonist
claims that his Christian counterpart had labored to associate Psalms 45:3 –
“You are fairer than all men, your speech is endowed with grace” – and
Jeremiah 11:16 – “The Lord named you verdant olive tree, fair, with choice
fruit” – with Jesus. How then did he propose to explain the discrepancy be-
tween the beauty and fruitfulness attributed by Christian exegesis of Psalms
and Jeremiah to Jesus with the horrific depiction of the sick and suffering
Servant of the Lord? Jacob ben Reuben in effect insists that Christian

16 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 103. This passage has been cited above, in Chap. 5. 17 Ibid., 107.
172 Jesus as Messiah
exegesis cannot have it both ways, identifying Jesus simultaneously with
the beautiful and the sickly.18
Finally, for Jacob ben Reuben, this same identification leads to insolu-
ble theological difficulties. For Jacob, divinity, which Christians claim for
Jesus, carries with it certain characteristics. Central among these is the un-
changing majesty of the divine, which Jacob finds unceasingly emphasized
in Scripture. Given the Christian notion of Jesus as divine, identification of
the Servant of the Lord as Jesus results in contradiction of the core biblical
notion of the divine as majestic. The lengthy Servant of the Lord passage
in Isaiah 52–53 clearly depicts a figure whose fortunes change, specifically
from a period of eclipse to a period of glory. For Jacob, the notion of a
divinity that suffers a period of eclipse is unthinkable. Indeed, the very
terminology of servitude – the figure of a Servant of the Lord – is, from the
Jew’s perspective, unacceptable, if the referent is taken to be Jesus as God
himself.19
Thus, for a variety of reasons it is impossible, claims the Jewish author, to
identify Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord with Jesus of Nazareth. Close reading
of the Isaiah text, internal Christian exegetical issues, and serious theo-
logical considerations combine to preclude the explication of the Isaiah
passage advanced by the Christian protagonist. What seemed to the Chris-
tian spokesman irrefutable evidence of the truth of his tradition turned
out, in Jacob’s view, to be utterly chimerical. Jesus could clearly not be the
Servant of the Lord of whom Isaiah spoke.
Let us probe yet one more Jewish attack on the Christian understanding
of the Servant of the Lord image. During the course of the Barcelona dis-
putation, the former Jew turned Dominican preacher, Friar Paul Christian,
brought into consideration the Servant of the Lord passage. He asked his
opponent, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman of Gerona, whether the Servant of
the Lord passage referred to the Messiah. Alert to the approach of the friar,
the rabbi did not deny that on occasion his rabbinic predecessors had ap-
plied the passage to the Messiah, although the true meaning of the passage –
he claimed – lay elsewhere. Rabbi Moses proceeded to argue, however, that
careful reading of the Isaiah passage indicates that Jesus could not have
been the figure that fulfilled the Isaiah prophecy. According to the rabbi’s
narrative reconstruction of the important Barcelona disputation, he in fact
offered to explain the entire passage in its most rigorous and direct sense,
an offer that was rebuffed.20

18 Ibid., 106. 19 Ibid., 106–107.

20 Vikuah. Barcelona, 307; The Disputation at Barcelona, 666–667.
 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 173
Because of the importance of the issue, Rabbi Moses proceeded, in the
wake of the public disputation, to pen yet another explanatory treatise, this
one devoted entirely to the Servant of the Lord passage. This treatise was
intended to show that, even accepting the Messiah as the figure designated
by Isaiah (not in fact the true meaning of the Isaiah prophecy, according
to the rabbi), Jews could rest assured that the Messiah predicted could not
have been Jesus of Nazareth. For Rabbi Moses, an outstanding exegete, who
had long pondered the modalities of biblical style, the key to understanding
the Servant of the Lord passage in Isaiah 52–53 lay in the requirement that it
be read as a description of the life experience of a flesh-and-blood, human
figure. To be sure, this methodological assumption is quite closely related to
the rabbi’s insistence that the Bible speaks only of a human figure as Messiah.
Put differently, Christian readers would not agree with the rabbi’s method-
ological approach; they were quite comfortable with the notion of Jesus’
suffering as fulfilling the first half of the prophecy and subsequent Christian
success as fulfilling the second half. Not so Rabbi Moses ben Nahman.
For the rabbi, the movement from suffering and popular contempt to
eventual glory lay at the core of Isaiah 52–53, and that imagery had to be
discernible in one and the same human figure. As had been the case for Jacob
ben Reuben, the implication of this assumption was, first of all, negative.
Jesus of Nazareth could by no stretch of the imagination be projected as
the Servant of the Lord figure. Let us note the rabbi’s closing formulation:
Behold, there is no mention in the passage that he [the Servant of the Lord,
understood as Messiah] would be delivered into the hands of his enemies, nor that
he would be killed, nor that he would be hung on a tree. Rather, [the passage
indicates] that he would see offspring and live a long life, that he would be exalted,
that his kingdom would be raised to heights among the nations, and that powerful
kings would become his booty.21
Again, for Christians, Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of a process
that led to precisely the kind of glory envisioned by Isaiah. For Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman, the Isaiah passage must be read more literally and rigorously.
Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord was a figure who was himself destined to win
acknowledgment and to enjoy longevity, achievements that the rabbi be-
lieved had clearly been denied the historical Jesus. For Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman, Isaiah’s vision of a successful Servant of Lord precluded identi-
fication of that figure with the Christian Messiah, whose earthly existence
came to a conclusion on the negative note indicated in the Servant’s career.

21 Perush Yisha‘yahu 52–53, 326. I have treated Nahmanides’s commentary at greater length in Barcelona
and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath, 158–171.
174 Jesus as Messiah
To be sure, Rabbi Moses was left with the obligation to explain in some
fashion or other the references to the suffering of the Servant of Lord, im-
agery of his grave among the wicked, and the notion of vicarious atonement,
themes central to Christian exegesis of the passage. The rabbi’s method-
ological insistence on a naturalistic reading of the Isaiah text led him in
a somewhat modernist direction, transforming the references to suffering
into psychological terms. Thus, for example, the rabbi makes important
observations on the pain borne by the Servant figure.
“A man of suffering” – troubled over the sins of Israel, which cause the delay in his
appearance and retard his becoming king over his people.
“Familiar with disease” – for the sick person is perpetually troubled over
his pain . . . Alternatively, [it means] that he actually becomes sick from the
[psychological] pain, as is the custom among people.22
For Christians, the pain borne by the Servant figure was real, compensated
by the subsequent successes of the faith he founded. For Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman, the pain borne was deep and intense; it was, however, the
psychological anguish felt by a human Messiah figure whose appearance
was constantly retarded.
More critical yet to Christian exegesis were the seeming references to
death on the part of the Servant figure. For Rabbi Moses, this imagery –
so central to Christian thinking – was yet more important to rebut. Focus
on the psychological remained, for the rabbi, the key.
“Like a sheep being led to slaughter” – he will consider in his heart: “Even if they
kill me, I shall complete the mission of my Creator, for that is my obligation.” In
the same fashion, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah said: “But even if he does not
[even if God does not save us from the burning fiery furnace], be it known to you,
O king, [that we will not serve your god or worship the statue of gold that you
have erected].”23 Similarly the rabbis said: “In the case of one who delivers himself
up in order that a miracle be effected on his behalf, a miracle is not effected on his
behalf.”24 In these same terms, Jeremiah said: “For I was like a docile lamb led to
slaughter.”25
The Servant of the Lord was prepared to accept death; according to Rabbi
Moses, he would not in fact actually die, except in the most natural fashion,
after a long and distinguished life.
The reference to a grave among the wicked represented for Christian
exegetes a yet stronger reference to Jesus’ experience. Rabbi Moses remained
faithful to his psychological line of explication.
22 Perush Yisha‘yahu 52–53, 323–324. 23 Dan. 3:18. 24 Sifra, Emor, 9:5.
25 Perush Yisha‘yahu 52–53, 324. The closing citation is from Jeremiah 11:19.
 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 175
“And he set his grave among the wicked” – “setting” [the Hebrew netinah] is
used in Scripture for intention, such as “And I set my mind to study” [natati
et libi]26 or “Do not take your maidservant for a worthless woman [al titen et
amatekha]27 . . . He [Isaiah] said: “He shall intend that his grave be among the
wicked of the nations.” For he shall conclude: “They shall surely kill me and this
place shall be my grave.”28
The Messiah will be endangered, will be willing to accept his death at
the hands of enemies, but will not in fact die. As predicted by Isaiah, he
will be vindicated and will live to see victory and progeny in a thoroughly
this-worldly mode.
Finally, for Christians, the notion of vicarious atonement, understood as
Jesus’ greatest gift to humanity, is clearly adumbrated in the Servant of the
Lord imagery. By this time, it comes as no surprise that Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman chooses to see these references in a thoroughly different manner.
“Yet it was our sickness he was bearing” – for he is sick and troubled over our
sins, over which we should be sick and troubled. And he bears the brunt of our
suffering, which we should in fact endure, for he is troubled over them.
“And by his bruises we were healed” – for the bruise, that is his pain and anguish
over us, will heal us. For the Lord will forgive us on his behalf. We shall be relieved
of our transgressions and the sins of our ancestors, in the sense of “it [the people
of Israel] will repent and will be healed.”29
Here the usually meticulous Rabbi Moses leaves a bit of ambiguity. The
essential point is clear: the Messiah will suffer the psychological pain of
his people’s shortcomings. Two positives, it seems, will eventuate. God
will be directly moved by the sympathetic pain the Messiah suffers and will
forgive his errant people. Alternatively, the people themselves will be moved
by the Messiah’s sympathetic suffering and will repent, thereby winning
more directly divine forgiveness. In either case, Rabbi Moses explicates
the references to what seems to be vicarious atonement in a thoroughly
naturalistic manner.
We have focused thus far on Jewish objections to identifying the Servant
of the Lord with Jesus, the kinds of problems Jewish exegetes raise with
respect to that identification, and Jewish counter-exegesis that posits a
thoroughly human Messiah. At this point, we might recall the reluctance
of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman’s acknowledgment that some of his rabbinic
predecessors had in fact identified Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord with the
Messiah. This identification did not – according to the rabbi – represent
the deepest level of meaning of the passage. According to Rabbi Moses,

26 Ecces. 1:13. 27 1 Sam. 1:16. 28 Perush Yisha‘yahu 52–53, 324–325. 29 Ibid., 324.
176 Jesus as Messiah
biblical imagery was capable of sustaining simultaneously a number of
meanings, representing differing levels of truth. Reading the Messiah into
Isaiah’s prophecy was not incorrect; such a reading did not, however, plumb
the true depth of this rich passage. When asked directly by Friar Paul
whether “this passage speaks of the Messiah,” Rabbi Moses portrays himself
as answering in the following manner: “According to its true sense, it [the
Servant of the Lord passage] speaks only of the people of Israel, for thus the
prophets always designate them – Israel my servant, Jacob my servant.”30
The deepest and most genuine referent of the Isaiah passage is the people
of Israel, meaning for Rabbi Moses the Jewish people, of which he was a
part.
Identification of the people of Israel, that is to say the Jewish people, as the
suffering Servant of the Lord destined for glorious redemption has a num-
ber of implications. On the very simplest level, this counter-identification
served to provide an alternative to the Christian projection of the Servant
as Jesus. We readily recall the Gospel reference to the puzzled Ethiopian
who asked precisely about the referent in this critical passage. To the ex-
tent that Jews rejected the notion that the passage referred to the Messiah
altogether, it was critical that they put forward an alternative. But even for
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, who acknowledged that the passage referred
in some measure to the Messiah (although not to Jesus of Nazareth), there
were compelling reasons for identifying – at the deepest level – the Servant
of the Lord with the people of Israel, the suffering Jews.
As we have already noted and will see more fully, the Jews faced something
of the same problem encountered by Christianity – the seeming ignominy
of suffering and the need to dignify it.31 For Christians, the problem lay
with a redeemer figure that perished on the cross; for Jews, the problem lay
with God’s purportedly chosen people exposed to seemingly endless perse-
cution and oppression. For both groups, the Isaiah imagery of a figure that
would initially be appalling, “despised, shunned by men, a man of suffer-
ing, familiar with disease,” only to eventually “be exalted and raised to great
heights,” answered important and difficult questions. Each group found in
the Isaiah prophecy a means of dignifying suffering and subordinating it
to eventual success.
Thus, the Servant of the Lord passages in Isaiah provide useful insight
into the dynamics of the Christian–Jewish debate over biblical prophecy.
Extremely complex and difficult biblical material opens the way for con-
siderable difference in understanding on the part of Christian and Jewish

30 Vikuah. Barcelona, 307; The Disputation at Barcelona, 666. 31 See below, Chaps. 8 and 9.
 Biblical prophecy: Messiah reviled and vindicated 177
readers. Alternative assumptions strongly color the conclusions that the
two camps reach. Christian willingness to see Jesus, its candidate for Ser-
vant of the Lord, in both human and divine terms, allows for combining
physical, this-worldly suffering with post-Resurrection, divine successes.
Jewish unwillingness to combine the human and the divine in the Messiah
figure eventuates in rejection of the Christian reading and insistence upon
a yet unrealized human Messiah, who will in his own lifetime undergo
tribulations – although not death – and emerge vindicated and victorious.
Alongside these factors that contribute to divergence are ranged consid-
erations that lead to convergence. It is, after all, the same text that both
Christians and Jews were reading. Equally important, each camp wrestles
with the same set of issues, for which the Isaiah passages offer a striking
solution. In both cases, the ignominy of suffering must be addressed. For
Christians, Jesus’ suffering on the cross was precisely predicted by the early
Israelite prophet. Others fail to understand the phenomenon, but the suf-
fering on the cross is gratuitous. It has nothing to do with Jesus’ sinfulness;
it represents rather willingness on his part to shoulder the sins of others.
Vindication was not long in coming. Christian successes proved to the
world the genuine meaning of death on the cross.
Jews rejected this reading of the Servant of the Lord, substituting them-
selves for Jesus. In the process, the Jewish readers of Isaiah likewise rejected
Christian attribution to them of the extraordinary sin of deicide. Like
their Christian counterparts, Jewish readers saw their Servant of the Lord
as blameless. Some day, at a future point in time, Christians, along with
others, will come to see that the people of Israel had suffered on behalf of
others, not as a result of their own misdeeds. Strikingly parallel readings
with stunningly differing conclusions.
 part iv
Rejection of the Messiah and rejection
of the Jews
 chap t e r e ight

Biblical prophecy and empirical observation:

displacement of the Jews

A critical element in Christian thinking was (and is) that the Messiah
promised and portrayed by God through his prophetic messengers has
already appeared, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We have seen this
issue as key to late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Christian pressures
on the Jews of northern Spain and southern France.1 This Christian claim
had profound implications for the Christian–Jewish debate. If Jews could
be brought to acknowledge that Jesus had arrived at the time predicted
in biblical prophecy for messianic advent and/or that he displayed key
characteristics predicted for the Messiah, then such Jews would be in effect
recognizing Jesus’ messianic role and thereby accepting a critical Christian
truth claim.
In addition, the notion of Jesus’ advent as Messiah had potent ramifica-
tions. The simplest of these was that all biblical prophecies of hope were
fulfilled in Jesus or – to put the matter negatively – Jews living with ex-
pectations of future redemption were woefully misguided. No such future
redemption was in the offing, since salvation had already dawned. In a
more detailed twist, Christians believed that the Jews of Jesus’ own days,
who spurned him, had occasioned thereby divine wrath and loss of their
covenantal status. With the spurning of Jesus, according to this Christian
view, Jews had been rejected by God and had been consigned to ongoing
and everlasting degradation and misery. Whether couched in its simpler
form or in this slightly more complex manner, the end result for Jews was
the same – a miring in exile and suffering with no hope for redemption or
even amelioration.
1 See the preceding two chapters. We have noted the centrality of this claim in early Christian argu-
mentation above, in Chaps. 1 and 2. As the spiritual pressure metamorphosed into the formalized
missionizing campaign of the mid-thirteenth-century, this theme maintained its importance. I have
suggested the centrality of prior messianic advent in my analysis of the Barcelona disputation of
1263 in Barcelona and Beyond, 61–63. A close look at Friar Raymond Martin’s Pugio Fidei shows the
continuation of this centrality. The entire second part of his Pugio Fidei revolves about the claimed
prior advent of the Messiah.

181
182 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
This Christian view was rooted, to a considerable extent, in the Christian
claims for Jesus as Messiah we have already examined. In addition, further
proof-texts were adduced to argue more specifically for replacement of the
Jews as the human covenant partners. The most famous of these proof-texts
was Genesis 49:10. For Christians over the ages, this verse predicted that
the Jews would enjoy temporal authority until the Messiah would come,
at which point their temporal authority would cease. For Christians, this is
precisely what took place in the aftermath of the advent of Jesus. The temple
of the Jews was destroyed; the Jewish state was dissolved; Jews went into
exile, from which they had yet – by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries –
to emerge.2
Indeed, the Christian claim of punishment of the Jews created a new
set of data. The manifest signs of Jewish exile and degradation, especially
when contrasted with the equally obvious signs of Christian success, should
in and of themselves – it was argued – indicate to Jews where theological
truth lay. While the notion that truth is reflected in material success may
seem a bit crass, over the ages human communities have regularly espoused
such an identification of might with right. Communities enjoying unusual
success have often seen themselves as particularly favored by God or the
gods.
In the case of Christians and Jews, there was more than this normal
human inclination at work. The biblical heritage to which both Christians
and Jews laid claim stipulated that divine pleasure and displeasure were
expressed directly in the historical sphere. Group virtue was to be rewarded
by group success; group sin was to be punished through group suffering.
Thus, polemical appeal could readily be made to direct empirical evidence.
Christian successes were surely a sign of divine favor and therefore of virtue.
Jewish degradation could be read only as a reflection of divine rejection for
serious shortcoming. The very lengthy period of Jewish exile and suffering
was especially striking. Short-term decline might reasonably be parsed as
brief divine anger and chastisement. Exile lasting for more than a millen-
nium must be acknowledged as evidence of total rejection.
Jesus as the promised Messiah, loss of Jewish hope for future redemption,
divine repudiation of the Jews, and the present parlous circumstances of
Jewish existence constituted an integrated set of contentions. Nonetheless,
we are justified in isolating the issues of alleged Jewish hopelessness and
divine rejection of the Jews as a separate Christian pressure for a number of

2 Note the exhaustive study of Gen. 49:10 and its impact by Adolf Posnanski, Schiloh: Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Messiaslehre (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1904).
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 183
reasons. In the first place, this particular line of Christian argumentation
opened up, as noted, a new set of data – daily first-hand observations of
Jewish degradation and suffering. More important, this line of argumen-
tation had potent psychological impact. It was one thing to argue, even
passionately, as to whether Jesus did or did not fulfill biblical prophecies
concerning the Messiah; it was another – and for the Jews far more painful –
matter to start from dolorous Jewish circumstances and to argue the mean-
ing of these circumstances. As noted, there seems to be an inherent human
inclination to equate success with rectitude, might with right. Thus, dolor-
ous Jewish circumstances as grounds for argumentation put the Jewish side
at an immediate disadvantage. This was an extremely disheartening issue
for Jews to debate.
With the growing power of medieval western Christendom toward the
end of the first millenium, the sense of divine favor and Christian rectitude
increased significantly. The stunning Christian triumph of 1099 at the walls
of Jerusalem served as a marker for the evolving sense of Christian might and
right. Not surprisingly, we encounter in the midst of the early crusading
endeavor numerous incidents of Christians arguing to their persecuted
Jewish neighbors that Christian successes must reflect divine favor and
Jewish losses can only mean divine rejection. Thus – it was claimed – Jews
should take to heart the lesson, abandon their hopeless faith, and join the
victorious Church.3 While our polemical works were not written in the heat
of crusading triumphalism, they nonetheless show considerable evidence
of the growing Christian emphasis on the linkage between success, divine
favor, and human virtue.
The powerful Christian belief in Jesus as the promised Messiah, a range
of purported biblical proofs for the replacement of the Jews at the point of
messianic advent, the millennium-old situation of the Jews as a Diaspora
people, and the growing power of western Christendom all combined to
reinforce the sense of the Church as God’s chosen community and of the
Synagogue as displaced and rejected.

The works we have been analyzing suggest that the argument from Jewish
circumstances was the most potent challenge the Jews of this period faced
3 Chazan, God, Humanity, and History, 144–147. Recently, David Malkiel, “Destruction or Conversion:
Intention and Reaction, Crusaders and Jews in 1096,” Jewish History 15 (2001): 257–280, has argued
that the principal Christian intention was slaughter of Jews, with the option of baptism offered
only after initial destruction had taken place. This view requires close examination. What remains
incontestable is that Christians did make the claim – after initial violence had taken Jewish lives –
that Jewish circumstances were obviously untenable and that Jews had no reasonable option other
than conversion.
184 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
and the one our Jewish polemicists were most concerned to rebut. The very
earliest of our polemical works, Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit, is suffused
with concern for the issue of Jewish suffering. The poem with which the
work begins – noted already – shows us immediately the author’s focus
on Jewish fate and its readings. Our brief examination of Sefer ha-Berit
suggested that the author’s reference to hope and redemption (“For there is
hope for you and redemption”) and to questions about “the wondrous end
of days” (“If you ask yourselves about the wondrous end of days”) constitute
a reference to the lost third section of the opus. In that lost section, I
argued, Joseph Kimhi treated Christian readings – for him misreadings –
of biblical prophecies of redemption and provided the accurate Jewish
counter-readings.4 Joseph Kimhi’s overarching concern with this line of
Christian attack is manifest, although it is a great pity that we have been
deprived of some of his detailed wrestling with this issue.
Indeed, throughout Sefer ha-Berit, we are confronted with recurrent
evidence for Joseph Kimhi’s concern with the issue of alleged Jewish hope-
lessness and rejection. Immediately after his opening poem, he adds three
biblical verses – Isaiah 35:3–4, 2 Chronicles 15:7, and Psalms 31:25, each of
which addresses Jewish despair and offers hope for the future.5 As we have
already seen, at the close of the very first sparring over a biblical verse –
Isaiah 9:5 – the Christian protagonist is made to break out in frustration
with the following: “He who wishes to believe must not scrutinize the words
of Jesus, even though reason is inclined toward them. You, however, lack
belief and deeds and power and kingship. You have lost everything.”6 The
reference to Jewish loss of power and political authority is telling. Interest-
ingly, the Jewish protagonist does not immediately address this Christian
claim, seemingly leaving it to the closing segment of the work, now lost.
This Christian thrust recurs during the debate over a number of further
biblical verses – for example, Genesis 49:10, Deuteronomy 18:15, and Daniel
9:24–27.7 Joseph Kimhi is surely reinforcing for his Jewish readers the im-
portance of this issue, with which he will conclude his polemical guide.
Parallel concern with the issue of Jewish fate is clear in Jacob ben Reuben’s
Milh.amot ha-Shem. We recall that, in the introduction to the work, the
author introduced himself and his Christian mentor-rival. The debate over
religious truth was initiated, according to Jacob, by the following revealing
thrust on the part of his Christian associate.
4 See above, Chap. 4. 5 Again see above, Chap. 4.
6 Sefer ha-Berit, 25; The Book of the Covenant, 32.
7 Gen. 49:10 – Sefer ha-Berit, 35, The Book of the Covenant, 43–44; Deut. 18:15 – Sefer ha-Berit, 37, The
Book of the Covenant, 46; Dan. 9:24–27 – Sefer ha-Berit, 39, The Book of the Covenant, 49.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 185
How long will you waver on the threshold, not allowing your heart to understand
and your eyes to see and your ears to hear. [This is true for] you and all your
brethren who are known by the name of Jacob. You become poorer and lower and
weaker in obvious ways; your numbers decline daily, both yesterday and tomorrow.
However, we become greater; our horn is ascendant. Our enemies are trampled
under our feet, while our friends are as resplendent as the sun when it goes forth.8
This opening Christian statement indicates clearly a Jewish sense of the
centrality of this argument at the time.
Like Joseph Kimhi, so too Jacob ben Reuben chose to end his work by
addressing the issue of Jewish hopefulness and hopelessness. The twelfth
and last chapter of Milh.amot ha-Shem opens with two specific Christian
claims for the hopelessness of Jewish circumstances – the claim that the
prophetic promises were fulfilled during the return from Babylonian exile
and the claim that Jewish sinfulness had abrogated the prophetic promises.9
Jacob responds to these Christian claims by adducing three sets of proofs
that in fact the Messiah has not yet come, neither in the return from
Babylonian exile nor in the advent of Jesus. This of course means that Jews
have every right to anticipate a future redemption. This likewise means
that present Jewish circumstances should by no means be taken as evidence
of divine rejection. Rather, they are simply the predicted elements in pre-
redemptive Jewish existence.10
The issue of Jewish circumstances is omnipresent throughout Rabbi
Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah. In a general way, Meir bar Simon is
the Jewish polemicist most fully attuned to contemporary realities of all
kinds. Thus the issue of Jewish circumstances loomed large on his polemical
agenda. He, like Joseph Kimhi, saw the amassing of predictions of eventual
redemption as part of his polemical responsibility.11 In the segment of the
collection that involves an extended Christian–Jewish dialogue, Rabbi Meir
raises the issue directly and forcefully. His Christian protagonist says: “Since
we [the Jews] are in exile and degradation under them [the Christians], we
should acknowledge that their faith is more correct and better than ours.”12
Striking in this regard are the two sermons in which the Narbonnese rabbi
tackles this Christian challenge. As noted, the first of these two sermons
was preached in the synagogue of Narbonne, in the wake of a missionizing
sermon delivered by a Christian preacher. It is obvious from the rabbi’s
counter-sermon that the Christian preacher made a detailed argument to
the Jews assembled in the synagogue that their circumstances were hopeless,

8 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 5. 9 Ibid., 157–158. 10 Ibid., 157–161.

11 Milh.emet Miz.vah, 129b–179b. 12 Milhemet Mizvah, ed. Herskowitz, 19.
. .
186 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
that there could be no redemption awaiting them. The power of this mes-
sage required the immediate response that Rabbi Meir ben Simon reports
and the transmission of this message to others via the written account of
the sermon embedded in the Milh.emet Miz.vah.13 While we cannot recon-
struct as precisely the circumstances of the second sermon, it too focuses
on inevitable redemption for the Jewish people.14
Finally, while the Barcelona disputation was distinguished by its innova-
tive technique of attempting to prove Christian truth from rabbinic sources,
the agenda was quite traditional and focused heavily on prior messianic ad-
vent, with its obvious implication of Jewish hopelessness.15 That Rabbi
Moses ben Nahman perceived the issue of Jewish hopelessness as central to
the disputation is made obvious by the rather radical statement he reports
himself making about imminent messianic advent – a statement we shall
engage in the next chapter. Rabbi Moses’ concern with the issue of Jewish
hopelessness is even clearer in his Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, his lengthy treatise on
redemption written in the wake of the disputation. Sefer ha-Ge’ulah is per-
haps the best evidence we have of the seriousness with which our polemicists
addressed the issue of purported Jewish hopelessness; it is a protracted and
vigorous denial of precisely such hopelessness and a powerful reaffirmation
of the inevitability of eventual Jewish redemption.

Let us now look a bit more closely at Jewish perceptions of the Christian
case, beginning with reliance on biblical verses. A number of our polemical
texts have Christian spokesmen adducing biblical proof-texts they read as
proving displacement of the Jews by Jesus as Messiah, eventuating in Jewish
degradation and hopelessness. The most famous of these proof-texts is, as
noted, Genesis 49:10. In the midst of the lengthy blessings bestowed upon
his sons by the patriarch Jacob, the future is spelled out for Judah.
The scepter shall not depart from Judah
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
‘ad ki yavo’ shilo
ve-lo yekehat ‘amim.
I have purposely left untranslated the difficult closing words of the verse.
Once more, the opacity of the biblical text allows for strikingly divergent
Christian and Jewish readings.16
Among the biblical proof-texts adduced by the Christian protagonist in
our earliest polemical source, Sefer ha-Berit, is Genesis 49:10. The Christian

13 See again Robert Chazan, “Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne.”

14 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 61–65.
15 See again Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, 61–63. 16 Again, see Posnanski, Schiloh.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 187
explication of this verse is straightforward. For the Christian, ‘ad ki yavo’
shilo should simply be read: “until Shiloh comes.” The meaning, for the
Christian, is obvious: “This is Jesus. For, when he came, you lost kingship.
You lack political authority and a king, because of what you did to the
Messiah.”17 Thus, Jacob’s prediction for Judah indicates that Judah was to
wield political authority – the scepter and the ruler’s staff – among the
Jews until the coming of Shiloh, i.e. Jesus. From that time forth, Jews were
to be stripped of their political power. This Christian reading of Genesis
49:10 includes loss of Jewish authority with messianic advent and the more
specific notion that Jacob was predicting Jewish rejection of the Messiah
and concomitant divine repudiation of the Jews.
Much the same Christian stance is reflected in Milh.amot ha-Shem. There
the entire verse is cited, with the following brief Christian exposition: “Now
the Messiah has already come. You did not accept him and did not hearken
to his voice. Therefore you have declined badly, to the point that you have
neither king nor ruler, neither sacrifice nor memorial.”18 Here, too, there is
more than simple messianic advent; Jewish rejection of Jesus and resultant
divine abandonment of the Jews are also seen by this Christian protagonist
in the prediction of the patriarch Jacob.
It is interesting that the very first text cited in the Barcelona disputation is,
according to the narrative account of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, Genesis
49:10. This is another instance in which Friar Paul seems to be moving
in thoroughly traditional directions, only to introduce into the ongoing
discussion a rabbinic text that is intended to upset the rabbi’s defense. For
our purposes, what is important is the traditional line of Christian attack
undertaken by Friar Paul at the outset.
Behold, Scripture says: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, etc., until Shiloh
comes,” and that is Jesus. Thus, the prophet [Jacob] says that Judah would exercise
power until the Messiah who comes forth from him. Therefore, today when you
have neither scepter nor ruler’s staff, the Messiah must have come. He is from his
[Judah’s] seed, and he has authority.19
This Christian stance differs slightly from that encountered in the previous
two sources. Here, there is no reference to Jewish rejection of Jesus. Rather,
Friar Paul cites Jacob’s prediction, notes the empirical evidence of lack of
Jewish political authority, and deduces from the combination that this can
only mean that messianic advent has taken place.
Let us note one more Christian proof-text regularly adduced to show
that Scripture foretold messianic advent associated with decline in Jewish
17 Sefer ha-Berit, 35; The Book of the Covenant, 43–44. 18 Milhamot ha-Shem, 50–51.
.
19 Vikuah. Barcelona, 304; The Disputation at Barcelona, 660.
188 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
circumstances. We have already noted the difficult Daniel 9:24–27 and
have seen it quoted recurrently by Christian discussants. We recall that
these Christian discussants saw in this difficult passage evidence for Jesus’
advent as Messiah and Jewish loss of political authority, citing a juxtaposi-
tion of predicted messianic advent with Jewish loss of power. To be sure,
this Christian case elicited particularly intense Jewish resistance, with the
argument that the verse advanced by the Christian side was a total fabrica-
tion, that it was a conflation of segments of two different verses, and that
in fact no such verse was to be found in the book of Daniel. In any case,
for our purposes at the moment, this is yet another instance of Christian
linkage of the advent of Jesus with Jewish loss of power.20
Citation of verses like Genesis 49:10 or Daniel 9:24–27 to prove a pre-
dicted combination of messianic advent and Jewish loss of political au-
thority (with or without the added element of Jewish guilt for rejecting
the promised Messiah) represents, in some measure, simply the broad me-
dieval tendency to anchor all truth claims in Scripture. At the same time,
there was more at stake than simply biblical reinforcement of empirical
evidence of Christian ascendancy and Jewish decline. The straightforward
inference that Christian ascendance and Jewish decline reflect the hope-
lessness of Jewish post-advent circumstances or the result of Jewish rejec-
tion of the promised Messiah entailed a considerable problem. After all,
Scripture was replete with extensive biblical prophecies assuring Israel of
redemption. How was it possible to reconcile these prophecies with the
empirically grounded claims of Jewish hopelessness and rejection? As com-
pelling as the empirical evidence might be, the prophetic texts could not
be overlooked.21 Thus, texts such as Genesis 49:10 and Daniel 9:24–27
provided biblical foundations for Christian claims that the Jewish people
had been stripped of all hope and/or that the Jews had been resolutely
rejected by God.
Christians claimed that such texts as Genesis 49:10 or Daniel 9:24–
27 addressed directly this issue, predicting precisely the combination of
messianic advent with rejection of the Jews. A number of further Christian
solutions to the problem posed by biblical promises of Israel’s redemption
emerged as well. Perhaps the simplest of these ploys was to contest the
meaning of the term Israel in the biblical promises. It is this tactic that
Joseph Kimhi mentions in the closing words of the extant Sefer ha-Berit, the
observations that constitute the introduction to his marshaling of biblical
verses that promise redemption for the Jewish people.

20 See above, Chap. 6. 21 For Jewish reliance on these prophetic texts, see the next chapter.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 189
Now it is my intention and objective to explain for you all the pericopes that
involve consolation and prediction for Israel. I shall inform you of the ways that
they [the Christians] are accustomed to expound the consolations. When you find
a positive consolation for Israel, they say: “We are the sons of Jacob.” When they
find a positive consolation for Judah, they say: . . .22
By identifying themselves as the Israel to which the prophecies of redemp-
tion were addressed, Christian could obviate what might be perceived as a
problem associated with these biblical prophecies. God had not annulled
his covenant with Israel. Rather, Christians had acceded to the mantle of
Israel as a result of Jewish misdeed and Christian righteousness. Part of the
heritage that Jews lost and Christians gained was precisely the promise of
redemption enunciated by the prophets of Israel.
This Christian claim of transfer of biblically predicted redemption to
another human community was buttressed by yet another set of biblically
grounded arguments perceived by our Jewish polemicists. This related set of
arguments posited that the biblical text itself provided numerous examples
of divine change of heart. To be sure, God did make extensive promises
to the people of Israel. These promises were genuinely meant. However, in
the face of recurrent Jewish sinfulness, capped by rejection of the promised
Messiah, God had – as it were – no choice but to change his mind and
to cut off the people he had promised to sustain. Evidence of this slightly
different tack can again be gleaned from Sefer ha-Berit, in this instance
from the rather lengthy argument over Genesis 6:5–7, where God repents
of his decision to create humanity, and over the book of Jonah, where God
rescinds his decision to destroy the sinning city of Nineveh. The latter case
is particularly striking. God had sent the prophet Jonah to warn the errant
inhabitants of Nineveh that destruction was imminent. However, he then
changed his mind and allowed them to survive. A God who could decide to
destroy and reconsider is likewise a God who could intend to redeem and
reconsider. The end result, for the Christian side, is significant evidence
of divine reconsideration and hence dismissal of the rich set of biblical
promises upon which so much Jewish hope rested.23
The notion of displacement of the Jews from their covenantal status and
their rejection by God entailed the very difficult issue of seemingly un-
breakable promises of redemption offered by the prophets of Israel to their
people. In building their case for Jewish hopelessness, Christian polemicists
were well aware of this problem and offered a series of possible solutions:
22 Sefer ha-Berit, 55–56; The Book of the Covenant, 67.
23 Sefer ha-Berit, 34; The Book of the Covenant, 42. I have argued that the reference to Num. 23:19 in
this passage is a late interpolation. See Chazan, “Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit,” 429, n. 16.
190 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
(1) prophecy indicates explicitly the future rejection of the Jews; (2) God
did not abrogate his promises; he merely transferred the title of Israel from
one people to another; (3) the Bible in fact shows numerous instances of a
divine change of heart. We shall shortly see our Jewish polemicists engage
each of the Christian claims.
I am concerned that the biblical argumentation we have identified be
neither overlooked, on the one hand, nor overemphasized on the other.
Such argumentation reflects, as noted, the tendency to see all reality through
the prism of biblical truth. It was of further use in countering anticipated
Jewish emphasis on the prophetic corpus that promised redemption for the
people of Israel. Nonetheless, we encounter regularly throughout our texts a
much more straightforward Christian emphasis on contemporary realities.
Without introducing biblical proof-texts, Christian spokesmen noted the
deplorable circumstances of medieval Jewish life and concluded therefrom
that God had rejected the Jews as a result of their sinfulness, specifically
their rejection of the promised Messiah. This straightforward reading of
contemporary realities had the added benefit of discomforting the Jews
psychologically. Such a powerful advantage was not to be minimized. We
have seen this reading of the present at the very outset of Jacob ben Reuben’s
Milh.amot ha-Shem. Let us note one more such straightforward reading of
the present, highlighted at a critical juncture in one of our texts, in this
case at a critical juncture in the Milh.emet Miz.vah.
As noted, Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah is a hodge-podge
of compositions. The clutter of Part i of the collection led to an effort
at a more orderly Part ii. While what emerged was a set of vigorous cri-
tiques of Christianity, Rabbi Meir set out initially to preserve the dialogic
structure so common in polemical works. The following is the opening of
what purported to be a dialogue, but quickly turned into a lengthy Jewish
monologue.
A Christian sage asked a Jewish sage: “Why do you not leave the religion of the
Jews? For you see that they have been in exile for a very long time and decline from
day to day. Conversely, you see with regard to the faith of the Christians that they
become greater from day to day. Their success has been great for a long time. Now,
you will live among us in great honor and with high standing, instead of being in
exile and fearfulness and accursedness.” He spoke at length on this issue.24
Rabbi Meir indicates that this advice was intended for the benefit of
the Jewish sage and that the Christian spoke at great length on the mat-
ter. Clearly, this Christian claim was perceived to involve both qualitative
24 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 305.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 191
and quantitative dimensions. It involved a highlighting of current Jewish
suffering and contrastive Christian ascendancy. Moreover, the Christian
spokesman is made to insist that this is more than a recent phenomenon.
Both Jewish degradation and Christian achievement are of long standing.
This was surely the most potent pressure that our late twelfth- and early
thirteenth-century spokesmen perceived and the thrust they were most
concerned to blunt.

What then were the Jewish responses to this most threatening of Christian
pressures? Let us begin by noting explicitly a line of response that does not
appear. Nowhere do our Jewish polemicists contest the reality of Jewish
degradation. Jewish suffering is fully acknowledged. It would seem that the
sense of exile was so profoundly rooted in the Jewish psyche and that the
evidence of secondary Jewish status was so unavoidable as to obviate any
inclination to disagree with the Christian assessment of degraded Jewish
circumstances.25
The reality was, however, one thing; its meaning was quite another. Our
Jewish polemicists, unanimous in agreeing to the reality of Jewish suffering,
were likewise unanimous in their refusal to see in this suffering evidence of
divine rejection of the Jews and their replacement as the covenantal people.
In opposing the Christian case, they first of all responded to each of the
biblical thrusts noted just now. We shall examine these responses in this
chapter. In addition, our Jewish polemicists built their own independent
biblically grounded case for the immutability of the covenant between
God and the Jewish people and the inevitability of divine redemption
of the Jewish people. We shall engage this line of Jewish response fully
in the next chapter. Finally, they also attacked the Christian claims of
replacement of the Jews as the covenant people, especially the claim that
messianic fulfillment was realized through Jesus. We shall analyze this third
line of Jewish response in Chapter Ten, where we shall follow our Jewish
polemicists as they take to the offensive.
Let us begin with the Jewish response to specific biblical thrusts, the least
threatening of the Christian pressures to be sure – least threatening because
the biblical citations shift the focus toward an intellectual attack, rather
than the visceral challenge of confronting disturbing everyday realities.
We have noted Christian use of Genesis 49:10, with its suggestion of the
earthly power of the Davidic dynasty replaced by the messianic authority

25 As we shall see in Chap. 11, acceptance of the reality of Jewish degradation did not mean agreement
to the reality of lasting Christian ascendancy.
192 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
of Jesus. How then do our Jewish authors respond to Christian reading of
this important verse?
For Joseph Kimhi, the careful exegete, the Christian reading of Genesis
49:10 is far off the mark. According to Kimhi, the prediction foretells a very
different kind of transition than that projected by the Christians and nec-
essarily involves an alternative set of historical characters. In Kimhi’s view,
Jacob predicted in Genesis 49:10 the transition from the lesser political au-
thority within early Israelite society to the stability of the Davidic monarchy.
According to Kimhi, Jacob spoke of the establishment of the tribe of Judah
as the leading element in the Israelite community, significant but not achiev-
ing the level of true kingship. Joseph Kimhi brings a number of indications
of precisely that leadership exercised early on by the tribe of Judah. This
leadership was, however, inferior to that conferred upon David as king.
Thus, for Joseph Kimhi, Genesis 49:10 might be paraphrased in something
like the following manner: inferior political authority will reside with the
tribe of Judah, until genuine kingship is vested in David and his house.26
Interestingly, Kimhi points to contemporary usage to buttress his sense
of differing degrees of political power.
It is well known that the scepter and the staff constitute power that is lesser than
kingship. For you explain it [the Hebrew mehokek, generally translated into English
as staff] as dux [equivalent more-or-less to the English “duke”].27 Now, a duke is a
ruler lesser than a king. This was realized in Nahshon the nasi and the other nesi’im
who followed him, until David came.28
Joseph Kimhi not only presents his own interpretation of Genesis 49:10;
he also sets out to show that the Christian interpretation, which involved
the transition from earthly Davidic rule to messianic authority, cannot be
sustained.
How can you not see [the true meaning of] the prophecies? For prior to the coming
of Jesus, kingship had already departed from the house of David for more than
four hundred years. The last king of the house of David had been Zedekiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylonia had blinded and led into captivity. There
did not arise after him a king from the house of David. For during the [days of
the] Second Temple the kings were of the priestly clan and also [included] Herod,
who was a slave and by no means of the house of David . . . How then can you
say that the kingship of the house of David did not depart [from it] until Jesus
came?29

26 Sefer ha-Berit, 35–36; The Book of the Covenant, 44–45.

27 The Vulgate translation has: dux de femore eius.
28 Sefer ha-Berit, 36; The Book of the Covenant, 44–45.
29 Sefer ha-Berit, 36–37; The Book of the Covenant, 45.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 193
The Christian case for displacement of Jewish authority grounded in
Genesis 49:10 is, according to Joseph Kimhi, untenable.
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman also dealt at some length with Genesis 49:10,
in both his narrative account of the Barcelona disputation and in his Sefer
ha-Ge’ulah. He agreed completely with Joseph Kimhi that the Christian
reading of this important verse was hopelessly misguided, since the Jewish
people had lost their kingship long before Jesus. Thus, the transition read
into the verse by Christian exegesis could not possibly be correct. Where
Rabbi Moses disagreed with Joseph Kimhi was with respect to the correct
reading of Jacob’s prediction. While denouncing the Christian reading,
Rabbi Moses nonetheless did see in this verse a prediction of messianic
redemption, not a prediction of early transition to Davidic rule. When
challenged at the outset of the Barcelona disputation by Friar Paul’s intro-
duction of Genesis 49:10, Rabbi Moses portrays himself as responding in
the following manner.
It was not the intention of the prophet [Jacob] to say that kingship would never
be suspended from Judah at any time. Rather, he said that it would not depart and
be annulled permanently. The intention was to say that, whenever Israel enjoyed
kingship, it would properly belong to Judah. If kingship would be suspended due
to sinfulness, then it would return to Judah.30
This means for Rabbi Moses ben Nahman that, when the inevitable re-
demption takes place, the royal figure will, of course, be of the tribe of
Judah, indeed of the house of David.
The second Christian tack in dealing with the repeated biblical promises
that seemed to point overwhelmingly to future Jewish redemption involved
challenging the meaning of the term “Israel” in these promises. We have
noted Joseph Kimhi’s claim that Christians interpret biblical promises
as referring to themselves, thus blunting the Jewish claims of promised
redemption. Unfortunately, loss of the closing section of Sefer ha-Berit has
robbed us of the possibility of analyzing his detailed rebuttal of this Chris-
tian ploy.
In general, our Jewish polemicists insist vehemently on Jewish continua-
tion of the legacy of biblical Israel. This insistence is expressed in a number
of ways. Not surprisingly, the most prominent is the Jewish sense that ad-
herence to the laws of Israel offers clear-cut proof of maintenance of the
identity of Israel. By contrast, abrogation of the laws of Israel indicates that
the Christian community could by no means claim the mantle of Israel.
While this is the most commonly cited index of continuity, Rabbi Meir
30 Vikuah. Barcelona, 304; The Disputation at Barcelona, 660–661.
194 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
bar Simon adds an interesting further gauge. He argues that the Torah
of Moses was obviously communicated in the Hebrew language, which is
the language of Israel. Loyalty of the Jews to that language is an index of
their continuity with biblical Israel; Christian abandonment of the Hebrew
language can only mean lack of continuity with biblical Israel.31
The third Christian tack – the claim that the Bible itself speaks of God
as changing his mind, a claim depicted by Joseph Kimhi in Sefer ha-Berit –
likewise met resolute Jewish rebuttal. Let us note Kimhi’s own engagement
with this issue. Clearly, Joseph Kimhi takes the issue seriously, offering two
lines of response, one general and the second more focused. Let us begin
with the more general line of response. Kimhi argues in effect that the notion
of a divine change of heart makes no sense. Since God is omniscient, he had
to be aware of the nature of the humanity he created, of the inhabitants of
Nineveh whom he threatened and then forgave, and of the Jewish people
he chose. That God could be surprised by subsequent eventualities and be
moved to alter a course of preordained action is simply unthinkable.
Joseph Kimhi’s formulation of this point connects with his general ra-
tionalist perspective, evidence of which we have encountered recurrently.
Involved here, for Kimhi, is proper understanding of the nature of Scripture
and of the ways in which the divine message must be understood. The bib-
lical imagery of a divine change of heart must be seen in the same terms
as biblical imagery of God’s eyes and ears. All these imageries must be
understood as concessions to commoner mentality. In truth, God has no
eyes, has no ears, and does not change his mind. Thus, the entire Christian
notion of God rethinking his covenant with the Jews is misguided. It is
based on misconstruing biblical rhetoric. The wise and sophisticated under-
stand that God’s omniscience precludes such reconsideration. God effected
a covenant with the Jews in days of yore and that covenant was intended
to last forever.32
As noted, Joseph Kimhi provides a more specific response to the Chris-
tian claims of displacement of the Jews, a response that involves a fascinating
Jewish perspective on prior Jewish reactions to Jesus. We recall that two
biblical sources were cited by Kimhi’s Christian protagonist – Genesis 6:5–7
and the book of Jonah, with the latter far the weightier of the two proof-
texts. Joseph Kimhi attacks Christian use of this specific text vigorously.
According to Kimhi, the divine message delivered to the inhabitants of
Nineveh was that “he would bring harm, and destroy and annihilate peo-
ple for their sins. But if they would repent, then he would forgive them and
31 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 327.
32 Sefer ha-Berit, 34–35; The Book of the Covenant, 42–43. On this Kimhian insistence on rationalism
and the need for metaphorical reading of Scripture, see above, Chap. 5.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 195
assuage his anger. Now this is atonement – he did not change his mind.”
This kind of human repentance and divine forgiveness is, according to
Kimhi, readily understandable. The situation claimed by Christians, how-
ever, is quite different. “But if someone promises to do well [by another]
and then does not do well, with no guilt on the part of the recipient of
the benefit, that constitutes a change of mind.”33 Divine behavior toward
the inhabitants of Nineveh involved normal procedures of repentance and
forgiveness; the rejection of the Jews claimed by Christians constitutes an
unacceptable divine change of heart.
To be sure, embedded within this Jewish argument is a critical detail – the
assertion that there was no guilt on the part of the recipient of the benefit.34
Joseph Kimhi himself does not address in any serious way this issue. He
assumes that Jews were guilty of no serious offense that might occasion
disruption of the covenant. Other polemicists went to some lengths to
argue this issue. Let us look first at Rabbi Moses ben Nahman. Rabbi
Moses indicates, in his narrative account of the Barcelona disputation, that
he heard rumors of a royal visit to the Barcelona synagogue, that he stayed
in Barcelona in order to be present, that in fact two Christian sermons were
preached, and that he answered both. Let us examine briefly his response
to the first.
The preacher who delivered the first Christian sermon was none other
than King James I of Aragon. Such a royal sermon put the Jewish spokesman
in a delicate position. He had to make some kind of response, while ac-
cording proper respect to the monarch, who was after all a key protector of
the Jews. Once again, we cannot be sure of precisely what the rabbi said.
His written account constitutes nonetheless a very important message de-
livered to his Jewish readers. It begins on a note of courteous and respectful
disagreement that was surely intended to provide an object lesson on how
to deal with such difficult circumstances.
The words of our lord the king are in my eyes princely, superior, and honorable,
for they proceed from the mouth of a prince who is superior and honored. There
is none like him in the world! However, I cannot praise them as true. For I have
clear proofs and indications as clear as the sun that the truth is not as he says. It is,
however, not proper to disagree with him.35

33 Sefer ha-Berit, 35; The Book of the Covenant, 43.

34 For intensifying Christian perceptions of Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion, see Jeremy Cohen, “The
Jews as the Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition, from Augustine to the Friars,” Traditio 39 (1983):
1–27. See also Jack Watt, “Parisian Theologians and the Jews: Peter Lombard and Peter Cantor,”
in The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life: Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff,
ed. Peter Biller and R. B. Dobson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), 55–76, and Irven M. Resnick,
“Talmud, Talmudisti, and Albert the Great,” Viator 33 (2002): 69–86.
35 Vikuah. Barcelona, 319–320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 694.
196 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
The rabbi has accorded great respect to his ruler. While indicating the
impropriety of arguing with the monarch, Rabbi Moses claims that he
nonetheless introduced one substantive point of contention, and it is ex-
tremely important.
However, I will make one comment. For I am most surprised at him. For the
things he has said in our ears – that we should believe in Jesus – Jesus himself
brought before our ancestors. He [Jesus himself] tried to say that before them.
In his very face, they [the rabbi’s Jewish ancestors] refuted him thoroughly and
powerfully. Now, he [Jesus] knew and was able to confirm his words more fully
than the king, since he was – in their view – divine. Now, if our ancestors who
saw and knew him did not heed him, how can we believe and heed the voice of
the king whose knowledge of the matter comes from distant reports that he heard
from humans who did not know him [Jesus] and who were not from his land, as
were our ancestors.36
On the simplest level, this is a clever case that contrasts earlier Jewish
first-hand knowledge and rejection of the Christian message with the later
testimony brought to thirteenth-century Jews by the king of Aragon. It
is hardly disrespectful on the part of the rabbi to compare King James
unfavorably with Jesus and to say that, if Jews rejected the message delivered
by Jesus himself, then all the more might they reject the thirteenth-century
royal message. Nonetheless, the likelihood of the rabbi raising the issue
of rejection of Jesus by the leaders of Palestinian Jewry of the first century
seems to me questionable. Since the Christian world had so heavily fastened
on this rejection as a sign of Jewish error, indeed Jewish sinfulness, to raise
it in such a public setting might not have been appropriate, indeed might
have been dangerous.37 However, for a Jewish audience, like the readers of
Nahmanides’s narrative, this point is an important one.
The key to this internally directed Jewish argument lies in the Jewish – as
opposed to Christian – sense of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries. In the New
Testament, Pharisees, Sadducees, and priests play the role of villains. By
contrast, in the Jewish world, these same leadership figures were venerated
authorities. Thus, what Nahmanides is telling his Jewish readers is that these
distinguished Jewish leaders of first-century Palestinian Jewry were in direct
contact with Jesus and were in a position to make a reasoned assessment of
him and his program. Even without asserting that his Jewish ancestors were
necessarily correct in their assessment, Rabbi Moses is indicating that they
at least had the right to make such an evaluation. Put otherwise, such an

36 Vikuah. Barcelona, 319; The Disputation at Barcelona, 694.

37 Recall the criticism by David Berger of this view, noted above, Chap. 4, n. 85.
 Prophecy and observation: displacement of the Jews 197
assessment by Jewish leaders on the scene can hardly be projected as a
heinous crime for which Jews should have or did lose their covenantal
status.
Rabbi Meir bar Simon of Narbonne, who – like Nahmanides – enjoyed
cordial relations with key political authorities and well understood the need
for respectful disagreement, went even further than the rabbi of Gerona. In
most of the Milh.emet Miz.vah there is no pretense of a direct engagement
with Christian leaders.38 The bulk of the collection involves material in-
tended for Jewish eyes and ears only. Rabbi Meir is thus far more outspoken
than Rabbi Moses. He marshals a series of historical arguments intended
to prove that Jesus cannot have been the promised Messiah. We shall sub-
sequently cite these observations at some length and analyze their details.39
For the moment, let us merely note that Rabbi Meir follows much the same
line as Nahmanides, arguing that the responsible leadership of Palestinian
Jewry and indeed the Jewish populace as well concurred in judging Jesus
negatively. There is in all this, according to Rabbi Meir bar Simon, no hint
of any kind of serious sinfulness on the part of these Jews, hence no occa-
sion for divine reconsideration of the covenant struck with the ancestors of
present-day Jewry.40

Our Jewish polemicists were well aware of a number of Christian arguments

for displacement of the Jews and their replacement by the Church. These
included citation of specific verses alleged to foretell such replacement, the
claim that the term “Israel” has now to be taken as a reference to Christianity
and not the Jews, and the argument that God is known in the Hebrew Bible
to change his mind. Our Jewish polemicists marshaled arguments against
each of these thrusts.
Defense against these Christian allegations was, of course, important.
Equally or more important was the affirmative construction of a Jewish
case for an unbreakable covenant between God and the Jews, meaning, of
course, an absolute divine commitment to redeeming his people. It is to
this affirmative case that we now proceed.
38 To be sure, in Chap. 4 we noted a few instances in which Rabbi Meir represented his community
before Christian authorities, as Nahmanides later did at Barcelona.
39 See below, Chap. 13.
40 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 66–67; Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 318–319.
 chap t e r n in e

Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews

The Christian attack rooted in the sense of degraded Jewish circumstances

was potent and threatening; it required extensive Jewish response. The first
prong of this response was to rebut Christian readings of biblical verses
that suggested displacement of the Jews or that at least made such a notion
conceivable. More important was establishment of the Jewish counter-case,
the creation of an argument that Jewish redemption is irrefutably grounded
in biblical revelation.

Let us begin with Rabbi Meir bar Simon of Narbonne. We recall that,
at one point in the dialogue he composed, Rabbi Meir has his Christian
protagonist point to lengthy Jewish exile under Christian rule and conclude
that “we [the Jews] should acknowledge that their faith is more correct and
better than ours.” Rabbi Meir has his Jewish spokesman respond by pointing
to the biblical legacy, with its highlighting of both frightful punishment for
Israel’s sins and eventual redemption. The Jew cites a number of biblical
verses that predict lengthy and difficult exile, meaning that the reality of
lengthy and difficult Jewish exile highlighted by the Christian should simply
be understood as fulfillment of divine prediction. These same passages
conclude with God’s redemption of his people. Just as the punishments
have in fact materialized, so too will the eventual redemption.1
Let us look closely at the very first of the passages adduced by Rabbi
Meir – Leviticus 26. The passage opens with brief indication of the blessings
attendant upon observance of the covenant. Beginning with verse 14, the
text begins to specify – at far greater length – the punishments that would
result from transgression of the covenant. The horrors depicted were fated
to take place initially within the Land of Israel. The passage proceeds to
note that, if these punishments did not suffice to redirect the people, then

1 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 19–20.

198
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 199
the result would be destruction of the land and exile of the people. Terrible
divine vengeance would hound the people into their exile.
As for those of you who survive, I will cast a faintness into their hearts in the land of
their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight. Fleeing as though
from the sword, they shall fall though none pursues. With no one pursuing, they
shall stumble over one another as before the sword. You shall not be able to stand
your ground before your enemies, but shall perish among the nations. The land
of your enemies shall consume you.2
Crucial to Rabbi Meir are two points. First, in his view, the terrifying
vision of punishment in Leviticus 26 has in fact been realized. More im-
portant, as angry as God might be with his people, he would never reject
them. The damning passage ends on the positive note of Israel’s repentance
and divine forgiveness and redemption.
Yet, even when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn
them, so as to destroy them, annulling my covenant with them. For I am the Lord
their God.3
Another verse cited by Rabbi Meir, Deuteronomy 32:21, offers a double-
edged perspective on Jewish suffering under Christian rule. In the midst of
a lengthy diatribe on Jewish rebelliousness and the suffering it will entail,
Moses says the following:
They incensed me with no-gods,
Vexed me with their futilities;
I will incense them with a no-folk,
Vex them with a nation of fools.
According to Rabbi Meir bar Simon, the simplistic Christian inference
drawn from Jewish suffering – Christian truth and Jewish error – is doubly
wrong. The deficiency of Jewish faith is by no means proven by exile, for
God had warned that such exile would take place. Indeed, God had specif-
ically predicted that Jewish suffering would be occasioned by a “no-folk,”
“a nation of fools.” Christian ascendancy thus proves the opposite of what
the Christian protagonist claimed. According to Rabbi Meir, Christians
were the “no-folk” of which God had spoken, “the nation of fools” that
was intended to subjugate God’s people.4
It is significant that the closing set of biblical verses cited by Rabbi Meir’s
Jewish protagonist comes from the book of Daniel. As we have earlier seen,
the second half of the book of Daniel is replete with imagery of persecution

2 Lev. 26:36–38. 3 Lev. 26:44–45. 4 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 19–20.

200 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
and Jewish suffering. Utilization of the book of Daniel to document divine
predictions of Jewish suffering has obvious implications. Just as the suffering
predicted in Daniel has come about, so, too, will the redemption that lies
at the very core of the second half of that biblical book.5
As noted, Part iii of Rabbi Meir’s Milh.emet Miz.vah is much like what
Joseph Kimhi projected as the now lost conclusion to his Sefer ha-Berit.
According to Rabbi Meir, he composed Part iii “to explain in it all the
essential verses from within the twenty-four [books of the Bible] that teach
about our tradition concerning the redemption that is designated for us.”
Like Joseph Kimhi, Rabbi Meir is aware of Christian utilization of these
materials. “There are among them [among these verses] that they attempt
to bring as support for Christianity.”6
Rabbi Meir’s approach is simple enough. The very first verses he adduces
are Jeremiah 2:2–3, which depicts God’s love for Israel because of its early
faithfulness, manifested in its following him “in the wilderness, in a land
not sown.” God indicates that “Israel is holy to the Lord, the first fruits of
his harvest. All who eat of it will be held guilty; disaster will befall them.”
For Rabbi Meir, the meaning of these verses is incontrovertible: “Behold
herein is proof that this was said about us, for our forefathers followed
the Lord in the wilderness and trusted him to provide their sustenance.”
For Rabbi Meir, the point of all the verses he cites is clear: “They [the
Christians] cannot explain these verses as relating to them. In truth, they
were said about us. We are confident in him [God], may he be blessed, who
is truth and whose utterances are all truth, that he will fulfill his promises
for the good.”7 As noted, Rabbi Meir proceeds twice through the prophetic
and closing books of the Hebrew Bible, noting verses that point to Israel’s
eventual redemption.8
What Rabbi Meir bar Simon attempted to show through a variety of
biblical citations was further developed by Rabbi Moses ben Nahman in his
Sefer ha-Ge’ulah. This treatise tackles the issue of redemption directly and
at length. Sefer ha-Ge’ulah exhibits fully Nahmanides’s mastery of Jewish
tradition and his intellectual acuity, but it is hardly an academic exercise.
It has about it an air of profound urgency.
In an introductory comment to his treatise, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman
describes its overall purpose.

5 Ibid., 20.
6 Milhemet Mizvah, 129b. As noted in Chap. 4, Rabbi Meir – true to form – is incapable of maintaining
strict focus on the issue of redemption and, in some cases, simply airs general polemical issues in
Part iii.
7 Ibid., 129b–130a. 8 See above, Chap. 4.
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 201
We are required to steady [our] loins and to brace all [our] strength in order to know
how to speak in timely fashion to those weary of exile the message of redemption.9
Reflected here is the weariness of exile, to which we might add the dis-
tressing inferences drawn by the Christian camp from that exile. Central
to Sefer ha-Ge’ulah is the author’s unambiguous and uplifting “message of
redemption.”
Sefer ha-Ge’ulah is simple in basic argument and structure, although
complex and sophisticated in detail. As noted, Rabbi Moses’ objective was
to prove from all three segments of the Hebrew Bible that the promise of
divine redemption for the Jews was absolute and admitted of no divine
reconsideration or abrogation. Rabbi Moses begins his lengthy argument
with the Torah. His reason for doing so is obvious. Of all the segments of
the Hebrew Bible, this is the most sacred; of all the prophetic voices heard
in Hebrew Scripture, it is the voice of Moses that is most authoritative; of
all the humans who enjoyed divine revelation, none was closer to God than
Moses.
To be sure, there is a problem with utilization of the Torah, a problem
that Rabbi Moses identifies in the following terms.
It is known to all the literate that our Torah is not composed of predictions and
parables, as is true for much of the Prophets and the Writings. [It is known] that
Moses our teacher, peace unto him, is uniquely the prophet of the commandments.
Through him they [the commandments] have come to us and reached us. No
[subsequent] prophet is empowered to innovate concerning them.10 Therefore,
most of his words are not intended to inform us of things to come. Rather, he
speaks of future travails in the form of warning and of good things and consolations
in the form of encouragement. All these are conditional – life and good things when
we serve him [God]; death and evil things when we rebel.11
This, however, is not the whole of the story. As usual for Nahmanides,
matters are considerably more complex and nuanced.
It is true that, within his [Moses’] rebukes or consolations, he made known to us in
many places signs and informed us of things to come, either in hints or explicitly.12
What is required of course is the perspicacity to understand the Torah
properly. It should, of course, be remembered that Nahmanides’s Torah

9 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 261; The Book of Redemption, 558.

10 This is an obvious rebuke of Christianity. It is also, as we have seen in the previous chapter, an
assertion of Jewish continuity with biblical Israel.
11 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 261; The Book of Redemption, 558–559.
12 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 261; The Book of Redemption, 559.
202 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
commentary was one of the great Jewish literary achievements of the Middle
Ages. We should therefore anticipate a high level of textual acuity.
Nahmanides proceeds to identify four discourses delivered by Moses
that are to an extent conditional and to an extent absolute. He arranges
these four passages in order of ascending absoluteness. The first of the four
passages is Deuteronomy 4:25–31.
When you have begotten children and children’s children and are long established
in the land, should you act wickedly and make for yourselves a sculptured image
in any likeness, causing the Lord your God displeasure and vexation, I call heaven
and earth this day to witness against you that you shall soon perish from the land
you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You shall not long endure in it, but shall be
utterly wiped out. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a scant
few of you shall be left among the nations to which the Lord will drive you . . . But
if you search there for the Lord your God, you will find him, if only you seek him
with all your heart and soul . . . For the Lord your God is a compassionate God.
He will not fail you, nor will he let you perish. He will not forget the covenant
that he made on oath with your fathers.
For Nahmanides, there is an element of the contingent here: if the Israelites
sin, God will drive them out of the land. This contingency is, however, close
to a certainty, according to Rabbi Moses. Far more important, under all
circumstances, God will remain faithful to the covenant he struck with the
ancestors of the Israelites.
With respect to this passage Nahmanides adds an interesting footnote.
He indicates that, subsequent to the exile that accompanied the destruction
of the First Temple, the rabbis came to understand that this verse contained
a hint of precisely how long the Jews would live in the land prior to this
Babylonian exile. He suggests that, at the time of the true and full redemp-
tion, it may similarly be discovered that this passage contains a hint of that
dating as well, a point to which Nahmanides will return at the end of his
treatise.13
The second of the passages is Deuteronomy 30:1–10. Nahmanides sug-
gests that this passage is couched “in language more inclined toward the
future and the coming, without the conditional.” Deuteronomy 30 be-
gins with the Jews in exile for their sins and again indicates total divine
commitment to reconciliation.14
The third passage is Deuteronomy 19:1–10, which he sees as even more
absolute than the two prior passages, although (or perhaps because) it is
13 For Nahmanides’s discussion of Gen. 4:26–31, see Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 261–262; The Book of Redemption,
559–560. For his return to this verse at the end of his treatise, see below.
14 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 263; The Book of Redemption, 562–563.
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 203
not focused on sin, punishment, and redemption. In this passage, which
specifies the establishment of cities of refuge, there is reference to three such
cities that are to be set aside at the time of the conquest of the land. Later
in the passage, there is indication of a subsequent time, when God will
give all the land he had promised to the Israelite forefathers. At that time,
associated with faithful observance of God’s commandments, the Israelites
are enjoined to set aside yet another three cities of refuge. For Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman, this is an absolute indication of an eventual redemption. At
that time, Israel’s commitment will be perfect, and God will enlarge the
boundaries of the land.15
The fourth and final passage comes at the end of the Torah and includes
Deuteronomy 31:16–32:43. For Nahmanides, this is incontrovertibly a pre-
diction on the part of the soon-to-die Moses and an absolute statement of
God’s intention to redeem his people.
The Lord said to Moses: “You are soon to lie with your fathers. This people will
thereupon go astray after the alien gods in their midst, in the land they are about
to enter. They will forsake me and break my covenant that I made with them.”16
Israel’s sin is a given, as is divine anger and punishment. God proclaims a
poem that the Israelites are supposed to preserve as a witness. This poem
speaks again of inevitable Israelite failure and divine wrath. It ends, however,
on a note of reconciliation.
For the Lord will vindicate his people
And take vengeance for his servants.17
For Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, this is the fullest and most unconditional of
the Torah’s statements on the inevitable redemption.18 Thus, a sequence of
Torah passages – in fact all from Deuteronomy – indicates God’s absolute
commitment to redemption of his folk.
Rabbi Moses goes yet one step further in his careful analysis of key Torah
verses. He abandons Moses, the greatest of the prophets, and focuses instead
on a lesser prophetic figure, but a prophetic figure nonetheless. The curious
figure to whom Rabbi Moses turns is Balaam, the strange seer to whom
the king of Moab turned for help in the face of the advancing Israelites.
Balaam, however, was unable to curse the Israelites; God, as it were, turned
his curses into blessings. In order to use effectively the prophecies of Balaam,
the gentile seer, Nahmanides has to begin by establishing his credentials.
Nahmanides describes him in the following terms.
15 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 264; The Book of Redemption, 563–565. 16 Deut. 31:16.
17 Deut. 32:36. 18 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 264–265; The Book of Redemption, 565–566.
204 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
It is known in Scripture that he [Balaam] was a great prophet. God, may he be
blessed, placed these words in his mouth. What is said about him in [rabbinic]
tradition is great extravagance for the sublime nature of his prophecy. What is
more, since the pericope concerning him was written in the Torah, Moses our
teacher knew with regard to it from the divine mouth that it is true.19
With this backdrop, Rabbi Moses can proceed to analyze carefully the
temporal progression of Balaam’s four prophecies concerning Israel.
The Bible indicates clearly a sequence of four attempts by Balaam to curse
the Israelites, each thwarted by God. The first of the four resultant blessings
is found in Numbers 23:7–10. According to Rabbi Moses, this blessing
establishes the fundamental reality of the special relationship between God
and Israel. The second of the blessings is reported in Numbers 23:18–24.
According to Nahmanides, this blessing moves forward in time a bit and
predicts the conquest of the Land of Israel by the tribes. It includes an
element of violence, for violence was an aspect of the conquest. Nahmanides
notes that, in these first two blessings, Balaam does not depict himself as a
seer or a visionary, because he is describing an immediate reality – the special
relationship between God and Israel – and a reality soon to be realized –
conquest of the land.20
With the third blessing, Numbers 24:3–9, Balaam begins to look further
into the future and does describe himself as a visionary. He depicts his
blessing as “the word of him who hears God’s speech, who beholds visions
from the Almighty.” The vision that Balaam beholds involves Israel at peace
in its land.
How fair are your tents, O Jacob,
Your dwelling places, O Israel!
Like palm-groves that stretch out,
Like gardens beside a river,
Like aloes planed by the Lord,
Like cedars beside the water;
Their boughs drip with moisture,
Their roots have abundant water.21
For Nahmanides, this is an obvious reference to the glorious years of the First
Commonwealth, with an emphasis on the achievements of King David.22
The fourth and last blessing of Balaam – Numbers 24:15-23 – looks,
according to Nahmanides, very far into the future and foretells messianic

19 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 265; The Book of Redemption, 566.

20 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 265; The Book of Redemption, 566–567.
21 Num. 24:5–7. 22 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 265–266; The Book of Redemption, 567–568.
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 205
redemption. Here Balaam rightly emphasizes his knowledge of divine in-
tention. He says explicitly that this vision projects a distant future – “What
I see for them is not yet; what I behold will not be soon.” What he sees
involves imagery that – for Nahmanides – can only be read as messianic.
A star rises from Jacob,
A scepter comes forth from Israel.
It smashes the brow of Moab,
The foundations of all children of Seth.23
The reference to a star rising from Jacob means, for Nahmanides, the
messianic redeemer; the reference to smashing the brow of all the children
of Seth means, for Nahmanides, victory over all of humanity. Thus, the
closing note in this four-part blessing is an absolute prediction of ultimate
Israelite victory and deliverance.24
In the eyes of Rabbi Moses, two separate prophets in the Torah
established the certainty of redemption of the Jews, a redemption that
has obviously not yet taken place. For Nahmanides the prophetic books are
in one sense simpler than the Torah – they clearly involve unconditional,
absolute assurances of redemption. They do, however, involve the serious
problem of discerning the referent for each promise, with the possibility
that some predictions refer to the First Temple period, some to the Second
Temple period, and some to eventual messianic redemption. Clarifying
these referents constitutes the central burden of Rabbi Moses’ treatment
of the prophetic books in Sefer ha-Ge’ulah.25
When he reaches the third section of the Hebrew Bible, Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman focuses exclusively on one book, the book of Daniel, which he sees
as “uniquely set apart for these future developments.”26 Each segment of
the second part of the book of Daniel must be examined carefully. Chapter
nine, with its imagery of seventy weeks of years for example, contains –
according to Nahmanides – no specific prediction of messianic advent. At
most, it suggests that, with conclusion of that period through the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem and its sanctuary, the stage was set for the beginning of
the process of expiation that would eventuate in messianic advent. When
precisely that advent would take place is not addressed in chapter nine
of the book.27 However, every other segment of the second part of the
book of Daniel does provide what is available nowhere else in the Hebrew

23 Num. 24:17. 24 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 266–267; The Book of Redemption, 568–570.

25 This treatment extends through the second half of chapter 1 of Sefer ha-Ge’ulah and on through the
entirety of chapter 2.
26 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 280; The Book of Redemption, 608. 27 See above, Chap. 6.
206 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
Bible – precise dating of the promised redemption. This precise information
indicates that messianic advent would take place approximately a century
beyond the lifetime of Nahmanides. This dating represents the final piece
of evidence in the elaborate case for the certainty of a future redemption of
the Jews. Indeed, it provides more than certainty of a future redemption; it
provides an actual point in time for that future redemption, a point in time
not all that far removed from the lifetime of Nahmanides and his Jewish
contemporaries.28
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman had already suggested this in a very curious
segment of his narrative account of the Barcelona disputation. As we have
seen, Rabbi Moses has Friar Paul citing Daniel 9:24–27, adding to it the
traditional Jewish reckoning of the period between the destruction of the
two temples as 490 years, and bringing the combination to a Christological
conclusion. Jesus was “the anointing of the holy of holies” intended to serve
as the culmination of the seventy weeks of years. Nahmanides challenges the
calculations advanced by the friar, noting that Jesus predated the destruction
of the Second Temple by a considerable margin. This is precisely the point
at which the exchange should have ended, but in fact it does not.
Rather, the rabbi sets off on a tack that represents his initiative. He por-
trays himself as once more taking control of the proceedings. His purported
speech clarifies the message of redemption in Daniel and the larger issue
of Jewish circumstances and Jewish hopes. Nahmanides depicts himself as
closing the initial exchange over Daniel 9:24–27 with an offer to explain
the entire difficult passage. This leads into a major pronouncement on the
book of Daniel:
I say before our lord the king and all the folk that there is in this passage or in all
the words of Daniel no set time for the advent of the Messiah, except at the end
of the book.29
Nahmanides briefly buttresses this statement by sketching the progression
of Daniel’s visions. All this maintains a discernible relationship to Friar
Paul’s citation of Daniel 9:24–27. Nahmanides argues that this passage – like
28 It should be noted that, in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christian circles, the same kind of bold
prediction of messianic advent is occasionally manifest. The key twelfth-century figure is Joachim
of Fiore, who predicted that “the consummation of the ages” would take place in 1260. On this
prediction, see Robert E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 14–16. For interesting adjustments once
1260 had passed, see ibid., 55. It is also interesting to note that Rabbi Meir bar Simon treats at
considerable length the same verses studies by Rabbi Moses, but refrains from projecting any precise
date of redemption, claiming that the book of Daniel does not clarify the starting point from which
its numbers should be reckoned. See Milh.emet Mizvah., 149b–150a.
29 Vikuah. Barcelona, 313; The Disputation at Barcelona, 679.
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 207
all the rest of the book, except for the closing verses – does not constitute
a precise messianic prediction. Thus, any Christian effort to argue Jesus’
advent from chapter 9 of Daniel or any other chapter except the last is
misguided.
What comes next, however, has no grounding whatsoever in Friar Paul’s
use of Daniel 9:24–27. Here Nahmanides goes off on his own, with a
remarkable statement. After indicating that only in Daniel 12:11–12 is there
a messianic prediction, the rabbi portrays himself as continuing:
Now I shall explain before all the folk the meaning of this verse [Daniel 12:11],
even though it will distress the Jews who are here. It says that, from the time that
the daily offering is suspended until he [God] will make desolate the abomination
that suspended it, that is the nation of Rome that destroyed the temple, will be
one thousand two hundred years . . . Subsequently, Daniel said: “Happy the one
who waits and reaches one thousand three hundred thirty-five days.” He added
forty-five years.
This means that, at the [end of] the first period, the Messiah will come and
make desolate the abomination that serves a non-god and will remove it from the
world. Subsequently, he will gather the dispersed of Israel to the wilderness of the
nations . . . and will bring Israel to their land, as did Moses our teacher, peace unto
him, the first redeemer . . .
Behold, there have passed now from the time of the destruction [of the Second
Temple] one thousand one hundred ninety-five years. Thus, there are missing from
the number specified by Daniel ninety-five years. We hope that our redeemer will
come at that time. For this explanation is proper and appropriate. It is fitting to
believe in it.30
Friar Paul had attempted to use rabbinic chronology to turn Daniel
9:24–27 into a proof of Jesus’ appearance at precisely the time predicted in
Daniel 9. Nahmanides did not dispute the rabbinic source or its meaning.
Rather, he claimed that Friar Paul and Christians in general misunderstand
Daniel 9. This already should not have been essayed or allowed, under the
ground rules of the engagement. From there, he proceeds to claim that only
one Daniel prophecy represents a prediction of messianic advent and that
he will explain this one Daniel prophecy. By the time he finished explaining
this one messianic prophecy, Nahmanides had denied in fact that Jesus was
the Messiah (which was supposed to be impossible under the ground rules
of the engagement), since he had come at very much the wrong time.
Far more important from the Jewish perspective, he had rebutted the
claim of Jewish hopelessness. According to the Nahmanidean reading of
the book of Daniel, Jewish redemption is secure. The time predicted in

30 Vikuah. Barcelona, 313–314; The Disputation at Barcelona, 679–680.

208 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
Daniel has not yet passed. In fact, it lay less than a century beyond the
Barcelona engagement. Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, in his unwarranted
outburst, had offered the strongest possible reply to the claim that the
Jews had lost all hope of redemption. They certainly had not. Redemption
would shortly dawn, and its date is identifiable. To be sure, Jews might well
be discomfited by this information, for reasons we shall examine shortly.
On the other hand, they might well exult in the sense of a redemption so
close at hand.
In Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman embellished the case made
in his narrative account in a number of important ways. In the first place,
he notes that his enterprise is a most unusual one and involves considerable
audacity on his part. In other words, he acknowledges the reasons for his
indication in the narrative that what he had to say would “distress the Jews
who are here.” The first reason is the record of failure by distinguished
predecessors. It was somewhat presumptuous to attempt what earlier greats
had conspicuously failed to achieve. More significantly, there was explicit
rabbinic condemnation of the effort to calculate the time of redemption.
While acknowledging both these realities, Rabbi Moses rationalizes his
endeavor despite these two formidable obstacles. The same consideration
operates with respect to each, and that is the proximity of the redemption
foretold in the book of Daniel. The reason that earlier worthies had failed
in their calculations is that the time of redemption was far off, making
the hints in the book of Daniel exceedingly difficult to read. Proximity
to the time of redemption also mitigates, for Nahmanides, the rabbinic
opposition to calculation. He believes that the rabbis were opposed to such
calculation because the lengthy time between the calculation and the reality
would discourage Jews who knew the truth. Since redemption was so close
at hand, there was no longer a danger of despondency.31
More important yet is the expansion of the elements in the case for
redemption 1,290 years beyond the destruction of the Second Temple, i.e.
in the year 1358 c.e. First of all, Nahmanides alters his prior contention
that only one Daniel passage provides numerical information on messianic
advent. In Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, Rabbi Moses identifies five verses that provide
such information. In addition to Daniel 12:11 and 12:12, already noted, he
cites Daniel 7:25, 8:14, and 12:7. This shift is not as consequential as it might
seem. The three additional verses introduced are extremely ambiguous;
it is only in the light of Daniel 12:11–12 that they can be explained by

31 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 289–290; The Book of Redemption, 632–636.

 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 209
Nahmanides in a coherent fashion. Nonetheless, addition of these three
further verses provides a sense of messianic dating that is yet more solidly
grounded.32
Indeed, armed with evidence for precise dating of messianic advent from
the book of Daniel, Nahmanides moves beyond such proof-texts to establish
corroborative evidence for the accuracy of his proposed dates. He turns
first to the beguiling notion of historical symmetry. He suggests that, at
the point of redemption, 1,290 years after the destruction of the Second
Temple and the onset of the present exile, Jews will have spent precisely
the same number of years outside the Holy Land as they spent in it prior
to this exile. He derives the number of years spent in the Holy Land from
a series of traditional Jewish datings. While this historical symmetry could
not form the initial basis for ascertaining messianic advent, now that the
rabbi had established a solid basis from the book of Daniel for the time of
this advent, the principle of historical symmetry seems to indicate that the
suggested time makes excellent sense.33
Finally, Nahmanides turns to one last piece of corroborative evidence,
the traditional technique of gematria, the substitution of numerical values
for Hebrew letters. Nahmanides introduces the technique of gematria onto
clauses in two important biblical passages that project exile and redemption.
In both cases, the rabbi finds further corroboration for his dating of the
messianic advent. The first of these clauses is found in Genesis 15:13, the
verse in which God speaks of the first exile of Israel, the 400 years of
oppression in Egypt. The second of these clauses is found in Deuteronomy
4:30, a verse from the passage with which Rabbi Moses began his argument
for the inevitability of redemption at the very beginning of Sefer ha-Ge’ulah.
These two instances of gematria serve to buttress the rabbi’s case for the
onset of the redemptive process in the year 1358.34
Beyond that, I would suggest that closing Sefer ha-Ge’ulah with a citation
from Deuteronomy 4 closes the circle and returns us to the central message
of the entire work – God’s redemption of his people is proclaimed in the
Bible in a manner that brooks no possibility of suspension or abrogation.
The verses with which Nahmanides began his treatise and from which he
drew his closing gematria are for the rabbi unequivocal and powerful:
32 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 287–288; The Book of Redemption, 628–630.
33 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 294; The Book of Redemption, 647–648. Historical symmetry was widely appealed to
in the Christian millennarian thinking of the period as well. Once again, the most prominent figure
was Joachim of Fiore. See again Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham, 14–15, for the role of symmetry
in Joachim’s thinking and ibid., 55, for the role of symmetry in the thinking of Bonaventure.
34 Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, 295; The Book of Redemption, 648–650.
210 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
But if you search there [in the exile projected in prior verses] for the Lord your
God, you will find him, if only you seek him with all your heart and soul – when
you are in distress because all these things [again the punishment detailed earlier]
have befallen you and, in the end, return to the Lord your God and obey him. For
the Lord your God is a compassionate God; he will not fail you nor will he let you
perish; he will not forget the covenant he made under oath with your fathers.35
Here we have the heart of the Jewish case. Exile and suffering were predicted
and have eventuated. Redemption by “a compassionate God,” who “will
not forget the covenant” is equally certain.

The case made by the two rabbis, Meir bar Simon of Narbonne and Moses
ben Nahman of Gerona, for the inevitability of redemption for the Jewish
people leaves one further issue, and that is explanation of the lengthy exile
to which the Jews have been subjected. The simplest explanation for this
lengthy exile is advanced by Rabbi Meir in the passages cited earlier. The
exile was decreed, as was redemption from it. The reality of lengthy and
terrible Jewish suffering in exile served in an ironic way as corroborative
evidence for the inevitability of redemption. God had promised exile and
has fulfilled that promise. God had equally promised a glorious redemption.
That too must surely eventuate.
The suggestion that the suffering associated with exile serves as proof of
the inevitability of redemption constitutes only one answer to the problem
of Jewish travails. There was a far more compelling answer reflected in
the writings of the same two rabbis. In this alternative view, the trials
and tribulations of exile constitute the basis for divine assessment of the
Jewish people and offer the potential for enhanced heavenly reward. In
the crisis of 1096, exhilarated Christians argued to Jewish neighbors that
the combination of Christian success and Jewish suffering reflected truth
on the one hand and error on the other. The response of the beleaguered
Rhineland Jews was to see their suffering as a divinely imposed test, offering
bounteous rewards in the immediate other world and – eventually – in a
this-worldly redemption as well.36 Both Rabbi Moses ben Nahman and
Rabbi Meir bar Simon pursue these lines of thought.
Nahmanides addresses this issue briefly, but tellingly, in the lengthy
discourse he attributes to himself on the second day of the disputation.
This lengthy discourse covers a wide range of issues. Approximately midway
through the speech, Friar Paul intervened, with an offer of yet another

35 Deut. 4:29–31.
36 See again Chazan, God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives, 140–156.
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 211
proof that the Messiah had already come. This led the rabbi to indicate
that, despite his agreement to debate the issue of the Messiah, that issue was
not in fact the nub of the Christian–Jewish disagreement. Deprecation of
the issue of the Messiah is carefully worded, allowing the rabbi to address
the issue of Jewish suffering and its rewards.
Judgment, truth, and dispute between us do not essentially involve the Messiah,
for you are more important to me than the Messiah. You are a king and he is a
king. You are a gentile king, and he is a Jewish king. For the Messiah is only a
flesh-and-blood king like you. Now, when I serve my creator in your domain, in
exile and in suffering and in subjugation and in the contumely of the nations –
who regularly revile me, my reward will be great, for I perform a sacrifice to God
with my body. For this I shall merit the world to come more and more. However,
when a Jewish king who shares my Torah rules over all the nations and when I will
be forced to abide by the Jewish Torah, then my reward will not be so great.37
Subjugation to the Christian world was decreed by God and will be over-
turned by God. In the interim, Jewish rewards for faithfulness to their
Torah and heritage will win them enormous rewards.
With regard to the Jewish sense that suffering was predicted for the Jewish
people and will entail bounteous rewards, we must turn our attention once
more to the imagery of Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord. We saw, in an earlier
chapter, that Christians perceived in that striking image clear adumbration
of the person and mission of Jesus and that Jews went to considerable lengths
to combat this Christian reading. We analyzed Nahmanides’s extensive
rebuttal of the Christian view of the Servant of the Lord image in his
Barcelona narrative and in his detailed commentary on the pericope.38 Let
us recall now the opening of the exchange over Isaiah 52–53 according to
the Nahmanidean narrative.
Friar Paul began by indicating the standard Christian view of this Servant
of the Lord passage as referring to the Messiah, i.e. Jesus. He then asked
the rabbi: “Do you believe that this passage speaks of the Messiah?” To this
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman replies: “In its true meaning, this passage speaks
only of the people of Israel in its entirety. For thus the prophets designate
them regularly.” Rabbi Moses reaffirms this view at the opening of his
detailed commentary on the passage. “‘Behold my servant shall prosper’ –
what is correct about this passage is that it refers to Israel in its entirety, as in
‘Fear not my servant Jacob’ or in ‘He said to me you are my servant Israel
in whom I glory’ and many similar [passages].” What Rabbi Moses was
insisting upon is that the Servant of the Lord imagery of radical suffering

37 Vikuah. Barcelona, 310; The Disputation at Barcelona, 672–673. 38 See above, Chap. 8.
212 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
succeeded by splendid success should be truly understood as fulfilled in
the people of Israel, i.e. the Jews. This was the reality predicted by the
prophet.39
Thus, present-day circumstances of suffering must be understood as the
first stage in the story of the Suffering-Servant people. However, this is the
first stage only. What must be borne firmly in mind by beleaguered Jews is
that this first stage will be succeeded by divine redemption that will entail
all the glories with which Isaiah 52–53 ends.
But the Lord chose to crush him by disease,
That, if he made himself an offering for guilt,
He might see offspring and have a long life,
And that through him the Lord’s purpose might prosper.
Out of his anguish he shall see it;
He shall enjoy it to the full through his devotion.
My righteous servant makes the many righteous,
It is their punishment he bears;
Assuredly, I will give him the many as his portion,
He shall receive the multitude as his spoil.40
This is precisely the central theme in the address Rabbi Meir bar Simon
of Narbonne delivered in his synagogue, in the wake of a Christian mis-
sionizing sermon that clearly advanced the message of the hopelessness of
Jewish circumstances. Rabbi Meir’s sermon has about it striking immediacy.
His flock had just heard the message of despair, and it was his responsibility
to counter that disheartening message. Interestingly, under these difficult
circumstances the Narbonnese rabbi, while addressing a variety of issues,
chose to focus on the rewards his fellow Jews would win for their unswerving
loyalty to the God of Israel throughout their time of travail.41
Rabbi Meir began his sermon with a verse from the closing chapter of
Song of Songs.
We have a little sister
Whose breasts are not yet formed.
What shall we do for our sister
When she is spoken for?42
The rabbi then notes the context of this important verse.

39 Vikuah. Barcelona, 307; The Disputation at Barcelona, 666–667. Rabbi Meir bar Simon takes the
same position in Part iii of the Milh.emet Miz.vah. See Milh.emet Miz.vah, 159a–159b.
40 Isa. 53:10–12.
41 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 25–31. See again Chazan, “Confrontation in the Synagogue of
Narbonne.”
42 Song of Songs 8:8.
 Biblical prophecy: redemption of the Jews 213
This verse with which we began comes at the end of the Song of Songs, after it
tells of the affection of the divine for Israel and of Israel for the divine and the
matter of the exiles that Israel suffered. All this [is told] allegorically, in terms of
the affection of a great and handsome king for his beautiful beloved.43
The unceasing love of the king and his beloved, representing the love of
God for Israel and Israel for God, serves to remind the Jewish audience
that the bond is unbreakable and that redemption is a certainty, Christian
claims notwithstanding.
According to Rabbi Meir, the verse with which he opened his sermon
is intended as a reflection of the conversation held by the heavenly hosts
about Israel. These heavenly hosts refer to Israel as their sister because of her
shared devotion to the one true God. The reference to her smallness alludes
to Israel’s suffering in exile, which Rabbi Meir sees quite differently from
the Christian preacher. The reference to her lack of breasts is an allusion to
the absence of the pious and prophetic leadership that sustains humanity.
Redemption from exile, which has already been assumed as a given from
the Song of Songs setting, involves a matter of maturation. A certain period
of time must elapse before Israel will be saved.
Thus, the verse indicates that Israel does not yet have these prophets, as is the
case with a girl who, until she reaches the age of thirteen or fourteen, does not
produce signs of puberty. Similar are the children of Israel. Until the end of days
as foretold by Daniel are completed, it is not yet time that prophets and wonders
appear among us.44
Indeed, redemption for the Jewish people is as natural and inevitable as the
maturation of a healthy young woman; it is merely a matter of time.
Exile is a reality, and so is eventual redemption. The critical issue involves
Israel’s behavior in the interim. For Rabbi Meir, the key to this matter lies
in the next verse in Song of Songs.
If she be a wall,
We will build upon it a silver battlement.
If she be a door,
We will panel it in cedar.45
According to Rabbi Meir, these verses indicate that redemption will take
place irrespective of Israel’s behavior. The only issue involves the magnitude
of Jewish reward. If Jews remain faithful through the travails of exile, then
their rewards will be staggering. If they do not, then redemption will take
place nonetheless, but with lesser rewards.

43 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 25–26. 44 Ibid., 26. 45 Song of Songs 8:9.
214 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
“If she be a wall.” That is to say, if she stood like a sturdy wall which is undamaged
by stones and likewise she was undamaged and unmoved by idolatry, even though
they pressed her continually [an obvious reference to such pressures as forced
sermons], then “we will build upon it a silver battlement.” That is to say, when the
time of redemption comes, they [the heavenly hosts] will go forth with silver and
gold and fine clothes in abundance.
“If she be a door, we will panel it in cedar.” That is to say, if she is not strong
in her faith and her hands waver and her heart hesitates because of the weight of
exile and from a lack of faith, she will not be deemed worthy to go forth with
great honor. For cedars are the choicest of trees, however they are much inferior to
silver.46
For Rabbi Meir and his fellow Jewish polemicists, their followers must be
reassured that redemption is secure. What is at stake is the level of eventual
reward. The impediments to faith are powerful, especially the weight of
exile exacerbated by Christian pressure. For those Jews who remain loyal,
however, the rewards will be magnificent. This is a potent message for
the Jewish community of Narbonne that had just suffered a conversionist
sermon focused on Jewish suffering and degradation. It is a message that all
our polemicists felt, in a more general way, a crucial one for the communities
they led.

The Jewish response to the disheartening Christian message of hopeless-

ness, the Christian claim that God had abandoned the Jews and transferred
the covenant to the Church, required multi-faceted Jewish responses. One
response was to argue the verses adduced by Christian thinkers. We ex-
amined this Jewish rejoinder in the previous chapter. Yet another response
was to build a broad and convincing case for the inevitability of redemp-
tion, a case we have examined in the present chapter. There remained yet
one further direction pursued by our Jewish polemicists, and that was to
challenge the Christian sense of chosenness, the sense expressed recurrently
by Christians that God’s transfer of the covenantal blessings was manifest
in their remarkable successes. We now turn our attention to this offensive
thrust on the part of our Jewish polemicists.

46 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 27.

 chap t e r t e n

Biblical prophecy and empirical observation:

Christian failures

Of all the Christian arguments with which medieval Jews were faced, the
most troubling in many ways was the claim from history, more specifi-
cally from Christian successes and Jewish failures, especially the latter. In
the Christian view, immediately subsequent to their rejection of Jesus, the
Jews were defeated by the Romans, suffered the loss of their sanctuary
and their independence, and were forced into exile. This decline in Jewish
circumstances – it was argued – was permanent, continuing to afflict the
Jews of the twelfth and thirteenth century, the objects of intensified Chris-
tian spiritual pressure. These failed Jewish circumstances stood in marked
contrast to Christian successes. While Jews were suffering exile and degra-
dation, Christianity was conquering the Roman Empire and spreading
throughout the Western world. Whether grounded in biblical exegesis or
in simple and direct empirical observation, this set of Christian claims
engaged both Jewish intellect and Jewish emotion. Jews had to be stung
by an argument that highlighted their difficult fate in medieval western
Christendom and forced them to ponder the meaning of this difficult fate.
The circumstances of the Jews were regularly contrasted with that of their
Christian neighbors, who ruled them and brought to bear ceaseless spiritual
pressure.
The conviction that divine pleasure and displeasure were manifested in
the historical realm was deeply rooted in biblical thinking. This conviction
was shared by medieval Christians and Jews, laying a firm foundation for the
Christian claim that historical circumstances offered telling proof of truth
and error, of virtue and sin. As noted, our medieval Jewish polemicists
did not challenge the Christian claim that history is controlled by God.
Nor did they challenge the Christian contention that Jewish circumstances
were dire indeed. They did, however, defend themselves staunchly, as we
have seen, against the Christian conclusion that dire Jewish circumstances
proved human error and divine abandonment. Our Jewish polemicists
challenged the biblical verses adduced to prove that God broke his covenant
215
216 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
with the Jews and consigned them to everlasting misery.1 These Jewish
polemicists argued in a more positive vein that the Jewish relationship with
God was predicted by the prophets to be everlasting, that present dire
circumstances were therefore temporary (albeit lengthy), that redemption
was inevitable, and that God would reward them for their loyalty under
onerous conditions.2
Simultaneously, Jews went on the offensive, disputing vigorously, as
we shall now see, the corollary claims of Christian success. Jews raised
questions as to early Christian history, later Christian achievement, and
the medieval world order associated with Christian power. Our Jewish
polemicists belittled Jesus’ own achievements and minimized subsequent
Christian successes. They further argued that the present world order, in
which Christianity loomed so large, was seriously deficient, betraying its
obvious pre-redemptive state.3 For our Jewish polemicists, these questions
about alleged Christian success served two purposes. Intellectually, they
buttressed the Jewish conclusion that redemption had not yet dawned,
that Jewish suffering was temporary, and that the genuine redemption yet
to come would correct the skewed nature of present reality, with God’s
elect – the Jews – achieving their rightful position. At the same time, these
attacks on Christian success softened somewhat the emotional impact of
the Christian assault on Jewish fate. While Jewish circumstances were un-
doubtedly degraded, Christian success was nowhere so majestic as claimed.
The sharp contrast drawn by Christian polemicists could not be sustained.
Since I have suggested that much of the potency of this line of Christian
attack lay in its emotional impact, blunting this emotional impact was of
no little consequence.
A simple frontal assault on Christian achievement was impossible. The
reality of Christian power and vitality could not be gainsaid. Our Jewish
polemicists lived in an environment dominated by Christianity. Indeed, the
spiritual pressures that occasioned the Jewish polemical works were them-
selves a reflection of the vigor of the Christian ambience. However, the
biblical tradition that underlay so much of medieval Christian and Jewish
thinking regularly posited extensive political power that was theologically
meaningless. The biblical Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, for exam-
ple, recorded impressive achievements in the temporal realm. The Hebrew
Bible indicates, however, that these great empires were, at very best, doing

1 Chap. 8. 2 Chap. 9.
3 Note the important study by Daniel J. Lasker, “The Impact of the Crusades on the Jewish–Christian
Debate,” Jewish History 13 (1999): 23–36. While Lasker broadly concludes that the Crusades did not
in fact have all that much impact on Jewish polemical literature, he does point to some of the attack
on contemporary Christian achievement.
 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 217
God’s will in the world. Their military victories and political hegemony
represented no proof of theological truth. Ultimately, in the biblical view,
their seemingly magnificent achievements would prove chimerical. These
great empires would disappear from the world scene, and their deities would
disappear with them.
The critical question involved the standards against which the successes
of Christianity were to be judged. For medieval Christians and Jews, there
was only one possible standard. Christian success had to be judged against
the measures set in the Hebrew Bible, more specifically against the prophetic
predictions of redemption. Thus, the question posed by Jewish polemicists
became: did Jesus and his Christian followers fulfill the prophecies that de-
lineated the redemptive process? We have seen recurrent Christian claims –
made in passing – that they did. Now, we shall see our Jewish polemicists
take to the attack, attempting to show that Jesus’ followers did not achieve
the kind of success that was to be the hallmark of redemption.

In our discussion of the Christian case for the messianic role of Jesus, we
have noted that the key was proper reading of biblical prophecy. Arguments
from prophecy were central already in the Gospels and came to dominate
Christian anti-Jewish polemical thrusts. We have regularly encountered
extensive evidence of Christian citation of biblical prophecy in support
of Christian truth claims. To be sure, both sides could play at the same
game. Jews could not only reject Christian biblically grounded claims;
they also could also build a biblically grounded counter-argument as
well.
We have along the way encountered occasional instances of such negative
argumentation. Let us begin with the Christian case built on the Suffering
Servant imagery of Isaiah 52–53. We have noted the close reading of this
passage by both Jacob ben Reuben and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman and
their conclusion that the details of this passage do not correspond to what is
known of Jesus.4 While Nahmanides, in his careful exegesis of the Suffering
Servant passage of Isaiah 52–53, does not cite Christian views explicitly, he
does reject them implicitly in unmistakable fashion. At the very end of his
brief treatise, he concludes:
Thus it is not indicated in this passage that he [the Messiah] would be turned over
to his enemies, that he would be killed, or that he would be hung from a tree.
Rather, [it is indicated that] he would see descendants, that he would live a long
life, that his kingdom would be preeminent among the nations, and that powerful
kings would fall subject to him.5

4 Chap. 7. 5 Perush Yisha‘yahu 52–53, 326.

218 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
Without direct mention of Jesus, the message is clear enough. The details
of Jesus’ life do not correspond to the Isaiah imagery of a figure initially
despised, but ultimately victorious. Especially noteworthy is Isaiah’s em-
phasis on messianic success, which is – claims Nahmanides – at obvious
odds with the realities of Jesus’ temporal existence.
Rabbi Meir ben Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah is extremely rich in reflections
on the Gospels and on the career of Jesus. For the moment, let us cite
only one of these reflections. We have already noted Rabbi Meir’s lengthy
catalogue of the shortcomings of Christianity, with an entire section devoted
to Jesus and his failings. One of the most striking critiques of Jesus in this
section is the following.
Behold he called himself king and said that with respect to him it was said: “Behold
your king has come for you.”6 However, he acknowledged kingship to Caesar
and commanded that tribute be paid to Caesar. Now, this is not the behavior of
kings.
Indeed, he contradicted himself and the prophecy of the prophets. For the King
Messiah will be mighty and will be elevated above all the kings of the earth. All of
them shall serve him. He and his associates will not have to pay them tribute. For
all of them will be under his authority and subservient to him, as is written in the
psalm that they expound as referring to him. “All the kings will bow before him;
all the nations will serve him.”7 He, however, was subservient to kings and fearful
of them.
For this reason, they [his Jewish contemporaries] recognized that it was proper
to condemn him.8
For Rabbi Meir, Jesus failed to live up to the standards established for
the powerful Messiah figure. This is, from the Jewish side, an appeal to
historical reality, the reality of early Christian history.
Let us conclude with a particularly striking instance of Jewish polemical
insistence on Jesus’ failure to live up to the biblical imagery of a power-
ful messianic figure. We have noted already the technical arrangements of
the Barcelona disputation. By establishing an arrangement in which the
Jewish protagonist was limited to responding to claims that Christian truth
was acknowledged by the rabbis, any direct engagement with the truth of
Christianity was precluded. However the actual engagement might have
developed, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, in his narrative account of the pro-
ceedings, portrays himself as recurrently circumventing the rules. Accord-
ing to Nahmanides, he regularly forced the discussion back to the biblical
underpinnings of the rabbinic texts advanced by Friar Paul Christian.

6 Zach. 9:9. 7 Ps. 72:11. 8 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 318.

 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 219
In one instance, Nahmanides claims that he was even successful in
directly engaging the issue of Jesus’ messianic role – a claim that is a bit
difficult to accept. Nahmanides portrays himself as opening the second day
of the proceedings by asking permission to clarify some of his earlier state-
ments – made on the first day – concerning rabbinic literature. This seems
reasonable enough. From this foothold, Nahmanides claims, he was able
to engage the king and Friar Paul in straightforward give-and-take, which
was supposed to have been precluded. In the course of this give-and-take,
Nahmanides purportedly argued that the issue of the Messiah did not lie at
the core of the Christian–Jewish debate. He portrays himself as conclud-
ing this argument with the resigned willingness to talk about the Messiah,
nonetheless. At this point, Friar Paul is supposed to have burst out: “But
do you believe that he has come?”9
This purported gaffe on the part of the friar leads the rabbi to make
a decisive statement on messianic advent. He begins this statement by
asserting that Jesus is the only possible messianic figure to be taken into
consideration; there is no other. With regard to Jesus, then, he continues:
It is impossible for me to believe in his messianic role. For the prophet says with
respect to the Messiah: “He shall rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends
of the earth.”10 But he [Jesus] had no political power. Rather, during his lifetime,
he was pursued by his enemies and hid himself from them. Eventually, he fell into
their hands and could not save himself. How then could he save all of Israel?11
There is an interesting continuation to this statement that we shall en-
gage shortly. In the process of portraying these assertions, Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman advanced an extremely powerful Jewish case against Chris-
tianity. Framed by the dramatic circumstances of the public disputation,
Nahmanides portrays himself as denigrating the historical role of Jesus,
arguing boldly that Jesus failed to live up to the messianic standards set by
the prophets of Israel.12

Since we have just now noted Nahmanides’s audacious statement about

Jesus and his messianic qualities, let us continue with the bold speech he
claims to have made on the second day of the disputation. After depicting
himself as stating that Jesus did not meet the standards of messianic rule,
Rabbi Moses portrays himself as continuing with the assault and taking it
in diverse directions.
9 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 674.
10 Ps. 72:8. 11 Vikuah Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 674.
.
12 Again, I am dubious as to whether such remarks could really have been made at Barcelona. For fuller
Jewish criticism of Jesus, see below, Chap. 13.
220 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
All the more after his death, he did not achieve political authority. For the rule
of Rome was not his achievement. Rather, before they [the Romans] believed in
him, the city of Rome ruled most of the world. After they took on belief in him
[Jesus], they lost many kingdoms. Now, those who worship Muhammed have
greater political authority than they [the Romans] do.
Likewise, the prophet says that, at the time of the Messiah, “no longer will they
need to teach one another and say to one another: ‘Heed the Lord.’ For all of them,
from the least to the greatest, shall heed me.”13 He further says: “For the land will
be filled with devotion to the Lord as water covers the sea.”14
He further says: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears
into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never
again know war.”15 Now, from the days of Jesus till now, all the world has been
full of violence and pillaging. Indeed, Christians spill blood more than the other
nations, and they also commit acts of sexual impropriety. How difficult it would
be for you, my lord the king, and for these warriors of yours, if they were to no
longer learn war.16

This is a wide-ranging condemnation of Christian history, launched on

a number of fronts. Nahmanides portrays himself as following up on his as-
sault against Jesus’ own messianic pretensions with the argument that Jesus’
followers have similarly failed to achieve prophetically stipulated attain-
ments. The failures, according to Rabbi Moses, fall into three categories –
the failure to achieve worldwide domination; the failure to bring into being
a world totally devoted to the one true God; the failure to bring into being
a world in which humans live in peace with one another. Christian claims
with regard to Jewish circumstances are here no longer simply rebutted.
Here, the Jewish polemicist goes on the attack. Jesus was not the promised
redeemer, and Christianity is by no means the religion of redemption. This
means that the world still exists in a pre-redemptive state. Christian achieve-
ment – however impressive it might seem – is still merely the achievement
of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. Thus, present Jewish status
means nothing of substance. True redemption – with its attendant change
of Jewish fortunes – has yet to dawn and will inevitably do so.
Rabbi Meir bar Simon was the most attentive of our Jewish polemicists
to medieval realities. His Milh.emet Miz.vah is – as noted – richer than any of
the other polemical works in its concern with historical and contemporary
issues. In the rambling dialogue that dominates the first part of the Milh.emet
Miz.vah, Rabbi Meir launches an extensive attack on Christianity and its
13 Jer. 31:33. 14 Isa. 11:9. 15 Isa. 2:4.
16 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 674–675. The closing segment of this citation –
the reference to the lack of peace – is cited by Lasker, “The Impact of the Crusades on the Jewish–
Christian Debate.”
 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 221
achievements, an attack that follows along the very same lines adumbrated
by Rabbi Moses ben Nahman.
This multi-faceted assault begins innocuously enough with a broad state-
ment by the Christian protagonist. The Christian is made to assert simply
and directly that Jesus is the promised Messiah, as indicated fully in the
Gospels.
The unholy one said that the Messiah has already come. He is that same person
whom they accepted as a divinity. He has already performed many signs in this
regard, as is written in their Gospels.17
To this simple and direct assertion, the Jewish protagonist is given a
broad and rich reply, replete with numerous biblical proof-texts.
With respect to the issue of the Messiah, there are three great characteristics proph-
esied by the prophets.
They are, [first], that the Messiah will rule the entire world, as is written “His
rule shall extend from sea to sea and from ocean to land’s end.”18 It is further
written: “He shall rule from sea to sea.”19 And it is said in Isaiah: “For the nation or
the kingdom that does not serve you shall perish.”20 Now this has not yet happened
on the part of them [the Christians], or the Muslims, or any other nation in the
world.
Secondly, [it is prophesied] that all the world will believe in the Lord, may he be
blessed, as is written: “Then I will make the peoples pure of speech, so that they
all invoke the Lord by name and serve him with one accord.”21 This too has not
yet happened. It is surely fated to take place, for the prophecies of the prophets are
fated to be fulfilled.
Thirdly, peace [is prophesied], for it is written in Isaiah: “They shall beat their
sword into plowshares [and their spears into pruning hooks]. Nation shall not take
up sword against nation; they shall never learn war.”22 It is further said: “He shall
extend peace to the nations.”23 But behold, every day wars increase between the
pope and the primoris, who is the son of the emperor. The same is true of the
Muslims and the [other] nations.24
Like Nahmanides, Rabbi Meir bar Simon launches a three-pronged at-
tack on Christian achievement – the failure to achieve complete rule over
the world, the related failure to bring worship of the one true God to all
humanity, and the concomitant failure to create the peace that is a critical
characteristic of the messianic era. Again, this critique of Christianity and
its achievements suggests that redemption has not yet dawned and that dif-
ficult Jewish circumstances are thus merely a reflection of pre-redemptive
17 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 112. There is a parallel exchange a bit earlier in the dialogue, with
many of the same biblical texts cited – ibid., 108–110.
18 Zach. 9:10. 19 Ps. 72:8. 20 Isa. 60:12. 21 Zeph. 3:9. 22 Isa. 2:4.
23 Zach. 9:10. 24 Milhemet Mizvah, ed. Herskowitz, 112–113.
. .
222 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
realities. The Jews have not been abandoned; when true redemption dawns,
the Jews will at last resume their rightful place in the world.

Let us pursue each of the three themes advanced by Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman and Rabbi Meir bar Simon a bit further, beginning with the core
Jewish claim that Christendom – for all its victories – does not show the kind
of hegemony that the prophets of Israel had predicted for the messianic
community. In addressing this Jewish sense of the failures of medieval
Christendom to reach the heights predicted in biblical prophecy, we must
be mindful once more of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century historical
setting upon which we are focused. These centuries are still very much part
and parcel of the crusading era. The crusades, however, were complex and
shifting, as was their impact on Christian and Jewish thinking.
The First Crusade, which culminated in the stunning conquest of
Jerusalem by a set of crusader armies, engendered enormous enthusiasm
throughout western Christendom. Christian claims of divine intervention
and support seemed to have been fully realized in the successes of the Chris-
tian armies in Jerusalem in 1099. As previously noted, Jews in some areas
of western Christendom were exposed to triumphalist Christian argumen-
tation, against which they were forced to erect their defenses.25
This initial crusading exhilaration, however, dissipated fairly rapidly. The
situation of the crusader states in the eastern Mediterranean was precarious.
A spiritual turning point of sorts was triggered by the failures associated
with the Second Crusade. The impressive Muslim achievements of the
1180s, especially the victories of Saladin, gave further pause to simplistic
Christian reading of God’s intervention in history. No longer was there a
sense of obvious divine assistance and irresistible Christian power. Rather,
there was growing awareness of the size and depth of the Muslim world, of
the extent to which Christendom would never be able to penetrate the far
reaches of the Muslim world and conquer it in its entirety.26
At much the same time, the institution of crusading was developing in
new and less exhilarating directions. Especially distressing to many was the
new notion of internal crusading, of embarking on holy war against inter-
nal dissidence within Christendom. Southern France, one of the areas of
our investigation, was particularly prominent in the emergence of the new
heretical trends and suffered grievously at the hands of the northern in-
vaders, who were ostensibly involved in a sacred crusading undertaking.

25 See once more Chazan, God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives, 140–156.
26 Giles Constable, “The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries,” Traditio 9 (1953): 213–281.
 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 223
On more than one occasion, the burghers of southern France rose in
opposition to what they saw as cruel and unwarranted political and eco-
nomic rapacity, rather than genuine crusading.27
The Jews of western Christendom were well aware of all these develop-
ments – both the external setbacks and the internal diversion of crusading
ideals from their original focus. Our Jewish polemicists highlighted these
developments in their attack on contemporary Christian achievement. A
military undertaking that had begun ostensibly with full divine support
had now bogged down into a difficult and perhaps losing engagement that
was utterly bereft of the sense of God’s hand and indeed had deviated in
its course into the basis for wanton greed and destruction within Christian
society.
In the previous section of this study, we gave considerable attention to the
book of Daniel, the biblical book most focused on messianic redemption.
The book of Daniel, suffused with a sense of the ebb and flow of history,
had predicted a sequence of four powerful but ultimately transient empires.
The achievements of the Babylonians, Persians/Medians, and Greeks were
most impressive, but these powerful empires were destined to pass away.
Medieval Christians and Jews agreed that all three had in fact passed away.
For medieval Jews, Christendom – as impressive as its achievements might
seem – constituted the last of these four powerful empires. Ultimately, its
fate would be that of its three predecessors.
All at once, the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were crushed and became like
chaff on the threshing floors of summer. A wind carried them off, until no trace
of them was left.28
At that point in time, according to the Daniel prediction, Israel would
assume its rightful place in the cosmos. The Christian sense of history was
thus – for our Jewish polemicists – misguided in its insistence that present
circumstances are reflective of ultimate divine will. Present circumstances,
for our Jewish polemicists, were part of pre-redemptive history. Only after
redemption truly dawns would the relative place of the Jews and Christians
be clarified.
In the dialogue that forms the longest element in the diverse Part i of
the Milh.emet Miz.vah, Rabbi Meir bar Simon has his Christian protagonist
point precisely to Daniel 2, with its succession of four kingdoms, succeeded
by a fifth and last kingdom that takes the place of all its predecessors and
lasts forever. The Christian asserts boldly and simply that this prediction
has in fact been realized in Christendom.
27 For literature on internal crusading, see above, Chap. 4, n. 6. 28 Dan. 2:35.
224 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
The unholy one [the Christian] said that with regard to them [the Christians]
was the prophecy spoken [that] the stone that struck the statue became a great
mountain and filled the whole earth.29
For the Christian protagonist in Rabbi Meir’s dialogue, the prior
transient world powers have all given way before the spiritual power of
Christianity, which has come to fill the entire earth.
To this assertion of Christian achievement, the Jewish protagonist is
given a lengthy reply.
The holy one [the Jew] replied that this was not correct. For in the deciphering
of this dream [Daniel’s deciphering the dream of Nebuchadnezzar], it is explained
that this kingdom [the final kingdom of Daniel 2] will not change and that no other
people will enjoy political power. But we see that the kingdom of the Tatars and
the kingdom of the Muslims are political powers as great as they [the Christians]
are. The same is true for the . . . [other] kingdoms. Therefore we must conclude
that the kingdom of the King Messiah has yet to come. It will rule the entire world,
and the kingdoms will bow before it and subjugate themselves to it.30
Christian claims of world dominance are overblown. Christianity is pow-
erful indeed. Its power, however, does not qualify it as the fifth and last
kingdom. Rather, it is part of the sequence of transient temporal powers;
it is on the same level as the Babylonians, Persians/Medians, and Greeks.
It too will be swept away by God at the end of days, when true Israel – for
Rabbi Meir, the Jews – will emerge as “the great mountain.”
In part, Rabbi Meir’s conviction that Christendom is not the ultimate
kingdom of Daniel 2 is directly related to crusading and its vicissitudes.
This critique involves prophetic predictions concerning the situation of
the Land of Israel and the circumstances of those who control it. Given
the crusading backdrop we have already noted, Rabbi Meir’s fascination
with these particular prophecies is not difficult to understand. Rabbi Meir
draws attention to this issue in both Part i and Part ii of the Milh.emet
Miz.vah. We shall draw upon the latter formulation.31 As noted, Rabbi Meir
presents briefly a Christian plea for Jewish conversion, based on present
Jewish circumstances. This leads Rabbi Meir to present a lengthy catalogue
of Christian shortcomings that preclude such conversion. This catalogue
begins with one hundred bases for non-conversion, proceeds to yet another
forty, and concludes with twenty more.
Almost in the middle of these 160 criticisms of Christianity, Rabbi Meir
includes, as number sixty-two, the following brief notice: “The desolation

29 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 19. 30 Ibid.

31 These issues are addressed in Part i in ibid., 73–74.
 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 225
of the land during the period of exile and its habitation with great splendor
at the time of redemption.” This brief remark is followed immediately by
criticism sixty-three, which is clearly related to the preceding. Rabbi Meir’s
sixty-third criticism of Christianity involves “the desolation of those who
dwell in it [the Land of Israel], while Israel remains outside it.”32
Having identified the two related critiques, Rabbi Meir proceeds to
explain. Both critiques are grounded in the prophecy of Jewish exile found
in Leviticus 26:32. “I will make the land desolate, so that your enemies who
settle in it shall be appalled by it.” For Rabbi Meir, this devastating prophecy
involves two elements – the desolation of the land and the difficulties of
those enemy forces that take it over. For Rabbi Meir, both elements in this
prediction have fully come to pass.
Behold, we see this every day. For the land is desolate, and those inhabiting it
are daily desolate along with it. For the Christians come and kill the Muslims in
it, and then occasionally the Muslims do likewise to the Christians. Thus said
the prophets elsewhere: “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a bowl of poison for the
peoples all around.”33
It is accepted among us from our ancestors and our rabbis that, even if the
leaders of Islam and Christendom wished to make peace among themselves and
wished to build the land and inhabit it, they would not succeed. For the Lord,
may he be blessed, would cause embroilment, so that their agreement would be
annulled, until the time of the redeemer.34
The Land of Israel has lain desolate and its possessors have suffered deeply,
according to Rabbi Meir, in consonance with divine prediction, and this
will continue to be the case. The vicissitudes of crusading are thus not a
temporary aberration. They are part of the long-standing divine plan and
reflect once more the present pre-redemptive phase of history.
Again, these negative observations on Christendom and Christianity
ultimately lead in a positive direction, which Rabbi Meir bar Simon spells
out.
Since we have seen that the Creator, who is truth, verifies these promises for us
while [we are] in exile, we must believe that certainly – at the time of the end of
exile – he will surely fulfill what he promised us for the time of salvation. For his
beneficence outweighs his punishment.35
Christianity and Christendom do not show the requisite signs of true and
full redemption; the moment of genuine salvation has not yet dawned; Jews
32 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 328. 33 Zach. 12:2.
34 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 328–329. This passage too is cited in Lasker, “The Impact of the Crusades
on the Jewish–Christian Debate.”
35 Ibid., 329.
226 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
thus have every right to be confident in a promised end to their present suf-
fering and to their predicted future redemption. This is simultaneously an
assault on Christianity and a buttressing of the Jewish response to Christian
allegations of hopelessness.
The second element in the three-pronged assault on Christianity
launched by both Rabbi Meir bar Simon and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman
involved the failure to bring belief in the one true God to the entire human
community. Rather, according to both these polemicists, the reality of spir-
itual fragmentation, with a variety of peoples worshipping a variety of gods,
remains the order of the day. David Kimhi, in his commentary on Psalms,
makes much the same claim. He begins by noting, in his commentary on
Psalm 2, the imagery of divinely supported victory that pervades the psalm.
According to David Kimhi, Jesus clearly did not fulfill the prediction of
worldly power contained in this psalm. Kimhi did not, however, drop
the matter there; he allowed for yet another Christian reading of Psalm 2.
Christians might suggest “that he [the psalmist] was speaking with reference
to [Christian] faith, [saying] that it would be accepted.”36 This Christian
reading of Psalm 2 would thus suggest the spread of the Christian faith as
the victory predicted prophetically.
Quickly, David Kimhi dismisses this alternative as well, indicating that
in fact the majority of the world has not accepted Christianity. His ex-
act words are: “Behold the majority of the peoples – whether Jewish or
Muslim – have not accepted his [Jesus’] faith.”37 The precise meaning of
this Kimhi statement is not clear. He may simply be pointing to Judaism
and Islam as two of the three – hence a majority – of the monotheistic
faiths. Alternatively, he may be suggesting that, were one to add up the
number of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the world, the last of the three
would emerge as very much a minority. In any case, the overall point is
clear enough. Christianity has achieved nothing like the spiritual unanimity
associated with messianic advent and victory.
Rabbi Meir bar Simon also points to the Christian failure to win accep-
tance among all the peoples of the world, indeed among even a majority of
them. We have seen this as one of the three key failings he discerns in Chris-
tianity. At another point in the lengthy and rambling dialogue he created in
Part i of the Milh.emet Miz.vah, Rabbi Meir has his Jewish spokesman note
the lack of miracles and prophecy on the medieval scene, again for the Jew
a sign of its pre-redemptive state. The Christian protagonist responds that

36 Perush Tehillim, 15; Commentary on Psalms, 185.

37 Perush Tehillim, 15; Commentary on Psalms, 185.
 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 227
in fact medieval Christendom does regularly produce miracles, especially
in its churches. To this, the Jewish protagonist responds that these miracles
are not at all impressive and are regularly rejected by Muslims and Jews.
The Jewish response moves his Christian interlocutor to the position that
in fact miracles are no longer necessary, “for their faith has already become
powerful and has spread through the entire world.”38
This claim elicits strong rebuttal on the part of the Jews.
Indeed, even among you there is need for prophets and miracles. For you see that
daily the Greeks, who are of the faith of that person [Jesus] like you, do battle
against you. You claim that they are errant [in their faith], and they say the same
about you. Likewise the Muslims and other nations do battle against you.39
The Christian claim that the world has become sufficiently Christianized
that it no longer requires prophecy and miracles is patently false. The world
is deeply divided among a variety of religious faiths. Indeed, Christianity
itself is riven by deep fissures within the community of its believers.
In his lengthy catalogue of Christian shortcomings that constitutes the
second part of the Milh.emet Miz.vah, Rabbi Meir pursues this issue, high-
lighting the Christian failure to bring all the world to its views and the yet
more damning failure to achieve internal consensus. Rabbi Meir begins by
contrasting the worldwide acknowledgment of the truth of the Mosaic dis-
pensation with the failure of the Christian to win parallel acknowledgment
for Jesus’ dispensation.
Indeed, no one disputes the fact that our Torah was received from God, may he be
blessed, by Moses and Israel.40 However, neither we nor the Muslims acknowledge
their new faith.41
More striking yet, according to Rabbi Meir, is the Christian failure to
achieve internal consensus. Internal factionalism in the Christian world
is, according to the rabbi, very well known and serves to indicate the
deficiencies in the faith system.
In fact, all the Christian people are not united in it [the Christian faith] in one view.
One believes what some of them consider as leading him to damnation; that one
says corresponding things about his opponents. Thus, their faith is confused among
themselves. For the Greeks [i.e. the Greek Orthodox]42 say about the adherents
38 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Herskowitz, 22. 39 Ibid.
40 The Hebrew here is somewhat difficult and seems to be disrupted. I have translated somewhat freely
in order to make sense of the contrast between views of the Torah of Moses and the teachings of
Jesus.
41 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 321.
42 Blau has g-r-g-r, in fact, the manuscript reads g-r-g-s, which clearly refers to the provencal grégeois,
meaning Greek or Greeks. Rabbi Meir is thus highlighting the intense disagreements between
228 Rejection of the Messiah and of the Jews
of Rome [i.e. the Roman Catholics] that they are damned, and they say the same
about them. Yet all of them are Christians.43
This perception of dissension-wracked Christendom very much strength-
ens the case made by both Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman that
Christianity failed to achieve the religious success predicted by the prophets
as a hallmark of the messianic era.
The third failure claimed by the two rabbis has to do with the peace
predicted by the prophets as yet another characteristic of the messianic age.
That peacefulness is linked by the prophets to the messianic age was not
disputed by Christians or Jews. In many ways, this peacefulness was seen
as flowing from the political order, with one power exercising hegemony
over the entire world. Peacefulness was also supposed to flow from the
shared human commitment to the one true God and the shared human
observance of his ordinances. Such peacefulness was, however, nowhere in
sight. Again, this was the age of the crusades. More specifically, the Christian
kingdoms of northern Spain were engaged in protracted and eventually
successful efforts to displace the Muslims on the Iberian peninsula. It is
this reality that elicited from Nahmanides the derisive reference to King
James the Conqueror’s warriors and their unwillingness to abandon the
ways of war.44 Southern France was, as noted, not spared its own share of
military engagement, with the troops of the north conquering in the name
of Christian orthodoxy.
The Christian propensity for violence involved – in Jewish eyes – more
than simply warfare, whether waged by Christendom against its external
foes or within Christendom itself. Patent in the Christian world – according
to our Jewish polemicists – was a basic proclivity to violent behavior. Let
us turn briefly to the very first of our Jewish polemicists, Joseph Kimhi.
In the early section of Sefer ha-Berit, Joseph Kimhi has his two rivals agree
on the importance of behavior as an index of religious truth. This leads
to the Jewish protagonist making an extended case for Jewish virtue and
contrastive Christian shortcomings. We shall engage this contrast at some
length in a later chapter.45 For the moment, let us focus on one element
only – the alleged Christian tendency toward violence.
Joseph Kimhi grounds his contrast once more in the Hebrew Bible. In
this case, it is not biblical prophecy to which he has recourse, but rather

Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. I am indebted to my colleague Brigitte Bedos-Rezak

for assistance with this identification.
43 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 321.
44 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 675, quoted above.
45 Chap. 14.
 Prophecy and observation: Christian failures 229
biblical prescription. While Christianity had early on broken with numer-
ous elements in Jewish law, the Ten Commandments retained their meaning
and their authority. It is to these ten shared precepts that Joseph Kimhi has
recourse, arguing with respect to each that Jews observe them and Chris-
tians diverge from them. Let us note his comments on the prohibitions
against murder and adultery.
“You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.” There are among them
[the Jews] neither murderers nor adulterers. Extortion and robbery is not common
among the Jews, as it is among the Christians. They [the Christians] rob people on
the roads, hang them, and in some cases put out their eyes. You cannot attribute
these acts to the Jews.46
The picture drawn here does not involve high-blown violence, anchored
to an extent in ideological causes. The claim here is that Christian soci-
ety is simply primitive and cruel. It is surely – according to the Jewish
polemicists – very far from achieving the peaceful ideals associated with
messianic advent.

Medieval Christians and Jews agreed that the historical scene was the arena
within which divine will was expressed. To be sure, historical realities were
as difficult to read and interpret as were biblical texts; historical realities,
like Scripture, admitted of diverse interpretations. Medieval Christians saw
in Jewish circumstances clear-cut evidence of Jewish error and/or misdeed
and resultant divine abandonment. Medieval Jews had to acknowledge
Christian achievement of many kinds – military, political, spiritual. The
issue for medieval Jews was the level of Christian achievement. Did it signify
divine favor and messianic status? For our twelfth- and thirteenth-century
Jewish polemicists, witness to sobering Christian setbacks in the external
struggle against Islam and to considerable internal Christian friction and
violence, Christian failures implied a lack of divine support. These failures
convinced Jewish observers that Christendom could by no means constitute
the eventual messianic empire of which Daniel and others had spoken. To
turn this once more in a positive direction, this Jewish conclusion meant
that the messianic era had not dawned, that the promised redemption
yet lay in the future, and that Jews had no reason to feel permanently
abandoned.
46 Sefer ha-Berit, 26; The Book of the Covenant, 32.
 part v
The Messiah human and divine
 chap t e r e leve n

Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine

Medieval Christians and Jews agreed that the doctrine of a redeeming

Messiah was omnipresent throughout the Hebrew Bible. As we have seen,
Christians and Jews could and did argue vigorously as to whether the
Messiah acknowledged by Christians appeared at the time predicted for
messianic advent and as to whether Jesus of Nazareth exhibited messianic
characteristics, for example the qualities associated with Isaiah’s Servant of
the Lord. Christians further contended that the biblical messianic figure
was predicted to be both human and divine and that Jesus of Nazareth
was in fact both human and divine. Here, however, Jews disagreed vehe-
mently with Christians on the conceptualization itself. Medieval Jews were
strongly committed to the position that such a combination is unthinkable.
They insisted that God alone is divine and that the promised Messiah was
intended by God to be thoroughly human. Once again, as with the issue
of divine rejection of the Jews, our Jewish polemicists defended against
Christian thrusts and took to the offensive as well.1
We shall soon see Christian efforts to prove that the doctrine of Incarna-
tion was reasonable, indeed that compelling circumstances forced God to
become incarnate. In addition to argumentation from reason, Christians
contended that this truth is obvious in numerous biblical verses, and it is
with this line of argumentation that we shall begin. Since we have exam-
ined closely the books of Daniel and Isaiah, we might note that Christian
thinkers drew evidence for Jesus’ divine nature from both texts.
In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar saw in his vision a great statue, made
up of diverse elements – gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay. In Daniel’s
retelling of the dream, he reminds the king that, “as you looked on, a stone
was hewn out, not by hands, and struck the statue on its feet of iron and
clay and crushed them.” Indeed, this stone demolished the entire statue.
1 Recall the important observations of David Berger on the complex relationship between Christianity
and Judaism, involving both intimacy and divergence. There was no more divergent element in this
complex relationship than the claim of divinity for Jesus.

233
234 The Messiah human and divine
“But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled
the whole earth.”2 Subsequently, when interpreting the dream to the king,
Daniel identified this stone as emblematic of “a kingdom that shall never be
destroyed, a kingdom that will not be transferred to another people,”3 the
kingdom of the end of days. For medieval Christian exegetes, the imagery
of “a stone hewn out, not by hands,” indicated clearly the unusual quality
of the virgin birth of Jesus, obvious evidence of his divinity.
Daniel 7, likewise focused on a succession of four powerful kingdoms
that would eventually give way to divinely decreed and everlasting rule of
the righteous, presents the following striking image:
One like a human being
Came with the clouds of heaven;
He reached the Ancient of Days
And was presented to him.
Dominion, glory, and kingship were given to him;
All peoples and nations of every language must serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away,
And his kingship one that shall not be destroyed.4
This celestial figure was identified by Christians with Jesus, and this passage
was regularly taken by them as evidence of his divinity.5
The book of Isaiah, from which the Servant of the Lord imagery was
taken, abounded in imagery that Christians took as proof of the divine
nature of their Messiah. Perhaps the most widely quoted of these proof-texts
was the previously noted Isaiah 7:14, with its purported reference (rejected
regularly and vehemently by Jews, as we have seen) to a virgin conceiving
and giving birth, who in fact is subsequently to be named Immanuel, i.e.
God is with us. Our Jewish polemicists regularly rebutted these Christian
claims. We have also noted Christian use of Isaiah 9:5 and resolute Jewish
rejection of that proof-text as well.6
In the present chapter, we shall turn to yet another important book of
the biblical corpus, the book of Psalms. This book, much of which was
attributed by both Christians and Jews to the prophetic King David, is rich
in poetic imagery that allows considerable latitude for exegetical ingenuity.
Many citations from the book of Psalms can be found throughout the New
Testament; Christian exegetes mined the book for valuable proof-texts on
a wide range of issues. Jewish commentators and polemicists were keenly
aware of Christian utilization of the book and were intent on rebutting such

2 Dan. 2:34–35. 3 Dan. 2:44. 4 Dan. 7:13–14.

5 Mark 13:26 and 14:62; Matt. 24:30 and 25:64; Luke 21:27 and 22:69. 6 See above, Chap. 5.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 235
utilization. In particular, Christian exegetes found in the book of Psalms
considerable evidence for their view of a being both divine and human.7
Jewish commentators and polemicists were well aware of such Christian
readings, examined carefully these verses and their Christian interpretation,
and rebutted the Christian claims at length.8 We shall focus on two psalms
that are recurrently adduced in Christian sources and are regularly cited in
our late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish polemical texts – Psalm 2
and Psalm 110.

Psalm 2 opens with an anguished question as to the behavior of the nations.

Why do nations assemble
And peoples plot vain things?
[Why do] kings of the earth take their stand,
And regents intrigue together
Against the Lord and against his anointed?
The slogans of these rebellious rulers are cited, as is the furious response
of God. God insists angrily that these nations and their rulers must accept
his decision, must accept the fact that he has installed his anointed king on
Zion, his holy mountain.
God is quoted as elaborating the decree through which this installation
of his chosen king has taken place. These verses are critical to subsequent
Christian thinking.
The Lord said to me:
You are my son,
I have fathered you this day.
Ask it of me,
And I will make the nations your domain;
[I will make] the limits of the earth your estate.
You can smash them with an iron mace,
Shatter them like potter’s ware.9
The psalm ends with simple advice to the nations – they must accept the
reality of divine rule.
This psalm, with its imagery of God’s son, played a key role in the
thinking of the early Church; it was quoted in a lengthy and important
address by Paul. In his first visit to the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch,

7 See above, Chaps. 1 and 2.

8 Recall the valuable study by Avraham Grossman, “The Commentary of Rashi on Psalms and the
Jewish–Christian Polemic.”
9 Ps. 2:7–9.
236 The Messiah human and divine
already cited, Paul was invited to address the congregation and did so at
length. In his talk, he spoke of the history of the Jewish people and their
eventual failure to recognize Jesus; he highlighted their condemning Jesus
to death. God thwarted the designs of the Jews by raising Jesus from the
dead. “We are here to give you the good news that God, who made the
promise to the fathers, has fulfilled it for the children by raising Jesus from
the dead, as indeed it stands written in the second Psalm: ‘You are my son,
I have fathered you this day.’”10 Psalm 2 is similarly used in the Epistle
to the Hebrews. “To which of the angels did God ever say: ‘You are my
son, I have fathered you this day,’ or again ‘I shall be his father, and he
will be my son?’”11 In both cases, the son imagery of Psalm 2 is invoked
to indicate Jesus’ divinity, reflected in the reality of his resurrection from
seeming death. This psalm came to occupy a regular place in the Christian
case for Jesus’ divinity and in the ongoing Christian polemical debate with
Jews.
Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem shows considerable familiarity
with Christian use of the book of Psalms in general and of Psalm 2 in par-
ticular. It is worth recalling once more the structure of this handbook-like
composition. Jacob ben Reuben begins with Christian efforts to prove the
divinity of Jesus by rational argumentation. He then proceeds, in chapter 2,
to present Christian and Jewish views of the proper approaches to biblical
texts and to present Christian arguments drawn from the first five books of
the biblical corpus and Jewish rebuttals. Chapter 3 of Milh.amot ha-Shem is
devoted to Christian arguments drawn from the book of Psalms and Jewish
replies to those arguments. Jacob was clearly aware of the centrality of the
book of Psalms in Christian thinking.
The very first psalm cited in the third chapter of Milh.amot ha-Shem is
Psalm 2. The Christian protagonist begins by quoting Psalms 2:7 – “You
are my son, I have fathered you this day.” For the Christian, the message of
this verse is patent. “Behold, your eyes see that the king, prophet, and poet
[David] reveals for us the secret of the divinity through his words.”12 The
message could not – in Christian eyes – be clearer. God as father established
Jesus as his son. There is, according to Jacob’s Christian protagonist, yet a
second proof of Jesus’ divinity in the same psalm, flowing from the closing
verses, 2:11–12. There, God offers his advice to the nations. Rather than
attempting to throw off the divine yoke, they should instead accept God’s
rule willingly. “Serve the Lord in awe; rejoice with trembling; nashku var –
lest he be angered.” I have purposely left untranslated the difficult nashku

10 Acts 13:33. 11 Heb. 1:5; cf. Heb. 5:5. 12 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 64.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 237
var, a phrase key to the Christian case. For Jacob’s Christian spokesman,
“this is its meaning: nashku var – kiss the image of the son,” obviously the
son referred to earlier in verse 7.13 Thus, this important psalm is – in the
Christian view – pervaded with reference to the divinity of Jesus.
Jacob’s Jewish spokesman rejects emphatically this Christian reading of
Psalm 2, leveling a number of Jewish objections. In the first place, the Jew
argues that in fact a series of figures are designated in the Bible as sons of
God, beginning with David, the author of the psalm himself. The Jewish
protagonist opens by citing Psalm 89. In this psalm, David is depicted by
the author. Toward the middle of the psalm, God himself is quoted, saying
of David – “He shall say to me: You are my father, my God, the rock of my
deliverance.” God continues in the next verse: “I will make him first-born,
highest of the kings of the earth.”14 The Jewish conclusion is simple: “It
follows that David was God’s first-born.” The imagery of God as father can
easily be extended, according to Jacob’s Jewish protagonist, to David’s son
Solomon or indeed to the entire people of Israel. In tongue-in-cheek fash-
ion, the Jewish respondent says that, should the Christian wish to make all
these figures God’s sons, then it follows that Jesus can hardly be viewed as
God’s eldest son. Rather, he was quite late in a line of God’s children. How-
ever, this was not in fact the real thrust of the Jewish observations. Rather,
“all people of discernment must understand that these things [the Christian
view] are nothing but extraordinary inanity.”15 Imagery of God’s sonship
can be found throughout the Bible. It should be taken as nothing more than
poetic imagery, used for a number of figures. To transform this poetic im-
agery into a doctrine of actual sonship and divinity is, according to Jacob’s
Jew, “nothing but extraordinary inanity.” Here once again we encounter a
reversal of the normal pattern, with the Christian reading Scripture quite
literally and the Jew insisting on a metaphorical understanding of the
text.
The Jew’s opening objection was exegetical, the existence of parallel bib-
lical imagery applied to alternative figures; his second objection was con-
ceptual and exegetical, rooted in prior statements of his Christian adversary
as to the nature of Jesus as God’s son.
Secondly, if this Messiah was divine and the one God who was his Father said of
him: “You are my son,” then tell me – how could one require the assistance of the
other? For you have already said that they are equal in will, in strength, and in
divinity. However, here one lacks all these – both strength and divinity, since he
required the assistance of the other.

13 Ibid. 14 Ps. 89:27–28. 15 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 64.

238 The Messiah human and divine
Jacob’s Jew is referring to the immediately following verse, Psalm 2:8: “Ask
it of me, and I will make the nations your domain; [I will make] the limits
of the earth your estate.” He notes that, if Jesus is in fact viewed as divine,
then “how could the divine need such domain. This notion is objectionable
and laughable to all rational beings.”16
Jacob’s Jew next addresses Psalm 2:12 – the difficult nashku var. The
Jewish objection here goes back to the earlier insistence that a number of
figures were designated sons of God. The Jewish interlocutor asks which
son of God was referred to in this verse. Why should this be a reference to
Jesus, the latest of the sons of God? Why should it not be a reference of
one of the prior sons of God – David, Solomon, or the entire people of
Israel? Indeed, he further suggests that the image of enemies kissing the
divine son of God is problematic, highly inappropriate for a divinity.17
Jacob concludes by addressing the entire psalm, offering his alternative
to the explication advanced by his Christian opponent. According to Jacob
ben Reuben, the author of Psalm 2, i.e. King David, was speaking simply of
himself. He was portraying God his master as indicating to him that he –
God – this day had proclaimed him – David – as his son. The important
expression “I have fathered you this day” should be taken to mean that God
had at this time fashioned him as king. Jacob’s Jew notes that the Hebrew
root y-l-d, meaning generally to sire, can often mean to fashion or create, as
in Psalms 90:2 – “before the mountains were fashioned [yuladu, a passive
form of the same verb].” David was simply describing God’s fashioning
him as king, leading to the imagery of God delivering the nations into his –
David’s – hands. This eventuates, at the end of the psalm, in the divine
advice to the kings of the nations, whom God has subjugated to David,
to accept God’s dictates. The verb in the difficult nashku var is derived by
Jacob from the root n-sh-k, not in the sense of kissing, but in the sense
of preparedness. The equally problematic var, taken by the Christian as a
designation for the son, is parsed by the Jew as adverbial, indicating purity.
Thus, the phrase in its entirety indicates an admonition to accept in purity
and properly the overlordship of David, whom God has this day appointed
as his king and as victor over the nations. In this Jewish explication, centered
around the royal figure of David, there is no reference to a Messiah and no
hint of a second divine figure. God alone is divine, and David is the human
chosen by him to serve as king and ruler over the nations.18
Psalm 2 is one of a number of psalms for which David Kimhi provides,
in addition to his direct commentary, indication of Christian exegesis and

16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 65. 18 Ibid.

 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 239
rebuttal of that Christian exegesis.19 David Kimhi takes the position, already
noted in Jacob ben Reuben, that the straightforward meaning of Psalm 2
involves God’s choice of David as king of Israel and master of the nations.
To be sure, some commentators, he notes, see in this psalm a reference to
the Messiah who is yet to come and God’s deliverance of the nations into
the hands of this Messiah. Finally, he acknowledges that Christians have
a different view of Psalm 2, seeing in it obvious reference to Jesus and his
role as Son of God. David Kimhi finds this third view utterly unacceptable
and sets out a lengthy series of objections.
Interestingly, these objections do not begin, as did the objections of Jacob
bar Reuben, with exegetical issues or possibilities. Rather, the objections
of David Kimhi commence from the philosophic. We recall that David’s
father, Joseph Kimhi, had addressed, in his Sefer ha-Berit, both exegetical
and philosophical issues. The same dual interests are manifest in the com-
mentaries of David Kimhi, Joseph’s son. In attacking the Christian view of
Psalm 2, the son chose to begin with the philosophic.20
David Kimhi’s philosophic objections involve three considerations. First,
the Christian reading of Psalm 2:7 is ultimately – as already noted – a liter-
alist reading. It assumes that the psalm speaks of a combination of a divine
father and a divine son. However, argues David Kimhi, such a combination
surely implies thorough identity between the elements joined in the dyad.
As David Kimhi puts it: “It is impossible to say: ‘This horse is the son of
Reuben.’” Thus, the necessity of such thorough identity means that father
and son must both be divine only. That a human figure, even a complex
divine-human figure like Jesus, could be designated literally as son of God
is unthinkable. While this objection attacks the core Christian notion of
Jesus as both human and divine, Kimhi immediately proceeds to indicate
that the purer notion of a father–son dyad of two wholly divine figures –
which Christians would in fact not embrace – is equally unthinkable. “For
divinity is inseparable. It is not a body that might be separated. Rather,
God is one in every sense of unity. He may not be expanded; he may not
be contracted; he may not be divided.” Finally, the temporality of divin-
ity makes such a dyad unthinkable as well. Fatherhood implies temporal
precedence to sonship. While the terms are correlative – there can be no
father without a son and vice versa, the father always precedes the son.
Just as divinity is indivisible, so too does it lie totally beyond the realm of

19 For a full list of these psalms, see above, Chap. 4.

20 During our period, Christian theological speculation regularly began with observations embedded
in biblical commentary.
240 The Messiah human and divine
temporality. A divine son who is later in the scheme of things than a divine
father is again unthinkable.21
At this point, David Kimhi turns in an exegetical direction, allowing for
the possibility of a figurative use of the term son. Such a figurative use of the
term son would of course undo the Christian view of Psalm 2:7. He puts this
suggestion in the form of a Christian objection. Christians might say: ‘It is
impossible to say son of God with respect to something that is not divine.”
Now, this sounds much like Kimhi’s own initial opposition to the Christian
reading of “You are my son.” There is, however, an important difference.
Earlier, Kimhi was attributing to the Christians a literalist rendition of
Psalm 2:7 and then attacking that literalist position in its own terms. Here,
he proceeds to raise the possibility of a broader, less literal approach, as he
immediately indicates. “Say to them [the Christians, in response to their
objection]: We can only speak of God, may he be blessed, figuratively, as
is said of him ‘the mouth of the Lord,’ ‘the eyes of the Lord,’ ‘ the ears
of the Lord,’ etc. It is obvious that this [these expressions] is only to be
taken figuratively.” Kimhi then suggests that widespread biblical use of the
terminology of sonship to God must similarly be taken in this figurative
sense only.22
In this regard, Kimhi takes a sly jab at Christian departure from what he
sees as divine commandment. “In the same way, when it [the biblical text]
says son of God or sons of God, this must be taken figuratively. For one
who fulfills [God’s] commands and commissions is called [God’s] son, in
the same way that a son does the command of the father.”23 Thus, despite
Christian literalist objections, it is thoroughly appropriate to read biblical
references to God’s son or sons in a figurative sense, and such a reading is
appropriate to Psalm 2:7. It is precisely such a reading that David Kimhi had
earlier offered his Jewish readers, with King David the human figuratively
identified as God’s son in the verse in question.
Finally, David Kimhi the exegete insists on seeing Psalm 2:7 in its larger
context and raising the philosophic problems associated with this contextual
reading of the verse. As noted, in the following verse the God who had
declared someone his son and had spoken of siring this same figure then
offered to make the nations his domain and the limits of the earth his
estate. He had further offered to enable this figure to smash the nations

21 Perush Tehillim, 14; Commentary on Psalms, 184. These philosophic issues will be discussed at greater
length in the next chapter.
22 Perush Tehillim, 14; Commentary on Psalms, 184. Recall the discussion of reading Scripture in figurative
terms above, Chap. 5.
23 Perush Tehillim, 14; Commentary on Psalms, 184.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 241
with an iron mace and to shatter them like potter’s ware. Now, for David
Kimhi, such imagery is unthinkable for the Jesus figure. To the extent that
Jesus is taken to be divine, he could surely not be depicted as requiring
the assistance of anyone to make the nations his domain. If his divinity
were to be taken seriously, says David Kimhi, he would have to be seen as
controlling the universe. The image of a deity requiring assistance in any
sphere is unthinkable.24
There is, of course, given the complexity of the Jesus figure in Christian
thinking, another possibility. Christians might suggest that this is a reference
to the earthly Jesus, “after the divine had taken on flesh, and he [God] said
to the earthly [Jesus] that he might ask and he would make the nations
his domain.” However, notes David Kimhi, “the earthly [Jesus] had no
kingship and no rule over any nation.” To which Christians might reply
that this was a reference to the eventual successes of the Christian faith
and its conquest of the nations. Again, however, David Kimhi demurs.
“Behold, that the majority of peoples, whether Jewish or Muslim, have
not accepted his [ Jesus’] faith.”25 This is a distinctly late twelfth-/early
thirteenth-century view. Greater awareness of a larger world, fostered by
crusading and the enhanced travel and trade that developed in its wake,
had given rise to a new sense of this wider world, in which the Christian
vision that dominated the West had by no means conquered the vastness
of the globe and the multitudes that inhabited it.26
The combination of Jacob ben Reuben and David Kimhi provides a
clear sense of Jewish awareness of Christian use of such passages as Psalm 2.
The Jewish response was fairly uniform. It involved both an appeal to
exegetical norms and philosophical truths. On both levels, Christian ar-
guments for Jesus’ divinity based on Psalm 2 were firmly rejected. Such
intellectual leaders as Jacob ben Reuben and David Kimhi understood the
importance of addressing these Christian claims and affording their Jewish
co-religionists meaningful lines of rebuttal.

Yet another psalm widely cited by Christians was Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is
actually quite close to Psalm 2 in its focus upon a figure who rules with
divine support. This figure is told by God: “Sit at my right hand, while I
make your enemies your footstool.” God further informs this figure that
he “will stretch forth from Zion your mighty scepter; hold sway over your
enemies.” The closing note in this psalm is the destruction that will be
wreaked with divine support.
24 Perush Tehillim, 14; Commentary on Psalms, 185.
25 Perush Tehillim, 14–15; Commentary on Psalms, 185. 26 On this theme, see above, Chap. 10.
242 The Messiah human and divine
The Lord is at your right hand.
He crushes kings in the day of his anger.
He works judgment upon the nations,
Heaping up bodies, crushing heads far and wide.
Despite these similarities between the two psalms, there are differences as
well. The first and simplest is the disparity in length. Psalm 2 is of moderate
size, twelve verses in all; Psalm 110 is quite short, consisting of seven verses
only. More subjectively, I would suggest that, while Psalm 2 is hardly free
of problems, these problems are by no means so pervasive as the difficulties
encountered in Psalm 110, which is studded with ambiguous or opaque
verses. Of these difficulties, the one that has most affected the Christian–
Jewish debate may well be the two simple words with which the psalm
opens: Le-David Mizmor, which might reasonably be translated “A psalm
written by David” or “A psalm written for David” or “A psalm written about
David.” These alternative renderings of the two simple Hebrew words lead
to striking divergence in understanding the thrust of the psalm, as we shall
quickly see.
Utilization of this psalm goes back into the earliest phases of Christianity.
In fact, Psalm 110 is cited as part of Jesus’ own teaching in all three synoptic
Gospels. This citation by Jesus himself assured Psalm 110 a central place
in the ongoing Christian–Jewish debate. Let us begin with the oldest for-
mulation, found in the Gospel of Mark. There, Jesus is made to quote the
opening verse of Psalm 110, as indication of the divinity of the promised
Messiah. Jesus is quoted as teaching the following in the Temple.
How can the scribes maintain that the Messiah is a son of David? It was David
himself who said, when inspired by the Holy Spirit, “The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’” David himself
calls him “Lord;” how can he be David’s son?27
This teaching is based upon the notion that Le-David Mizmor means a
psalm written by David. From this it follows that the figure addressed
by God and told to sit at his right hand must be someone other than
David. Were David himself the figure in the verse, it would have read:
“The Lord said to me, ‘Sit at my right hand.’” It further follows from
David’s designation of this figure as his lord that this being could surely
not be an offspring of his, but must instead be a superior being.
The Matthew version of this same story sharpens two dimensions of it.
In the first place, it heightens the sense of Jesus’ conflict with his Jewish

27 Mark 13:35.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 243
contemporaries over this verse. Moreover, it also augments the sense of
self-perception on Jesus’ part of his place in the exegesis of the psalm. In
Matthew, the citation of this verse becomes part of an extended debate be-
tween Jesus and his Pharisaic and Sadducean detractors. First the Pharisees
attempted to trap him with difficult questions; they were followed in turn
by the Sadducees. In each case, Jesus is portrayed as successfully answering
the difficult questions. The Sadducean failure was succeeded by yet another
effort on the part of the Pharisees, who first asked him as to the greatest
commandment in the law. After responding, Jesus himself posed a query.
Turning to the assembled Pharisees, Jesus asked them, “What is your opinion about
the Messiah? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied. “Then how is
it,” he asked, “that David by inspiration calls him Lord? For he says, ‘The Lord
says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’
If then David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” Nobody was able to
give him an answer, and from that day no one dared to put any more questions to
him.28
In this version of the story, Psalm 110:1 is made a point of direct contention
between Jesus and his Jewish rivals. Moreover, there is stronger implication
of Jesus’ own role as messianic and divine.29
This implication is made quite explicit in Peter’s lengthy and important
address in Acts of the Apostles 2. Peter’s speech is depicted as closing on a
moving note.
My friends, nobody can deny that the patriarch David died and was buried; we have
his tomb here to this very day. It is clear therefore that he spoke as a prophet who
knew that God had sworn to him that one of his own direct descendants should sit
on his throne, and, when he [David] said he [his descendant] was not abandoned
to death and his flesh never saw corruption, he spoke with foreknowledge of the
resurrection of the Messiah. Now Jesus has been raised by God, and of this we
are all witness. Exalted at God’s right hand, he received from the Father the Holy
Spirit, and all that you now see and hear flows from him. For it was not David
who went up to heaven. His own words are: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my
right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Let all Israel then accept
as certain that God has made this same Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and
Messiah.30
Here, the impact of Psalm 110:1 is clear, and its implications for Jesus’
humanity and divinity are manifest.
Given this rootedness in Christian Scripture, Psalm 110 had to become
pivotal in the Christian–Jewish debate. A reflection of this centrality can

28 Matt. 22:41–46. 29 Ps. 110 is also quoted by Jesus in Luke 20:42–43. 30 Acts 2:29–36.
244 The Messiah human and divine
be found in Nahmanides’s lively narrative account of the Barcelona dispu-
tation. As we recall, the disputation was supposed to focus on the claim
that rabbinic literature contains convincing hints that the rabbis knew and
acknowledged key Christian truths. In Nahmanides’s rich narrative por-
trait, Friar Paul is depicted as introducing the rabbinic material in one of
two ways. In most cases, he introduced the rabbinic material immediately,
either in the form of direct rabbinic statements or rabbinic exegesis of key
biblical verses. In a few interesting cases, Rabbi Moses has Friar Paul quote
important biblical verses and supply standard Christian readings. These
standard Christian readings of course elicit predictable Jewish responses
from the rabbi. Only in the wake of these predictable Jewish responses
does Friar Paul then introduce a rabbinic statement that seems to contra-
dict the traditional position enunciated by the rabbi. A striking example of
the latter procedure is afforded by Friar Paul’s use of Psalm 110.
According to the Nahmanidean narrative, on the last day of the dispu-
tation Friar Paul began by raising the issue of the Messiah as both divine
and human, asking the rabbi whether the prophets had predicted such a
combination. Nahmanides responded by insisting that the Messiah was
surely intended to be a totally human figure, albeit of heroic stature. Friar
Paul then introduced Psalm 110:1 and asked, in traditional Christian terms:
“Who is it then that King David would designate ‘my Lord?’ And how could
a human being sit at the right hand of the Lord?” The reply attributed by
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman indicates how habituated Jews had become to
citation of this particular verse.
Are you the brilliant Jew who discovered this insight and converted as a result of
it? And are you the one who suggested to the king to gather all the sages of the
Jews so that you could dispute with them over the insights you discovered? Have
we not heard this previously? Indeed there is no priest and no infant that has not
raised this issue to the Jews. This question is exceedingly antiquated.31
For Nahmanides, this is simply one of the hoariest Christian proof-texts in
existence.
According to Nahmanides, the king intervened and said to him:
“Nonetheless, answer it [the antiquated Christian claim].” Nahmanides’s
stock Jewish reply suggested that the verse actually focused on David him-
self, as we shall see. Upon the conclusion of this response, Friar Paul then
introduced his rabbinic text, claiming that Nahmanides had deviated from
earlier rabbinic understanding of the text.32 For our purposes, we shall
31 Vikuah. Barcelona, 317; The Disputation at Barcelona, 688.
32 Vikuah. Barcelona, 318; The Disputation at Barcelona, 690.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 245
adopt the stance of King James of Aragon. That is to say, despite the fact
that the Christian claim was by the twelfth century an old one, how did
our Jewish polemicists respond?
Let us begin with Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit. Joseph Kimhi’s Christian
protagonist poses his question in the simplest and sketchiest way. He quotes
Psalm 110:1 and asks: “How could he [David] say, ‘The Lord said to my
Lord?’” This brief question, obviously well understood by the Jew, elicits
a lengthy reply, which begins with textual issues and yet another attack on
Jerome. The Jewish protagonist claims, first of all, that Jerome distorted
the meaning of the Hebrew text by misreading and mistranslating it, mis-
taking the singular Hebrew la-adoni – meaning “to my (human) lord” – as
the plural la-adonai, which would be a reference to the divine Lord. The
Hebrew vowels indicate clearly that the text means: “The Lord said to my
lord.” Jerome, misreading this Hebrew, rendered: “Dixit Dominus Domino
meo,” meaning “The Lord said to my Lord.” According to Joseph Kimhi,
there is in this brief Hebrew phrase no reference to two Lords, i.e. two
divine figures. Rather, captured here is a reference to God communicating
with a distinctly human figure.33
Proper understanding of this distinctly human figure is contingent upon
accurate understanding of the context of the psalm, that is to say of the
proper meaning of the superscription Le-David Mizmor. As already noted,
Le-David Mizmor could reasonably mean a psalm written by David or a
psalm written for David or a psalm written about David. Joseph Kimhi
argues that the contents of the psalm, beginning with the opening words
cited by his Christian protagonist, indicate clearly that the psalm was writ-
ten for or about David, indeed at the very beginning of his difficult but
successful reign. Joseph Kimhi then proceeds to parse the entire brief psalm
as a reflection of the military successes of King David. In so doing, he cites
extensively from the depiction in 2 Samuel of David’s military achieve-
ments. It is precisely such achievements that are reflected in Psalm 110.
Psalm 110 thus reveals itself as a thoroughly understandable creation of an
Israelite poet, lauding the victories of King David over his enemies.34
In addition, Joseph Kimhi raises the same kind of question we have
already encountered in Jewish reactions to Christian use of Psalm 2. It is
impossible, says Joseph Kimhi’s Jew, to comprehend the Christian reading
of Psalm 110 as referring to God speaking to a divine being and promising
victory over human enemies. “If it [Psalm 110] was said of Jesus, as you

33 Sefer ha-Berit, 47; The Book of the Covenant, 58–59.

34 Sefer ha-Berit, 48; The Book of the Covenant, 59–60.
246 The Messiah human and divine
claim, why should there be a need for his [God’s] sending the staff of his
[ Jesus’] might from Zion? He [ Jesus] should have been able to assist himself,
without the assistance of his father.”35 This is precisely the kind of argument
used by Jacob ben Reuben and David Kimhi with respect to Psalm 2.
David Kimhi, in his Psalms commentary, again begins with his own
direct observations on Psalm 110. He opens by noting that the rabbis see
this psalm as a reference to the patriarch Abraham, as he prepared to set out
to battle against the coalition of Canaanite kings. This rabbinic explication
of the psalm derived in no small measure from the reference to Melchizedek,
found in Psalm 110:4. While respectful of this rabbinic interpretation, David
Kimhi indicates that his own contextual reading of the psalm suggests that it
is far likelier set at the early stages of King David’s reign and involves divine
promise of assistance in the face of the Philistine enemy. This promise was
in fact realized in David’s successful campaigns against the Philistines.36 In
other words, David Kimhi agreed fully with his father’s reading of Psalm
110, as reflected in Sefer ha-Berit.
In addressing Christian claims based on Psalm 110 at the close of his
commentary on it, David Kimhi opens with precisely the same Christian
claim cited by his father. He does, however, add a second dimension to the
Christian case, drawn from an opaque phrase in verse 3. As noted, Psalm
110 is replete with difficult phrases. Of these problematic phrases, none is
more impenetrable than verse 3. According to David Kimhi, reference in
verse 3 to the womb moves Christian interpreters to read it something like:
“I have begotten you from the womb before morning” and to see in this a
reference to virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus.37
Once again, David Kimhi sets out to provide his Jewish readers with
telling responses to this Christian interpretation, which in his view is in fact
a misinterpretation. David Kimhi begins with another assault on Jerome
and his alleged misreading of the Hebrew. However, David Kimhi moves
beyond this focused attack on Jerome’s reading of a specific Hebrew word,
to make a number of broad methodological points.
How can they [the Christians] establish the error of one man [Jerome] against so
many others. For from east to west, it [this word adoni] is found with a hirik [i.e.
in the singular, with the meaning of a human lord and not the divine Lord]. . . .
Indeed, they say that the basis [of our presence in Christendom] lies in the provision
of testimony to them [i.e. to Christian truth]. If this is so, then let them heed fully
this testimony.38
35 Sefer ha-Berit, 48–49; The Book of the Covenant, 60.
36 Perush Tehillim, 251–252. 37 Ibid., 252; Commentary on Psalms, 192.
38 Perush Tehillim, 252; Commentary on Psalms, 192.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 247
Reflected here is a claim that the well-attested Hebrew of the Masoretic
text should be accorded far more weight than the individualistic reading of
Jerome.
Indeed, says David Kimhi, classic Christian justification for the legiti-
macy of Judaism within the Christian world flows from the Christian sense
of the Jews as providing evidence for Christian truth by proclaiming to
the world the divine origins of their Scripture, which Christians so firmly
believe proves conclusively Christian truth claims.39 David Kimhi thus ar-
gues that Christians should take more seriously their own expressed sense of
the validity and importance of the Hebrew text that the Jews preserve and
venerate. They should acknowledge the veracity of that text and dismiss
the misleading Latin translation of Jerome.
David Kimhi next proceeds to the kind of theological issue we have al-
ready encountered. He argues that making the second figure in Psalm 110
divine results in one divine being promising another divine being victory
over his enemies, thereby implying that this second divine being was de-
ficient, which is of course unthinkable for the divine. David Kimhi also
turns toward history, repeating the kind of historical argument he had lev-
eled with respect to Psalm 2. As in Psalm 2, so too Psalm 110 included
promises of victory over the enemy. David Kimhi focuses on Psalm 110:4 –
“He crushes kings in the day of his anger,” asking: “Where were the wars
that Jesus fought? And where were the kings he defeated?”40 Psalm 110:4
includes another element, an element of judgment. “He works judgment
upon the nations, heaping up bodies.” This segment of the verse leads
David Kimhi to point to yet another inconsistency between the imagery
of Psalm 110 and Christian views of Jesus. “How could it say: ‘He works
judgment upon the nations?’ He [Jesus] came to judge the souls and to save
them.”41 Thus, David Kimhi argues to his Jewish readers that, on textual,
philosophical, and historical grounds, identification of the second figure in
Psalm 110 with Jesus fails dismally.
Let us conclude our discussion of Psalm 110 with Rabbi Moses ben Nah-
man, with whom we began. As we recall, despite Nahmanides’s protestations
that this verse had been known to Jews from time immemorial, the king
insisted that he respond, and respond he did. Interestingly, Nahmanides
did not raise the issue of the textual reading. Rather, he began with the
problematic mizmor le-David. As is often the case for Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman, he took a rather original position. He in effect concurred with
39 On this theme, see again Cohen, Living Letters of the Law.
40 Perush Tehillim, 252; Commentary on Psalms, 193.
41 Perush Tehillim, 252; Commentary on Psalms, 193.
248 The Messiah human and divine
the Christian position that David was the author of Psalm 110. However, he
insisted that the circumstances of this authorship had to be borne carefully
in mind.
Indeed, King David was the poet who composed the psalms under divine inspira-
tion. He composed them so that they might be sung before the altar of the Lord.
However, he himself did not sing them and was in fact not permitted to sing them,
since this was prohibited by the law of the Torah. Rather, he would give the psalms
to the Levites, so that they might sing them. This is indicated expressly in the book
of Chronicles. Therefore, he perforce had to compose the psalms in terms that
would be appropriate for the Levites to utter. If he had said: “The Lord said to
me,” then the Levite would speak falsely. Instead, it was appropriate for the Levite
to say in the tabernacle: “The Lord said to my lord, i.e. David, sit at my right
hand.”42
Having established this setting, Nahmanides addresses the imagery of
David seated at God’s right hand. He argues that this imagery involves
God’s commitment to assist David, which – claims the rabbi – he in fact
did. Nahmanides, a gifted exegete, then brings an array of verses to support
his explication of God’s right hand equaling divine assistance. These verses
begin in the writings of David himself and then proceed broadly across the
biblical corpus.
Nahmanides then notes – again in agreement with Christian views and
with David Kimhi as well – that King David wrote the psalms under
divine inspiration and that his depiction of God’s support in Psalm 110
was intended to be predictive of God’s assistance to David himself and –
simultaneously – to David’s eventual descendant, the divinely promised
Messiah. Of course, Nahmanides had insisted throughout the Barcelona
disputation that this eventual offspring of David was intended to be – like
King David himself – thoroughly human. Thus, Psalm 110 was polysemous,
referring at one and the same time to King David and the human Messiah.
Indeed, for Nahmanides, just as the Levites had sung this psalm in the prior
temples, so too would their eventual descendants sing it – with reference
to the Messiah – in the temple that would be built after the redemption.
From the continuation of this discussion, it is clear that Nahmanides was
laying the groundwork for parrying what he could see as Friar Paul’s next
thrust.43
Seemingly incognizant of this ploy by Nahmanides, Friar Paul proceeded
to challenge the rabbi’s claim that Psalm 110 referred to King David. “How

42 Vikuah. Barcelona, 317; The Disputation at Barcelona, 688.

43 Vikuah. Barcelona, 317–318; The Disputation at Barcelona, 688–689.
 Biblical prophecy: the Messiah human and divine 249
can you say this thing? For their sages say that it [Psalm 110] refers to
the Messiah.” Friar Paul then introduced into the discussion a rabbinic
statement that the Messiah would be seated to God’s right and Abraham
to God’s left.44 Because of what he had previously said, Nahmanides could
reply that he had in fact allowed for understanding Psalm 110 as referring
to the Messiah. He asked that the text of the rabbinic statement be brought
before him. He then informed the audience of the precise context of the
statement. “In the future, the [Holy One] blessed be he will sit the Messiah
to his right and Abraham to his left. Abraham’s face will fall. He will say:
‘My offspring sits to the right of the [Holy One], blessed be he, while I
sit to his left?’ Then God will provide solace to Abraham. . . .” This full
statement Nahmanides takes to be further proof of his consistent claim
that the Messiah was intended to be wholly human. Were the rabbis to
have acknowledged a divine Messiah, how could they have portrayed a
despondent Abraham, distressed at the greater respect accorded such a
divine Messiah?45 For our purposes, what is significant is Nahmanides’s
willingness to see Psalm 110 as a reference to the Messiah, without agreeing
to the Christian view that this Messiah must necessarily be divine.

Our examination of Christian and Jewish argumentation over Psalms 2 and

110 has shown us fairly full Jewish awareness of the meaning of these two
important psalms for Christian thinking. Jacob ben Reuben, Joseph Kimhi,
his son David, and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman were all conversant with wide-
ranging Christian use of these psalms and a diversified set of Christian claims
emanating therefrom. They were all intent on providing their Jewish readers
with compelling rebuttal of these Christian claims. There is a high level of
commonality in the approaches of these four Jewish polemicists. They tend
to focus on textual matters, on exegetical proprieties, on the philosophical
problems associated with Christian readings of these two psalms, and on the
historical inappropriateness of these two psalms to Jesus. That said, there
remains substantial diversity in the Jewish anti-Christian argumentation,
both in focus and in specifics. Jewish thinkers were engaged in ongoing
and original wrestling with these texts and with the Christian reading of
them. The Jewish objections leveled by our southern-French and northern-
Spanish Jewish polemicists show considerable independent creativity.

44 Vikuah. Barcelona, 318; The Disputation at Barcelona, 690.

45 Vikuah. Barcelona, 318; The Disputation at Barcelona, 690.
 chap t e r t we lve

Human reason: the Messiah human and divine

Our cursory look at the history of Christian argumentation directed at

Jews suggested the preponderant utilization of biblical verses to make the
Christian case; our more detailed examination of twelfth- and thirteenth-
century argumentation over messianic advent, the suffering of the Messiah,
and rejection of the Jews has shown the same preponderance of exegetical
argumentation.1 In the light of this emphasis on biblical exegesis, it is rather
striking that our very first two Jewish polemical works, which are at the same
time the very first two works of Jewish anti-Christian polemic composed
in medieval western Christendom, begin with the effort to approach the
Christian–Jewish debate from the perspective of reason.2 The older of these
two works, Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit, opens with a series of brief and
limited Christian efforts to advance major Christian doctrines on the basis
of reason. Each time, the Jewish author has his Christian protagonist retreat
rather quickly to alternative lines of argumentation, suggesting the weakness
of the Christian appeal to reason. Jacob ben Reuben, however, devotes the
entire first chapter of his Milh.amot ha-Shem to an extended and dogged
Christian effort at defending key Christian truth claims through reason
and to Jewish rebuttal of that extended effort.3
Over the ages, Christian thinkers have taken a wide range of positions on
the place of reason in the Christian scheme of things. For some, religious

1 For the pre-twelfth-century Christian argumentation, see Chaps. 1 and 2. For the more detailed
examination of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century case, see Chapters 6 through 11. To be sure, in
some of this argumentation, philosophical considerations and historical realities played a role as well.
2 Recall Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, which is – as
noted – the fullest overall depiction we have of any aspect of the medieval Christian–Jewish debate.
Recall also Lasker’s forthcoming study, “Christianity, Philosophy, and Polemic in Jewish Provence,”
with its closer focus on the role of philosophy in the Christian pressures exerted on the Jews of
southern France. Recall also Berger, “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern
Times.” Note my earlier observation on the interchangeable use of “rationality” and “reasonability,”
above, Chap. 5, n. 49.
3 To be sure, both Sefer ha-Berit and Milh.amot ha-Shem ultimately place heaviest stress on Christian
argumentation from Scripture and on Jewish rebuttal of such Christian thrusts.

250
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 251
truth is in fact irrational and mysterious; God willed it to be so; and religious
faith lies precisely in the readiness to suspend normal human judgment and
accept such divine mystery. Two factors militated against the appearance
of this anti-rational position in our polemical works, however. In general,
polemical confrontation is, by its very nature, an essentially rational enter-
prise. Polemical argumentation is normally grounded in widely accepted
and reasonable norms. Christian pressures on the Jews of northern Spain
and southern France were unlikely to include the necessity of accepting
irrational teachings. Such a line of argumentation would surely have been
counter-productive in appealing to Jews. As a result, our Jewish polemical
works, which seek to identify genuine Christian pressures and offer Jews
compelling responses, do not reflect an anti-rational Christian perspective.
There is a second, more specific factor at work as well, associated with the
intellectual environment of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
As noted recurrently, one of the central characteristics of what has come to
be called “the twelfth-century renaissance” involved enhanced reliance on
human reason in general and the growing conviction that, in particular, the
essential doctrines of Christianity could be defended on rational grounds.
Christian thinkers were increasingly drawn to this position.4 To be sure,
Christian thinkers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries went to great
lengths to insist that reason could not lead directly to faith. Rather, Christian
thinkers, led by Anselm of Canterbury, emphasized the primary role of
faith. Reason, while not leading in and of itself to faith, could play a
crucial role in addressing and overcoming the doubts of Christian believers.
While Christians could not be led to belief through reason, they must
know that their beliefs accord with reason.5 Since Jews regularly pointed
to the irrationality of Christian doctrine, reason could play a useful role
in combating these Jewish arguments.6 Thus, the Christian thrusts from
reason in both Sefer ha-Berit and Milh.amot ha-Shem essentially involve the
effort to combat ab initio anticipated Jewish claims of the irrationality of
core Christian teachings.
Not surprisingly, much the same tendency toward enhanced reliance on
human reason was likewise prominent among the Jews of the late twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. The giant figure in this Jewish rationalism was
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, originally of Muslim Spain and subsequently

4 Note the literature above, Chap. 4, n. 2.

5 The opening chapters of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo have Anselm and his interlocutor Boso insisting
repeatedly on this limited but important role for reason.
6 Recall Southern’s contention that Jewish objections to the doctrine of Incarnation constituted a major
factor in Anselm’s composition of the Cur Deus Homo. See above, Chap. 4, n. 3.
252 The Messiah human and divine
resident in Egypt. We have noted the profound impact of Maimonidean
thinking on the Jews of southern France and northern Spain. While there
was intense opposition to this rationalism in certain quarters, there was
powerful support in others.7 It is clear that our five Jewish polemicists were
all oriented – in some measure or other – toward the rationalist position.8
Given the pervasive commitment – both Christian and Jewish – to human
reason, it is not at all surprising that the rationality or irrationality of key
Christian truth claims would be reflected in our Jewish polemical sources.
Many issues in contention between Christians and Jews were not
amenable to rational argument. Issues related to Jesus’ messianic role,
such as the timing of messianic advent, were not susceptible to rational
deliberation; such issues could only be debated on the grounds of bibli-
cal proof-texts. Christian spokesmen were made to cite their sources, and
Jewish protagonists disagreed as to the correct interpretation of these sources
and as to whether Jesus in fact fulfilled the prophecies they projected.9
Only a limited number of major Christian doctrines could involve charges
of irrationality (by Jews and others) and thus occasion Christian efforts to
prove them through rational argumentation. Of these, the most important
was the doctrine of Incarnation, with the Trinity a related and somewhat
distant second.10 As we shall see, of the two the doctrine of Incarnation
is more prominent in our sources, with the doctrine of the Trinity
ancillary.11
Daniel J. Lasker’s overarching study of the Jewish appeal to philosophy in
anti-Christian polemic covers broad territorial ground and a lengthy time
period.12 During the course of this lengthy time frame, philosophic thinking
became increasingly rigorous and technical, among both Christians and

7 Again, see above, Chap. 4. 8 Again, see above, Chap. 4.

9 Recall that, in our sources and in the serous Christian missionizing efforts that developed from the
1240s onward, the issue of prior messianic advent occupied central position.
10 Lasker, in his Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, focuses on four
Christian teachings – Incarnation, Trinity, Virgin Birth, and Transubstantiation. The first two
appear regularly in our sources; the last two appear only infrequently. In a real sense, the first of
these four conditions the other three. Note Lasker’s own observations on the primacy of the issue of
Incarnation in ibid., 105. We shall note regularly the intertwining of the issues of Incarnation and
Trinity in our sources, with Incarnation conditioning Trinity.
11 The perceived need to prove these doctrines rationally was, as noted, critical to the so-called twelfth-
century renaissance. Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally), at the same time that the
drive toward utilization of reason was taking place, there was augmented emphasis on the humanity
of Jesus. The combination heightened the importance of explaining the doctrine of Incarnation
rationally.
12 Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, begins with Jewish
philosophizing in the Islamic world and proceeds to Jewish philosophizing in western Christendom
down to the end of the Middle Ages.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 253
Jews.13 Lasker shows a parallel tendency toward more rigorous and technical
argumentation on the part of Jewish polemicists. It must be remembered
that our five Jewish writers are the earliest anti-Christian polemicists we
know from medieval western Christendom. Thus, the level of technical
argumentation from either the Christian or Jewish side reflected in their
works will be relatively low. About all we shall see of a technical nature
involves the invocation of logical categories for the nature of divinity and
Jewish criticism based on those logical categories. More generally, the Jewish
criticisms and the Christian defenses involve appeals to reasonability, rather
than strict philosophic or logical principles. Indeed, argumentation from
appealing metaphors will dominate at this early stage of Christian and
Jewish polemical philosophizing.
Claims for the rationality/reasonability of Christian doctrine in our
sources operate on two levels. The more purely philosophic level consists
of Christian efforts to show that the doctrine in question is not irrational,
that is to say that there are ways of explaining the given doctrine that makes
it accord with normal standards of rationality. This approach dominates
in Christian argumentation with respect to the Trinity. Slightly different
is the Christian argumentation with respect to Incarnation. There, the
tendency reflected in our Jewish sources is for Christians to claim that,
while the juxtaposition of human and divine would normally be unthink-
able, compelling considerations necessitated unusual actions on the part of
God. These pressing necessities brought about what would otherwise be a
problematic juxtaposition of human and divine.14
We have noted that the line between a defensive Jewish stance and an
offensive posture on the part of Jewish polemicists is not all that easy to
draw. Often the distinction is somewhat blurred.15 Nowhere is this more
obvious than with respect to argumentation over Incarnation and Trinity
on the grounds of reason. In Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit, the flurry of
efforts to ground Christian belief in reason has the Jewish protagonist in
the role of aggressor. In Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem, it is the
13 A comparison of the late eleventh- and twelfth-century Anselmian endeavor with the later effort of
Thomas Aquinas to construct a philosophically rigorous case for Christian truth gives some sense
of the growing technicality and sophistication of this effort.
14 Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 106–107, distinguishes
between these two approaches, identifying the former as the Christological and the latter as the sote-
riological. For Lasker, the former involves genuinely philosophical issues, while the latter does not.
In this sense, then, the primary tendency reflected in our sources is the looser and less philosophical
approach, on the part of both the Christians and Jews.
15 We have seen, for example, in Chaps. 8 through 10, that the Christian claim of divine rejection of
the Jews elicited Jewish defense against Christian arguments and then overt Jewish attack on the
achievements of the Christian world.
254 The Messiah human and divine
Christian protagonist who takes the lead by arguing for the rationality of
Incarnation and Trinity, with the Jewish protagonists assuming a defensive
position. In Nahmanides’s account of the Barcelona disputation and its
aftermath, there are two references to the rationality of Incarnation and
Trinity. In one, the Christian side takes the initiative; in the other it is
Rabbi Moses himself who takes the lead.
More generally, regardless of the sequencing of presentation in our
sources, i.e. who precisely levels the opening claims, the underlying sense
involves Jewish attack and Christian defense. Even when the Christian
makes the opening remarks, these remarks are generally made in anticipa-
tion of Jewish allegations of the irrationality of Christian doctrine. Clearly,
medieval Christians were well aware of Jewish critiques of Christianity as
irrational/unreasonable, and major Christian thinkers made requisite ef-
forts to counter these Jewish critiques. Thus, in the argumentation from
reason, even the seemingly offensive Christian thrusts were in fact pred-
icated on prior knowledge of damaging or potentially damaging Jewish
claims.
With one exception, the reasonability of Christian doctrine is not fully
expounded in our polemical sources from northern Spain and southern
France. That exception, as we shall see, is Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot
ha-Shem. Only in that work is the Christian protagonist made to advance
a thorough case for the rationality of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity
and Incarnation; only in Milh.amot ha-Shem does intense and protracted
argumentation grounded in reason take place. Elsewhere, the issue of ratio-
nality is limited to simple assertions of the rationality of Jewish teachings
(Rabbi Meir bar Simon), to Jewish rebuttal of biblically grounded Christian
argumentation (David Kimhi), or to relatively underdeveloped Christian
claims that are readily vanquished (Joseph Kimhi and Nahmanides).
Despite their differences, however, all five of our Jewish polemicists are
united in their sense of the indispensability of reason in the religious enter-
prise; all five are firmly convinced of the irrationality/unreasonableness of
Christian doctrine and the contrasting rationality/reasonableness of Jewish
teachings.

Joseph Kimhi signals the importance of reason in the Christian–Jewish de-

bate at the very beginning of the body of his Sefer ha-Berit. He announces
at the outset that “he will commence, with God’s good assistance, by in-
quiring and investigating through the ways of the intellect, [examining] the
responses of understanding and wisdom.”16 This pronouncement suggests
16 Sefer ha-Berit, 21; The Book of the Covenant, 28.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 255
the new commitment to rationality; it would seem to presage a vigorous
Christian presentation grounded in reason. In fact, however, such a vig-
orous presentation does not materialize. Investigation via reason proceeds
sporadically through three stages in the first section of Sefer ha-Berit. In each
stage, the Jew is the aggressor, with the Christian attempting to make his
case for the rationality of the doctrine of Incarnation in response. Each of
the efforts dissipates fairly quickly, with the frustrated Christian spokesman
turning in alternative directions. The end result of all of this is to project a
sense of the importance of reason, on the one hand, and of the Christian
failure to build a case on reasonable grounds, on the other.
The very first exchange in Sefer ha-Berit opens with the author – rather
than the Christian protagonist – presenting the Christian case for the
Trinity.
They speak of and believe in the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They claim
that the Creator is Father to all and created the entire universe. At the beginning
of the book of Genesis, it says: “And the spirit of God sweeping over the water.”
Behold then the Father and the Spirit.17
It seems that the concept of the Father is rooted in reason; it is of course un-
contested by the Jew. The notion of a Holy Spirit seems to be derived from
Scripture, although this implication will be negated almost immediately.
At this point, Joseph Kimhi, still speaking in a direct authorial voice,
says:
We respond and say: “I believe that reason teaches them [the doctrines of Father
and Spirit] and that intellect is inclined to them. For he is the Father for all times,
and he created and fashioned things ex nihilo. The same is true for the Holy Spirit.
But who can compel me to believe that he has a Son, in the way that the intellect
compels me [to believe that there is] a Father and a Holy Spirit?18
Here Kimhi seems to suggest that both doctrines – the Father and the Holy
Spirit – are required by reason, although no reasonable basis for the Holy
Spirit has been in fact been advanced. What Kimhi cannot accept on
rational grounds is the notion of a divine Son.19
The Christian protagonist created by Joseph Kimhi makes no effort
whatsoever, at this juncture, to argue the doctrine of the Son on rational
17 Sefer ha-Berit, 21–22; The Book of the Covenant, 28.
18 Sefer ha-Berit, 22; The Book of the Covenant, 28.
19 Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 105, notes that some
Jewish “polemicists stated explicitly that the Trinity, in itself, was not an unacceptable doctrine.”
According to Lasker, intense Jewish opposition to the Christian Trinity stemmed from the doctrine
of Incarnation, “which was professed to be a concomitant of the belief in the Trinity.” Jewish
willingness to grant some sort of multiple attributes for the deity is reflected in the present passage
and will be encountered again in Nahmanides and Jacob ben Reuben.
256 The Messiah human and divine
grounds. He backs off immediately, suggesting that the doctrine of the
human and divine Son can only be substantiated through an appeal to
Scripture. He cites Isaiah 9:5 and concludes therefrom that Scripture in-
dicates clearly the doctrine of a divine Son. This instantaneous retreat to
the domain of Scripture hardly projects strong and convincing Christian
argumentation for the rationality of its core teachings.
Kimhi’s Jewish spokesman examines carefully Isaiah 9:5, concluding –
as we have seen – that the Christian case erected upon this important verse
is fatally flawed.20 From this case against the Christian reading of Isaiah
9:5, he proceeds to yet another argument, which highlights the alleged
irrationality of the doctrine of Incarnation.
Moreover, if it were as you say – that he [Isaiah] spoke this verse with respect
to the Son, it would have been proper for him to explain fully. For a belief that
the intellect cannot accept in the exegesis of a straightforward verse the prophets
would have explained [fully]. For who can believe that the Holy One, blessed be
he, entered the womb of a woman and took on flesh?21
This stinging Jewish assertion of the unreasonableness of Incarnation
moves the Christian protagonist – as created by Joseph Kimhi – to take
a stronger stand. Whereas he had earlier said that he could not prove this
belief on rational grounds, he is portrayed as moved by the Jewish assault to
attempt to do so. The Christian protagonist now in fact offers a reasonable
case for Incarnation. He argues that, “because of the sin of Adam, all his
offsprings descended to hell and were condemned by the sin he committed.
Therefore he [the divinity] elected to descend to earth and to take on flesh
in the womb of Mary, in order to save humanity.”22 Here we in fact do
have a reasonable Christian case made, albeit not with anything like full
articulation, for a redeemer who is both human and divine, a case rooted
in the desperate human need for such juxtaposition.
Joseph Kimhi’s Jewish protagonist rebuts this Christian claim of the need
for and hence the reasonableness of Incarnation from three perspectives.
First, the claimed basis for divine descent into the world – wholesale con-
demnation of mankind to hell – makes no sense whatsoever, according
to the Jew. God would not condemn humanity in wholesale fashion to
perdition. Such divine behavior simply does not square with what human

20 See above, Chap. 5.

21 Sefer ha-Berit, 23; The Book of the Covenant, 30. Note that the Jewish objection is not genuinely
philosophical, in the sense of appealing directly to philosophical norms; the Jewish objection involves
the unreasonableness of the doctrine of Incarnation.
22 Sefer ha-Berit, 23–24; The Book of the Covenant, 30. This is an example of what Lasker calls the
soteriological argumentation.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 257
beings know via Scripture and reason to be the nature of God. Moreover,
the Jew argues, Jesus has failed utterly to produce change in this-worldly
aspects of the curse of Adam. The difficulties encountered in producing
foodstuffs and in begetting children, both part of the curse of Adam, have
shown no signs of amelioration. This failure in the observable realm raises
grave doubts as to Jesus’ impact on the fate of humanity in the unobserv-
able afterlife. Finally, the New Testament story of Lazarus suggests that, for
Christian Scripture itself, human beings have all along been punished for
this-worldly misdeeds and rewarded for this-worldly saintliness. In Luke
16:19–31, Jesus tells the story of a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus.
In this story, told by Jesus prior to his redeeming acts of crucifixion and
resurrection, the rich man went to hell and the poor but righteous Lazarus
made his way to heaven. Thus, the Gospels themselves seem to undercut
the notion of wholesale condemnation of humanity to hell prior to Jesus’
redemptive actions.23
This extensive Jewish rebuttal does not move Kimhi’s Christian pro-
tagonist to a defense of his position. It moves him instead to a fairly weak
statement, followed by an attack on the Jews. In the weak statement he says:
“One who wishes to believe must not submit the words of Jesus to [close]
scrutiny, even though the intellect is inclined toward them.”24 This is hardly
a ringing affirmation of the rationality of Christian teaching. Piqued, the
Christian then goes on the attack, suggesting that Jews lack everything –
correct belief, moral standards, and political power. This leads to a spir-
ited exchange over the comparative morality of the two communities, the
Christian and the Jewish, an exchange we shall examine closely at a further
point in this study.25 Once again, the discussion has been steered by the
Christian protagonist away from the rationality of Christian doctrine.
At the close of the exchange over comparative moral standards, the
Christian once more allows the discussion to drift back to belief, noting
that ultimately proper belief is the heart of religion. He again highlights
the importance of the Christian doctrine of Incarnation, indicating that
Jesus “came into [the womb of] Mary to take on flesh, in order to save
the world.”26 There is no extended development of this argument; there is
only a renewed assertion. This leads to a third Jewish attack on the doctrine
of Incarnation. This Jewish assault features an analogy between an earthly

23 Sefer ha-Berit, 24–25; The Book of the Covenant, 30–31.

24 Sefer ha-Berit, 25; The Book of the Covenant, 32.
25 Sefer ha-Berit, 25–28; The Book of the Covenant, 32–35. Discussion of the comparative levels of moral
achievement can be found below, Chap. 14.
26 Sefer ha-Berit, 28; The Book of the Covenant, 35–36.
258 The Messiah human and divine
king and the heavenly King of kings, a style of argumentation that was very
much in vogue during this period.
I shall offer an analogy concerning a flesh-and-blood king. If he changed his
clothing,27 cut his hair, put on dirty garments and stinking attire, abased his
dignity, diminished his glory, and walked about alone, utterly lacking grandeur
and honor, and if people came and said to him: “This is the king!” – should
someone not believe [in this], the king would not be distressed. Now, how much
more so the King of all kings, the Holy One blessed be he.28
According to the Jew, royal self-abnegation would be strange, to say the
least. A subject of such a king could hardly be faulted for not recognizing
his sovereign under such circumstances. True royal behavior – on both
the human and divine level – involves majesty and glory. Once more, the
Jewish case concludes with the Christian protagonist shifting gears, this
time moving decisively into the realm of biblical citation and thus effecting
a transition to the second major section of the body of Sefer ha-Berit.29
What then has Joseph Kimhi done in Sefer ha-Berit? He has certainly
insisted on the importance of reasonability to religious belief, a position that
he and his son espoused regularly in all aspects of their thinking. He has, at
the same time, through his structuring of the interplay between Christian
and Jewish protagonists in his dialogue, suggested regularly and insistently
that the Christian is incapable of making an extended argument from
reason. The basis for this failure lies in the core doctrine of Incarnation,
a doctrine central to Christian faith and – for Joseph Kimhi – utterly
incompatible with reasonable thinking.

The rationality or irrationality of Christian doctrine makes two appearances

in the narrative account penned by Rabbi Moses ben Nahman in the wake
of the 1263 disputation. Again, the case for the rationality of Christian
teachings is brief and limited. In the Nahmanidean narrative, a Christian
spokesman takes the initiative in one instance; in the other, it is Nahmanides
himself who raises the issue. While both the Trinity and Incarnation are
addressed, Rabbi Moses makes it clear that the latter doctrine constitutes
the critical issue, as it had for Joseph Kimhi. Indeed, he claims – as we
shall see – that Incarnation lies at the very heart of the Christian–Jewish
debate. For Rabbi Moses, the patent irrationality of this doctrine makes
Christianity an unthinkable alternative to Jews, whose commitment to

27 The Hebrew is somewhat problematic.

28 Sefer ha-Berit, 29–30; The Book of the Covenant, 37.
29 Sefer ha-Berit, 31; The Book of the Covenant, 39.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 259
rationality is profound. We shall treat the two efforts in order of ascending
significance. We shall begin with the issue of the Trinity and proceed to
Incarnation.
Of course, there was really no room in the Barcelona disputation itself for
proofs of Christian truth from reason. As noted recurrently, the disputation
was grounded in Friar Paul’s new missionizing tactic, which utilized rabbinic
sources for making the Christian case. However, Nahmanides portrays two
instances in which the rules governing the disputation were inoperative.
The first involved a post-disputation engagement, where the prior rules
no longer applied. Nahmanides notes that he remained in Barcelona for
eight days beyond the end of the disputation, because he had heard “at the
court that it was the desire of the king and the Dominicans to come to the
synagogue.” The royal-Dominican appearance at the synagogue did in fact
materialize, according to Nahmanides. He tells us that the king preached
a message claiming that “Jesus is the Messiah.” Rabbi Moses ben Nahman
portrays himself as answering with the utmost tact and respect, yet laying
out grounds for his disagreement.30
The royal sermon was, according to Nahmanides, the first of two
delivered in the synagogue of Barcelona. The second was delivered by
Friar Raymond of Penaforte, a distinguished Dominican leader. It should
be borne in mind that Friar Raymond shows much the same breadth of tal-
ent and achievement we have already noted in Nahmanides himself. Friar
Raymond was a distinguished expert in Church law, responsible for com-
pilation of the Decretales, a major milestone in the history of ecclesiastical
jurisprudence; he was master of the Dominican Order, an important lead-
ership position in the Church; he was ecclesiastical advisor to the powerful
King James I of Aragon. In both spiritual and political terms, Friar Raymond
was a commanding figure.31 We may well suspect that the extremely cursory
report of his sermon does not by any means do full justice to it.
According to the Nahmanidean narrative, Friar Raymond, following the
king, rose in the synagogue
and preached on the issue of the Trinity. He said that it involves Wisdom, Will, and
Power. He further said in the synagogue: “Indeed, the rabbi himself [a reference
to Rabbi Moses ben Nahman] acknowledged this to Friar Paul in Gerona.”32
30 Vikuah. Barcelona, 319–320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 694. On the rabbi’s tactful reply, see above,
Chap. 8.
31 There has been strikingly little study of the important Friar Raymond. The only full-length study
in English is Thomas M. Schwertner, Saint Raymond of Pennafort of the Order of Friars Preachers
(Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1935).
32 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 695. This passage is discussed in Lasker, Jewish
Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 67–68.
260 The Messiah human and divine
The suggestion here is that Friar Paul had made a case for the doctrine of
Trinity before Jews in Gerona, the home community of Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman. Friar Raymond further claims that the rabbi of Gerona had, in
some fashion or other, agreed to this combination of qualities in the divine,
resulting in a deity that is simultaneously one and three.33
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman portrays himself as responding in extenso.
His response begins with requisite clarification of what had taken place in
Gerona between himself and Friar Paul. Friar Raymond’s simple assertion
that the rabbi had assented to the notion of the Trinity as Wisdom, Will,
and Power could not be allowed to go unchallenged. In the process, as is
so often the case, Nahmanides was capable of achieving multiple objectives
simultaneously. In this instance, while clarifying the prior exchange between
himself and Friar Paul, he was already able to portray the Christian doctrine
of the Trinity in a negative light.
Nahmanides’s report of his extended statement shows all the rhetorical
power I have previously suggested for his entire narrative. He begins by
depicting a series of purported exchanges between himself and Friar Paul
in Gerona.
Listen and hear my voice, Jews and Christians.
Friar Paul asked me in Gerona if I believe in the Trinity. I said to him: “What is
the Trinity? [Does it mean] that the divinity is composed of three physical bodies,
like human beings?” He said: “No.”
[I continued: “Does it mean that] there are three spiritual entities, like souls or
angels?” He said: “No.”
[I continued: “Does it mean that] it is one entity composed of three, like physical
bodies that are composed of the four elements?” He said: “No.”
[I continued:] “Well then, what is the Trinity?” He said: “Wisdom, Will, and
Power.”
I then said that I believe that God is wise and not a fool, willful but without
emotion, and powerful and not weak.”34
In this mildly satirical portrayal, Nahmanides has clarified the nature of
his purported agreement, which he will proceed immediately to explicate
and qualify. All he really agreed to, he claims, is that “God is wise and
not a fool, willful but without emotion, and powerful and not weak.” He
obviously wishes to portray himself as assenting to nothing significant.
33 On the Trinity as Wisdom, Will, and Power, see Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Chris-
tianity in the Middle Ages, 63–76. For a sense of the intense and ongoing internal Christian debate
over issues related to the Trinity, see the rejection of the attack by Joachim of Fiore on Peter Lombard
adjudicated in the Fourth Lateran Council. See Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical
Councils, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), i: 231–233.
34 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 695.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 261
In the process, however, he has depicted himself as pushing Friar Paul to
clarify the notion of the Trinity. In the end, Friar Paul was allegedly forced
to retreat to an innocuous position, to which any believing Christian or Jew
could have readily assented.35 The purported exchange between the rabbi
and the friar, however, laid out a number of alternative proposals for the
Trinity that were quickly dismissed. Mere enumeration of these possibilities
serves, in some measure, to evoke at least a hint of disdain for the doctrine.
At this juncture, Nahmanides turns serious – at least briefly – in his
discussion of the Trinity. Any notion of a combination of entities – physical
or spiritual – or elements in the Trinity has been thoroughly dismissed. The
focus has shifted to the Trinity as a set of divine qualities, which Nahmanides
proceeds to attack vigorously and in diverse ways. The most serious assault
involves clarification of the nature of these qualities. After indicating his
almost meaningless agreement that “God is wise and not a fool, willful but
without emotion, and powerful and not weak,” Nahmanides proceeds to
his first and most telling line of attack.
However [despite the agreement on God’s qualities], the term “Trinity” is thor-
oughly wrong. For wisdom in the Creator is not an attribute. Rather, he and his
wisdom are one; he and his will are one; he and his power are one. Thus, wisdom,
will, and power are all one.36
Since God is wisdom and will and power, the notion of a Trinity is, according
to the rabbi, utterly inappropriate. God is a unity of essential qualities.
Nahmanides then takes a somewhat different tack. This new direction
was dictated in some measure by earlier remarks made by King James in
his sermon, remarks that Nahmanides felt compelled to recall and rebut.
Although the rabbi had just argued that there are no attributes associated
with the deity and that there is thus only a divine unity, he now allows
for the possibility of attributes. He suggests: “Even if there are attributes
associated with him [the divinity], this does not mean that he is a trinitarian
divinity; it only means that he is one God bearing three attributes.”37 Thus,
either God is an absolute unity or a unity bearing attributes; in either case,
there can be no basis for the Christian notion of a Trinity.
The rabbi then cites a prior statement by the king, which he sees as
deeply flawed. The king, under the influence of his clerical teachers and
advisors, had allegedly said: “Wine has three qualities – color, taste, and

35 Recall Lasker’s observations on potential Jewish accommodation of the notion of a trinity, cited
above, n. 18.
36 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 695.
37 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 695.
262 The Messiah human and divine
smell, but is still one.” Despite his repeated protestations of respect for the
king, this statement – attributed to ecclesiastical teachers and advisors –
elicits the rabbi’s scorn.
This is utterly erroneous. For redness, taste, and smell are disparate and can be
found one without the other. For wine has redness and whiteness and other colors.
Likewise with taste and smell. Moreover, the redness is not the wine, nor is the
taste, nor is the smell. Rather, the essence of the wine is that which fills the vessel.
Thus it [the wine] is a body bearing three diverse contingencies, which bear no
unity.38
Reflected here are two simultaneous lines of argumentation. On the one
hand, Nahmanides rejects the king’s suggestion of a parallel between God
and wine. In effect, Nahmanides is simply reiterating here his prior position.
While wisdom, will, and power are characteristics essential to the deity,
color, taste, and smell are utterly contingent to wine. The parallel simply
doesn’t work. God’s three (or whatever number) essential characteristics do
nothing to alter or qualify divine unity.
Nonetheless, the rabbi pursues the king’s purportedly mistaken notion a
bit further. He argues that wine (which should in actuality not be compared
to the deity) hardly represents a unity that is a trinity. It is, rather, “an object
that shows three diverse contingencies, without any unity.” Now, argues
the rabbi, even were we to allow the king’s erroneous parallel, we would
quickly see that it achieves nothing with respect to the theological doctrine
of the Trinity:
If we were to erroneously count in this way [i.e., to use the king’s erroneous parallel],
we would be forced to say that these qualities were fourfold. For the reality of the
divinity and his wisdom and his will and his power must be counted, and they are
four. Indeed, you [Christians] should speak of five. For he [God] lives, and living
is like wisdom. Thus his [God’s] definition is five; living, wise, willing, powerful,
and the essential deity are five. All of this is obviously wrong.39
Thus, the basic Christian approach is flawed, for God is a unity of essen-
tial characteristics. The Christian effort to disengage these characteristics –
fundamentally wrong, to be sure – achieves nothing, if it is pursued. For
such a misguided effort results in a God that is allegedly one and many, with
the number three having no special meaning. Were Christians to pursue

38 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 695.

39 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 695. Again see Lasker, Jewish Philosophical
Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 63–76, for a number of formulations of the elements
represented in the Trinity.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 263
this misguided tack, they would end up with doctrines of God as one and
three, one and four, one and five, and so forth.
Again, what must be emphasized here is the highly limited nature of
this exchange. The Christian case is portrayed in the most cursory manner
possible, despite the obvious sophistication of the preacher delivering it.
The Jewish rebuttal is extensive, with no reference to a serious Christian
response. To be sure, there is a Christian rejoinder indicated by Rabbi
Moses, but this rejoinder only serves to deepen the overall sense of Jewish
rationality and Christian irrationality.
Then Friar Paul stood up and said that he believes in the absolute unity [of the
deity]. Nonetheless, it involves a Trinity. This is a very profound matter, which
even the angels and the heavenly forces do not comprehend. I stood up and said:
“It is obvious that one cannot believe what one does not understand. Thus, the
angels cannot believe in the Trinity.” Then his associates silenced him.40
Rabbi Moses here portrays his adversary as retreating to the position that
the doctrine of the Trinity is beyond human comprehension, but should
nonetheless (or even therefore) be believed. As noted earlier, such a position
is highly inappropriate to the polemical setting. While many medieval
Christians in fact espoused such a position, this approach could not be
effectively used for argumentation with Jews.
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman also addresses the issue of Incarnation. This
issue was purportedly raised during the disputation itself. On the second
day of the proceedings, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman portrays himself as
embarking on a lengthy speech that breaks all the rules of the engagement.
To be sure, the speech begins in a manner that does not seem to contravene
these rules, with the rabbi clarifying his earlier discussion of types of Jewish
literature and their status. At a number of points, however, Friar Paul and
the king are portrayed as making pointed statements that set the stage for
extended rebuttal by the rabbi. Whether such lapses by Friar Paul and the
king are credible and whether the rabbi could have said the things he claims
to have said is – for the moment – beside the point. As a Jewish polemical
statement, this set of exchanges is of great significance, as it addresses major
issues in the Christian–Jewish debate.
In the middle of this lengthy set of exchanges, Nahmanides portrays
himself as asking whether his Christian interlocutors acknowledge that the
sin of Adam would be annulled at the time of the Messiah. This supposedly
elicited from both the king and Friar Paul an instant response:

40 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 696.

264 The Messiah human and divine
Yes. But not as you think. For the issue was that they all [all of humanity] were
entering hell because of that punishment [the punishment of Adam’s sin]. Then in
the days of the Messiah Jesus it [the punishment] was annulled, for he took them
out of there.41
Again, whether Nahmanides could have raised such a question and whether
the king and the friar would have responded to it is not our concern.
This Christian statement – quite parallel to the statement of the Christian
protagonist in Sefer ha-Berit – sets the stage for extensive rebuttal by the
rabbi.
The rabbi’s first two lines of response reprise the arguments we encoun-
tered in Sefer ha-Berit. Wholesale condemnation of humanity to hell makes
no sense whatsoever, as Joseph Kimhi argued. Moreover, the lack of any evi-
dence of diminution of Adam’s punishment on the observable this-worldly
scene renders the claim of change on the unobservable other-worldly scene
highly suspect. Nahmanides introduces this rebuttal with a bit of humor.
He has himself proclaiming: “They say in our land – ‘One who wishes to
lie should send off his witnesses.’” As he puts it, Christians emphasize the
changes in the afterlife, because “no one can dispute them – send one of
your people and let him come and report.”42
At this point, Friar Paul is depicted as attempting to force the discussion
back to its central topic, the advent of the Messiah. This elicits a broad
and extremely important statement by Rabbi Moses. He suggests that the
real heart of the Christian–Jewish disagreement does not in fact revolve
around the doctrine of the Messiah. Rather, the key to Christian–Jewish
disagreement lies in the doctrine of Incarnation.
The heart of the dissension and disagreement between Jews and Christians lies in
[the fact that] you say about the essence of the divinity something very distressing.
You, our lord the king, are a Christian, son of a Christian man and a Christian
woman. All your life, you have heard priests and Franciscans and Dominicans
speaking of the birth of Jesus. They have filled your brain . . . with this issue, and
it has been implanted in you as a result of that habituation. But the doctrine you
believe – and it is the core of your faith – the intellect cannot possibly accept and
nature does not allow and the prophets never suggested.43
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman suggests to his Jewish readers that the core of
Christianity lies in the doctrine of Incarnation and that such a doctrine
is hopelessly irrational. Only habituation makes intelligent Christians like
King James believers in such irrationality.
41 Vikuah. Barcelona, 310; The Disputation at Barcelona, 671.
42 Vikuah. Barcelona, 310; The Disputation at Barcelona, 671–672.
43 Vikuah. Barcelona, 310–311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 673.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 265
Thus, in the narrative of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, a Christian
spokesman does take the initiative in making a rational case for the Trinity.
This Christian statement is, however, rather brief, eliciting far lengthier
Jewish rebuttal. There is, in the Nahmanidean report, no significant rejoin-
der on the part of the Christians. More importantly, Nahmanides portrays
himself as initiating a vigorous attack on the doctrine of Incarnation, an
attack to which there is no Christian response whatsoever. The impression
created is, once more, that religious doctrine must be judged on the grounds
of its rationality and that, in this regard, Christian teachings fall woefully
short.

Joseph Kimhi and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman argued the importance of rea-
son and asserted Christian irrationality. To be sure, neither one provided
much in the way of a genuine Christian case for the rationality of Christian
doctrine. Only Jacob ben Reuben provides us with a sense of real give-and-
take over the rationality of Christian doctrine. Jacob’s Milh.amot ha-Shem
creates a Christian adversary who is knowledgeable and who is afforded
the opportunity to lay out fully a Christian case grounded in reason. As we
shall see, not only is a careful and multi-dimensional Christian case devel-
oped, but even Jewish rebuttals are engaged by the Christian protagonist
and deflected. To be sure, when all is said and done, the first chapter of
Milh.amot ha-Shem – the chapter devoted to presentation of the Christian
case grounded in reason – ends in a Jewish victory. This victory does not
involve – as was true for our other Jewish polemicists – non-presentation or
weak presentation of the Christian perspective; it is, rather, a hard fought
victory achieved through a dogged exchange of views. In order to appreciate
the unique achievement of Jacob ben Reuben, we must of necessity follow
in some detail the extended dialogue in the opening chapter of Milh.amot
ha-Shem.44
We recall that Jacob indicates in his prologue that religious truth is
built on a double foundation – reason and Scripture. Jacob ben Reuben
in fact devoted the vast majority of Milh.amot ha-Shem to argumentation
based on Scripture. However, the importance of reason is reflected in the
author’s decision to dedicate the very first chapter of his book to an extended
Christian effort to provide rational grounding for the key doctrines of
Trinity and Incarnation. We further recall that Jacob described his Christian
44 Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, cites Jacob ben Reuben’s
chapter 1 recurrently throughout his treatment of the issues of Trinity and Incarnation. Given the
importance of the persuasive techniques used by Jacob and the other polemicists, following the
development of Jacob’s chapter 1 is important to our enterprise.
266 The Messiah human and divine
teacher-adversary as learned in philosophy and that he portrays himself as,
to an extent, this learned Christian’s student. Obviously, Jacob felt that he
had absorbed his lessons well enough to discern the philosophic flaws in
his mentor’s reasoning.45
The exchange begins with a lengthy speech by the Christian (designated
by Jacob, as noted, the mekhah.ed – the denier of divine unity). This speech
opens with a panegyric to the being that is the beginning of all begin-
nings, the first but without any onset, the end of all ends, the Creator
of all creation ex nihilo. Immediately, however, the Christian protagonist
complicates matters. As soon as he speaks of a Creator of all creation, he
introduces this complication.
He is the Creator of all creation and was created for the redemption of his creatures
at the time he willed. He fashioned all creatures and was fashioned in human form
at the proper time like one of us, in order to save his creatures from descending to
perdition.46
This leads the Christian protagonist to set forth his initial agenda, which
is to prove that all people of discernment “must truly believe in the worship
of the Trinity.” Thus, while opening in fact with Incarnation, the Christian
protagonist sets as his first goal rational proof for the related doctrine of
the Trinity. In a number of ways, this is in fact a somewhat easier objective.
The Christian proposes to prove, through analogy, that the Trinity can be
understood in rational terms.
I shall bring you proofs from the [realm of God’s] creatures, so that you might
understand through them their creator. From his wondrous deeds, you will com-
prehend and understand some of his greatness.47
The specific analogy advanced involves a burning coal. The Christian notes
that a burning coal involves three constituents – the matter, the inclination
to fire, and the flame. The burning coal and its three constituents are
simultaneously one and three. The one cannot exist without the three, and
the three cannot exist without the one. For the Christian protagonist, this
is precisely the model for the Trinity.48
While the Christian had clearly intended to commence with the issue of
the Trinity, the Jew (designated by Jacob the meyah.ed, the affirmer of God’s
unity) responds to the entirety of the Christian address, beginning with
the opening remarks on the Creator who is simultaneously the created.
45 See above, Chap. 4. Recall also Lasker’s indication of the rootedness of Jacob ben Reuben in the
Andalusian tradition, noted there.
46 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 7. 47 Ibid., 7–8.
48 Recall Nahmanides’s citation of this same view on the part of King James I, with the analogy of
wine instead of the burning coal.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 267
The Jewish respondent opens by agreeing with the very first words of his
Christian partner. He assents to the sentiment that depicts God as the
beginning of all beginnings, the first but without any onset, the end of
all ends, the Creator of all creation ex nihilo. The next set of Christian
observations, that introduce an incarnate deity alongside the Creator, elicits
only scorn. According to the Jewish protagonist, “all philosophers and those
wise in the ways of reason mock you.” The philosophers’ rejection has to
do with the timing of the created aspect to the deity.
If the Creator, may he be blessed, was created, tell me whether he was created prior
to his being or subsequent to his being? If [he was created] prior to his being, then
you have contradicted yourself. For you said that he [the Creator] is the beginning
of all beginnings, the first but without any onset. But if you say that subsequent
to his being he was fashioned in the form of flesh at the time he willed, then he
lacked the flesh and bones and sinews that he received at the time you specified.
But this cannot be correct.49
While the Christian seemingly did not intend to engage his Jewish inter-
locutor on the issue of Incarnation at the outset of the conversation, the Jew
attacked the notion of Incarnation immediately, on philosophic grounds.50
The Jew then turns to the notion of the Trinity and levels a parallel assault.
He asks whether the Son element in the Trinity was so designated before
or after his birth. Designation as Son prior to birth is logically impossible.
“For there is nothing in the world that can be designated a son prior to
its birth.” However, if the Son element in the Trinity was so designated
after his birth, then there was a time when the Trinity was a duality. This
necessarily throws the entire notion of Trinity into question. Indeed, even
the notion of a duality cannot be sustained, according to the Jew, for a
duality necessitates limitation, and limitation of any kind is inconsistent
with the nature of the deity.51
From here, the Jew proceeds to attack the imagery of a burning coal.
With regard to this, there is a true reply grounded in reason. For while you bring
a proof from one of the created things that is one and simultaneously three, bring
a proof from one of the created things that is one and five or one and ten or even
more.
The Jew suggests a number of specific alternatives: a hand that is both
one and five or a human being that is both one and 248 (the purported
number of components of the human body). There is no inherent logic

49 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 9.
50 For this line of Jewish attack in general, see Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity
in the Middle Ages, 83–90. This particular passage is cited and discussed there, 84–85.
51 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 9–10.
268 The Messiah human and divine
in choosing a created thing that is one and three, when there are so many
other alternatives.52 The Jew has thus leveled a series of strong attacks on
the opening statement of his opponent. What is so striking about Milh.amot
ha-Shem is that the exchange does not end here. The Christian is accorded
a lengthy and powerful rejoinder.
The Christian begins by indicating that the stakes in this discussion are
high. He – the Christian protagonist – has devoted his life to service in
the Church and has inflicted upon himself abstinence and suffering. The
Jewish assault threatens the very foundations of this life of commitment
and service. The Jewish assault, however, is baseless. The Christian focuses
first on the Jew’s critique of Incarnation, the attack that had centered on
the issue of time and timing. The Christian claims that this Jewish critique
is based – fallaciously – on a human perception of time and timing. For
the deity, however, this human sense of time is inappropriate.
In his lengthy statement, the Christian both rebuts the Jewish assault
and moves a step further in his own presentation of Christianity as entirely
rational.
However, with respect to the Creator, may he be blessed, you and all who com-
prehend the investigations of reason must know that all this world, before it was
created and after its creation, and all creatures who have been created and who are
to be created and all that which has taken place and all that is to take place – all
stand in the view of the creator through his sight. Indeed, you testified concerning
him that that time does not pass over him. Thus, since he saw and knew and
understood all that took place under the sun prior to its happening, he recognized
that the world could not be saved from Satan until he would pass through the
womb of a virgin, who remained a virgin even through his passage. Even after his
passage, her virginity was not pierced. He saw that there was no other way to save
the world except through what he would lose. Thus, immediately the designation
“Son” was initiated. Even though he [the Son] was revealed to us only at the time
when he descended to earth and was fashioned in our form, the designation of
“Son” existed previously, indicating the future.53
This rich statement accomplishes three objectives simultaneously. It
counters the Jewish attack on Incarnation as logically inconsistent; at the
same time, it reinforces the opening statement on the need for incarnation;
finally, it introduces a new theme – Virgin Birth as indicative of the divinity
of the child so born. This new theme then is supported by another analogy

52 Ibid., 10. Recall Nahmanides’s similar attack.

53 Ibid., 11. It is worth recalling the formulation of the Nicene creed. “And those who say ‘there once
was when he was not’ and ‘before he was begotten he was not’ and that he came to be from things
that were not or from another hypostasis or substance, affirming that the Son of God is subject to
change of alteration – these the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes.” See Tanner, Decrees
of the Ecumenical Councils, i: 5.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 269
to the created world, an analogy intended to indicate that the doctrine can
be presented and understood rationally.
Now, behold, if you take a white pearl and place it in the ray of the sun, you will
see the shining of the sun from end to end. But the stone remains whole; it has no
hole.54
The second lengthy Christian statement had done more that simply
respond to the Jewish rebuttal. It is a rich combination of arguments, and
the Jew addresses each of them. He begins with the philosophic issue of
time. He had earlier raised a difficulty flowing from the timing of the
incarnation of the Son. The Christian response was to indicate that divine
time and human time operated in two quite different ways. Thus, the Jewish
objection was nullified. The Jew does not accept this Christian rejoinder.
Rather, he notes the Christian sense of the incarnate Son as both divine
and human. Since he was in some measure human, then human time does
apply, and the prior Jewish objection has not in fact been removed.55
From this opening reaffirmation of his earlier objection, the Jew then
proceeds to the need for Incarnation in order to save humanity from perdi-
tion. For the Jew, this is an impossible position to espouse.
You said that the world could not be saved until he [the divinity] passed through
the womb of a virgin. Indeed, it is as you say. The world [could not be saved].
However, with respect to the creator of the world, he has the power to save his
world, for he had already created it ex nihilo. It [the world] could have been other
than it is, without [divine] effort, exertion, or trouble – by divine word alone . . .
Since creation was entirely fashioned according to his [God’s] will, how could one
of his creatures [Satan] exert force upon him, so that he [God] could not save the
rest of his creatures from his [Satan’s] hand until he [God] was born as one of them
and surrendered himself into his [Satan’s] hands on their behalf and was crucified,
so they might be saved?56
For the Jew, attributing such power to Satan, one of God’s creatures, is
unthinkable.57
Indeed, further argues the Jew, the salvation achieved through the Cru-
cifixion is by no means visible. As we have seen earlier argued by Joseph
Kimhi and Nahmanides, the post-Crucifixion world continues to show all
the evidence of the curse of Adam. “We have seen none of this salvation. For
in precisely the same way that Satan used to kill human beings [prior to the

54 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 11–12. For use of this imagery in twelfth-century Christian writings, see Abulafia,
Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 81–82.
55 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 12. 56 Ibid., 12–13.
57 Note that the argumentation here slips from the philosophical to the reasonable or – in Lasker’s
terms – from the Christological to the soteriological.
270 The Messiah human and divine
Crucifixion], he continues to kill them in the same way since.”58 The notion
of salvation produced through Incarnation and Crucifixion is unacceptable
to reason and is unsubstantiated by direct observation. According to the
Jewish disputant, the notion of Incarnation, besides being thoroughly un-
reasonable, is morally repugnant as well – to speak of the divinity entering
the womb of a woman and exiting therefrom is reprehensible.59
Finally, the Jew turns his attention to the analogy of the pearl and the
sun’s rays, the analogy advanced by the Christian protagonist to argue the
reasonability of Virgin Birth. The Jewish spokesman addresses this issue
and distinguishes between the actions of light, which is not corporeal, and
the movement of a fetus, which is corporeal, through the birth canal. “One
may not compare the passage of a human fetus to the ray of a sun. For
in the latter case there is no real passage in any way or sense that might
be compared to the matter you propose.” Alert to the possibility that the
Christian might immediately respond that in fact the incarnate deity was
likewise not corporeal, the Jew again points to the Christian notion of
a thoroughly human Jesus. “But if you say that the issue of the light I
indicated was the same as the issue of the divinity, this is not possible.
For the former [light] is devoid of matter, while the latter [the incarnate
divinity] upon its birth was not devoid of matter.”60 Again, the Jew points
to the Christian notion of a divinity assuming flesh and thus amenable to
the laws of matter.
Once more, Jacob ben Reuben does not have his Christian protagonist
wilt in the face of this Jewish assault. The Christian immediately addresses
the issue of coercion seemingly exerted upon the deity, a possibility dis-
missed out of hand by the Jew. The Christian notes a series of realities
accepted by Jew and Christian alike. The first such reality adduced is the
creation of the world in six days, with God resting on the seventh. Now
then, asks the Christian, “while the Creator, may he be blessed, created his
world in six days, who forced him so that he not create it in one day. Since
everything was created by divine word, he could have commanded: ‘Let the
world be created,’ and it would have been so.” Similarly, while Jews claim
that the world is not yet – at the time of this discussion – five thousand years
old, what forced the creator to choose precisely this time for creation? Why
could the world not have been created many thousands of years earlier?
The answer for the Christian is clear-cut – God so willed it. God willed the
world to be created in six days, with the seventh day dedicated to rest; God

58 Ibid., 13.
59 Ibid. For more on moral repugnance, see below, at the end of this chapter. 60 Ibid., 13–14.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 271
willed the world to be created at precisely the point in time that he chose;
likewise, God willed the world to be created in such a way that it could be
saved only by Incarnation and Crucifixion.61
The Christian also engages the Jewish sense of the immorality of the doc-
trine of Incarnation, the inappropriateness of the divinity passing through
the sullying birth channel. Once more, the Christian uses the analogy of
light to make his point. He claims that light is by no means sullied by
passing through garbage or even dung. Again the analogy from the realm
of the created serves to clarify issues relative to the divine.62
The Jew quickly hones in on the issue of divine will. He, of course, agrees
to the reality of divine will, as well as to God’s absolute power to do as he
wishes. Nonetheless, the Jew claims – in a very important statement – that
there is reasonability in God’s will and actions. The Jew, who has heretofore
resisted a series of Christian analogies, turns to analogy himself, an analogy
deeply embedded in Scripture. This analogy involves the behavior of kings,
appealed to already by Joseph Kimhi. For the Jew, there is such a thing as
behavior appropriate to royalty. A king normally goes forth “dressed in
royal attire, with a royal diadem on his head, with his officers and troops
running before him.” According to the Jew, “there is in this behavior no
surprise whatsoever. We have no reason to ask why, for there is no fool who
does not know that this is the way of kings, to behave grandly.” However,
should a king alter this normal pattern of royal behavior, dressing in rags,
going barefoot, and seating himself in dark corners, all those around him
would be astounded.63 Thus, argues the Jew, the Christian contention that
God could have created the world in one day is inappropriate. No one is
really distressed by either one day or six days. However, claiming that God
diminished himself through Incarnation cannot be similarly dismissed.
The notion of God diminishing himself in this way cannot but occasion
astonishment and rejection.
In a way that is by now utterly predictable, the Jew rejects once more the
analogy drawn from light passing through garbage or even dung. This anal-
ogy of God to light has already been encountered repeatedly and rejected
repeatedly by the Jew, on the grounds that light is incorporeal and that the
incarnate deity is, according to Christian doctrine, very much corporeal.64

61 Ibid., 14–15.
62 Ibid., 15. For Christian use of this imagery of light passing through dung, see Abulafia, Christians
and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 83–84. For this theme in Jewish polemical literature,
see Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 111–114; this passage
is cited and discussed therein, 112.
63 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 16–17. 64 Ibid., 17.
272 The Messiah human and divine
The Jewish image of a king and his normal or abnormal patterns of
behavior is the focus of the Christian rejoinder. In effect, the Christian
protagonist proposes an extensive counter-image, involving an earthly king
with a beloved son born to him in his old age. This young son, intended
to inherit the throne, went out to play with his companions. In the course
of this play, the prince and his companions fell into a bog and were nearly
submerged. Royal guards alerted the king to the incident, and he hastened
in person to the bog. Once there,
he quickly removes his shoes and enters the clay, in order to save his son. He does
not wait for the help of his servants, because the lad was so dear to him . . . You
must understand this matter, for it occasions no astonishment. There is no reason
to ask why.65
The reason for this precipitous and seemingly inappropriate royal behavior
lies of course in the deep love the king felt for his son. So too, argues the
Christian, with the King of kings. Out of his love for humanity, caught up
in the snares of Satan, the King of kings deviated from the behavior pattern
that might be normally expected and submerged himself in the muck and
mire of human life in order to save his beloved children.
For the Jew, this appealing analogy – the story of the king and his beloved
son – simply does not work. In the first place, there is an obvious difference
between this story and Christian doctrine. In the former, the king descends
into the mire and saves his son. In the process, nothing untoward happens to
the king himself. By contrast, in Christian doctrine the King of kings takes
on humanity, and that human figure is killed in order to save his children.
Now, argues the Jew, a king who loses his life is actually a symbol of
inefficacy, an image that would totally demoralize his followers. How then is
it possible for Christians to believe in such an utterly demoralizing myth?66
The Jew in fact claims that the entire analogy is inappropriate – it simply
does not correspond to the realities of the divine king. To show this, the
Jew raises a number of issues. In the first place, there is a kind of equality
between the bog and the king that does not exist between God and Satan.
The king exercises no inherent power over the bog; God does exercise
inherent power over Satan, indeed over everything in the universe. Indeed,
in a real sense the bog is more powerful than the king, since it cannot be
directly controlled by him. No one, however, would wish to suggest that
Satan is more powerful than the King of kings.67
As a result of these considerations, the Jew offers a counter-allegory
to that proposed by his Christian rival. In this counter-allegory, there is
65 Ibid., 18. 66 Ibid., 19. 67 Ibid., 19–20.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 273
an exceedingly powerful king, who rules mightily over a large number of
retainers and subjects. At some point, one of his minor officials went on a
rampage and began mistreating the other subjects of the king. This situation
continued for some time, until word of the injustices committed reached
the king himself. At this point, the Jew questions his Christian adversary
as to the appropriate behavior on the part of the king:
I suggest that the king should arise from his throne and proceed by foot to this
servant of his. He should fall before him with entreaties, saying to him: “Here I
am. Take me and kill me as atonement for the rest of my remaining servants. Thus
damage will be removed after my death.”68
For the Jew, such advice is obviously misguided. If such advice is inappro-
priate for an earthly king, how much more inappropriate is it for the King
of kings. Yet this is precisely the position attributed to God by the Christian
notion of Incarnation.
The Christian, in his final rebuttal, already signals the impending move-
ment toward Scripture. However, before moving in this alternative direc-
tion, he makes one last argument, by way of one last image. The image
suggested involves a pure white bird that lives off the insects in the waters
of a lake. With the passage of time, these insects came to recognize the
white bird and flee from it, leaving it empty-handed and hungry. In order
to catch these insects, the white bird had no choice but to blacken itself as
a means of disguise. So too with God.
Initially, prior to his decent to earth, he was high and much exalted above his
creatures and sacred. He saw, however, that that none of the righteous was saved
by his righteousness. There then developed in his will a desire to live among us on
the human level, so as to come closer to us and to make us but little lower than
God and to indicate his desire for us and to save us from descending to perdition.69
Not surprisingly, the Jew rejects this image out of hand, indeed on
grounds already established in the discussion of prior images advanced
by the Christian. In this image as well, it is the lake that has the upper
hand, not the bird that is likened to God. For the Jew, what is so obviously
central to the deity is his supreme power. Any image that projects incapacity
on the part of God is obviously a misguided and misleading image.70

68 Ibid., 20.
69 Ibid., 21. This is a curious image, one that is rather difficult to understand. On the one hand, the
desire of the white bird/deity to come closer to the creatures of the lake/humanity is understandable.
The image of feeding off these creatures is not.
70 Ibid., 22.
274 The Messiah human and divine
With this final Jewish rebuttal, the grounds of argumentation will shift to
Scripture. What have we gleaned from this extensive look at the give-and-
take in chapter one of Milh.amot ha-Shem? Perhaps most impressive is the
position created for the Christian spokesman, who is permitted time and
time again to respond fully to Jewish claims. Jacob ben Reuben’s Christian
is presented ultimately as a mekhah.ed, a denier of divine unity. He is,
however, a thoughtful, forceful and dogged opponent, one not to be taken
lightly. To be sure, the Christian is put in a somewhat difficult situation.
He is given the first word and required to make his case. The Jew has the
luxury of playing the respondent and undoing the case made by his fellow-
discussant. It is generally far easier to take the critical position than it is to
erect a case. Both disputants acquit themselves well, although what is for
Jacob the obvious truth of the Jewish view and the obvious error of the
Christian case necessarily shows through.
In the course of this close examination, we have also seen the marked
difference between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the
Incarnation. The doctrine of the Trinity is far the lesser of the two concerns
in the opening chapter of Milh.amot ha-Shem. The focus throughout is
heavily on Incarnation, with the Trinity merely an offshoot of the latter.
The most that the Christian protagonist attempts with respect to the Trinity
is to prove that it can be understood rationally. With regard to the more
important doctrine of Incarnation, the Christian protagonist sets out to
show that, despite its seeming irrationality, it was in fact a necessity, thus
making it reasonable. This point lies at the very heart of chapter one of
Milh.amot ha-Shem.71
At its core, the Christian argumentation in Milh.amot ha-Shem attempted
to prove that Incarnation reflects the deep love of God for humanity. There
is no resonance in Milh.amot ha-Shem of the earlier medieval notion of
the devil’s right over humanity that had to be erased through inducing
error on the devil’s part. The issue, rather, is simply God’s deep concern
for humanity, which leads him to self-sacrifice. The key image is that of
the king whose believed son is threatened by the bog. This line of Chris-
tian thinking is somewhat akin to that of Anselm, although to be sure
far less sophisticated.72 This is the nub of the Christian argument; all

71 The same was the case for Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, as we have seen earlier in this chapter. He too
believed that the doctrine of Incarnation constituted the critical shortcoming of the Christian faith.
72 See the analysis of R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, 205–227. See also Anna
Sapir Abulafia, “Christians Disputing Disbelief: St. Anselm, Gilbert Crispin and Pseudo-Anselm,”
in Religionsgespräche im Mittelaltler, ed. Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz, 1992), 131–148.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 275
the thinking related to this argument is resolutely disputed by the Jewish
spokesman.73
Finally, we have seen the extent to which analogies lie at the core of the
Christian–Jewish debate over the rationality of Trinity and Incarnation.
This is very much in the spirit of twelfth-century Anselmian teaching; it is
rather far from the more abstract Thomistic style that will come to domi-
nate thirteenth-century Christian philosophy. The argument over analogies
comes down ultimately to a reasonable sense of the divine.74 The Christian
and Jewish analogies strongly reflect alternative religious and human em-
phases and values. There is a relentless insistence on the part of the Jewish
protagonist on the power, grandeur, and glory of the divinity. By contrast,
the Christian spokesman is much less caught up in these aspects of the
divinity and much more drawn to God’s concern over and love for
humanity, which he perceives as beset with certain inescapable liabilities.
Incarnation for the Christian ultimately reflects God’s love and compas-
sion. While the Jew does not by any means wish to diminish God’s love of
and compassion for humanity, he cannot accept the diminution of divine
power and authority expressed in the doctrine of Incarnation.
Ultimately, the Jew is accorded the last word, and the Jewish position
is accorded greater weight. Clearly, Jacob ben Reuben wishes his Jewish
readers to emerge with the sense that the learned and clever Christian –
and he is learned and clever – cannot carry the day. Christian theology is
simply encumbered with too many unacceptable doctrines. Despite all the
ingenuity exercised on behalf of these doctrines, there can be no gainsaying
their inherent irrationality. To be sure, rational argumentation can be tricky
and dangerous; nonetheless the Jewish case is unquestionably victorious.
The final message of Jacob ben Reuben – reflected in his according but
one chapter to argumentation from reason – is that the twelfth-century
Christian pressures flow in far greater measure from use of Scripture and
that Jews must be prepared yet more fully to wage their battle on the
grounds of biblical truth.

What has been described thus far is learned, rational, and clever Jewish
attack on the key Christian doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity. Before

73 There are some rather striking parallels between the Jewish argumentation and the case that Boso
in the Cur Deus Homo attributes to disbelieving Christians.
74 Again, such analogies play throughout Abulafia’s discussion of Christian efforts to erect rational
proofs for the Incarnation. See her Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 77–93.
Recall once more Lasker’s distinction between the genuinely philosophical argumentation and claims
rooted in reasonableness, rather than philosophic rigor.
276 The Messiah human and divine
concluding this chapter, we must note that there was a profound Jewish
sense that these Christian doctrines were more than simply unreasonable.
Recurrently, our Jewish polemicists express moral revulsion at these teach-
ings. While this aspect of the Jewish engagement with the doctrines of
Incarnation and Trinity is distinctly secondary to the rational discourse we
have thus far encountered, it should by no means be overlooked.75
We have just now noted in passing Jacob ben Reuben’s sense that the
doctrine of Incarnation is morally repugnant. Let us now cite Jacob’s own
words.
Now set your thoughts within the web of your mind and immerse your ideas in
the depths of wisdom. Perhaps your thinking may clarify your words. You say that
the Creator, may he be blessed, as he is – from every aspect that the mind and the
heart can consider him – was entirely enclosed in the darkness of the womb and
imprisoned in the shadows of the belly and became like sucklings that have never
seen light. This notion is repugnant to one who utters it and sinful to one who
hears it. Heaven forfend that I sin to the Lord through my tongue.76
Jacob here communicates to his Jewish readers his feelings of outrage and
revulsion at the notion of God incarnate.
Joseph Kimhi is yet more graphic in his treatment of the doctrine of
Incarnation.
How can I believe that the great God, exalted and hidden, entered the womb of a
woman, those pierced innards, filthy and fetid, needlessly and willingly. [How can
I believe] that the living God would be the offspring of a woman, a child lacking
knowledge and intelligence, a simpleton unable to distinguish between his right
hand and his left – defecating and urinating and suckling from the breasts of his
mother out of hunger and thirst and crying out of thirst so that his mother would
have pity upon him. Indeed, if his mother did not suckle him, he would die of
hunger like all of humans . . . Therefore I do not believe this doctrine that you
believe. For my reason will not allow me to diminish the greatness of the Lord,
may he be exalted, for he does not lower his dignity – may he be exalted – nor
does he reduce his honor – may he be extolled. If I do not believe this doctrine
that you believe, I am not at all guilty.77
Joseph Kimhi is yet more outspoken than his contemporary, Jacob ben
Reuben.
Finally, Rabbi Meir bar Simon, as we recall, compiled a lengthy list of
the shortcomings of Christianity that precluded Jewish acceptance of it.

75 On this tendency in Christian–Jewish polemics in general, see Alexandra Cuffel, Filthy Words/Filthy
Bodies: Gendering Disgust in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Jewish–Christian Polemics (Doct. diss.:
New York University, 2002).
76 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 13. 77 Sefer ha-Berit, 29; The Book of the Covenant, 36–37.
 Human reason: the Messiah human and divine 277
The first twelve items in this list were devoted to the shortcomings of
Christian society. With item thirteen, Rabbi Meir turned his attention to
“the behaviors of the person who they say is their God, to his deeds and
his words.” Rabbi Meir moves through the lifetime of Jesus, arguing that,
from birth to death, his actions belie divine status. Like Joseph Kimhi, he,
too, stresses heavily the bodily aspects of the gestation and birth process
and the physical needs and shortcomings of a young child. Again, all this
is presented as utterly incompatible with divinity.78
I suggest that this aspect of the Jewish critique of Incarnation and Trinity
be neither overlooked nor unduly emphasized. Our Jewish polemicists
generally treat these subjects with a considerable level of detachment. They
at the same time do reveal their profoundly negative emotional reaction to
the notion of God incarnate and in the process attempt to convey those
feelings of revulsion to their readers.

78 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 312–314, encompassing items thirteen through twenty-four in Rabbi
Meir’s catalogue.
 part vi
Jewish polemicists on the attack
 chap t e r t hirt e e n

Christian Scripture and Jesus

In the previous seven chapters, we have examined Jewish perceptions

of major Christian polemical thrusts and the rebuttals our twelfth- and
thirteenth-century polemicists proposed to their Jewish contemporaries.
In many of these rebuttals, Jews to a limited extent took to the offensive
against Christianity. An example of this is Jewish insistence that Christian
use of the Hebrew Bible was deeply compromised by reliance on the work of
two individuals – the Church Fathers Origen and Jerome. In this insistence,
Jews moved beyond disputing specific Christian readings and attacked the
foundations of medieval Christian biblical exegesis.1 Similarly, Jewish de-
fense against the charge of divine abandonment regularly eventuated in
Jewish denigration of the achievements of Christianity.2 Likewise – Jews
insisted regularly – Christian biblical interpretations and/or rational ar-
guments that resulted in Jesus as simultaneously divine and human are
inherently unreasonable. This insistence too represents more than simply a
Jewish defense against Christian claims; it is very much an attack launched
against Christian thinking.3 Despite these flashes of Jewish assault, the pre-
ceding chapters have by and large focused on the Jews in their defensive
stance. In the coming two chapters, we shall examine extended Jewish anti-
Christian claims, and we shall encounter our Jewish polemicists entirely on
the offensive.
The most obvious point of attack for our Jewish polemicists was the
literature sacred to Christians, but not to Jews. As we have seen, the bulk
of the preceding argumentation was grounded in alternative readings of
the Hebrew Bible, accepted as divinely revealed by both Christians and
Jews. Much of this argumentation revolved directly around interpretation
of biblical texts. Even when empirical observation or rational considerations
were introduced, the Hebrew Bible lurked prominently in the background,
influencing profoundly the way in which historical realities were interpreted

1 See above, Chap. 5. 2 See above, Chap. 10. 3 See above, Chaps. 11 and 12.

281
282 Jewish polemicists on the attack
or parameters established for rational or reasonable thinking. Shared biblical
passages and patterns of biblical thinking affected deeply both the Christian
and Jewish camps.
Christian Scripture, however, was and is composed of two disparate seg-
ments – the earlier largely Hebrew writings revered by Christians and Jews
alike and the later Greek writings sacred to Christians only. Christian and
Jewish treatment of the Hebrew Bible had to be respectful, with insistence
on the distinction between correct and incorrect interpretation. With re-
gard to the New Testament, no such constraints operated for the Jews.
Jews could level the most biting criticisms against this literature, which was
sacred to Christians, but neutral or worse for Jewish readers.4
To be sure, Jewish criticisms had to be uttered sotto voce. One of the
stipulations that governed Jewish minority existence in medieval western
Christendom was that Jews must, in a general way, comport themselves
properly as adherents of a dissenting and secondary religious tradition.
This meant, inter alia, that Jews must under no circumstances behave
disrespectfully toward the majority and dominant faith. Disrespectful be-
havior might include public infringements, such as building a synagogue
that towered over a neighboring church or disrupting Christian worship.
Criticism of the New Testament and/or Jesus fell squarely under the rubric
of disrespectful behavior and could not be voiced publicly. Even private ex-
pression of such anti-Christian sentiment was dangerous, although it clearly
was common. Our southern-French and northern-Spanish polemicists did
express – for the eyes of their Jewish readers only – such anti-Christian
sentiments, thereby providing the first extended Jewish consideration of
the New Testament and Jesus from medieval western Christendom. From
the outset, this earliest Jewish polemical literature included harsh criticism
of the religious foundations of the majority faith.

Of our five Jewish polemicists, Jacob ben Reuben provides the fullest
and most detailed critique of the New Testament and the Jesus stories
and teachings contained therein.5 As we recall, Jacob began his extremely

4 In parallel fashion, Christians could and did criticize freely Jewish sacred literature that postdated
the Hebrew Bible. On these parallels, see Robert Chazan, “Sacred Literature Shared and Divergent:
Medieval Christian and Jewish Polemical Thrusts,” to appear in the proceedings of a conference held
at Pennsylvania State University.
5 Recall the criticisms of Jesus in the Qis..sa/Nestor. For an important study of medieval Jewish wrestling
with “the historical Jesus,” see David Berger, “On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic
against Christianity: The Quest for the Historical Jesus,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays
in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. Elisheva Carlebach, et al. (Hanover: Brandeis University
Press, 1998), 24–39. Berger treats Jacob ben Reuben therein, 29–30.
 Christian Scripture and Jesus 283
well-organized opus with the Christian case built on rational considerations
and the Jewish rebuttal (chapter one). The bulk of Milh.amot ha-Shem con-
tains extended Christian exegesis of key biblical books, with full Jewish
discussion and dismissal of this Christian exegesis (chapters two through
ten). With chapter eleven, the work proceeds in a new direction and in-
volves intertwined criticisms of the New Testament and of Jesus. Chapter
eleven is devoted to a Jewish attack on Christian Scripture, specifically the
Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel text is cited in extenso, after which the
Jewish author levels his strictures.
Not surprisingly, this change in focus occasions a shift in format as well.
In chapter eleven of the Milh.amot ha-Shem, the Christian protagonist dis-
appears completely. There is no point in a Christian arguing his case from
the New Testament, writings that bear no authority for Jews. Likewise, it
was obviously unrealistic to construct a dialogue in which a Jew attacks the
New Testament and a Christian responds, since such a scenario is so thor-
oughly unrealistic. Jewish circumstances in medieval western Christendom
precluded such open Jewish assault on Christian Scripture and its central
figure. We are thus left with an extensive Jewish critique of the Gospel of
Matthew and of Jesus as depicted therein, with no pretence of inter-faith
exchange.
Our author opens by voicing his concern at this element in his under-
taking. He begins, as he normally does, with a brief poetic introduction,
in which he notes the Jewish circumstances out of which he writes. The
Jews in medieval western Christendom constitute a minority community,
living under the hegemony of the Christian majority and severely lim-
ited in its self-expression. After depicting poetically the subjugation of the
Jews, Jacob ben Reuben suggests that the wise course is to remain silent in
the face of majority power. He notes specifically the danger in attacking
Christian teaching: “Why should we perish by attacking their error, by
raising questions about the words of their Scripture?”6
Jacob then notes, in a prose continuation, that it had never been his
intention to exchange views with the Christian majority. Rather, his goal
had always been to address his own Jewish community, cognizant, to be
sure, of the danger that his writing might fall into the hands of the other
side. With regard to this particular chapter, he originally had no intention
of writing anything. “Likewise with respect to this chapter, the Lord knows
that I had no intention of saying anything on these issues. But my friends
forced me and pressed me and implored me to mention something in this

6 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 141. For full citation of this poetic material, see above, in the Introduction.
284 Jewish polemicists on the attack
regard. Therefore I have mentioned some of the errors of their Scripture
and its deviance. I have not revealed even a tenth [of its errors], for I have
been fearful.”7
Jacob begins each of his attacks with a lengthy citation in Hebrew from
the Gospel of Matthew. There has been much discussion of and debate
about this Hebrew version of Matthew, its nature, and its provenance. For
us, these issues are intriguing, but peripheral. What is important for us is
the fact that Jacob created or had at his disposal an accurate translation of
Matthew, knew the material well, and utilized it as the basis for a wide-
ranging attack on Christianity.8
Jacob’s attack on the New Testament takes a number of tacks: charges
of inconsistency between it and the Hebrew Bible, accepted by both sides
as the word of God; charges of internal inconsistency within the New
Testament; charges of inconsistency between New Testament material and
widely known Christian doctrine; charges that New Testament material
is offensive to reason and/or moral sensitivity.9 The targets of this attack
include the New Testament narrator, in this case the author of the Gospel
of Matthew, and Jesus as the central figure in the Gospel. The result is a
comprehensive assault on the writings that Christians hold sacred, with the
obvious implication that a faith based on such flawed literature must be
a false faith, and a thorough attack on the central figure of the Christian
faith, whose deeds and words are found wanting.
Let us first examine Jacob’s critique of the Gospel of Matthew as a work of
sacred literature. There is, to be sure, much less of this criticism and much
more criticism of Jesus, his deeds, and his teachings. Early on, Jacob ben
Reuben points to significant divergence between the storytelling of the New
Testament and that of the Hebrew Bible. He contrasts Matthew’s presen-
tation of Jesus with the Hebrew Bible’s presentation of Moses, suggesting
that the New Testament portrayal of the former is clearly inconsistent with
the Hebrew Bible depiction of the latter. After a lengthy citation from
Matthew 4:1–11, the account of Jesus’ temptation by the devil, Jacob raises
a number of questions. The first has to do with the indication of Jesus’ fast-
ing for forty days, at the end of which he was famished. To this account,
Jacob juxtaposes the Exodus report on Moses atop Mount Sinai. In the
words of Jacob: “What kind of praise is this of the divinity, that he fasted
forty days and forty nights and afterwards was famished? Now, Moses, who
7 Ibid.
8 Recall the essay by Berger, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben,” with its suggestion
that in fact Jacob did know Latin, as evidenced by his translation of prior medieval polemical materials.
9 These lines of attack are strikingly parallel to those leveled by Christian thinkers against the Talmud.
 Christian Scripture and Jesus 285
was a prophet and was not divine, fasted forty days and forty nights, and,
when he descended from the mountain, his face shone.”10 Embedded in
this question is a sense of the disjuncture between the New Testament and
the Hebrew Bible.
Likewise problematic to Jacob ben Reuben was what he took as evidence
of internal inconsistency in the Gospel of Matthew. For Jacob, evidence
of internal inconsistency betrayed a lack of divine origin, indeed a lack of
religious stature altogether. Early on in chapter eleven, Jacob cites the story
of Jesus’ baptism, found in Matthew 3:13–17.
No sooner had Jesus been baptized and come up out of the water than the heavens
were opened, and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove to alight on him.
After the citation, Jacob continues: “It follows that, at the time of baptism,
the holy spirit descended upon him, but that prior to baptism the holy
spirit was not within him. But then, how can you say that he himself was
created from the holy spirit that entered the womb of his mother. For if
he [Jesus] was of it [the holy spirit], why would he need yet another at the
time of baptism?”11
At the very outset of chapter eleven of the Milh.amot ha-Shem, Jacob levels
a harsh criticism of the storytelling style of the Gospel, urging that in a
general way it is morally deficient. Jacob’s first citation from Matthew is the
lengthy genealogy with which the Gospel opens. Jacob notes the sequencing
of generations and then says: “Behold, thus is in truth the beginning of
their New Testament. I ask in this regard: Why does it mention Tamar,
the wife of Judah, but does not mention one of the wives of Abraham,
Isaac, or Jacob? And why does it mention Rahab the prostitute and the
wife of Uriah and Ruth the Moabite, but does not mention one of the
wives of others, only these who were sullied? How can you provide such
testimony with respect to your divinity?”12 The storytelling style of the
Gospel, which highlights women with well-known failings, is – according
to Jacob – seriously lacking from a moral perspective.
To be sure, Jacob’s criticisms focus far more fully on Jesus than on Gospel
narration. The Jewish polemicist finds difficulty with Jesus’ deeds and in-
teractions, on the one hand, and with his formal teachings, on the other.
Let us begin with Jesus’ deeds and interactions. Jacob cites Matthew 4:1–11,
as we have seen, and charges dissonance between the New Testament and
the Hebrew Bible. Within this citation is also embedded an interaction
between Jesus and the devil that involves the issue of divine intervention.

10 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 144. 11 Ibid., 143–144. 12 Ibid., 142–143.

286 Jewish polemicists on the attack
The devil challenges Jesus to throw himself off the parapet of the Temple
and trust in God’s assistance. Jesus rejects this challenge, replying: “Scrip-
ture also says: ‘You are not to put the Lord your God to the test.’” Jacob
ben Reuben notes that, in contrast to Jesus, a series of earlier worthies
had been perfectly comfortable invoking divine intervention. This series
included Moses, Gideon, Elijah, and Elisha. Indeed, according to Jacob,
God himself had suggested that the Israelites test him. In Malachi 3, God
rebukes the people for defrauding him. He urges them to bring the full
tithe into the public storehouses and then see the results. “I will surely
open the floodgates of the sky for you and pour down blessings upon
you; and I will banish the locusts from you, so that they will not de-
stroy the yield of your soil; and your vines in the field shall no longer
miscarry.” Thus, Jesus’ reluctance, claims the Jewish polemicist, is grossly
inconsistent with the earlier word of God, to which it claims to be a
continuation.13
Yet another instance of the same comes at the end of a set of citations –
Matthew 15:21–25, the incident of the Canaanite woman; Matthew 18:11–
13, the image of lost sheep; and Matthew 13:10–13, Jesus’ explanation of his
speaking in parables. The Jewish author argues for inconsistency among
these passages, as we shall see shortly. Subsequently, he suggests that the
last of the citations conflicts with major prophetic passages. In his expla-
nation for the use of parable, Jesus claims that he speaks in this fashion
so that his audience may look without seeing and listen without hearing
or understanding. To this Jacob ben Reuben juxtaposes two passages from
Ezekiel, in which the prophet proclaims: “Is it my desire that a wicked
person shall die? . . . It is rather that he shall turn back from his ways and
live.”14 “Turn back from your evil ways, that you may not die, O House of
Israel.”15 For Jacob ben Reuben, Jesus’ speaking in parables contradicts the
Ezekiel emphasis on repentance and acceptance by God.16
According to Jacob, not only are the deeds and interactions of Jesus
inconsistent with the Hebrew Bible, they are internally inconsistent as
well. We have just now noted the lengthy citation of Matthew 15:21–25,
Matthew 18:11–13, and Matthew 13:10–13, which gave rise, inter alia, to the
charge of disjuncture with the Hebrew Bible. The set of verses occasioned
a Jewish claim of internal inconsistency as well. According to Jacob, in
the story of the Canaanite woman Jesus indicates explicitly that “he was
sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” How then, asks the
Jewish polemicist, can Jesus subsequently say that he speaks in parables,

13 Ibid., 145. 14 Ezek. 18:23. 15 Ezek. 33:11. 16 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 152–153.

 Christian Scripture and Jesus 287
so that his Jewish auditors not understand his message? How does this
latter statement square with his mission to the lost sheep of the House of
Israel?17
Jacob also notes instances of contradiction between Jesus’ actions and
interactions and his formal teachings. Thus, after citing the account of the
fig tree without fruit that Jesus cursed, which elicits multiple criticisms
from the Jewish polemicist, Jacob ben Reuben hearkens back to the stir-
ring message of the Sermon on the Mount. Jacob criticizes Jesus for his
anger with the fig tree – a critique we shall encounter shortly – and then
proceeds to denounce the discrepancy between deed and word. “Did he
not command – love those who hate you, do well by your enemies, and
pray for those who oppress you?”18 The words of Jesus, according to the
Jewish critic, were utterly inconsistent with his deeds.
In addition to charging that Jesus’ actions and interactions showed dis-
juncture with the Hebrew Bible and internal inconsistency, the Jewish
polemicist also claims inconsistencies between the New Testament stories
and widely accepted Christian doctrine. Again, Jews, as a minority commu-
nity, were relatively familiar with the outlines of contemporary Christian
thinking, which they saw represented all about them and which they en-
countered in even the most casual of conversations. Jacob found the claim
of Jesus’ divinity, which he obviously knew well from his contact with
Christians and Christianity, inconsistent with much material in the New
Testament. Recurrently, his citation of sections of Matthew elicits the sense
of incongruity between the Gospel and this widely known foundation of
medieval Christian theology.
Let us note a few brief examples. In the temptation of Jesus by the devil,
cited already, the former is portrayed as challenging Jesus to turn stones
into bread. Jesus responds: “Scripture says: ‘Man is not to live on bread
alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” This elicits
from Jacob ben Reuben the suggestion that, given Jesus’ divinity, he should
have indicated “every word that comes from my mouth.”19 Citation of
God’s mouth suggests, according to Jacob, that the Gospel does not in fact
project Jesus as divine. We have already noted Jacob’s citation of Matthew
21:19, the story of the barren fig tree, from which he elicited evidence of
contradiction between Jesus’ word and Jesus’ deed. Jacob also finds in this
story contradiction between Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel and Jesus
as the divine figure projected by the Church. Jacob asks, with respect to
this story: “If he [Jesus] is divine, how did he not know that there was no

17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 151. 19 Ibid., 144–145.

288 Jewish polemicists on the attack
fruit?”20 Surely, a divinity would have known of this reality even without
approaching the tree directly.
A more serious instance of the same kind of critique is mounted against
Jesus’ post-resurrection admonition to his disciples to preach his message
and baptize in his name. The grounds for this mission are laid with the
following: “Full authority in heaven and on earth has been committed to
me.” Jacob finds it difficult to understand the notion of authority commit-
ted to Jesus. “Who gave it [authority] to him? Do you not say that he is
divine and lordly? Now you say that his Father gave it [authority] to him.
But do you not say that he and has Father are co-equal?”21
In a number of interesting instances Jacob ben Reuben reacts to New
Testament stories about Jesus and statements by Jesus by suggesting that
they are simply not reasonable, that they do not accord with the obvious
dictates of right thinking or moral behavior. We have twice noted the cita-
tion from Matthew 21:19, the story of the barren fig tree. This brief episode
arouses Jacob’s scorn from a number of perspectives. We have already cited
his claim of inconsistency between Jesus’ actions and teachings and his
claim of the disparity between this story and Jesus’ purportedly divine sta-
tus. Finally, for Jacob ben Reuben, Jesus’ behavior is simply inconsistent
with reasonable moral norms. “After he went there needlessly [as divine he
should have known of the lack of fruit], why did he become angry with the
tree, curse it, and wither it?”22 Jacob expresses here dismay at the portrait
of Jesus – whether divine or not – as reacting in such a seemingly childish
and peremptory way.
Jacob ben Reuben criticizes more than Jesus’ behavior; he criticizes Jesus’
teachings as well. Here too he charges, first of all, disjuncture between the
pronouncements of Jesus and the legacy of the Hebrew Bible. Jacob cites a
lengthy segment from the Sermon on the Mount, which elicits a number of
Jewish objections. The first involves the sense that the directives delivered
by Jesus constitute innovation, by dismissing prior biblical directives and
by adding to them. According to Jacob, by telling his followers “not to
swear at all,” Jesus dismisses clear-cut divine commandments with respect
to oaths. Moreover, by telling his followers to turn the other cheek and to
meet court challenges to their shirt by handing over their cloaks as well,
Jesus was adding further obligations to the previously ordered law of an
eye for eye. The underlying charge is divergence from prior divinely or-
dained commandments, found in the Hebrew Bible.23 We have already seen

20 Ibid., 151. 21 Ibid., 152. 22 Ibid., 151. 23 Ibid., 146.

 Christian Scripture and Jesus 289
evidence of the charge of internal inconsistency as well. Jacob highlighted
what he saw as striking dissonance between the teachings of Jesus to “love
those who hate you, do well by your enemies, and pray for those who
oppress you” and his own behavior in the incident of the fig tree.
Jesus’ teaching also raised the aforecited difficulty of disjuncture between
Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel and the commonly held notions of his divin-
ity. This criticism is to be found in Jacob’s citation of Matthew 12:30–32.
In this discourse, Jesus says: “Every sin and every slander can be forgiven,
except slander spoken against the Spirit; that will not be forgiven. Anyone
who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but if anyone
speaks against the Holy Spirit, for him there will be no forgiveness, either
in this age or in the age to come.” Jacob’s lengthy wrestling with this prob-
lematic passage is of course, by this time, predictable. Again, the overall
charge is inconsistency between clear statements in Christian Scripture that
indicate significant difference between the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit
and the evolved doctrine of the Church, which saw the two on precisely the
same plane.24 This inconsistency sheds doubt, for the Jewish polemicist,
on both.
Finally, let us return to the Jacob’s citation from the Sermon on the
Mount. We recall that Jacob’s citation led him to criticize the New Tes-
tament for serious divergence from the divinely ordained precepts of the
Hebrew Bible. The extreme demands of the Sermon on the Mount leads
Jacob into a lengthy rumination on the overall effects of these extreme
demands, effects that culminate in immorality.
Ultimately, he [Jesus] undercut all the laws, statutes, and directives. The result is
that each of you who worships him will suffer in a double sense. You will not
observe the Torah of Moses, which is a Torah of law, because of the Torah of grace,
which he [Jesus] gave you. Likewise, you do not fulfill the Torah of grace at all,
in many senses. You war with one another; you despoil one another. [This is true]
not only for you, but even for those who enter the priesthood and wear hair-cloth
and refrain from wine and meat. Even they despoil property and do most of their
business in ways severely prohibited to them. Therefore I conclude that you have
neither the old nor the new, neither a way nor a path; rather [you have] only
darkness and death.25
This is a rather atypical outburst for chapter eleven of the Milh.amot ha-
Shem; it indicates the Jewish author’s deeply negative feelings about the
moral implications of Jesus’ teachings.

24 Ibid., 153. 25 Ibid., 146.

290 Jewish polemicists on the attack
Jacob ben Reuben’s critique of the Gospels is unique among our five Jewish
polemicists. None of the other four cites Gospel verses in such a precise
way. That is not to say, however, that our remaining Jewish polemicists were
oblivious to the Gospels and their accounts of the life of Jesus. Without
precise citations, there is considerable evidence of Jewish knowledge of early
Christian history and thought. As noted recurrently, Jews, as a minority
element in medieval western Christendom, were exposed to considerable
everyday familiarity with the activities and teachings of Jesus. Of our re-
maining Jewish polemicists, it is Rabbi Meir bar Simon of Narbonne who
most regularly brings this information to the fore, criticizing severely Jesus
and the teachings he disseminated.
We have already had ample opportunity to familiarize ourselves with
Rabbi Meir’s 160 criticisms of Christianity, its beliefs and its practices. In
composing his criticisms of Christianity, Rabbi Meir makes the common
distinction between doctrine and practice. In his positive statement about
Judaism, he highlights what he sees as its strengths in both areas. When he
turns to the weaknesses of Christianity, he tends to focus more heavily on
practice than doctrine, although the latter is not entirely absent. His first
set of criticisms involves “the behavior of Christians and their belief,” with
a decided tendency to focus on the former (considerations 1 through 12).
Indeed, he concludes this set of critiques by identifying them as “some of
the practices of the Christians.”26
Rabbi Meir then proposes speaking “about the behaviors of the person
who they claim is their God and about his deeds and his words.”27 These
observations are extensive (considerations 13 through 58). At its conclusion,
Rabbi Moses identifies this lengthy section as involving “his [Jesus’] behav-
iors and his words.”28 To be sure, as always, Rabbi Meir has great difficulty
with organization. While criticism of Jesus’ deeds and words constitutes the
central thread of this lengthy segment of criticisms, there is considerable
fluidity in these critiques. Because of the weaknesses of the rabbi’s organi-
zational scheme, we shall impose upon this material the framework already
used for our discussion of Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem. We shall
look first at claimed inconsistencies between Jesus and the Hebrew Bible;
then at claimed internal inconsistencies; then at purported divergences be-
tween Jesus and medieval Christian doctrine, especially the notion of Jesus’
divinity; and then at aspects of Jesus’ behavior and teaching that allegedly
contravene good sense and moral standards. We shall conclude with an

26 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 312. We shall analyze these criticisms in the next chapter.
27 Ibid., 312. 28 Ibid., 327.
 Christian Scripture and Jesus 291
innovative claim on the part of Rabbi Meir, the claim of Jesus’ insufficien-
cies based on historical considerations.
Before beginning this analysis, we might pose briefly the question of
Rabbi Meir’s knowledge of the Gospels and early Christianity. Clearly,
he does not offer the same precise citations found in Milh.amot ha-Shem.
Occasionally, he errs in detail,29 and in rare instances he introduces rather
strange extra-biblical folklore.30 On the whole, however, he is fairly accurate
in his references to Jesus, to be sure insisting regularly on the discrepancies
between the biblical portrait and widespread medieval notions of Jesus and
his life.
Let us begin with criticisms that highlight purported disjuncture with
the Hebrew Bible. Rabbi Meir, who was in general much caught up with
the importance of miracles, as we have already seen and will see recurrently
in this discussion, was struck by Gospel reports of Jesus’ unwillingness to
provide wonders that would convince his detractors. According to Rabbi
Meir, if this were in fact true, then Jesus was guilty of bringing about the
effort on the part of these opponents to have him killed. For Rabbi Meir, this
stance on the part of Jesus stood in marked contrast with the stance of the
prophets of Israel towards their detractors. He cites specifically the prophet
Isaiah urging a dubious King Ahaz: “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God,
anywhere down to Sheol or up to the sky.” Likewise, the same prophet
told King Hezekiah that his prayers were answered and provided a specific
sign that he and his kingdom would be protected.31 Jesus’ unwillingness
to follow these earlier precedents was surprising and distressing to Rabbi
Meir. If Jesus was in fact an emissary of God or divine, he should have been
concerned about the wellbeing of even his opponents.32
Even more distressing to Rabbi Meir was what he saw as Jesus’ distortion
of the Hebrew Bible. He cited the well-known section of the Sermon on
the Mount that says: “You have heard that they [the forefathers] were told,
‘Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’ But what I tell you is this: Love
your enemies and pray for your persecutors.” Rabbi Meir is offended by
what he sees as Jesus’ distortion of the legacy of biblical Israel.
But this is not so in our perfect Torah! Is it not written in the Torah: “You shall not
take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countryman.” It is further said: “You
shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart.” Further, it [the Torah] commanded
assisting with the unloading and loading of burdens even for an enemy and [the
same] with respect to return of a lost object.33
29 Note the somewhat distorted description of the death of Stephen in criticism no. 27, ibid., 316.
30 Criticism no. 39, ibid., 320 31 Isa. 7 and 38.
32 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 315. 33 Ibid., 316.
292 Jewish polemicists on the attack
Jesus’ characterization of the legacy of biblical Israel was incorrect and
misleading, according to our Jewish polemicist.
Like Jacob ben Reuben, Rabbi Meir bar Simon also sees internal contra-
diction within the New Testament. A major instance of this again involves
the matter of miracles and their power to convince onlookers. Thus, Rabbi
Meir notes:
His [Jesus’] words seem to contradict one another in many places. It is found in
their book that he performed miracles in order that they might believe in him. Yet
behold it is written in their book that he cured a certain sick man and told him
that he should not tell anyone.34
For Rabbi Meir, concerned as he was with the issue of miracles and their
impact on human thinking, there was more than contradiction here – there
was outright dereliction of duty, as we shall see.
Another item seized upon by Rabbi Meir involved Jesus’ genealogy,
which is specified in Matthew 1:1–17 and in Luke 3:23–38. The repetition
suggests that this is in fact an important issue. For Rabbi Meir, this Gospel
material presents two problems. In the first place, it differs in detail from
material in the book of Kings – “There is disparity between the biblical
author in Kings and their books.” Moreover, “there is also [disparity] in their
books between one and another. In fact, they contradict one another.”35
This surely raises questions, for the Jewish observer, as to the reliability of
books purportedly written under divine inspiration.
For Rabbi Meir bar Simon, as for Jacob ben Reuben, Christian doctrine
emphasizes strongly the divinity of Jesus, while the Gospels portrayed a
figure who was far from divine. Rabbi Meir devotes a sequence of consid-
erations, numbers 13 through 24, to this critical discrepancy. Indeed, this is
precisely the issue with which his critique of Jesus opens. We have already
noted Rabbi Meir’s focus on Jesus’ birth and bodily needs and functions
and his revulsion at these notions.36 In addition, he further highlights Jesus’
fears and need to flee, his unavailing prayers, his lack of foreknowledge,
his harsh treatment of the fig tree, his misassessment of Judas Iscariot, and
his death in contravention of his own desires. All this shows decisively, in
our Jewish polemicist’s view, that Jesus could not have been divine.37 The
disparity between the Gospel stories and Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity
is, for the Jew, obvious.
Let us note one of these criticisms, simply to gain a sense of their broad
tone. In consideration 16, the rabbi says the following:
34 Ibid., 314. 35 Ibid., 322. 36 See above, Chap. 12.
37 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 312–314.
 Christian Scripture and Jesus 293
That he was frightened, feared, and trembled out of apprehension of enemies,
as is written in their book. But the Creator, may he be blessed, is the master of
all – he is not frightened of anything and does not fear anything. For all things
are his creation. He can raise them instantly, according to his will, or remove
them instantly. Behold, it is written in the psalm: “The Lord is my light and my
help; whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Whom should
I dread?”38 Thus, you see that, when the Lord is with someone, he should not be
frightened or fear. If he [Jesus] was divine or – even if he was not divine – if God
was in him or with him, how could he be frightened or fear? Even David, who was
human, born of man and woman, said that he would not fear or be frightened,
because God was with him, to assist him.39
We have encountered the issue of miracles repeatedly in this discussion,
noting Rabbi Meir’s insistence that Jesus’ stance on this important matter
contradicted that found in the Hebrew Bible and was indeed internally
inconsistent as presented in the Gospels. In a far more scathing criticism,
Rabbi Meir contends that Jesus’ stance on miracles was in fact morally
repugnant. According to Rabbi Meir, miracles were a tool regularly used
by God to save those in error. Jesus’ reluctance to provide miracles thus
amounted to condemnation of those in error, affording them no opportu-
nity to redeem themselves. For Rabbi Meir, this was an intolerable moral
position.
Let us note the continuation of Rabbi Meir’s consideration 25. This
specific attack begins with the charge that there is internal contradiction
between Jesus’ working of wonders in order to convince people of his special
qualities and his admonition to one of those whom he cured to keep the
matter hidden. Rabbi Meir pursues this last admonition.
It would have been better if he [Jesus] had told him [the person whom he cured]
to tell many, so that they would believe in him and would not be lost. All the more
[is this true] after he was killed and received his sentence, if it is true that he exited
his sepulcher and went up to heaven. Likewise, subsequently, when they say he
returned and spoke with his disciples and showed them his wounds, why did he
not do all these wonders in the sight of all the people, so that they might be saved
by him and not be ensnared by him? For the signs that could be done by magic he
would do publicly. Thus, the Pharisees said that he did them through the prince
of the spirits. But the great wonders through which all would believe him he did
in secret.40
This is a very important statement for Rabbi Meir, who was a firm
believer in the importance and efficacy of miracles. As we saw earlier, in
our discussion of the sermon he delivered in the synagogue of Narbonne,
38 Ps. 27:1. 39 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 312. 40 Ibid., 314.
294 Jewish polemicists on the attack
Rabbi Meir was convinced that renewal of prophecy and miracles would
be one of the hallmarks of messianic deliverance.41 He – not surprisingly –
contrasts Jesus and his miracles with Moses and his miracles. In the case of
Moses, there was something like a contest of wonders, with Moses doing
all that the magicians of Egypt could do and more. His miracles were of
such a public nature as to convince all the Israelites, despite their initial
recalcitrance; they even convinced the Egyptians of God’s hand at work.
Not so – claims Rabbi Moses – with Jesus. Jesus’ public miracles were of
the kind that magicians have traditionally been able to perform. On the
other hand, the purported great miracles were done in a very small circle
of believers and not in a larger setting, where a wider audience would have
been convinced of his mission. For Rabbi Meir, this is a severe shortcoming
on Jesus’ part. This shortcoming might be moral. That is to say that Jesus
was imbued with the power to perform such miracles and chose not to,
to the eternal detriment of those whom he failed to convince of his true
powers. The alternative, of course, is that Jesus did not in fact have the
powers attributed to him, that he was no more than a run-of-the-mill
wonder worker.42
This assault on the miracles performed by Jesus and their alleged limita-
tions has significant implications for the position of those who have rejected
Jesus, first and foremost the Jews.
It is written in their book that those who did not believe in him will be lost and
will be punished in hell. This does not seem correct. For the wonders that they
say he did, such as curing the sick and the other things that he did, he did so that
people would believe in him. If so, then it was up to him to do them in a way
that would arouse no doubt in the heart of any wise and pious person as to his
prophecy and his divinity.43
The failure on Jesus’ part to perform truly impressive miracles is presented
as a puzzle and a failure.
Rabbi Meir proposes a Christian answer to the puzzle.
Now if you say that he performed them [the miracles] in a dubious manner, so
that some of them [the onlooking Jews] would not believe in him and would kill
him, so that he might accept upon himself death in order to save the souls of the
righteous from Satan, then why should they be punished for this? They behaved
properly, since his wonders could not be properly assessed and there was a way to
deny them [the miracles done by Jesus]. It would have been better for them to
receive a reward for his killing, since the wise and pious Pharisees who were there
at that time said that they [the miracles] took place through magic.

41 See above, Chap. 9. 42 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 315–316. 43 Ibid., 316.
 Christian Scripture and Jesus 295
Indeed, Christian sages say that those who condemned him to death were not
[condemning him] intentionally, but rather in error. They thought they were
carrying out a proper sentence. Since this is so, then the God who knows the heart
and probes the mind should reward them for this.44
Here the critique of Jesus, central to the Jewish attack on early Christianity,
is turned in a defensive direction. Not only was Jesus unfair in the way he
established himself, but those Jews who were led astray by him should bear
no guilt whatsoever. They were doing the proper thing, given his failure to
perform his miracles in a convincing manner.45
Rabbi Meir turns these observations into an unusual attack on Jesus
made on the basis of historical considerations. This attack is, at the same
time, a defense of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries for their part in his demise.
The foundation for this unusual Jewish attack lies in the combination of
Jesus’ shortcomings and the reactions of various segments of Palestinian
Jewry to these failures. Let us note a bit of the detail, beginning with the
role of the established Jewish authorities in the condemnation of Jesus.
It is written in their book that the high priest, named Caiaphas in the vernacular,
condemned him. Now, it is written in the Torah: “If a case is too baffling for you to
decide, be it a controversy over homicide, civil law, or assault – matters of dispute
in your courts – [you shall promptly repair to the place that the Lord your God
will have chosen]. [You shall] appear before the levitical priests or the magistrate
in charge at the time [and present your problem. When they have announced to
you the verdict in the case, you shall carry out the verdict that is announced to you
from that place.]. You shall observe scrupulously all their instructions to you.”46
Based on the biblical injunction, the high priest in first-century Palestine
was in fact carrying out his ordained responsibilities.
There is more. The decision of the high priest was based on the input of
yet another leadership element in first-century Palestine.
Moreover, they [the high priest and his associates] condemned him on the basis
of the witnesses they received concerning his [Jesus’] affairs. As is written in their
book, the Pharisees said that he did his actions through magic, through the prince
of the spirits.47
The Pharisees are here invoked as experts in religious affairs, who were in a
position to judge Jesus’ actions. They came to the conclusion that he was
simply a wonder worker, involved in illegal manipulations. In so judging,

44 Ibid.
45 I have presented this theme briefly above, in Chap. 9, as part of the Jewish argument that Jewish
redemption could not have been annulled by guilt for the Crucifixion.
46 Deut. 17:8; Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 318. 47 Ibid.
296 Jewish polemicists on the attack
the Pharisees too were guiltless, since it was the insufficiencies of Jesus’
miracles that led them – justifiably or unjustifiably – to their conclusion.
Finally, Rabbi Meir turns beyond the leadership groupings – the high
priest and the Pharisees – in one further direction, to the people. Here, he
makes a slightly different case.
It is written in their book that the entire people condemned him to death. Now
their words contradict one another. For if it were true that he benefited them by
healing their ill and curing their deaf and blind and reviving their deceased, how
did they all agree to his killing? It would have made more sense for them to save
him, as we found in the case of [the biblical] Jonathan . . . How did they all not
save one who had done no harm, according to their [the Christians’] words, even
in error, and had done many good things. Not only did they not save him. In
fact, they said that he should be killed. For thus do they write, that the procurator
Pilate said: “What should I do with Jesus?” And the entire people said: “Let him
be crucified!” Who can believe that someone who had done only extremely good
things would be condemned to death, unless they recognized fully and accurately
that he did what he did through magic?48
Not only were the experts convinced of Jesus’ culpability, the entire folk
shared that conviction.
This is obviously a striking and provocative statement, by no means
intended for a Christian audience. In it, Rabbi Meir bar Simon accepts
Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion and justifies the course of action
taken by the Jews of first-century Palestine. This striking statement involves
a double-edged sword, reflecting on both early Christianity and on the
Jews of first-century Palestine. Rabbi Meir bases his case exclusively on the
Gospels, which he accepts as accurate reflections of the historical reality.
To be sure, he reads the Gospel account in a profoundly anti-Christian
manner. He in effect claims that, according to the Gospels themselves,
every element in the Jewish population concurred in the condemnation
of Jesus and that every aspect of the decision reflects the propriety of the
Jewish actions. The Pharisees were charged with responsibility for charting
the spiritual course of their people and did so. The priests were the duly
authorized internal political leaders and exercised the authority vested in
them. What is perhaps most striking is the rabbi’s claim that the people
were an enthusiastic party to the decision as well. This, he argues, can only
reflect a deep sense of Jesus as a sorcerer and the purveyor of misleading
and destructive religious teachings.
There are ultimately two possibilities. In all likelihood, this shared as-
sessment was accurate. Jesus was not the promised Messiah or anything else
48 Ibid., 318–319.
 Christian Scripture and Jesus 297
of significance. It is, to be sure, remotely possible that all these elements
in the Jewish community of first-century Palestine misassessed. If that is
so, then responsibility for the misassessment falls on the shoulders of Jesus
himself, who did not use his powers to produce the overwhelming miracles
that would have left no room for doubt on the part of onlookers.

The offensives launched by Jacob ben Reuben and Rabbi Meir bar Simon
reflect a twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewry determined to defend itself
vigorously. In addition to parrying Christian claims, these Jewish polemi-
cists were willing to go out and do battle against the foe. Christian Scripture
was known and was exploited against the majority faith in a variety of ways.
The result was intended to serve as useful guidance for a community under
significant spiritual pressure – to assure the members of this community
that the religious alternative being proposed to them was in fact not a
worthy one.
 chap t e r fou rt e e n

Comparative behaviors: Jewish achievement and

Christian shortcoming

We have periodically encountered in passing broad criticism of contempo-

rary Christian society and its behavior patterns. We recall for example the
attack leveled by Jacob ben Reuben against the teachings of Jesus promul-
gated in the Sermon on the Mount. According to Jacob, Jesus proclaimed
a Torah of grace, a Torah that is in fact unattainable. The proof of this
unattainability lies in the everyday existence of Jacob’s Christian contem-
poraries, with regard to whom he says the following: “You war with one an-
other; you despoil one another. [This is true] not only for you, but even for
those who enter the priesthood and wear hair-cloth and refrain from wine
and meat. Even they despoil property and do most of their business in ways
severely prohibited to them.”1 Christian society, according to Jacob’s Jewish
protagonist, is awash in moral failure, from its lowest to its highest levels.
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman pointed in much the same direction, purport-
edly arguing to King James the Conqueror that, in contrast to messianic
ideals of peace and tranquility, medieval Christendom was a society steeped
in warring and warfare. He portrays himself as noting sarcastically to the
king: “How difficult it would be for you, my lord the king, and for these war-
riors of yours, if they were to no longer learn war.”2 In both cases, our Jewish
polemicists highlight what they see as the moral failings of Christianity and
Christian society. Religions should be judged by the behavior patterns ob-
servable among their adherents. Looked at this way, medieval Christendom
comes up desperately short, according to our Jewish polemicists. This issue
constitutes yet another powerful Jewish attack leveled against the dominant
faith.

Sefer ha-Berit begins, as we have seen, with a brief exchange about the
possibility of proving the truth of Christianity from reason. The Christian
1 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 146. This criticism was noted above, in Chap. 13.
2 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 675. We have noted this criticism above, in
Chap. 10.

298
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 299
protagonist gives ground immediately, retreating to the more traditional
reliance on biblical authority. The Christian and the Jew then debate the
meaning of Isaiah 9:5 and its ramifications at some length.3 At the end of this
protracted exchange, the Christian, in a bit of exasperation, exclaims that
the Jews have no base from which to argue. “You lack faith, [good] deeds,
and political authority. For you have lost everything.” The Jew responds by
setting a new foundation for the argument.
Know that all the good a person does in this world has two elements – good deeds
and faith. Now, if I can establish for the Jews good deeds and proper faith, then
they have everything.4
Joseph Kimhi establishes as a basis for judging individuals and communities
the twin foundations of proper behavior and true belief.5
Joseph Kimhi then launches an extended argument for Jewish behavioral
superiority. The argument is comparative throughout, regularly contrasting
Jewish achievement with Christian failure. At this relatively early juncture
in Sefer ha-Berit, the Jewish protagonist is made to abandon his normally
defensive position and to go on the offensive. Kimhi sets forth his argument
carefully, seeking a reasonable starting point on which Christians and Jews
can agree. He finds such a starting point in the biblical legacy. While
there is considerable Christian–Jewish dispute on the status of biblical law
subsequent to the advent of Jesus, Joseph Kimhi finds a set of biblical
injunctions that brook no dispute. Christians and Jews agree as to the
absolute validity of the Ten Commandments.
Joseph Kimhi thus utilizes the Ten Commandments as the uncontested
frame through which to contrast Christian and Jewish behavior patterns.
“I [am the Lord your God]” – the Jews proclaim the unity of the Divine.
“You shall have [no other gods]” – the Jews do not make idols.
“You shall not take [the name of the Lord your God in vain]” – there is no
people in the world that refrain from idle oaths like the Jews.
“Remember [the Sabbath day]” – there are no people who observe the Sabbath
except the Jews.
“Honor your father and your mother” – likewise.6
“You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery” – there are not among
them [the Jews] murderers and adulterers.

3 Sefer ha-Berit, 21–25; The Book of the Covenant, 28–31. This opening section has been described in
Chap. 4.
4 Sefer ha-Berit, 25; The Book of the Covenant, 32.
5 On Rabbi Meir’s invocation of these twin foundations, see above, Chap. 13.
6 My translation alters the punctuation introduced by Talmage. I suggest reading “kabed kemo khen,”
which would mean “Honor [your father and mother] – likewise [the Jews excel].”
300 Jewish polemicists on the attack
“[You shall not steal]” – oppression and thievery are not prominent among
the Jews, as they are among the Christians. For they rob folks on the roads and
hang them and put out their eyes. You cannot establish these behaviors among the
Jews.7
A few observations are in order. First, again, the Ten Commandments
constitute a set of injunctions over which there has never been any dispute.
They are acknowledged by both Christians and Jews as binding. To be sure,
some of the initial claims involve differences of religious belief. The claim
that “Jews proclaim the unity of the Divine” reflects Jewish objection to the
doctrine of the Trinity. Similarly, the claim that “Jews do not make idols”
reflects Jewish opposition to the images that are so central to Christian
religious practice.
Sabbath observance as well might be said to be an issue of religious
dispute, although at a slightly later point the Jewish protagonist attacks
more precisely this issue. Allowing for an alternative Christian reading of
the injunction to remember the Sabbath, he still insists on Christian laxness
and Jewish scrupulousness.
The Jews are observers of their Sabbath and festivals in outstanding fashion.
However, the Christians even on Sunday, which is their sacred day, do all kinds of
work thereon and go out on the roads.8
In other words, while acknowledging a different reading that projects Sun-
day as the Christian Sabbath, the Jew claims that observance of the chosen
day differs markedly between Christians and Jews, with the latter exhibiting
genuine reverence for their Sabbath in marked contrast to casual observance
by the former.
Even dismissing items grounded in religious disagreement, the remain-
ing prohibitions (vain oaths, dishonoring of parents, murder, adultery, and
robbery) offer a impressive catalogue of behaviors universally condemned.
It is Joseph Kimhi’s contention – voiced by his Jewish protagonist – that
Jews refrain from these obnoxious behaviors. It is further the Jewish con-
tention that Christians are incapable of distancing themselves from such
objectionable activity. Medieval western Christendom is steeped in such
actions, argues the Jewish spokesman.
Indeed, Joseph Kimhi’s Jewish protagonist proceeds farther. Leaving the
solid mooring of the Ten Commandments, he moves to a set of behaviors
that are not so explicitly grounded in a particular set of biblical injunctions.

7 Sefer ha-Berit, 25–26; The Book of the Covenant, 32.

8 Sefer ha-Berit, 26; The Book of the Covenant, 33.
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 301
Rather, he points to behaviors that seem to involve broad moral standards,
again claiming Jewish superiority and Christian inferiority with respect to
these behaviors.
They – the Jews and Jewesses – are modest in all their actions. They raise their
children, both younger and older, in the study of Torah. Should they hear foul
language from his [a child’s] mouth, they strike him and punish him, so that he
not speak foully with his lips. They condition him to pray every day. If they hear
that he conditions himself to oaths, they restrain him. Likewise, [they condition]
their daughters to modesty. They [the daughters] do not appear outdoors and are
not found to be wanton, like the daughters of the Christians, who go out to the
street corners everywhere. The Holy One, blessed be he, ordered restraint in all
these matters.
But you would surely be embarrassed and humiliated to claim that you are a
good people. For you are accustomed to commit all these sins publicly. You are
not a people that restrains itself from all this.9
Even with this contrast, the Jewish protagonist in Sefer ha-Berit is not
yet finished. He proceeds to charitable behavior toward the stranger and
the wayfarer.
I shall further say to you that, if a Jew lodges with a fellow-Jew for a day or two
days or [even] a year, he [the host] will not take from him [the guest] money for his
sustenance. Such is the case for all the Jews in the world, who behave toward their
brethren with pity. If he [a Jew] sees his brother captive, he will redeem him. [If he
sees him] naked, he will clothe him. He will not permit him to beg at doorsteps.
Rather, he will secretly send him food.
However, you see with your own eyes that the Christian goes out to the roads
to receive guests, not in order to honor them, but rather in order to oppress them
and to take from them all their provisions.
No one can deny that all the good deeds I indicated to you are to be found
among the Jews and that their opposite [are to be found] among the Christians.10
The Jew in Sefer ha-Berit speaks a bit further and then ends with a
flourish. “What kind of good deeds can you seek that are not to be found
among the Jews, and what kind of evil deeds that you will not find among
the Christians?”11 Let us not lose sight of the overarching point. Religions
are to be judged, at least in part, by the behaviors of their adherents.
On those grounds, argues Joseph Kimhi, Judaism is honored by the be-
havior of the Jews, while Christianity is dishonored by the actions of its
adherents.

9 Sefer ha-Berit, 26; The Book of the Covenant, 32–33.

10 Sefer ha-Berit, 26; The Book of the Covenant, 33.
11 Sefer ha-Berit, 26–27; The Book of the Covenant, 33.
302 Jewish polemicists on the attack
The Christian spokesman in Sefer ha-Berit does not dispute the points
made by his adversary in their entirety. At the same time, he can of course
not assent fully either. He is given three responses by Joseph Kimhi. The
first is that deeds are insufficient, so long as Jews lack proper belief.12 This
response does not constitute rebuttal of the Jewish position, since the Jewish
protagonist had said that he would prove for the Jews a combination of
proper belief and excellent behavior.
The second tack taken by the Christian is to note one pattern of Jewish
behavior that he finds utterly reprehensible, and that is Jewish moneylend-
ing at interest. By the latter decades of the twelfth century, Jewish mon-
eylending at interest had come to loom large in the Jewish economy, had
become a matter of grave concern for the Church, and had begun to arouse
popular hostility.13 According to the Christian protagonist in Sefer ha-Berit,
this unsavory activity must be taken fully into account when assessing pur-
ported Jewish behavioral superiority. This Christian response leads into an
exchange on the propriety of Jewish moneylending at interest, with the Jew
arguing that Scripture explicitly permits moneylending at interest by Jews
to their non-Jewish neighbors. There is thus nothing reprehensible in such
activity.14
Indeed, this line of Christian response engenders yet another contrast by
the Jewish protagonist, highlighting once more Jewish virtue and Christian
vice. This new contrast is grounded in the conviction that Jews are permitted
to lend at interest to non-Jews, while being prohibited from lending at
interest to their fellow-Jews.
Behold, the Jews guard themselves most carefully from [taking] interest from their
brethren, as the Torah prohibited. Moreover, they guard themselves against even
the hint of interest. A Jew will not sell to his fellow-Jew wheat or wine or any item
for a set time, in order to augment the price.15

12 Sefer ha-Berit, 27; The Book of the Covenant, 33.

13 See the important study by Joseph Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval
Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). While this study focuses on a specific incident,
the trial of a wealthy Jewish moneylender in Marseilles, chaps. 3 and 4 treat the broad phenomenon of
medieval Jewish moneylending. In her Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, Anna
Sapir Abulafia suggests that Jewish moneylending contributed considerably to the negative imagery
of Judaism and Jews spawned during the twelfth century. In my Medieval Stereotypes and Modern
Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), I made much the same suggestion. For
a lengthy study of Jewish views on usury, with a focus on the issue of usury in polemical literature,
see Judah Rosenthal, “Usury from the Stanger” (Hebrew), Talpiot 5 (1952): 475–492.
14 Sefer ha-Berit, 27; The Book of the Covenant, 33–34.
15 The practice to which Joseph Kimhi is here alluding involves selling on credit, with payment of
interest for the extra time allowed for payment. Again the point is the scrupulousness of Jewish
adherence to the behavioral norms of the Torah.
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 303
But behold, you, who withhold yourselves from interest, sell for a set time at
double the price. Are you not ashamed to say that you do not lend at interest? This
is very great interest. Moreover, many Christians lend openly at interest to Jews
and to Christians, which the Jews do not do with their fellow-Jews.16
Thus, the Christian rebuttal serves as the opening to yet another Jewish at-
tack. Even in the vexing area of moneylending, according to Joseph Kimhi,
Jewish behavior is far superior to that of Christians.
The third response of the Christian protagonist is to point to a special
kind of Christian behavior, the behavior of individuals who take upon
themselves unique piety and achieve heights of human virtue.
I shall show you good deeds that the Christian do. For there are among them men
who separate themselves from the world and its pleasures. They dwell in the forests
and in the deserts in suffering all their days.17
Moneylending at interest ostensibly marred the Jewish record; monasticism
and its achievements elevated the purported negativity of the Christian
record.18
Not surprisingly, the Jewish assault continues, contesting the significance
of monasticism. The Jew argues that it is a highly limited phenomenon and
counts for very little.
As to what you said – that there are among them [the Christians] holy men who
separate themselves from this world – such a person is one of a thousand or one of
ten thousand. The rest are all sullied by the ways of the world. Even your priests
and your bishops, who are not to marry women, are known to be lustful.19
Occasional model figures do not erase or even counter-balance the general
reality of a Christian society steeped in misbehavior. This negative pattern
pervades all of Christian society and extends even to the religious leadership
of the Church.
According to the Jewish protagonist, the biblical record – again accepted
by both Christians and Jews – shows that occasional exemplary individu-
als do not efface the sinfulness of the larger society around them. Kimhi
draws upon the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, arguing that
there were righteous figures among the Judean population, but that these

16 Sefer ha-Berit, 27; The Book of the Covenant, 34–35.

17 Sefer ha-Berit, 27; The Book of the Covenant, 34.
18 The centrality of monasticism to twelfth-century western Christendom is emphasized by a number
of scholars, most prominently Giles Constable. See especially his magisterial The Reformation of the
Twelfth Century.
19 Sefer ha-Berit, 28; The Book of the Covenant, 35.
304 Jewish polemicists on the attack
righteous few were not sufficient to efface the sinfulness of their genera-
tion. Thus God, despite this righteous minority, brought Nebucchadnezzar
upon Jerusalem. Just as those few righteous of yore could not eradicate or
counter-balance the sins of the multitude, so the Christian monks cannot
eradicate or counter-balance the sins of contemporary Christian society.20
The Jew makes yet one more response. Having accepted the phenomenon
of monasticism and having argued that it does not ameliorate the larger
picture of Christian shortcoming, the Jewish spokesman closes by challeng-
ing the reality of monastic achievement. “All this notwithstanding, I do not
believe that the one who separates himself in the forest is actually perfect
in his behavior and his belief.”21 With this, the focus returns to belief in
Sefer ha-Berit, with the Christian resuming his offensive position and the
Jew reprising his defensive posture. What we have seen in this interlude,
however, is the Jew moving briefly to the offensive and challenging the
Christian world – and by extension Christianity – for its allegedly debased
behavioral standards.

Of our Jewish polemicists, it is Rabbi Meir bar Simon of Narbonne who

examines most closely the purported contrast between Christian behavioral
shortcomings and Jewish behavioral excellences. Part ii of the Milh.emet
Miz.vah adduces one hundred sixty critiques of Christianity. Significantly,
Rabbi Meir chose to open these critiques with the behavioral shortcomings
of Christian society. Rabbi Meir does provide the requisite contrast to Jewish
behavioral excellences, but that contrast forms only a brief introduction to
the lengthy catalogue of Christian failings. We shall follow Rabbi Meir in
noting first his fairly brief depiction of Jewish virtues, then proceeding to
the far more elaborate description of Christian vices.
Rabbi Meir begins his case for Judaism as the superior religion by fo-
cusing on the simplicity, rationality, and elegance of Jewish doctrine. After
making this very brief case, Rabbi Meir proceeds to argue for the superiority
of Jewish behavioral norms. He opens, with echoes of the Ten Command-
ments again lurking in the background, by linking Jewish virtues to the
purity of Jewish doctrine as he has just described it. His first observations
have to do with Jewish observance of the Sabbath. The portrait is intriguing.
I likewise see that the commandments of the Torah are good and proper, useful
for the well-being of man and the well-being of society and the perfection of
the soul, so that it remains bound in the bond of eternal life. For among the

20 Sefer ha-Berit, 28; The Book of the Covenant, 35.

21 Sefer ha-Berit, 28; The Book of the Covenant, 35.
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 305
commandments of the Torah is [the commandment] to observe Sabbaths and
festivals. Thus, man will be free from the burdens of the world, will consider the
wonders of the Lord, will read the stories of the Torah and the Prophets, will realize
from them that the Rock, may he be blessed, created all and oversees all and directs
all, as we explained. He will then accept his love [love of God] and his fear [fear of
God] upon himself with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might.22
Jewish observance aims to move the excellent teachings of Judaism into the
everyday existence of Jews, according to Rabbi Meir.
Jewish behavioral norms also involve social relations as well. Once more
echoes of the Ten Commandments can be discerned.
It is likewise among the commandments of the Torah to honor parents and teachers
and elders, to love neighbors, to refrain from vengeance and from grudges and
from hatred of one’s brother, to do well by enemies, to help him load and un-
load, to return his lost objects, and to give to the indigent according to their
need.23
These observations portray a Judaism with high standards for human re-
lations. We recall Rabbi Meir’s criticism of Jesus’ suggestion that he had
deepened moral sensitivity beyond that of the Hebrew Bible.24 For Rabbi
Meir, the Hebrew Bible was in and of itself a repository of the highest
ethical insight, and his contemporary fellow-Jews attempted in every way
to live by the lofty standards established by these biblical teachings.
Finally, Rabbi Meir turns in a third direction, to Jewish ritual command-
ments, involving such matters as sexual relations, permitted and forbidden
foods, and purity and impurity. While Rabbi Meir does not treat these
matters in any detail, his overall point is clear. Once again, he urges that
the commandments by which Jews order their lives are reasonable, work to
the advantage of the individual and society, are achievable, and have been
realized among his fellow-Jews.
Rabbi Meir makes some interesting closing observations to this relatively
brief and positive portrayal of the commandments of Judaism. He claims
for these commandments two sound foundations – reason and biblical
authority. He describes the first in the following way.
Ultimately, when the man of intellect looks carefully at the commandments, he
will find in them sustenance for the body, sustenance for society, and perfection
of the soul, which achieves the human perfection intended from man.25

22 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 306–307. 23 Ibid., 307. 24 See above, Chap. 13.
25 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 307. Recall the depiction of Rabbi Meir as a moderate follower of
Maimonides by Moshe Halbertal, cited above, Chap. 4, n. 48.
306 Jewish polemicists on the attack
He then proceeds to buttress the virtues of the commandments in their
divine origin as well.
They [the commandments] were given by one shepherd, that is the Creator, may
he be blessed, the shepherd of Israel . . . at the convocation at Mount Sinai, before
all of Israel – men, women, and children . . . Indeed every nation acknowledges
and believes that the Torah was given by God, may he be blessed, to his servant
Moses and to his people Israel. It is a Torah of grace and truth.26
There is more here than simply stereotypic phrases. Rabbi Meir, who
repeatedly criticized Jesus for failing to perform requisite miracles before a
large and proper audience, is here claiming that God performed the great
miracle of giving the commandments in a fully public setting. Moreover,
these commandments constitute a system of truth and grace. There was
no need for the creation of a new system of grace. The original divine
dispensation was fully a system of grace. Most important of all, this di-
vinely ordained and rational system of precepts was within reach of all who
committed themselves to it. It is by no means beyond human attainment.
Indeed, Rabbi Meir believes that his medieval fellow-Jews achieved much
of what the system was intended to produce.
Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s defense of Judaism and its practices is brief
and quite abstract. It is burdened with very little specific detail. By con-
trast, when moving to the negative side of the ledger and depicting al-
leged Christian shortcomings, Rabbi Meir spares his readers nothing. His
criticisms are lavishly embellished with full detail, resulting in a full por-
trait of the purportedly deficient society that is Christendom. Striking
in Rabbi Meir’s critiques are their wide range, their detail, and their up-
to-date quality. Rather than focusing on traditional issues, Rabbi Meir
adduces Christian practices that were in the process of achieving new cen-
trality in Christian life. Many of the items he singles out for criticism
were prominently addressed in the great Fourth Lateran Council, called by
Pope Innocent III in 1215.27 In the wake of this council, Church leader-
ship bent considerable effort toward the implementation of its demands.
It is upon these newly highlighted measures that Rabbi Moses regularly
focuses.
In his positive comments, Rabbi Meir began with Jewish doctrine and
proceeded to Jewish behaviors. In his negative portrayal of Christendom
and Christianity, he orders his attack in opposite fashion, beginning with
the allegedly flawed behavioral patterns of medieval Christian society and

26 Ibid.
27 For the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, see Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,
i: 230–271.
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 307
of Jesus himself and then proceeding to doctrinal issues.28 Rabbi Meir’s
opening twelve critiques of Christian behaviors cover the following items:
(1) confession and penance (nos. 1–4); (2) the organization of justice in
Christian society (nos. 5–6); (3) crusade-related relaxation of vows (no. 7);
(4) a series of contraventions of biblical law (nos. 8–12). To be sure, Rabbi
Meir – never a master of effective organization – sprinkles throughout his
subsequent 148 criticisms of Christianity numerous references to additional
behavioral shortcomings. I shall order these criticisms in a different and
more useful pattern.29
For Rabbi Meir, the great virtue of Judaism lies in its spirituality; by con-
trast, the doctrine of Incarnation set Christianity on a path of corporeality
that affected and debased every aspect of its development. For Rabbi Meir,
the most drastic reflection of this corporeality was the Eucharist, which he
found reprehensible.30
They say that the bread, which is the work of human hands in kneading and baking
and the rest of the [necessary] actions, is the corporeal embodiment of his [Jesus’]
heart and that the wine, which is treaded by humans, is the corporeal embodiment
of his blood, as the result of the words said over them. They say that he himself is
divine and that it is to him they bow and kneel. But the prophet said: “No more
shall you bow down to the works of your hands.”31
They eat that bread, which they say has become his heart, as a result of the
words said upon it by the person they call a chaplain. How can they behave in this
degrading way? Who ever heard of such thing or who ever saw such things? That
numerous men and women [together] eat the body of their deity? All the more
so [is this objectionable] in that many of them are evil and sinful and sully their
bodies with many serious sins.
They drink that wine, which they say has become his blood. Now the Torah
warned against this in many places and said: “You must not eat any fat or any
blood.”32 How much more should this be the case with the blood of their god.
They further behave in a degrading manner, as noted above [the common ritual
practiced by numerous men and women together].
Moreover, they accept that bread and wine as divine. But behold, it is written
in the Torah: “You shall have no other gods beside me.”33 Now, this was said many
years before that person [Jesus] was born. Thus, he was warned against this at the
time of the giving of the Torah, in the Ten Commandments.34
This is an inclusive set of criticisms. On the one hand, Rabbi Meir suggests
that, to the extent that physical objects are involved, Christians contravene
28 We dealt with some of the doctrinal issues in the previous chapter.
29 Because this material is not available in English translation and because the rabbi’s strictures are so
lavishly detailed, I shall quote them at some length.
30 For a recent excellent study of the Eucharist, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late
Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
31 Mic. 5:12. 32 Lev. 3:17. 33 Exod. 20:3. 34 Milhemet Mizvah, ed. Blau, 322.
. .
308 Jewish polemicists on the attack
the biblical injunction against worshipping the works of human hands. On
the other hand, allowing for the Christian notion of transubstantiation,
Christians are then guilty of ingesting the body and blood of their deity,
a transgression yet more heinous than worshipping physical objects. In
either case, the results involve – to the Jewish polemicist – grave Christian
misdeeds.
Along the same lines, Rabbi Meir criticized the utilization of images in
Christian worship.
It is written: “Cursed be anyone who makes a sculptured or molten image, abhorred
by the Lord, a craftsman’s handiwork, and sets it up in secret.”35 It is further written:
“You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image or any likeness [of what is in
the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth]. You shall
not bow down to them or serve them.36 It is further written: “To whom, then, can
you liken God, what form compare to him?”37 However, they make sculptured
and molten images in the likeness of the deity, even in public. Now, a sculptured
or molten image is cursed [if done] in secret, as is written: “Cursed be anyone
who makes a sculptured or molten image, [abhorred by the Lord, a craftsman’s
handiwork,] and sets it up in secret.”38 All the more so if he makes it and brings it
into public view, so that many are brought to err.
Now it seems plausible to explain that this verse indicates that he [the
transgressor] set it up in secret, that is he [the transgressor] says that it involves
something secret, that is not what it seems to be. Now even if they say that the
intention of that image is [to establish] a likeness of that person who they claim
to be divine, nonetheless they transgress the commandment of God, may he be
blessed, by making that image in his [Jesus’] likeness.39
Rabbi Meir’s initial critique is, again, rather straightforward, suggesting that
Christians worship the images they fashion. His second criticism is, again,
more sophisticated, allowing for the Christian claim that the image itself
is not being worshipped, that it is Jesus himself who is being worshipped.
Even this more sophisticated view – Rabbi Meir claims – puts Christians
in the position of transgressing biblical law.
As a result of the Fourth Lateran Council, confession and penance took
on new centrality for the Church and in the life of Christian society.40 This
new emphasis evoked multi-faceted excoriation on the part of Rabbi Meir.
35 Deut. 27:15. 36 Exod. 20:4. 37 Isa. 40:18.
38 Deut. 27:15. 39 Milhemet Mizvah, ed. Blau, 309–310.
. .
40 For the Fourth Lateran Council constitution, see Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, i: 245.
For an overview of the confessional and penitential system at this time, see Cyrille Vogel, Le pécheur
et la pénitence au moyen âge, 2nd ed. (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1982), Mary C. Mansfield, The
Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1995), and Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (eds.), Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (York:
York Medieval Press, 1998).
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 309
I shall begin with the issue of confession, which you call penitence in the vernacular,
because it is a great necessity for every human, as Scripture says: “For there is no
righteous man in the land, who does good and never sins.”41 Therefore everyone
needs confessions, through which he abandons sin with a broken and aching heart
and with the resolution not to return to it [his sin] ever again.
Now, your behavior in this regard is problematic to me from two perspectives.
The first is that Christians confess to one set person, the person they call a chap-
lain. They indicate to him the sins they have committed. This is the reason that
sometimes the sinner does not admit all his sins, out of embarrassment. Thus, he
is damned according to your faith.
Moreover, sometimes the person they call the chaplain learns from the sinner
and imitates him, for he is in the stage of strength and power, in the days of his
youth. Thus, his urges are aroused by the things he hears. Women confess to this
same man and inform him of their fornication, that they sinned with a man other
than their husbands. Thus, his urge will overcome him and he too will sin with
her [the said woman] and regularly so.
This will become the reason he sins with many women in the same town or
castle, but the matter will not be known. In this way, a brother will eventually
marry his sister or his aunt, and the land will be filled with wickedness, robbery,
and oppression. [The robbery and oppression will ensue from the fact that] the
son born from adultery will share in the property of the husband of the woman,
along with his [the husband’s] sons.
According to their faith, they should insist that woman should confess only to
an elder, seventy years old or more, unless the women are extremely old and known
to be respectable.42
There is, not surprisingly for Rabbi Meir, a scatter-shot quality to this
criticism. The criticism begins with acknowledgment of the human reality
of sinfulness and thus the genuine need for confession. Without his saying
so explicitly, Rabbi Meir’s Jewish readers were well aware of the importance
of confession in their own tradition and of the lack of human intermediaries
in Jewish confession. The heart of Rabbi Meir’s critique lies in the Christian
use of human intermediaries for confession. This leads, according to Rabbi
Meir, in a number of deleterious directions, with disastrous results for those
confessing, for the confessors, and for Christian society at large.
This Jewish criticism of confession leads Rabbi Meir by association to
related Christian penitential rituals, especially pilgrimage to sacred shrines
as an act of penance. Once again, sexual impropriety looms large in the
Jewish criticism.
Likewise, they [the Christians] are lax with regard to sexual impropriety, for
example, the prohibition of [sexual relations with] a married woman or with a

41 Eccles. 7:20. 42 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 307–308.

310 Jewish polemicists on the attack
man’s female relatives, such as his sister, his mother, his daughter, his mother-in-
law, or his aunt. They go to the many sacred sites near and far. They say that they
will spend a full night there and will give a wax candle or a small coin and their
sin will be forgiven, even though it [the sin] is a serious one.43
Mention of this penitential practice leads Rabbi Meir to return to the
issue of confession and to follow up on his opening critique.
They say that anyone who sinned and did not complete his confession and the
suffering imposed on him – called penance – by his chaplain should go to one of
the aforesaid places, spend a full night there, give a small coin, and have everything
expiated.
This eventuates in a global judgment by Rabbi Meir. “This practice [the
visiting of shrines as a mode of expiation] contributes to the ensnaring of
the multitude.”44 Thus, according to Rabbi Meir, Christian society is – as
it were – inherently sinful. This innate tendency, however, is very much
exacerbated by the easy remedies that Christianity provides. In this case,
pilgrimage to shrines serves to encourage sinning by affording fairly simple
and relatively painless expiation for weighty shortcomings.
On somewhat different grounds, Rabbi Meir criticizes infant baptism.
Here the practice itself is not inherently objectionable in the Jew’s view;
rather, it is the social implications of infant baptism that are so distressing.
Behold they say that the little infants that die prior to baptism in their holy water
are damned forever. Now this seems wholly wrong, for this infant never sinned at
all. It had no [faculty of] reason. Why should such a soul be damned?
Now I shall provide an instance in this regard. Consider that a son was born to
a poor but pious and good man, who died prior to the birth. The mother died in
childbirth, and she too was a good person. Because of involvement in the death
of the mother, the infant was not baptized and died. At the same time, a son
of a wealthy man, wicked and evil, died. His wife was likewise a wicked person.
As a result of their wealth, the child, who was the son of that wealthy man, was
baptized. Behold the angels bring the soul of the child who was son of the wicked
wealthy man into paradise. And behold the demons bring the soul of the son of the
pious man, who was not baptized, into the presence of the devil to remain there
forever . . . Who could believe such a thing? Who could attribute such iniquity to
the Creator?45
This is obviously not a criticism of infant baptism as inherently wrong (as
were the prior criticisms leveled against the host and the wine and against
the use of images). Rather, it is a critique of the social inequities fostered
by the religious practice of infant baptism.

43 Ibid., 308. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 325–326.

 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 311
Let us conclude this set of critiques of medieval Christian behavior by
leaving the realm of ritual practice altogether and noting impassioned criti-
cisms of the workings of Christian society. Rabbi Meir begins with the civil
leadership and the justice system.
Anyone who is an extortionist and wicked is given an opportunity to oppress
and rob. For he [the extortionist] can secure against an associate a writ from the
head of their kingdom, forcing him through threat of excommunication to travel
two days distance from his home community to appear before a judge that the
plaintiff chooses. [This is done] so that the defendant pay money needlessly to
release himself from the expenses of the trip and the loss of work or as a result of
his fear of the roads.
It would be more fitting to force him [the defendant] to come before his bishop
or before a wise and honest judge that the bishop would choose from his [the
defendant’s] home community. For the punishment for robbery and violence is
very great, as we found in the generation of the Flood, whose judgement [by God]
was decided finally on the basis of robbery. For it is written: “For the earth is full
of lawlessness because of them. I am about to destroy them with the earth.”46
Indeed, it would be fitting that the bishop and the [secular] ruler appoint a judge
and a faithful and honest scribe and a sergeant and messengers, [all of whom] would
accept nothing from anyone. They would only receive their salaries from the ruler
of the town or from the citizens of the town working together. Thus, when the
defendant pays the plaintiff what he owes, he would lose no portion of it.
However, now if the sum owed is two dinars, he [the plaintiff] must pay the
salary of the messengers to bring the defendant before the judge. Moreover, the
scribes receive recompense for writing the writ of complaint and the response and
the testimony of the witnesses. The result is that there no longer remains in his [the
plaintiff’s] hands the sum of his complaint. Indeed, sometimes [there remains] not
even half. It would be proper that the sum of the obligation remain in the hand of
the one who has been wronged and that the guilty party repay all the costs of the
one who has been wronged.47
As usual, the issue raised by Rabbi Meir becomes highly ramified. The
essential point, however, is clear. Here the rabbi of Narbonne leaves behind
altogether issues having to do with religious observance. He simply casti-
gates the civil leadership of the medieval Christian society in which he lives
for its faulty judicial arrangements. Equitable justice is, according to Rabbi
Meir, one of the demands imposed by God in Scripture and one of the hall-
marks of a decent society. In this regard, the judicial arrangements the rabbi
sees all around him are utterly deficient. They fail to insure the righting

46 Gen. 4:6.
47 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 308. The Fourth Lateran Council identified somewhat parallel abuses –
see Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, i: 251–252.
312 Jewish polemicists on the attack
of wrongs. Indeed, in a yet more serious way, they allow for extortion and
robbery through the judiciary itself.
Criticism of Christian society includes both the civil authorities and
the religious leadership; it proceeds from the judicial foundations to the
charitable superstructure of society. We have already noted Rabbi Meir’s
critique of the religious authorities for their licentiousness and their failure
to harness the sinfulness of those in their charges through creation and
administration of an effective penitential system. At a later point, he charges
the Christian religious leadership with selfishness and a failure to establish
the necessary charitable system for a dignified and decent human society.
Behold it is written in their book: “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, offer
him the other also . . . If someone asks you to accompany him for one mile, go
with him for two miles” – and other things like these.48
All this they [the religious authorities] interpret allegorically for their own bene-
fit. They gather the tithes and the first fruits and other expenditures through their
relatives in greater measure than warranted. They should rather every year give
them [all this income] to the poor and in order to marry off the daughters of the
poor, so that they not descend into wantonness and prostitution. Many of them
[the religious authorities] give gifts to women of questionable repute in order to
entice them to sin. [They do the same] to their husbands and other relatives [the
husbands and relatives of the aforesaid women], so that they [the husbands and
relatives] disregard them [the priests in their misbehavior], according to what we
have heard some of them say.
It should suffice them to be satisfied with those possessions for their food and
clothing. The rest should accrue each yard for charitable purposes. But they wear
extremely expensive clothes; they ride upon expensive and ostentatious horses and
mules; they eat choice meats and fish and fruits and drink perfumed wines. Thus,
the verse is fulfilled with respect to some of them: “When you have eaten your fill
[and have built fine houses to live in and your herds and flocks have multiplied
and everything you own has prospered], beware lest your heart grow haughty, and
you forget the Lord your God.”49
It would be fitting for their leaders to correct all this and to adjudicate for the
salvation of souls.50
We are by now fully accustomed to the scatter-shot nature of Rabbi Meir’s
critiques. In this passage, he lashes out once more against what he perceives
as selective and hypocritical allegorization of biblical commandments,

48 This is a reasonably accurate citation from Matt. 5:39–41. 49 Deut. 8:12–14.

50 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 316. Once more Rabbi Meir includes this in his critique of Jesus, while
I am citing it as a critique of Christian society. There was, of course, considerable internal Christian
criticism of the inclination of churchmen toward lavish living and a number of major efforts at
returning to a simpler and purer clerical life style. Again see Constable, The Reformation of the
Twelfth Century for an overview.
 Jewish achievement and Christian shortcoming 313
against the sexual mores of the Christian clergy, against the sexual mores of
Christian women (to be sure, not entirely their own fault), and against the
ostentatious living of the clergy. The most trenchant criticism is the failure
of Christian society – New Testament ideals notwithstanding – to create a
society in which charitable arrangements insure all members of society of
reasonable fulfillment of needs.
Throughout these scathing criticisms of Christian society, Rabbi Meir
bar Simon appeals to the two foundations noted throughout the study –
biblical authority and human reason. Examination of the Eucharist, church
imagery, confession and penance, the ordering of justice, and the arrange-
ments for charity led the rabbi to argue that Christian behaviors contravene
well-established biblical law and the dictates of human reason. In addition,
appearing as a sub-theme throughout these critiques, is the issue of sexual
impropriety. In almost all these criticisms, the rabbi finds a way to incrim-
inate Christian society for its licentiousness. On the widest possible range
of considerations, Christian society falls short. Since Rabbi Meir assumes
an obvious linkage between belief and behavior (as do others of our Jewish
polemicists as well), the execrable behaviors of Christian society constitute
a stain on the Christian faith. Jewish acceptance of such a faith is – for the
rabbi – unthinkable.

Joseph Kimhi and Rabbi Meir bar Simon are the most forceful voices
arguing that medieval Christian society is flawed in critical ways. These
polemicists, writing for a Jewish audience deeply wounded by claims of
Christian success and contrasting Jewish degradation, amassed considerable
evidence to assure their Jewish readers that Christian successes were nowhere
so impressive as they might seem. These successes certainly fell far short of
the kind of achievement that would warrant designating Christian society
as reaching the status of messianic fulfillment.51
When this society was subjected to further scrutiny, these Jewish polemi-
cists found it seriously deficient in its behavior patterns. Jewish readers were
oriented fully to these deficiencies, while at the same time they were assured
that – as regards proper patterns of behavior – their own community far
exceeded the achievement of their Christian neighbors. Current disabilities
were surely irksome, but they must be kept in proper perspective. These dis-
abilities pale in comparison with the achievement of a Jewish community
assiduously fulfilling divine will – in the rationality of its belief structure
and in the moral excellence of its behavior patterns.

51 See above, Chap. 10.

 part vii
Underlying issues
 chap t e r fift e e n

Techniques of persuasion

Early in this study, I presented a brief sketch of the legacy of Jewish polemical
literature and thinking available to the earliest Jewish polemicists writing
in medieval western Christendom. That legacy can hardly be called ex-
tensive.1 Nonetheless, Daniel J. Lasker has suggested that this legacy, the
most significant elements of which stem from the Islamic world, in fact
adumbrated all the significant lines of anti-Christian argumentation that
would later surface in medieval western Christendom.2 Our close inspec-
tion of the earliest wave of Jewish polemical writings from medieval western
Christendom has – I believe – substantiated Lasker’s claim. We have tracked
in considerable detail the wide-ranging argumentation our late twelfth- and
thirteenth-century southern-French and northern-Spanish polemicists of-
fered to their Jewish readers. This argumentation covered a broad spec-
trum of issues and was grounded in appeals to revealed truth, to human
reason, and to empirical observation. There is in fact, in all this, no ap-
proach and no issue not anticipated in the prior legacy of anti-Christian
argumentation.3
This of course raises the question of what precisely has been innovated
by our five Jewish authors, the question with which I closed the survey of
earlier Jewish polemical materials. Lasker himself suggests, as noted, that
“a full-scale critique of Christianity had to wait for an all-out Christian at-
tack on Judaism in Christian countries.”4 We have seen that by the middle
of the twelfth century such an attack was under way, culminating in an
intensive missionizing campaign initiated in the 1240s. What then did this
1 See above, Chap. 3.
2 Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages,” 137. Lasker has
reinforced this point in “Jewish–Christian Polemic and Its Roots in the Islamic World” and “The
Jewish–Christian Debate in Transition.”
3 The one exception would be Jewish responses to the mid-thirteenth-century Christian effort to prove
Christian truth from rabbinic sources. However, this approach and the Jewish responses to it have
not in any case been part of this study.
4 Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages,” 137.

317
318 Underlying issues
overt Christian pressure add to the prior legacy? Wherein lies the inno-
vative contribution of our southern-French and northern-Spanish Jewish
authors?
Let me begin by suggesting that the aggressive Christian pressures exerted
on the Jews of southern France and northern Spain changed the essential
nature of the Jewish engagement with Christianity. There is, in the Jewish
materials noted earlier from the Muslim sphere, a detached and speculative
element, with a critical bent to it. The Jewish philosophers and exegetes
were intent upon examining Christianity as a religious phenomenon and
delineating its flaws. By contrast, our five Jewish polemicists from southern
France and northern Spain begin their enterprise with a starkly different
agenda. They are first and foremost defenders of Judaism in the face of
intense Christian pressure. It is certainly true – as we have repeatedly seen –
that defense of Judaism often elides into attack on Christianity. Nonetheless,
the essentially defensive nature of the entire enterprise is inescapable. In
all the works we have examined, it is Christianity that is on the offensive
and Judaism that must be defended. This is, of course, a function of the
aggressive Christian thinking and behavior in late twelfth- and thirteenth-
century southern France and northern Spain.
In the face of this Christian aggressiveness, the first contribution of our
southern-French and northern-Spanish authors was to create a new lit-
erary category – Jewish polemical literature with direct reader appeal. As
noted, the polemical thrusts initiated by the Jews in the Muslim realm and
in early northern-European Jewry were by and large adumbrated tangen-
tially, as part of the philosophic or exegetical enterprise. To be sure, the
Qis..sat Mujādalat al-Usquf and Sefer Nestor ha-Komer do constitute polem-
ical works, but – as indicated – they are not couched in anything like an
appealing literary format.5 By contrast, Joseph’s Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit of
the 1160s and Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem of 1170 are polemical
works written in a manner intended to attract and convince an audience
of Jewish readers or auditors. The same is true as well for the subsequent
works we have examined.
The writings we have studied show a concern with Christianity that
goes far beyond detached intellectual give-and-take. These works reflect
a Jewish community buffeted by Christian pressures and Jewish lead-
ers determined to assure their co-religionists of the truth and dignity of
Judaism and the contrasting falsity and corruption of Christianity. This new

5 In a sense, the Toldot Yeshu material might be construed as polemical literature, but I believe it hardly
warrants that designation.
 Techniques of persuasion 319
literature is intended from the outset to appeal to both the minds and the
hearts of the Jews of southern France and northern Spain; the composi-
tions we have scrutinized are oriented ultimately toward persuasion. Under
the stimulus of intensifying Christian pressure, intellectual issues were
turned into an intense struggle to maintain Jewishness under threatening
circumstances.6
The seriousness of the Christian challenge and of the Jewish response
is reflected in the sheer volume of the polemical writings, in the range of
issues each author addresses, in the posture of absolute conviction and re-
assurance each author adopts, and in crucial decisions as to how to present
the Christian adversary. Especially striking is the diversity of the liter-
ary formats employed by our five Jewish authors. We noted earlier that
the transition from the diffusion and amorphousness of talmudic dicta
about Christianity to the focus imparted by the new literary genres cre-
ated in the Muslim world resulted in far more effective grappling with
Christianity. I would now suggest that, in parallel fashion, the establish-
ment of a variety of literary genres for Jewish polemical writings eventuated
in far more persuasive presentation of Judaism’s virtues and Christianity’s
shortcomings.

The preceding chapters have amply shown the proliferation of Jewish

polemical writings. The prior legacy, fashioned over a number of centuries,
includes only one set of works that might reasonably be called polemical
literature – the Qis..sa/Nestor material.7 By contrast, from the 1160s through
the 1260s, we have seen a multitude of works that are obviously polemi-
cal in intent. Rabbi Meir bar Simon of Narbonne and Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman of Gerona each composed a number of polemical works, in fact
in a multitude of literary genres. The result is a rich literature that, in its
totality, covers all issues from a variety of perspectives.
Our five authors were committed to providing the Jews of southern
France and northern Spain with much to read and a wide range of issues to
ponder. There is clearly a sense that accelerating Christian pressure required
an intensifying effort to address the challenge. It is especially noteworthy
that Rabbi Meir bar Simon and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman saw it necessary
to return time and again to polemical issues. In the case of Rabbi Meir, we

6 Note the interesting study by Daniel J. Lasker, “Teaching Christianity to Jews,” 73–86. Lasker argues
that the needs of the times moved Jewish authors to overcome their reluctance to transmit information
on Christianity.
7 Again, the Toldot Yeshu material might be construed as polemical literature, but I believe that this
relatively shapeless folk material hardly deserves such designation.
320 Underlying issues
have seen him composing a number of opuscules addressed to polemical
issues and then attempting to put all this material into a more manageable
format in Part ii of his collected materials. This reflects more than personal
compulsivity; reflected here is – I suggest – Rabbi Meir’s sense of the
seriousness of the Christian challenge and the importance of the guidance
he might offer. The same is true for Nahmanides, who defended the Jewish
cause in Barcelona, saw the necessity of writing his narrative account of the
proceedings, and then felt the need to pursue further two of the key issues
raised by the Christian missionizing campaign.
Each of our five authors was committed to rebutting a wide range of
perceived Christian claims and to highlighting an equally wide range of
perceived Christian weaknesses. David Kimhi, in his commentary, and
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, in his narrative account of the Barcelona dis-
putation, are surely the most restricted of our authors. The former was
limited by the rather narrow parameters of his commentary; the latter
by the innovative and confining give-and-take over rabbinic sources, a
clever tactic introduced by his opponent, the formerly Jewish Friar Paul
Christian. Yet within his commentary, David Kimhi was able to address
multiple Christian arguments, to marshal evidence against them, and even –
now and then – to mount an assault against Christian thinking and be-
havior. Rabbi Moses ben Nahman portrays himself as regularly evading
the restrictions imposed by the ground rules of the Barcelona disputation.
While I have often questioned the historicity of the Nahmanidean report,
the rabbi’s portrayal of his expansion of the issues under debate makes his
narrative a broad and appealing statement of the multiple and complex
issues dividing Christians and Jews.8 Jewish readers of the Nahmanidean
narrative were provided with a conspectus of issues over which Christians
and Jews disagreed. More important, they were provided with a powerfully
expressed Jewish perspective on these issues.
Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit suffers none of the restrictions imposed by
the exegetical format of his son’s commentary or the Dominican-controlled
agenda of the Barcelona disputation. Sefer ha-Berit ranges far and wide;
addresses a variety of Christian claims; appeals to biblical text, rational
consideration, and empirical observation; and attacks Christianity recur-
rently. It should, of course, be recalled that the text we now have before

8 Hyam Maccoby has lavishly praised Rabbi Moses ben Nahman for his insistence on widening the
debate and for insisting on discussion of essentials. See his Judaism on Trial (London: Associated
University Presses, 1982), 39–75, esp. 74–75. While I do not believe – as Maccoby does – that this
was possible in the public disputation, I do agree that the narrative expansion of issues was a major
Nahmanidean achievement.
 Techniques of persuasion 321
us constitutes only a portion of the original Sefer ha-Berit, which was even
fuller in its Jewish argumentation.
Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem likewise ranges very widely.
Milh.amot ha-Shem is both comprehensive and extremely well organized.
Argumentation from reason is given its own separate chapter; argumenta-
tion over the proper modes of reading Scripture is given its own separate
half-chapter; major segments of the Hebrew Bible are accorded individual
consideration. In Milh.amot ha-Shem, the attack on Christianity reaches its
apogee, as Jacob cites directly from the Gospel of Matthew and attacks
both the narrative and its central figure, Jesus. I have recurrently desig-
nated Milh.amot ha-Shem a handbook or manual of Jewish argumentation.
The great virtue of this handbook resides in the exhaustive range of its
anti-Christian argumentation and the careful organization to which this
copious material was submitted.
The garrulous Rabbi Meir bar Simon offers the lengthiest and most
comprehensive materials of all. He provides us with a number of literary
formats and covers the broadest set of issues. There is something poignant
about Rabbi Meir’s realization of the disorder of the works that form Part i of
the Milh.emet Miz.vah. The commitment to composing a Part ii, with a more
structured set of arguments is laudable, but Rabbi Meir’s ongoing inability
to control his materials is curious and almost humorous. In this Part ii,
he initially provides one hundred critiques of Christianity. These critiques
begin with the beliefs and practices of Christians (numbers one through
twelve), proceed to teachings and behaviors of Jesus (thirteen through fifty-
eight), move to characteristics of the time of redemption that have not yet
been realized (fifty-nine through seventy), and then conclude with thirty
biblical passages at issue between Christians and Jews. Within this basic
framework, there is considerable looseness of organization. Since Rabbi
Meir was hardly a master of systematic thinking, multiple issues are regularly
addressed within individual critiques. Interestingly, Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s
commitment to comprehensiveness was not fulfilled by his one hundred
critiques of Christianity. After completing these wide-ranging criticisms, he
was moved to compile yet a further forty critiques. After concluding these
further arguments, he was once again moved to add, this time tacking on
yet another twenty critiques of Christianity.9 What this indicates clearly
for us is the restless effort of our Jewish polemicists to bring to their Jewish
readers as much material as possible – as many Christian claims as possible,
9 Rabbi Meir’s 160 critiques of Christianity can be found in Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 307–357. The
first hundred end and the second forty begin on p. 346; the second forty end and the final twenty
begin on p. 353.
322 Underlying issues
full rebuttal of each and every Christian claim, and as many assaults as
possible.

In works intended to convince Jewish readers of the unquestionable truth

of the Jewish position, it was important to our authors to present their
positions with an air of absolute certainty and to convey to their Jewish
readers that sense of absolute certainty. Rarely is doubt expressed, as com-
plex issues are debated. Reassurance of Jewish readers was the objective
of this literature, and total assurance was the tone generally established in
it. This sense of assurance was expressed in different ways in the various
literary formats utilized by our authors, but it was omnipresent.10
Sefer ha-Berit is suffused with Joseph Kimhi’s sense of certainty with
regard to Jewish truth and Christian error and with respect to the superior-
ity of Jewish behaviors to those of Christian contemporaries. At no point
does Joseph Kimhi’s Jewish protagonist show any hesitation or doubt. The
various segments of the Milh.emet Miz.vah share this sense of certainty as
well. Even when engaged with prominent Christian authorities or in their
presence, Rabbi Meir bar Simon retains an uncompromising posture of
certitude. The Nahmanidean narrative is embroidered throughout with
a tone of bemused assurance. For Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, the entire
enterprise launched by Friar Paul Christian was utterly hopeless; the mis-
sionizing disputation and the follow-up sermons had absolutely no chance
of success. Rabbi Moses’ commentary on Isaiah 52–53 and his treatise on
redemption are steeped in the same air of certainty.
Two of our authors face special challenges with respect to creation of a
tone of certitude. The first of the two is David Kimhi in his commentary
on the book of Psalms. This commentary is obviously – at its core – a
dispassionate and open-ended quest for truth. David Kimhi explores wide-
ranging options in his effort to understand the book of Psalms. He does
not hesitate to reject traditional Jewish explication of that important book.
He is utterly devoted to a dispassionate search for the genuine meaning of
the text. Yet whenever David Kimhi cites Christian readings of the psalms,
he dismisses them without a trace of intellectual uncertainty. In all these
passages, the overall tone of dispassionate intellectual quest is replaced by
complete conviction.
Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem is the most complex of the works
with respect to level of certainty. Jacob establishes a convoluted situation,
involving a formidable Christian protagonist – a knowledgeable Christian
10 For further analysis of the different literary formats and the strategies of assurance utilized in each,
see below.
 Techniques of persuasion 323
who has befriended the Jew and from whom the Jew has learned much.
This is a situation that begs for some measure of uncertainty, and yet such
uncertainty is rarely in evidence. Every thrust of the Christian protago-
nist is met with resolute and assured Jewish rebuttal. The intelligence and
learning of the Christian disputant is by no means hidden. As noted, the
Christian protagonist in Milh.amot ha-Shem is accorded the fullest oppor-
tunity to present the Christian case. No other Christian figure is given
such an extensive opportunity by our Jewish polemicists. Yet the com-
pleteness and complexity of the Christian position in Milh.amot ha-Shem
in no way diminishes the certainty accorded the Jewish case. We have
noted one interesting instance in which the Jewish spokesman expresses a
measure of uncertainty. In that instance, it is not the Christian case that
occasions the uncertainty; it is, rather, the complexity of the biblical book
of Daniel that gives pause. In our discussion of that passage earlier on, I
suggested that Jacob’s intellectual scruples vitiated his polemicist role. This
unusual instance of something verging on doubt throws into greater re-
lief the normal posture of certainty encountered throughout our polemical
works.11
Projecting an air of certitude can often lead to condescension, to dis-
missal of the adversarial position altogether. The literature we have been
examining, while occasionally bordering on such condescension, gener-
ally refrains from it. To be sure, there is regular Jewish denigration of the
Christians opponent (for example in the dialogues) and of Christianity
(in almost all the works). The Christian opponent is regularly castigated
for obtuseness and Christianity for unreasonableness, yet this dismissal is
always accompanied by profound engagement with Christian claims and
purported Christian shortcomings. Perhaps most illustrative in this regard
is Jacob ben Reuben, who creates a powerful Christian foe, regularly deni-
grates this Christian foe, and always engages fully the arguments advanced
by this respected/denigrated adversary.
Polemicists of all stripes face the very difficult issue of how much of
the opposing position to reveal. The dilemma involves the realization that
telling too little of the adversary’s position threatens to vitiate the persuasive
message, while telling too much may create an opponent who is too con-
vincing. To what extent, then, did our Jewish polemicists in fact alert their
Jewish auditors and readers to the Christian challenge in all its depth? Put
differently, how much of Christian thinking and practice did our Jewish
polemicists choose to portray?12
11 On this departure from the norm of certainty, see above, Chap. 6.
12 Again note Lasker, “Teaching Christianity to Jews.”
324 Underlying issues
Our Jewish polemicists were committed to informing their co-religionists
of intensified Christian argumentation and to providing potent Jewish
counter-arguments. I have suggested throughout this study that Jews as a
minority community within a large and dynamic majority were conversant
with the realities of Christian belief and practice. The time has come to
probe this matter a bit further. The visible monuments and the public
festivals observable in the towns of southern France and northern Spain
all celebrated Christian belief and practice. Casual conversation would
readily reinforce Jewish awareness of the majority religion. This somewhat
superficial knowledge of Christianity is fully reflected in the polemical
works we have examined. Our Jewish authors were certainly aware of the
traditional lines of Christian thinking and argumentation and of twelfth-
and thirteenth-century Christian innovations.13 To what extent, however,
did our Jewish polemicists understand in depth the Christian faith? In a
period during which Christian leaders were re-examining the foundations
of Christian thinking, how aware were our Jewish authors of the more
sophisticated conclusions being drawn?14 To be sure, our Jewish polemicists
may well have known Christian thinking in depth and chosen not to present
that knowledge. Since we cannot know whether limited Jewish presentation
of the Christian alternative involved deficient knowledge or a conscious
decision to withhold full information, we will confine ourselves to asking
where the Jewish presentation falls on a spectrum that runs from fullest
disclosure to highly limited caricature.
The first issue to be addressed with regard to this question is socio-
intellectual. Moving beyond casual everyday observation and discussion,
were our Jewish polemicists or indeed medieval Jews in general involved
in serious conversation related to Christian belief? General evidence from
both sides certainly suggests that possibility. One of the major advances of
recent research into medieval biblical studies involves clarification of the
extent to which twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christians became inter-
ested in the Hebrew original of what they saw as the Old Testament. The
writings of such exegetes as Andrew of St. Victor, Hugh of St. Victor, and
Herbert Bosham, to name but a few, suggest regular intellectual contact be-
tween Christians and their Jewish neighbors.15 The memoir of the convert

13 Recall, for example, Rabbi Meir’s awareness of the heightened thirteenth-century importance of
confession, penance, and the doctrine of transubstantiation, all important early thirteenth-century
developments. See above, Chap. 14.
14 Recall the literature on the so-called twelfth-century renaissance cited above, Chap. 4, n. 2.
15 I have cited recurrently the pioneering work of Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle
Ages.
 Techniques of persuasion 325
Herman of Cologne provides some sense of real inter-religious give-and-
take, with the Jewish young man Judah exposed to Christian teaching,
eventually drawn into serious conversation with Christian thinkers, and
slowly convinced of some of their teachings, albeit with considerable reluc-
tance.16 Joachim of Fiore attests to the same intellectual contacts, referring
to ongoing discussions with “a most learned Jew” on matters of faith.17
At the same time, Samuel ibn Tibbon, a major Jewish intellectual leader
in southern-French Jewry, provides considerable evidence from the Jewish
side of contact between Jews and their Christian neighbors.18
The material we have engaged would seem to reinforce this general sense
of serious discussion between twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christians
and Jews. We know of a fairly close relationship between Rabbi Meir bar
Simon of Narbonne and the archbishop of that town. Moreover, the newly
instituted practice of forced sermons brought Christian views directly to
the attention of Rabbi Meir and his fellow-Jews of Narbonne.19 There can
be little real doubt as to the extended contact between Rabbi Moses ben
Nahman, his fellow Jews, and the Dominicans responsible for engineering
the forced sermon in the Barcelona synagogue and the yet more impressive
forced missionizing debate in the public places of that important munic-
ipality. Surely the most substantial evidence of all comes from Jacob ben
Reuben and his Milh.amot ha-Shem. Jacob ben Reuben claims to have had
a significant relationship with a pious and sophisticated Christian cleric,
from whom he learned logic and philosophy, on the one hand, and with
whom he discussed theological issues on the other. The rather full infor-
mation at Jacob’s disposal and – equally impressive – his commitment to
conveying at least some of this information to his Jewish readers suggest that
he was in fact deeply involved with a learned Christian contemporary.20
Jacob seems to have been in a position of knowing in some depth the
sophisticated thinking going on in Christian intellectual circles of his
milieu.21

16 This memoir has been edited most recently by Gerlinde Niemeyer, in the Monumenta Germa-
niae Historica: Quellen zur Geschichte des Mittelatlers (Weimar: H. Bohlaus, 1963). Avrom Saltman,
“Hermann’s Opusculum de Conversione Sua,” Revue des études juives 147 (1988): 31–56, suggested that
the memoir was a work of fiction, composed by a born Christian. Saltman’s article has provoked
considerable discussion, with a growing tendency toward acceptance of the memoir as grounded in
the thinking of a former Jew.
17 See Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham, 27.
18 See Robinson, Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Chap. 1. Cf. the general discussion
in Lasker, “Christianity, Philosophy, and Polemic in Jewish Provence.”
19 See above, Chap. 4. 20 See above, Chap. 4.
21 Recall the study of David Berger, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben,” with its
evidence of Jacob’s knowledge of Latin materials.
326 Underlying issues
In yet another way, the material we have discussed reinforces the sense
of Jewish confrontation with current Christian teachings and views. We
have seen regularly throughout this study striking parallels between Jewish
reports of Christian argumentation and the evidence of Christian sources as
to contemporary Christian views. We recall, for example, the imagery found
in Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem relative to the Christian doctrine
of Virgin Birth. In response to Jewish objections to that doctrine, Jacob’s
Christian protagonist is made to advance a number of analogies, including
the rays of the sun proceeding through a white pearl without penetrating
the pearl and the related image of the rays of the sun proceeding through
dung without being contaminated. Both these images can be found in major
Christian polemical sources of the period.22 Again, we are left with the sense
that Jews were genuinely exposed to Christian teaching at a considerable
level of sophistication.
At a deeper level yet, were our Jewish polemicists directly conversant with
Latin and with Christian sources? Here the data are nearly non-existent.
There is only the flimsiest evidence of knowledge of Latin and Christian
sources on the part of our Jewish authors. We noted, for example, Joseph
Kimhi’s assertion that the Vulgate translation of dux in Genesis 49:10 serves
to buttress his suggestion that this important verse speaks of no more than
the transition from the lesser authority of the judges to the more lasting
authority of royalty.23 Perhaps the best evidence of Jewish knowledge of
Latin and of Christian writings comes from Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot
ha-Shem. The Hebrew translations from the Gospel of Matthew are quite
impressive, although it is by no means certain that Jacob himself made these
translations. More important is David Berger’s argument that Milh.amot
ha-Shem contains a translation of material from an anthology containing
selections from Gilbert Crispin’s polemic, thereby indicating familiarity
with Latin and with contemporary Latin literature.24 Indeed, at a signifi-
cant point in the Milh.amot ha-Shem discussion of Daniel 9:24–27, while
contesting the Christian reading of this verse, Jacob’s Jew challenges his
interlocutor to check “in your books or in our books or in the book that
Jerome translated.”25 This seems to suggest that Jacob himself was familiar
with the Latin translation and was sure of what was to be found in it.
We are probably relatively safe, nonetheless, in assuming that the knowl-
edge of our Jewish polemicists – with the exception of Jacob ben Reuben –
was only rarely gleaned from first-hand immersion in Christian sources.

22 See above, Chap. 12. 23 See above, Chap. 8.

24 Berger, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben.” 25 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 136.
 Techniques of persuasion 327
This suggests some measure of limitation in Jewish knowledge of Christian
thinking. Rather, most of our polemicists’ knowledge of Christianity was
gleaned from external observation and oral communication. Such external
observation and oral communication may have put limits on how fully our
Jewish polemicists might have engaged sophisticated Christian teachings
and truths. At the same time, it should be remembered that much of the
teaching on the medieval scene proceeded via oral discourse. Thus, the
kind of communication to which our Jewish polemicists were privy could
nonetheless result in considerable understanding of Christian sources and
doctrines.
Given some level of Jewish knowledge of contemporary Christian think-
ing, how much of that knowledge were our Jewish authors prepared to share
with their co-religionists? This is generally the critical issue in polemical
strategy. Again, polemicists are usually aware of the need to provide infor-
mation on the views to be combated. Without such information, rebuttal
makes no sense. At the same time, polemicists normally wish to mini-
mize the information provided on the out-group position and to mold that
information is such as way as to diminish its appeal and heighten its im-
plausibility. While our Jewish polemicists show some diversity, ultimately
all more or less agree in limiting presentation of the Christian alternative
and heightening what they perceived to be its unappealing features.26
Clearly, the Jewish author who provides the fullest and most impres-
sive information on Christianity and its views is the unknown Jacob ben
Reuben. We have noted recurrently the tenacity of the Christian protag-
onist created by Jacob, the fullness of his statements, and the vigor of his
rejoinders to the rebuttals of his Jewish interlocutor. This fullness of presen-
tation may well be traceable to the real circumstances of Jacob ben Reuben
and to his meaningful friendship and discussions with a learned Christian
cleric. It is interesting to note that Jacob’s treatise, with its fairly full pre-
sentation of Christian views was one of the most popular of the works we
have analyzed.27 That a polemical treatise penned by an utterly unknown
figure could achieve such a level of popularity suggests that Jacob’s deci-
sion to impart fairly full information on Christian views proved useful to
subsequent generations of Jewish readers.
To be sure, even Jacob’s presentation of Christian views is somewhat cir-
cumscribed. Surely the most pressing theological issue for twelfth-century
26 Again, I wish to acknowledge that it is extremely difficult to distinguish between limited knowledge
on the part of medieval polemicists and the decision to restrict presentation of knowledge for the
intended internal audience.
27 See above, Chap. 4.
328 Underlying issues
Christian thinkers was Incarnation, more specifically the reasons why God
had to submit himself to the indignities of earthly existence. The older
view of the power of the devil over humanity and the need for a ruse that
would free mankind from that power was increasingly challenged. Anselm
moved in an important new direction in his Cur Deus Homo, locating the
need for Incarnation in God’s fulfillment of his own perfection. Abelard
subsequently suggested that the divine act was intended above all else as
an exemplar for humanity, an exemplar of selfless sacrifice.28 As we have
seen, the first chapter of Jacob’s Milh.amot ha-Shem was dominated by the
issue of the necessity of Incarnation. Yet none of the innovative think-
ing of twelfth-century Christendom on the need for Incarnation is truly
represented by Jacob. The Christian protagonist presents only the most
time-honored notions of God’s love for humanity, without any of the com-
plications introduced by the new thinking.29 Again, this may reflect either
a deficiency of knowledge on Jacob’s part or an unwillingness to share too
much.
Jacob nonetheless provided the fullest information on the Christian al-
ternative, which his Jewish readers seem to have found helpful. At the same
time, he left no doubt in the minds of these Jewish readers as to the ulti-
mate error of the Christian views, whether philosophical or exegetical. Jacob
achieves this in a variety of ways. The most important is the dogged Jewish
rebuttal he provides to every Christian claim. No Christian argument is
avoided; all are addressed and disproved. What Jacob is communicating to
his Jewish readers is that the Christian case is extensive and serious, but
ultimately a flawed failure.
Generally, our Jewish polemicists cut the Christian case far less slack than
did Jacob ben Reuben in his Milh.amot ha-Shem. The Christian case, while
never absent, is not regularly advanced by Joseph Kimhi, David Kimhi,
Rabbi Meir bar Simon, or Rabbi Moses ben Nahman with anything like
the vigor and tenacity that we find on the part of Jacob ben Reuben.
We might well surmise some disagreement among our Jewish polemicists
as to precisely how fully to present the Christian alternative. Our Jewish
polemical works – with the exception of Milh.amot ha-Shem – show their
authors tending toward the side of less clarification, rather than more. We
noted, for instance, the tendency in Sefer ha-Berit for the Christian case to be
presented in the briefest possible fashion, with the Jewish response lengthy
and full. In the various pieces that comprise the Milh.emet Miz.vah, the
Christian case is minimal and the Jewish case extremely lengthy. Perhaps

28 For all these directions, see Southern, Saint Anselm, Chap. 9. 29 See above, Chap. 12.
 Techniques of persuasion 329
most striking, because it involves a known historical personality, is the
cursory description by Rabbi Moses ben Nahman of the post-disputation
sermon delivered by the very distinguished Friar Raymond of Penaforte,
a description that is unlikely to have done justice to such a celebrated
Christian thinker.
While it seems fair to conclude that our Jewish polemicists do not gen-
erally present a full and fair picture of twelfth- and thirteenth-century
Christian thinking, it should be noted that, almost without exception, our
Jewish authors do not descend to the level of caricature. The Christian case,
while perhaps not depicted in fullest terms, is generally not lampooned.
The Christian protagonist/foe is often mocked, as we have seen. However,
this mockery – with occasional exceptions in the Milh.emet Miz.vah – rarely
extends to the Christian argumentation. Mockery is a staple of polemical
literature, both in the Middle Ages and in more recent times. It involves, on
the one hand, a sense of frustration with alternative views that seemingly
can hardly be engaged because of their foolishness. On the other hand,
caricature often suggests that the alternative views are in fact beneath con-
tempt – they are so base and groundless that rational argumentation breaks
down and one can only mock. The general lack of such caricature sug-
gests the Jewish sense of the seriousness of the Christian challenge. There
is sufficient engagement with real-life Christians and real-life Christianity
to make caricature and mockery counter-productive. The Christian case
must be detailed – at least to an extant – and must be rebutted at length
and with vigor, intelligence, and certainty.30

This new and rich Jewish polemical literature went far beyond the simple
airing of intellectual issues; its objective was persuasion, the protracted effort
to win over the minds and the hearts of Jewish readers or auditors. As noted
recurrently, these polemicists wrote in a number of different genres, and
each of these genres could be manipulated to achieve maximal impact on
readers. Let us proceed to examine the various genres utilized by our Jewish
authors and the ways in which they could be exploited for the ultimate
objective of convincing Jewish readers of the weaknesses of Christianity
and the strengths of Judaism.
Perhaps the most difficult of the genres to assess is the sermon. Rabbi Meir
bar Simon has left us two sermons that include presentation of Christian
claims, rebuttal of those claims, and a positive case for the truth of Judaism.
30 As noted, the Toldot Yeshu literature, with its lampooning of Christian history, might have proven
minimally useful, but could hardly serve as the centerpiece of the Jewish response to the new Christian
aggressiveness.
330 Underlying issues
To be sure, the polemical thrust is somewhat muted in these sermons; they
lack the overt polemicizing so obvious in the other segments of the first
part of the Milh.emet Miz.vah. At the same time, there can be no doubting
the polemical objective that animated the preacher. What makes the strate-
gies of these sermons difficult to assess is, first of all, our relative lack of
knowledge of the techniques of sermonizing at this period. We have little
against which to judge Rabbi Meir’s sermonic techniques.31 More impor-
tant, sermons are intended to be heard and not read. The ultimate effec-
tiveness of the two sermons preserved in the Milh.emet Miz.vah probably
depended more on the voice and delivery of the rabbi than on their precise
content.
Somewhat easier to assess is the straightforward treatise. Perhaps the most
extensive and convincing of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century treatises
with which we have dealt is Nahmanides’s Sefer ha-Ge’ulah. The power of
this treatise lies in its comprehensive organization, moving through each
section of the Hebrew Bible; the sensible focus on the book of Daniel; the
exhaustive discussion of critical passages from Scripture, especially from
Daniel; and the closing appeal to a variety of considerations in establish-
ing the dating for messianic advent.32 The reader emerges from immersion
in Sefer ha-Ge’ulah with admiration for the argumentation and – equally
important – with admiration for the presenter of the copious argumen-
tation; more important, the reader is encouraged to emerge with a sense
that the argumentation and the presentation are thorough, accurate, and
correct. I have noted that the audacity of the treatise – its claim to pin-
point messianic advent in the middle of the fourteenth century – was both
presumptuous (we recall that Nahmanides himself notes the failure of dis-
tinguished predecessors) and somewhat self-defeating, in that subsequent
failure of messianic advent to materialize as predicted robbed the treatise
of much of its appeal for subsequent generations. The presumptuousness
of predicting fourteenth-century advent for the Messiah may have cost
Nahmanides readers over the ages. That same presumptuousness, however,
surely had enormous impact on thirteenth-century Jewish readers.33 To
argue that the Messiah has not yet come and then to lay out detailed argu-
ments for a subsequent coming had to have great meaning for a generation
of Jews under extreme Christian pressure.

31 On the sermons of this period, see Marc Saperstein (ed. and trans.), Jewish Preaching 1200–1800: An
Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). In this collection, Saperstein includes only two
sermons from the thirteenth century.
32 For the details, see above, Chap. 9.
33 Recall the parallel Christian certainties at this same time. See above, Chap. 9.
 Techniques of persuasion 331
While Rabbi Meir bar Simon presents Part ii of his Milh.emet Miz.vah in
crude dialogue format, it is in fact not a dialogue at all; it is much closer to a
treatise. The Christian protagonist merely sets the stage for a lengthy Jewish
presentation. The power of that presentation lies in three elements. The first
is the adumbration of the criteria for religious superiority, to be discussed
shortly.34 The second is the focus on Christian shortcoming. Negatives are
always easier to gather and more convincing than positives. Finally, Rabbi
Meir exhausts himself and probably his readers as well by heaping criticism
upon criticism, as already noted. By the time Rabbi Meir had completed
his 160 critiques of wide-ranging aspects of Christianity, readers had to feel
that the Jewish case had been made and was irrefutable.
We have two polemical works that take the form of biblical commentary,
and they complement one another in an interesting fashion. As noted
already, the power of David Kimhi’s anti-Christian observations derives in
no small measure from the overall air of intellectual quest that he created.
This air of general dispassion makes the assertiveness of David Kimhi’s
anti-Christian observations all the more impressive. The Jewish reader is
led to the conclusion that David Kimhi, the questing thinker, must have
been utterly certain of the flaws in the Christian case that he assiduously
enumerates.
Nahmanides’s commentary on Isaiah 52–53 lies at the other end of the ex-
egetical spectrum. It is wholly devoted to the polemical issues surrounding
this contentious text. There is no pretense of broad investigation. There is,
on the other hand, extended and masterful consideration of the Christian
case on every major verse in this passage, with the Christian perspective
cited and then carefully rebutted. While there is no posture of dispassion-
ate intellectual inquiry, the sense of focused and diligent refutation of the
Christian case establishes an alternative paradigm for the effective utiliza-
tion of the commentary format.
The literary genre most regularly utilized by our Jewish polemicists is
the dialogue. This is hardly surprising, since in a more general way dia-
logue was the genre of choice in medieval polemical literature altogether.
What the dialogue format offered was an opportunity to present claim and
counter-claim in an easy and appealing format.35 The re-creation of give-
and-take makes the dialogue a delightful and effective vehicle for polemical
literature. When properly manipulated, the dialogue can in fact achieve yet
34 See below, Chap. 16.
35 To appreciate this ease, it is useful to imagine the presentation of the give-and-take of polemics in
formats other than the dialogue. While such presentations are available, they are far less appealing
to read.
332 Underlying issues
more. It offers the possibility of reinforcing intellectual conclusions with
beguiling characters and narrative development – the possibility of creat-
ing an interplay of human figures that buttresses the sense of intellectual
rectitude with an impression of human superiority.
The least impressive of the dialogues at our disposal is the lengthy give-
and-take embedded in Part i of Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s Milh.emet Miz.vah.
In this protracted dialogue, there is no human element or dramatic intrigue
created at all. The alternating speeches are merely the vehicles for presenta-
tion of points; there is no dynamic to the discussion and nothing remotely
approaching the creation of appealing characters. Slightly better from a
literary perspective is Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit. While Joseph Kimhi
does not create identifiably human figures for his dialogue, he does at least
create a dramatic flow that draws the reader’s attention. The movement
from argumentation grounded in reason, to argumentation grounded in
Scripture, to argumentation grounded in empirical observation, succeeds
in establishing for the Jewish reader a sense of Christian frustration, a
frustration taken by Jews to signify the lack of truth in Christianity.
Jacob ben Reuben created a far more successful dialogic format. In his
narrative, Jacob creates two characters and a temporal flow. Despite the
respect he claims for his Christian friend, Jacob in fact demeans this learned
Christian regularly. Let us look back, for example, at the introductory
comments to Milh.amot ha-Shem, in which Jacob presents himself and his
Christian interlocutor. He first depicts this Christian in glowing terms:
“[He was] one of the leading citizens of the town and one of the learned of
the generation. He was a priest expert in logic and sophisticated in esoteric
wisdom.” In contradistinction to this positive portrayal, Jacob immediately
adds: “To be sure, our Creator, may his Name be blessed, obscured his eyes
from seeing and his heart from understanding. Thus, his soul clung to
his idolatry, and his will and his mind continued to serve his ‘sticks and
stones.’”36 This ambiguous portrait – with its generous opening and its
derogatory closing – typifies Jacob’s treatment of the Christian throughout
the text. In a sense, the portrait of the Christian is projected by Jacob
as a portrait of Christianity, with impressive learning on the one hand
sullied by a commitment to “idolatry” and “sticks and stones,” on the
other. Jewish readers were to understand that the Christian challenge was a
formidable one and must by no means be taken lightly. At the same time,
it is unquestionably a deeply flawed challenge, despite all its formidable
qualities.

36 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 4–5.

 Techniques of persuasion 333
The picture that Jacob provides through his depiction of the two discus-
sants is reinforced by the narrative flow. The argument shifts back and forth.
The Christian makes a considerable case; the Jew rebuts; the Christian en-
gages the Jewish rebuttal; the Jew responds. At the end of each lengthy
exchange, however, the outcome is never portrayed with any element of
doubt. The Jew is always victorious, and no significant issue is left unre-
solved. The Jewish reader is thus provided with real intellectual evidence of
Jewish superiority from both a philosophical and exegetical perspective, but
that evidence is very much buttressed by the ebb and flow of the narrative
in which Jacob embeds his Christian and Jewish claims.
Like Jacob ben Reuben, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman buttresses his pro-
Jewish and anti-Christian stance through the creation of a narrative with
interesting characters and a compelling rhythm.37 Nahmanides’s narrative
is even more complex than that of Jacob ben Reuben. It has the further
advantage of depicting a genuine historical incident and a critical one at
that. Rabbi Moses creates a triad of intriguing figures in place of Jacob’s
dyad.
The main Christian protagonist is, of course, Friar Paul Christian, a
convert from Judaism to Christianity who had become a Dominican and
was leading the missionizing confrontation. He is regularly portrayed by
Rabbi Moses in the most negative terms. He is denounced as Jewishly un-
lettered, unable to understand properly the rabbinic sources upon which
his new missionizing argumentation was based. Beyond this glaring insuf-
ficiency, he is depicted as a foolish bumbler, who recurrently says the wrong
thing. For example, Rabbi Moses portrays himself as taking command of
the proceedings at the opening of the second session and making lengthy
and inappropriate – in terms of the ground rules established early on –
statements that attacked the truth of Christianity, with a focus on the doc-
trine of Incarnation. Toward the end of this assault, after claiming that the
real issue that divides Christians and Jews does not involve the Messiah,
but rather involves the utterly unacceptable notion of Incarnation, Rabbi
Moses portrays himself as saying in resignation: “However, let us speak
also of the Messiah, since such is your wish.” To this, Friar Paul supposedly
blurted out, in a major gaffe: “But do you believe that he has come?”38 Given
the carefully constructed rules of engagement, this should never have been
said. It is a reflection of the purported density of the Christian protagonist.
Similar stupidity is reflected in Friar Paul’s alleged intervention after the
37 For fuller treatment of Nahmanides’s narrative achievement, see Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond,
100–141.
38 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 674.
334 Underlying issues
rabbi had countered Friar Raymond’s statement on the Trinity. According
to Nahmanides, the foolishness of Friar Paul’s statement was recognized
by his Dominican colleagues, who quickly silenced him.39 By contrast, the
portrait Nahmanides creates for himself is that of a quick-witted thinker
of depth, knowledge, and remarkable savoir-faire. The clash of two such
unmatched protagonists tells the Jewish reader at once where truth and
error surely lie.
In many ways, however, it is the third figure created by Nahmanides
in his narrative that is decisive. King James the Conqueror is, on the one
hand, a devoutly committed Christian. It is the king who ordered that
the disputation take place, and it is the king who intervenes from time to
time, reasserting Christian control of the event and setting things back on
course. At the same time, Nahmanides extols the Christian monarch as re-
gal, intelligent, and fair. As we shall shortly see, King James the Conqueror is
purportedly generous to the rabbi at the conclusion of the entire protracted
series of engagements that took place in Barcelona.
In the course of his crucial statement at the opening of the second day
of deliberations, Nahmanides has himself attacking the Christian doctrine
of Incarnation as utterly irrational and unacceptable. How then could such
a regal, intelligent, and fair person as the king accept such an unthinkable
teaching? The answer provided by Nahmanides is habituation. The king
is a Christian, son of a Christian father and a Christian mother, and has
been exposed to this teaching for his entire lifetime, thus inuring him to
the irrationality of the key Christian teaching of Incarnation.40 Again, the
message extends beyond the figure of the king alone. What Nahmanides
is suggesting is that the Christian world, in its entirety, had allowed itself
with the passage of time to become habituated to a doctrine that the ra-
tional mind could simply not accept. The Christian world was surely not
composed of fools; it had to be composed of a normal human combination
of wise and foolish, with the intelligent folk inured through habituation to
a core doctrine that reason rejects.
Nahmanides further reinforces the convictions of his Jewish readers by
constructing a narrative flow that eventuates in a sense of Jewish triumph.
To be sure, Jewish triumph must be understood in the proper terms, given
the particular circumstances of Barcelona in 1263. The Jewish protagonist
could by no means “win” the disputation. That is to say, it would have
been unthinkable to have the Christian side (Friar Paul, his Dominican

39 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 696.

40 Vikuah. Barcelona, 310–311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 673–674.
 Techniques of persuasion 335
associates, and/or the king) acknowledge that the Jewish case – in either
its more restricted sense of rebuttal of the new missionizing argumentation
or its more extended sense of Jewish superiority over Christianity alto-
gether – triumphed. However, Nahmanides asserts that, on the fourth day
of the disputation, the king, who had forced him to come to Barcelona
for the encounter, called the proceedings to a halt, saying: “I have never
seen a person whose case is incorrect make it as well as I [Nahmanides]
had done.”41 This is the highest imaginable praise and suggests remarkable
Jewish achievement. As noted, Rabbi Moses describes himself as remaining
in Barcelona in order to be present at the synagogue for the missionizing
sermons to be delivered there. On the morrow of that follow-up engage-
ment, Nahmanides claims that the king sent him home to Gerona, with
a handsome gift. “He said to me: ‘Return to your city in life and peace.’
He then gave me three hundred dinars, and I left him with great fond-
ness.”42 Again, this is meant to convey to the reader a clear sense of Jewish
achievement.
The enterprise undertaken by our five Jewish authors involved weighty
responsibility, the responsibility of protecting Jews from accelerating
Christian religious pressures. The persuasive techniques utilized by our
Jewish authors were many and varied. Utilization of a variety of literary
genres and manipulation of these diverse literary genres for maximal effect
were among the most effective of these techniques.

Finally, in concluding this discussion of the techniques of persuasion uti-

lized by our five Jewish polemicists, we must remind ourselves that religion
is ultimately a matter more of the heart than of the head, a matter steeped
to a greater extent in poetry than in prose. The Hebrew Bible, the New
Testament, and much of rabbinic literature draw upon literary imagery
and devices that are by no means to be taken in their surface and literal
meaning. The simplest example to adduce is the Song of Songs, which
both traditions agree in reading allegorically and poetically. During the
period under consideration, both Christians and Jews were fully engaged
in exploring the poetic elements in their traditions. This is the age of
St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Francis of Assisi from the Christian side
and – from the Jewish side – of the German-Jewish pietism of northern
Europe and the first stirrings of medieval kabbalah in the south. Yet, in their
polemical writings our five Jewish authors eschew the poetic altogether.

41 Vikuah. Barcelona, 319; The Disputation at Barcelona, 694.

42 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 696.
336 Underlying issues
Their defense of Judaism and attacks on Christianity are couched entirely
in prosaic terms.43
In fact, the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries were rife with efforts to
move beyond the seemingly plain truths of Christianity and Judaism, to
plumb the hidden depths of the divine message. During our period, there
was a potent sense of reaching new levels of understanding – philosophical
and/or mystical – with respect to old texts and traditional doctrines; there
is also considerable emphasis on the limitations to be placed on sharing this
deeper understanding.44 From the Jewish side, the Kimhis were very much
a part of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century philosophical movement and
– as we have seen – postulated two levels of meaning to biblical texts, the
simpler for the masses and the deeper and truer for the sophisticates. Rabbi
Moses ben Nahman was one of the leading figures in this new movement
toward deep mystical truths and concomitant esotericism.
Nonetheless, our Jewish polemicists – in some cases very much commit-
ted personally to in-depth probing of religious truth – scrupulously refrain
from suggesting deep and innovative meanings to the texts and doctrines
with which they deal and make no appeal whatsoever to esotericism. Rather,
they approach all issues under debate from a broadly reasonable and open
perspective.45 In our survey of the writings of our five Jewish polemicists, we
have seen the preponderant reliance on argumentation from Scripture and
history, rather than from the technicalities of rational inquiry.46 However,
Scripture and history are both analyzed from a distinctly reasonable per-
spective. There is, in all the attention to the Hebrew Bible and the realities
of Christian and Jewish circumstances, no evidence of poetic or esoteric
interpretation of either. Rather, it is contextual and reasonable readings
that are regularly valorized. These contextual and reasonable readings of
Scripture and history can and indeed must be readily assimilated by all;
they are by no means the prerogative of a limited circle of initiates.
43 The parallels to the Christian assault on the Talmud are striking – see Chazan, “Sacred Literature
Shared and Divergent.”
44 For a sense of this probing and the resultant esotericism on the Jewish side, see, for example,
Aviezer Ravitzky, “The Secrets of the Guide to the Perplexed: Between the Thirteenth and Twentieth
Centuries,” in Studies in Maimonides, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1990), 159–207, and Moshe Idel, “We Have No Kabbalistic Tradition on This,” in Rabbi Moses
Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious Virtuosity, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983).
45 Approaching all issues “from a broadly reasonable and open perspective” does not mean privileging
argumentation from reason. Rather, it involves a choice against reading the biblical text in terms of
its purportedly deeper poetical or mystical meanings or interpreting history in terms of the same
purportedly deeper meanings.
46 For fuller discussion of the preponderance of biblical and historical argumentation and the relative
de-emphasis of argumentation from the technicalities of rational inquiry, see below, Chap. 16.
 Techniques of persuasion 337
We have noted just now Nahmanides’s portrait of Friar Paul as an invet-
erate bumbler. The second major instance of the friar’s bumbling – accord-
ing to Rabbi Moses – comes in the wake of the sermon delivered by Friar
Raymond of Penaforte on the Trinity. Nahmanides portrays his response
to Friar Raymond and then has Friar Paul intervening with indication that
“he [Friar Paul] believes in the absolute unity [of the divinity]. Nonetheless,
it [the divinity] is also a trinity. This is an extremely profound matter, that
even the angels and heavenly retinue do not understand.” Nahmanides
portrays himself as responding: “It is obvious that no one should believe
what he does not understand. Thus, the angels do not [truly] believe in
the Trinity.”47 According to Nahmanides, this gaffe on the part of the friar
caused his associates to silence him, obviously in embarrassment. Yet it
must be recalled that Rabbi Moses ben Nahman himself was – as noted – a
key figure in the early development of medieval kabbalah, one who would
certainly not subscribe to the notion that all profound religious truths can
be rationally understood or publicly shared. I see no alternative but to sug-
gest that Rabbi Moses here provides us with a striking illustration of the
polemical technique of approaching all issues from a broadly reasonable
and open perspective.
In part, the broad rationalism of our Jewish authors is symptomatic of
polemical literature of all epochs. In attempting to convince others or wa-
vering believers, appeal is almost always made to considerations of reason,
rather than to poetics. Indeed, the poetics of religious traditions lend them-
selves readily to misinterpretation and to abuse. There are arresting parallels
between Jewish attacks on the poetry of the New Testament and Christian
attacks on the poetry of the Talmud.48 In both instances, the attacking side –
while fully cognizant of its own propensity to read sacred texts metaphori-
cally and poetically – allows for no such reading in the opposing camp. In
the light of this propensity to demean the poetic imagery of the other side,
rather than to approach it with sympathy and understanding, it is hardly
surprising that polemicists of all generations and our five Jewish polemi-
cists in particular gravitate regularly toward reasonable reading of texts and
issues.
More specifically, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw an enhanced
respect for and commitment to rational/reasonable thinking. We have
noted such a new commitment throughout this study. The new emphasis
on reason surely buttressed the normal polemical gravitation toward the

47 Vikuah. Barcelona, 320; The Disputation at Barcelona, 696.

48 See again Chazan, “Sacred Literature Shared and Divergent.”
338 Underlying issues
rational. To be sure, the enhanced focus on the reasonable by no means ef-
faced the turn toward the poetic and the mystical among either the Christian
majority or the Jewish majority. Nonetheless, the battle between the two
faith communities was conducted almost exclusively on the grounds of
reasonable reading of Scripture and history. This was the final and most
consistently employed technique of our Jewish polemicists.
 chap t e r s ix t e e n

Fashioning identities – other and self

A key strategy of persuasion employed by our Jewish polemicists was the

advancing of the widest possible range of issues and arguments. Since their
objective was to alert Jews to every possible Christian thrust and to provide
responses to each, broad and exhaustive coverage was necessary. At the same
time, this strategy posed a significant danger as well – the danger of losing
sight of the forest for the trees. Thus, our Jewish polemicists balanced their
commitment to inclusivity with recognition of the need to prioritize – to
highlight more dangerous Christian thrusts, to isolate the key issue or issues
in contention between Christians and Jews, or to propose a set of criteria
on the basis of which the conflict might be adjudicated.
Our five Jewish authors do in fact project a hierarchical sense of the
dangers flowing from the heightened Christian aggressiveness, a perception
that some Christian thrusts were more threatening than others. At the
same time, they also identify for their readers key issues in contention.
Finally and most importantly, they provide the criteria for assessing religious
traditions, thereby offering guidance as to why their Jewish readers should
remain Jewish. Indeed, underlying the entire polemical enterprise was a
commitment to sketching out alternate Christian and Jewish identities –
the latter irrational and debased, the former reasonable and dignified.

In analyzing our authors’ sense of the relative dangers posed by the diverse
Christian thrusts, it will be useful to recall our distinction between the
grounds of argumentation utilized by Christians and Jews and the issues
at stake in the dispute between the two groups. Let us begin with the
grounds of argumentation. There is, in the material we have considered, a
clear Jewish sense that the most significant Christian claims come from the
Hebrew Bible, from empirical observation, and from the combination of
the two.
Proofs of Christian truth from human reason are distinctly secondary.
Indeed, our close examination of these Christian claims for truth grounded
339
340 Underlying issues
in reason suggested that such claims are essentially defensive in nature.
These Christian arguments are intended to obviate anticipated Jewish
objections.1 They have not yet reached the point of adumbrating an
ab initio case for Christian truth, a point reached only toward the end of
our period with Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles.2 Argumentation
from reason in our sources is distinctly secondary, and in this argumentation
our Jewish authors clearly felt themselves to be at a very great advantage.3
It was, of course, highly tempting to exploit that sense of advantage and
focus on exposing the purported irrationality of Christianity. In so doing,
however, our Jewish polemicists would have neglected their primary task,
which was to bring to Jewish attention truly threatening Christian claims
and to rebut them.
Christian claims rooted in the Hebrew Bible constituted the bedrock of
the Christian case. We have seen this line of argumentation embedded in
the Gospels and fundamental to the earliest strands of Christian adversus
Judaeos literature. The conviction that Christian truth is anchored in He-
brew Scripture is an old and established line of argumentation. Indeed, the
view that Jews deserve toleration within a Christian society was rooted, to a
considerable extent, in the Augustinian notion that Jews provide a valuable
service by attesting to the truth of the Hebrew Bible, which they – to be sure
– do not properly comprehend. The traditional nature of this argumenta-
tion was not taken by Christians as a weakness. They continued to believe
that the truth of their reading of the Hebrew Bible was incontrovertible
and that – were Jews simply to open their minds and hearts – they would
not fail to recognize this truth. As western Christendom enhanced its intel-
lectual vigor through the opening centuries of the second millennium, that
conviction was only strengthened. While our Jewish authors were generally
unimpressed with this Christian conviction, they were forced nonetheless
to address this line of Christian argumentation with every weapon in their
intellectual arsenal.
Even more striking is the Jewish sense of the danger in the Christian
argument from historical fate. While this, too, was a hoary Christian

1 Again recall the centrality of the problematic doctrine of Incarnation in this Christian argumentation
from reason and in the Jewish attack on such argumentation.
2 In Daggers of Faith, I suggested that this ambitious new-style philosophizing was in fact not readily
utilizable for missionizing purposes. Its shortcoming lay in the high level of ratiocination required.
Preachers could hardly enter a synagogue and convince Jews by laying out such a detailed philosophic
argument.
3 Recall the closing comments to the previous chapter. There I argued that, while not putting argu-
mentation from reason at the center of their enterprise, our Jewish polemicists insisted vigorously on
the use of reason in reading the Hebrew Bible and interpreting history.
 Fashioning identities – other and self 341
contention, the reversal of Christian and Muslim fortunes – with the
fortunes of the former waxing and the fortunes of the latter waning –
increasingly moved Christians toward equating success and truth. To be
sure, the most obvious crusading successes – those in the Holy Land – began
to evaporate rather quickly. However, the areas of our concern, southern
France and northern Spain, were immediately adjacent to the arena in which
Christian successes were most consistent and most lasting. The Christian
re-conquest of the Iberian peninsula was an ongoing feature of the period
under consideration. Indeed, the most significant gains in the centuries-
long process of re-conquest of the peninsula took place precisely during the
later decades of the twelfth century and on into the thirteenth.
It seems clear that our Jewish authors perceived this Christian thrust to
be omnipresent and highly dangerous. Christian spokesmen were regularly
depicted as presenting this claim as their overarching argument, and our
Jewish authors were deeply committed to rebutting it in multiple ways.
These Jewish polemicists attacked all biblical grounding for the Christian
argument, advanced lengthy and detailed cases for the irrevocable covenant
between God and the Jews, and went on to belittle the achievements of
Christendom. The regular recurrence of this Christian case and the inten-
sity of the Jewish response suggest that our Jewish leaders perceived this
Christian thrust as extremely dangerous. I have suggested that a good part
of this danger flows from the psychological impact of this Christian claim.
When the Christian side is made to articulate its sense of the key issues in
the Christian–Jewish debate, the focus is generally upon messianic advent
and consequent divine rejection of the Jews and loss of Jewish hope for the
future. While the Barcelona disputation addressed a number of issues (prior
advent of the Messiah, that the Messiah was fated to suffer and die, that the
Messiah was intended to be divine and human, and that Jewish ceremonial
law was intended to lose its significance with messianic advent), the two
surviving reports – the lengthy Hebrew narrative and the brief Latin record –
suggest that in fact the issue of the prior advent of the Messiah, with its
corollary of Jewish hopelessness, lay at the heart of the debate.4 Rabbi
Moses ben Nahman’s commitment to penning Sefer ha-Ge’ulah, with its
vigorous assertion of future advent of the Messiah and thus of legitimate
Jewish hope, reinforces the sense that this issue was central in 1263.5
Jacob ben Reuben’s Milh.amot ha-Shem suggests that this same issue was
key to the Christian–Jewish debate at the very beginning of our period,

4 For full analysis of the agenda of the Barcelona disputation, see Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, 59–64.
5 See above, Chap. 9.
342 Underlying issues
some ninety years prior to the Barcelona disputation. The exchange that
set in motion the lengthy give-and-take between the Christian and the
Jew involved the former’s suggestion that Jewish circumstances were dire
and declining regularly, while Christian circumstances were splendid and
improving daily, thus indicating divine rejection of the Jews and divine
approbation for the Christians.6 The selfsame claim set in motion Part ii
of the Milh.emet Miz.vah, in which Rabbi Meir bar Simon assembles his
extensive criticisms of Christianity.7 Jews seem to have perceived a Chris-
tian sense that contrasting circumstances offered the central and telling
argument for the truth of Christianity.
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman challenges overtly this Christian sense of the
centrality of messianic advent to the religious debate between Christians
and Jews. As noted, Rabbi Moses reports in his narrative a lengthy speech
that he was purportedly able to give at the opening of the second day of the
proceedings. The speech and ensuing give-and-take begin with an effort to
clarify the nature of Jewish sacred literature and then proceed to the issue
of messianic advent. At a given point, Friar Paul interrupts and says that
he will offer yet another proof that the time of the Messiah has passed.
Rabbi Moses portrays himself as taking this opportunity to challenge the
centrality of the messianic issue. Rather, argues the rabbi, the heart of
the Christian–Jewish dispute lies in the fundamental irrationality of the
Christian doctrine of Incarnation. According to Rabbi Moses, this doctrine
is utterly unacceptable to the rational mind, and therefore Christianity
cannot be true.8
Now, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman surely did not believe that the issue
of messianic advent and its timing was irrelevant to the Christian–Jewish
debate or to the truth of Judaism independent of Christian pressures.9
What he seems to be arguing, rather, is that the doctrine of Incarnation
poses an insuperable challenge to Christian truth or to any possibility of
Jewish acceptance of Christian truth. While other issues are important and
worth arguing, this overwhelming Christian shortcoming – as seen from
the rabbi’s perspective – makes Christianity utterly unacceptable to the
thinking person, Christian or Jewish. This is a powerful Jewish response

6 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 5.
7 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 305. We should recall that the contents of Rabbi Meir’s sermon, in which
he responded to a Dominican address in the synagogue of Narbonne, suggest that the heart of the
Christian address involved the claim of Jewish hopelessness.
8 Vikuah. Barcelona, 310–311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 672–674.
9 Recall the subsequent composition of the impressive Sefer ha-Ge’ulah.
 Fashioning identities – other and self 343
to the Christian sense of the centrality of contrastive Christian and Jewish
fate as the key to the dispute between the two faith communities.
There is another alternative to isolating the purportedly key issue in the
Christian–Jewish debate, and that is identification of criteria to be used in
deciding issues of religious conflict. While somewhat less dramatic than
isolation of the decisive item in the debate, the quest for criteria to be used
in deciding issues of religious truth bespeaks a more measured approach to
the Christian–Jewish conflict. Our very first Jewish author, Joseph Kimhi,
offers both a Christian and a Jewish version of these key criteria. After
initial skirmishing that involves appeals to reason and Scripture, the Chris-
tian protagonist, in some frustration, proposes a set of criteria for judging
religious faith: “You [Jews] lack belief, deeds, and rule and kingship. You
have lost everything.”10 This is more than a critique of the Jews; it is a set
of criteria by which religions should be judged – rational beliefs, dignified
behavior, and temporal success. The Jewish protagonist cannot assent to
these three criteria. He offers instead two:
Know that all the good that man does in this world consists of two elements –
good deeds and belief. If I can establish for the Jews good deeds and proper belief,
then they have everything.11
In effect, the Jew accepts the first two of the Christian criteria, but rejects
worldly success, the third. He then proceeds to argue that Judaism involves
the combination of proper belief and good deeds.12
It is Rabbi Meir bar Simon who is most articulate in identifying the
criteria for deciding issues of religious identity and truth. Rabbi Meir was
perhaps the least intellectually acute of our five Jewish polemicists. He does
not show the brilliance of Jacob ben Reuben, the Kimhis, or Rabbi Moses
ben Nahman. On the other hand, Rabbi Meir was, in many ways, the most
grounded of our polemicists in the everyday realities of life. His collected
materials are the richest in reflections of their historical setting and of daily
living; he was regularly involved in practical matters of contention between
southern-French Jews and their secular and religious rulers; he seems to have
had the fullest appreciation of the human issues in change of religious faith.
Concerned (and rightly so) that the materials in the first part of
his mélange constituted something of a hodgepodge, Rabbi Meir was

10 Sefer ha-Berit, 25: The Book of the Covenant, 32.

11 Sefer ha-Berit, 25: The Book of the Covenant, 32.
12 Recall that the issue of Jewish lack of worldly success is addressed in the lost closing section of Sefer
ha-Berit.
344 Underlying issues
determined to put matters in a more effectively organized format, so that
his readers “might find expressed concisely the rebuttals that are in Part i.”
The setting that Rabbi Meir created involved the exhortation on the part
of a Christian sage to a Jewish sage that the latter must acknowledge the
reality of Christian success, seemingly increasing daily, and of Jewish suf-
fering, seemingly deepening daily.13 Rabbi Meir does not dispute the reality
of Christian success and Jewish suffering, but he does differ markedly in
his evaluation of this reality.14
Rabbi Meir has his Jewish sage respond to the exhortation of the Christian
sage with some broad observations on conversion, observations steeped in
the author’s common-sense approach to life.
Now it is known to every sage that anyone of intelligence and understanding who
might wish to join in teachings and faith with another or with others who are
not of his belief and faith must surely investigate and study the behaviors and
beliefs of the latter. If he sees that his behaviors are better than their behaviors,
then he will not exchange good for bad. For it is proper for one of intelligence
to improve his behaviors daily, not to diminish them or spoil them. Likewise, he
must investigate their belief and teaching, if it conforms to the intellect and to
wisdom as accepted by him . . . It is also fitting to investigate from whom it [the
belief and teaching] was received and through whom it was received and in what
setting it was received.15
This common-sense approach – involving the comparison of religious
faiths in terms of both behavior and belief, just as suggested by Joseph Kimhi
some time earlier – serves as the introduction to Part ii of the Milh.emet
Miz.vah. Rabbi Meir bar Simon examines fairly briefly Jewish belief and
practice, highlighting what he sees as the rationality of Jewish belief and
the high standards of Jewish behavior. The bulk of his Part ii is devoted to
criticisms – 160 such criticisms, to be exact – of Christian practice and belief.
Here we have, in the most general way, a Jewish polemicist identifying the
criteria to be used in judging conflicting religious claims.
Let us follow the comparative observations of Rabbi Meir Bar Simon.
He begins with general comments on Jewish belief and practice. “Indeed
I see that the Torah of Moses, to which I hold fast and to which my
fathers and fathers’ fathers held fast, is proper and pure. Its precepts are
exceedingly good and pleasant.”16 Rabbi Meir then spells out the excellence
of both Jewish belief and practice. The Jewish belief system is rooted in
commitment to God’s unity, to God’s creation of all, and to God’s rule

13 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 305. 14 See above, Chaps. 9 and 10.
15 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 305–306. 16 Ibid., 306.
 Fashioning identities – other and self 345
over all. God’s rule over all, upon which the rabbi focuses, involves the
proper distribution of reward and punishment. While occasionally there
might well seem to be miscarriage of divine justice, Judaism teaches that
in fact “the proper reward will be accorded to each one in this world or in
the next world, which is the world of recompense.”17 According to Rabbi
Meir, these reasonable and useful teachings are contained throughout the
Torah of Moses and are in perfect consonance with true intellect.18
The behaviors enjoined in the Torah of Moses are similarly reasonable
and useful. They aid in sustaining the individual, society, and the human
soul. Rabbi Meir shows briefly how central Jewish observances – Sabbath,
festivals, honoring of parents, loving neighbors and refraining from hatred,
restraining oneself from illicit sexual contact and from prohibited foods –
all contribute to the well-being of body and soul. “Ultimately, when the
wise one examines the commandments, he will find they lead to sustenance
of the body and sustenance of society and perfection of the soul, so that it
might achieve the human perfection intended for mankind. Thus he [man]
can realize through them [the commandments] a world that is entirely good
and everlasting.”19
Rabbi Meir completes this picture of Jewish superiority by pointing
to the absolute certainty associated with the system of belief and practice
enshrined in the Torah of Moses. According to the rabbi, the Torah of Moses
was given by the Shepherd of Israel to his people; it was given through the
agency of Moses, God’s designated representative; and it was given in a
public setting at which were gathered hundreds of thousands of Israelites,
including great sages and intellects. The foundations of the entire system
are thus, for Rabbi Meir, beyond reproach. All the virtues of Judaism – the
purity of its belief system, the sensibility of its enjoined practices, and the
reliability of its foundations – are in the eyes of Rabbi Meir obvious. These
virtues are then highlighted by the rabbi’s far more extensive depiction of
Christian shortcomings.20
Thus, Rabbi Meir bar Simon – more than any of our other four Jewish
polemicists – clarifies the grounds for discussing Christian error and Jewish
truth. Rabbi Meir in effect eschews the search for a single key to the
Christian–Jewish dispute. Rather, he proposes a series of criteria on the
basis of which intelligent observers might come to a reasoned decision as

17 Ibid.
18 Recall Halbertal’s designation of Rabbi Meir as a moderate Maimonidean. See above, Chap. 4, n. 48.
19 Milh.emet Miz.vah, ed. Blau, 307.
20 We have considered many of Rabbi Meir’s extensive criticisms of Christian doctrine above,
Chap. 13, and of Christian behavior in Chap. 14.
346 Underlying issues
to the superior faith system. As likewise proposed by Joseph Kimhi, such a
reasoned decision must result from careful weighing of the beliefs and the
practices of the contesting faiths. If Jews challenged by intensifying Chris-
tian pressure look carefully at their own tradition and that of their Christian
neighbors and weigh the two judiciously, such Jews – according to Joseph
Kimhi and Rabbi Meir bar Simon – can only come to one conclusion. The
truth of Judaism – reflected in its beliefs and its practices – is obvious. This,
I would urge, is the deeper meaning of the many and diverse arguments
mounted by our Jewish authors. Behind the myriad details of argumenta-
tion lies the establishment of contrastive identities – the deficiencies of the
Christian world and the advantages of the Jewish world.

In a variety of disciplines – psychology, anthropology, cultural studies,

and philosophy – recent decades have seen proliferating interest in the
relationship of other and self, of in-groups and out-groups. Although there
has been some examination of benign and symbiotic relationships between
the two,21 more often it is the antagonistic relationships between self and
other, between in-group and out-groups, which have been the focus of
attention. For Jewish history, two types of antagonistic relationships have
been studied. The first involves the Jews as others, against whom majority
communities have reacted and have indeed often defined themselves.22
Less widely studied has been the extent to which Jews have historically
defined themselves over and against a perceived other.23 This latter approach
dominated in a most interesting conference and volume, both entitled The
Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and
Identity.24
In the introductory essay to the volume, Laurance J. Silberstein, one of
the editors, notes:
21 In medieval Jewish history, we might note studies that highlight the interdependence of minority
Jewish and majority non-Jewish patterns of thinking and behavior. Some of the work done in this
direction includes Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade; idem, God, Humanity, and History;
Shmuel Shepkaru, “To Die for God: Martyrs’ Heaven in Hebrew and Latin Crusade Narratives,”
Speculum 77 (2002): 311–341; Jeremy Cohen, “‘The Persecution’ of 1096: From Martyrdom to Marty-
rology” (Hebrew), Zion 59 (1994): 169–208; idem, “The Hebrew Crusade Chronicles in the Christian
Cultural Context, in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Sigmaringen:
Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1999), 17–34; Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in
Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
22 Note, for the Middle Ages, Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance.
23 Note David Berger, “On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature,” in
Yehudim mul ha-Z. lav, ed. Yom Tov Assis et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000), 74–91.
24 The conference took place in May, 1992; the volume that resulted was Laurence J. Silberstein and
Robert I. Cohen (eds.), The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and
Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1994).
 Fashioning identities – other and self 347
In order to understand identity, both individual and group, we must attend to
the Others over and against whom the self is positioned/constructed/ constituted.
“The Other is, as we have seen, the medium by which we all but consciously define
ourselves. Such is the identity/otherness dialectic which must be brought into full
consciousness.” The concept of the Other, of otherness, is particularly prominent
in the writing of that family of thinkers and writers commonly identified as post-
modern.25
The essays in the volume cover a wide range of periods. They begin with
three essays on the biblical period, proceed to three essays on late antiquity,
include one essay on medieval kabbalah, and then are entirely channeled
toward issues in modern Jewish history and culture. The medieval period,
during which Jewish identity was to a considerable extent fashioned out
of reaction to others, is almost entirely neglected.26 In a broad sense, the
material we have encountered in this study constitutes a classic instance of
construction of self over and against perceptions of the other.
The sketching of alternative pictures of Christianity and Judaism and
of Christians and Jews is ultimately the most potent polemical strategy
invoked by our five Jewish polemicists. It was obviously important to our
Jewish authors that every specific Christian polemical argument be ad-
vanced and rebutted, that telling criticism of Christianity and the society it
undergirded be identified and communicated, and that Jewish spokesmen
be perceived as superior to their Christian interlocutors and regularly vic-
torious in direct engagement. Far more important, however, was the overall
conclusion with which Jewish readers were to emerge – the sense of adher-
ing to the superior religious tradition and belonging to the superior human
community.
At the heart of the polemical contrast between Christian other and Jewish
self lies a set of fundamental assumptions about the nature of religion
and the criteria for evaluating it. Despite the diversity of our authors and
their works, these assumptions were shared by all. The most basic of these
assumptions was the conviction that religions include a combination of
doctrine and practice and must be judged with respect to both. Indeed, these
two core elements of religious life are necessarily related one to another.
Irrational doctrine will lead to unreasonable practice; rational doctrine will

25 The Other in Jewish Thought and History, 5; the quotation is from Thierry Hentsch, Imagining the
Middle East (Montreal: Black Rose, 1992), 192.
26 This neglect may stem from the Ahad Haam assumption cited on p. 2 of The Other in Jewish
Thought and History: “In previous generations, he [Ahad Haam] argued, it was unthinkable for a
Jew to question his/her identity.” The entire thrust of this study has controverted this Ahad Haam
assumption.
348 Underlying issues
find its expression in reasonable practice.27 Moreover, the declared ideals
of a religious faith must find expression in the life of its adherents. High-
sounding proclamation of ideals that are not realizable or are not realized
in practice is meaningless. In fact, they are worse than meaningless; they
are actually harmful in deluding adherents as to their commitments and
achievements.
The most important of all the specific core values identified by our Jewish
polemicists was reasonability, first in doctrine and then in practice. In this
regard, our late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish authors very much
shared the general commitment of their Christian environment to reason.
In addition, they were heirs to the Jewish commitment to the centrality of
reason that had previously developed within the Jewish communities of the
Muslim world.28 The combination of internal Jewish and external general
reinforcement of rationality made it a potent factor in the polemical argu-
mentation we have examined.29 Reasonability was the touchstone of the
argumentation over Christian versus Jewish doctrine. Our Jewish polemi-
cists claimed that Christian teaching was throughly irrational, in marked
contrast to the utter reasonability of the beliefs of Judaism. This irrational-
ity/rationality of teachings involved, to an extent, philosophic issues; more
importantly, it extended to the interpretation of biblical texts and historic
events. Equally significant was the centrality of reason in the assessment
of religious praxis and of societies, their structures, and their functioning.
Beyond the specific details of argumentation, our Jewish authors labored
to paint a picture of a fundamentally debased and unreasonable Christian
society contrasted with a sane and reasonable Jewish society.
As we have seen, it is not possible to identify with precision what our
authors meant by rational and reasonable, either with respect to doctrine
or practice. There is, not surprisingly, considerable vagueness about this
ideal to which they were so deeply committed. Perhaps the strongest sense
we have gleaned of this amorphous value involves correspondence with the

27 Recall my earlier observations on the interchangeable use of the terms “rational/irrational” and
“reasonable/ unreasonable, above, Chap. 5, n. 49. We have noted that claims based on technical
argumentation from philosophic reasoning occupy a distinctly secondary place within the polemical
corpus we have been examining. At the same time, “rational”/“reasonable” reading of Scripture
and history has emerged as primary. This “rationality”/“reasonability” could be readily extended to
examination of behaviors as well.
28 Recall the observations of Lasker on the Andalusian heritage to which our polemicists were heir.
Admiration for the teachings of Maimonides is palpable in a number of our authors. The pro-
Maimunist activities of David Kimhi might be noted specifically.
29 There is no point, for our purposes, in speculating on the respective weight of the influence of
the recently developed Jewish emphasis on reason and reasonability and the surrounding Christian
emphasis on these same virtues.
 Fashioning identities – other and self 349
Hebrew Bible’s insistence on the unity of the one true God and the norms
involved in properly serving that one true God.30 The Hebrew Bible so
dominates the consciousness of our Jewish polemicists as to form the foun-
dation and framework for their image of reasonable teaching and behavior.
To be sure, there is the discernible impact of Greco-Roman thinking as
well, especially in a Platonic or neo-Platonic sense of laudable ideas and
values that are nearly self-evident to all human beings, at least once they
have been alerted to these ideas and values.
As we have seen repeatedly, the harshest Jewish criticism of all is leveled
against the Christian doctrine of Incarnation. Christianity, with its notion
of a deity incarnate and its concomitant doctrine of a trinity of divine be-
ings, became – for our Jewish authors – the ultimate irrationality. Rabbi
Moses ben Nahman’s contention that the doctrine of Incarnation lies at the
very heart of the Christian–Jewish dispute was shared by all his polemicist
colleagues. The doctrine of Incarnation was projected as the teaching that
would supposedly reveal to any impartial observer the fundamental irra-
tionality of Christian thinking. It was seen as responsible for the profound
gulf between the two traditions, was viewed by Jews as thoroughly unrea-
sonable, and was claimed to have more than a tinge of the immoral about
it as well. Jacob ben Reuben’s designation of the Christian as the mekhah.ed
– the denier of divine unity – is revealing in its intense negativity.
Jews knew, of course, that there was learning in the Christian majority
and that this majority had its share of expert scholars. All this learning, the
institutions in which it took place, and the sophisticated philosophic argu-
mentation that it produced could not, in Jewish eyes, efface the inherent
irrationality of the belief in an incarnate deity, that was both a unity and a
trinity. Again, Jacob ben Reuben is illustrative. His Christian interlocutor
was a sophisticated foe; at the same time, Jacob sees him as mired in irra-
tionality – a learned man committed to unreasonable teachings. Indeed,
Christianity’s irrational conclusions had to imply flawed reasoning. For all
its philosophic sophistication, the methodology of Christian thinking had
to be deficient. Irrational conclusions cannot flow from sound reasoning.
What Jews saw as the irrationality of this core Christian belief affected
the reasonability of the dominant style of Christian argumentation, the
argumentation grounded in biblical authority. Our Jewish authors viewed
Christian reading of Scripture as an exercise in unreasonable exegesis. The
unreasonable nature of Christian exegesis was again – in Jewish eyes –
obvious from the irrational conclusions to which it led. Recurrently, our

30 See above, Chap. 11.

350 Underlying issues
Jewish polemicists concluded that Christian exegesis used to buttress the
notion of a deity incarnate could obviously not be accurate exegesis. Our
Jewish polemicists formulated a set of standards for reasonable reading of
the Hebrew Bible and found the Christian parsing of the biblical text woe-
fully inadequate when viewed in the light of these standards. Particularly
important was the emphasis on context, meaning both the immediate con-
text of a given verse and the larger context of the Hebrew Bible as a whole.
Christian readings used to support the notions of Incarnation and Trinity
– for our Jewish authors – clearly contravened what they saw as the biblical
emphasis on divine unity and incorporeality.
According to our Jewish polemicists, Judaism exhibited all the values of
rationality so noticeably deficient in Christian doctrine. It remained – they
claimed – thoroughly committed to the biblical idea and ideal of one God,
who was both indivisible and incorporeal. The teachings of Judaism were
simple and uncontaminated by even a hint of compromise on the issue
of God’s unity. As we recall, the Jewish protagonist in Milh.amot ha-Shem
was called the meyah.ed, the Jew who declares unwaveringly the unity of
the divinity. For our Jewish polemicists, the lack of a Jewish theology as
extensive as that of Christianity was simply a reflection of lack of need.
Jewish doctrine was devoid of the kind of problems that so engaged the
Christian intelligentsia; it was – according to our Jewish authors – exquisite
in its simplicity.
For our Jewish authors, the irrational doctrine of Incarnation carried over
into Christian religious practice as well. The tendency toward corporeality
in the doctrine of Incarnation led – in Jewish eyes – to the central and
irrational Christian religious ritual of the Eucharist and to the related and
unreasonable veneration of images, of both Jesus and the saints. All this
reflected an unreasonable attraction to the physical and flowed ineluctably
from what Jews viewed as the central irrationality of the Christian system.
Rabbi Meir bar Simon’s critique of the Eucharist and of Christian imagery
was biting and intense. He believed that, like the doctrine of Incarnation
itself, these practices illustrated unmistakably the inherent irrationality of
the entire Christian system. For Rabbi Meir, the Christian penitential sys-
tem represents yet another expression of the errant Christian attraction to
the physical and the tangible. The institution of confession to a human
being and the system of penitential practices such as pilgrimage were seen
as deflecting Christian believers from the interiority of true confession and
repentance. There is in this line of Jewish attack an obvious irony. Christian
imagery of Judaism and Jews saw both as mired in physicality, as obsessed
with the external letter rather than the internal spirit of religious life. In
 Fashioning identities – other and self 351
fact, however, Jews were simultaneously leveling the same critique against
Christianity and Christians.31
Indeed, Rabbi Meir bar Simon went even further. For him, the irra-
tionality of Christian society extended far beyond its religious practices.
According to Rabbi Meir, the entire judicial structure of medieval Christian
society was flawed. We have noted the fascinating specifics of his attack on
medieval Christian society and its judicial system and his suggestions as to
what would constitute a truly just alternative. Underlying these critiques
and alternatives is the conviction that the irrationality of Christian doc-
trine and Christian religious practice eventuated in an utterly unreasonable
social structure as well. The entire Christian system was uniformly flawed,
with irrational doctrine feeding irrational practice and vice versa. Irrational-
ity was the byword; according to Rabbi Meir, it permeated every facet of
medieval Christian existence.
By contrast, the reasonability of Jewish doctrine was reflected, for our
Jewish polemicists, in the simplicity and sanity of Jewish practice. For them,
objectionable Christian practices – such as the Eucharist, images, human
confessors, lax penitential practices, and an unfair judicial system – find
no place in a religious system grounded in simple, straightforward, and
reasonable doctrine. Instead, there is emphasis on the effort of every Jew
to reach out directly to the one and only God through prayer and ritual
and, beyond that, through decent treatment of other human beings. Were
Christians and/or impartial observers to look closely and objectively into
the mores of the Jewish community, they could not fail to see the sanity,
beauty, and order embodied therein.
It is from this perspective – at least in part – that Christian claims of the
impropriety of Jewish usury were met with such intense Jewish opposition.
To be sure, Jewish spokesmen, like Joseph Kimhi and – much more fully –
Rabbi Meir bar Simon, had important practical reasons for making these
arguments; they were intent on protecting key Jewish business. Rabbi Meir
addresses this issue fully in a number of compositions that are obviously
practical and not polemical.32 At the same time, there was a serious polem-
ical dimension to this issue as well, and it appears in both Sefer ha-Berit and
in the polemical sections of the Milh.emet Miz.vah. These Jewish polemicists
were intent on preserving the contrast between irrational Christian behav-
ior and reasonable Jewish behavior. Jewish usury, they argued vociferously,
by no means constituted a blemish on the sterling Jewish record.
31 For more on this irony, see the closing observations in this chapter.
32 See again, Chazan, “Anti-Usury Efforts in Thirteenth-Century Narbonne and the Jewish Response,”
and “A Jewish Plaint to Saint Louis.”
352 Underlying issues
For our Jewish authors, irrational doctrine and irrational practice were
intimately linked and were readily observable on the medieval Christian
scene. Doctrine and practice were linked in yet another way by our Jewish
polemicists. Religious teachings had to be not only reasonable; they had
to prescribe attainable human objectives as well. Religious ideals that lay
beyond the potential of human realization were seen as misleading and
ultimately harmful. While they might seemingly be justified as setting high
goals for human achievement, in fact they worked in a different way. Their
unattainability moved humans to give up on the effort to strive toward
betterment. For our Jewish authors, this flaw was manifest in the teachings
of Jesus and constituted yet another decisive factor in the manifold failures
of medieval Christianity and Christendom.
As noted, our Jewish polemicists were fully conversant with the Christian
notion of Jesus as a teacher of love and mercy and of Christianity as a
religion of love and mercy. Yet this Jewish acknowledgment serves merely
as a prelude to intense indictment of this teacher of love and mercy for
failing to live up to his own declared standards and for the failure of the
religion he founded to live up to those standards as well. We recall the
attack of Jacob ben Reuben against some of Jesus’ behaviors as depicted in
the New Testament. While the most striking of these attacks involves Jesus’
cursing of the barren fig tree, in fact the pervasive notion of Jesus as hiding
religious truth from his contemporaries – thereby condemning them to
religious failure according to the internal logic of the Christian system –
is repeatedly excoriated by Jacob. Rabbi Meir bar Simon castigates Jesus
for misrepresenting the mandates of Moses, on the one hand, and for
replacing them with high-blown, but unachievable alternatives, on the
other.
In this regard, we recall the especially trenchant criticism leveled by Jacob
ben Reuben against the Christian notion of a Torah of grace intended
to replace the Torah of law given by Moses. Let us recall a bit of that
criticism, with its notion of a double loss – the abandonment of law and
the imposition of an unattainable ideal of grace.

Ultimately, he [Jesus] undercut all the laws, statutes, and directives. The result
is that each of you who worship him will suffer in a double sense. You will not
observe the Torah of Moses, which is a Torah of law, because of the Torah of grace,
which he [Jesus] gave you. Likewise, you do not fulfill the Torah of grace at all,
in many senses. You war with one another; you despoil one another. [This is true]
not only for you, but even for those who enter the priesthood and wear hair-cloth
and refrain from wine and meat. Even they despoil property and do most of their
business in ways severely prohibited to them. Therefore I conclude that you have
 Fashioning identities – other and self 353
neither the old nor the new, neither a way nor a path; rather [you have] only
darkness and death.33
The reference here to Christian priests and monks plays a significant role
in regard to the attainability of Christian ideals. Within Christian society
itself there was full recognition of the heights of human achievement de-
manded by the Christian vision, the difficulties in reaching those heights,
and the need for withdrawal to special circumstances in order to reach the
goal. In a sense, monastic society was viewed as the precursor and stepping
stone to such achievement by broader segments of the Christian com-
munity. Our Jewish polemicists first of all disputed the notion of limited
achievement of religious ideals by a small and select population. In their
eyes, the one true God had communicated demands that were to be met by
the entire community of Israel and that in fact could be met by the entire
community of Israel. Moreover, our Jewish polemicists regularly denigrated
the achievements of the small and select group of the Christian elect. This
denigration – enunciated by Joseph Kimhi, Jacob ben Reuben, and Rabbi
Meir bar Simon – represented a final buttressing of the Jewish argument for
the unattainability of Christian ideals. In effect, these Jewish polemicists
claimed that, were one to examine carefully the Christian clergy and the
monastic communities, the unattainability of Christian ideals would be
proven decisively. Even these selected segments of Christian society were
not successful in their quest.
By contrast, Jewish behaviors were regulated – claimed our Jewish
polemicists – by biblical mandates, which were both reasonable and achiev-
able. Jews were guided pragmatically in their efforts to behave as well as
human nature might allow. The lack of specially identified groups of devo-
tees who might be capable of achieving overly high ideals was particularly
telling. There was – in Jewish eyes – no need for such a special group, since
the entire community was committed to an unwavering effort to reach the
attainable.
Thus, Christian doctrine was portrayed as irrational; Christian practice
was tainted by the same basic unreasonableness; Christian practice was
oriented toward goals that were beyond human attainment. For our Jewish
polemicists, the contrast with Judaism could hardly have been sharper. Fully
grounded in the divine teachings and commandments of the Hebrew Bible,
Jewish doctrine was simple and pure; Jewish practice was likewise reasonable
and achievable. Jews considering seriously and rationally the choice between
these two faith systems could hardly have suffered anything in the way of
33 Milh.amot ha-Shem, 146.
354 Underlying issues
uncertainty. Our Jewish authors insisted that an obvious choice in favor of
the Jewish system had to be patent.
Let us now turn our attention to some of the specific goals of reli-
gious practice that play heavily into the contrast between Christianity and
Judaism, between Christian society and Jewish society. The first of these,
we noted, is the biblical goal of peace and tranquility. That goal is reflected
in numerous biblical passages, perhaps most famously in Isaiah’s vision of a
day when swords are to be beaten into ploughshares and humans no longer
learn war. For Jews, the divergence of Christian society from this biblical
ideal was so obvious as to hardly require comment. We recall Nahmanides’s
claimed observation at the opening of the second day of the Barcelona
proceedings: “From the days of Jesus till now, all the world has been full of
violence and pillaging. Indeed, Christians spill blood more than the other
nations.”34 Now, the immediate context of this devastating observation was
a response to Friar Paul’s ill-considered question as to whether the rabbi
believed that the Messiah has already come. However, this observation
has broader significance as a general condemnation of Christian society,
highlighted in the claim that “Christians spill blood more than the other
nations.”
This Jewish critique of Christian society was related, in part, to the
ubiquity of internal strife on the medieval scene. As a somewhat primitive
feudal society struggling to move toward larger units of political power
and a higher level of governmental efficiency, western Christendom du-
ring the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was plagued by ongoing strife
among the small principalities of which it had been composed. More im-
portant, the move toward larger units of political power involved consid-
erable imposition of military force. As noted recurrently, southern France
was the scene of a brutal religious/military takeover by northern-French
armies, and the Iberian peninsula saw the expansion through conquest of
heretofore Muslim territories by Aragonese troops. Perhaps more important
was the sacralization of military force through the new institution of cru-
sading. The crusades – aimed at both external and internal religious foes –
elevated fighting and bloodshed to the status of exalted religious ideal. All
this was seen by our Jewish polemicists as evidence of major departure from
biblical norms and evidence of the failures of Christian society.
Jews, utterly devoid of political power, could easily maintain claims of
fidelity to biblical teachings related to peace and tranquility. Because of the
sensitivity of the issue of Jewish powerlessness, the emphasis in this area

34 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 674–675.

 Fashioning identities – other and self 355
was very much on Christian shortcoming, without the parallel discussion
of Jewish achievement. At best, our Jewish authors insist that, with true
messianic advent, the society of the future controlled by Jews would achieve
the ideals of peace and tranquility proclaimed by Israel’s prophets.
To move from the macrocosm to the microcosm, compassionate con-
sideration for fellow humans was yet another core value identified by our
Jewish polemicists. Once more, they found this value woefully missing
in Christian society. While proclaiming itself a religion of love and grace
and in fact contrasting itself with the Jewish emphasis on law and legalism,
Christianity in fact – in the view of our Jewish polemicists – was profoundly
deficient in its everyday treatment of others, particularly the vulnerable and
the needy. In Jewish eyes, medieval Christian society was awash in ill will
toward neighbors and in mistreatment of the vulnerable – for example,
travelers, the needy, and the aged. Biblical insistence on fundamental so-
cietal morality was – according to our polemicists – patently disregarded,
with the resultant profusion of robbery on the roadways and oppression in
the towns. To be sure, medieval Christian moralists lamented the injustices
found in their society as well. For the Christian moralists, however, these
were shortcomings that had to be overcome. For the Jewish polemicists,
these failures were endemic to Christian society and a sure indication of
their flawed nature.
In this area, contrast between Christian failure and Jewish achievement
abounded. Medieval Jews in general were extremely proud of the internal
arrangements in their relatively small communities for treatment of the
wayfarer and the needy. Regulations governing communal funding of these
efforts were extensive, and private initiative seems to have been widespread
as well. We have had occasion to note repeated insistence on the part of our
Jewish authors on this positive aspect of the medieval Jewish record. Joseph
Kimhi, the very first of our Jewish writers, was intense in his highlighting of
Christian societal shortcomings and of contrasting Jewish successes. Rabbi
Meir bar Simon also spoke glowingly, albeit relatively briefly, of this aspect
of Jewish achievement.
Finally, there was considerable concern in medieval society in general
with control of human impulse, especially the sexual impulse. Medieval
Christian leaders were obsessed with this issue, as were our Jewish au-
thors. The tone of our Jewish authors was uniformly condemnatory with
respect to Christian society and its failures in this regard. Joseph Kimhi
condemned Christian licentiousness harshly, noting especially the rearing
of young women as leading to immorality. Rabbi Meir bar Simon similarly
castigated Christian society for its lack of sexual propriety, focusing on the
356 Underlying issues
clergy and its tendency toward sexual misconduct. The brief addition that
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman makes to his upbraiding of Christendom for
its allegedly ubiquitous bloodshed is especially revealing, because it is so
much out of place. The overall issue was Nahmanides’s contention that the
Messiah had in fact not yet come, and one of his proofs was the widespread
warfare that he felt characterized western Christendom. With respect to this,
he made the damning comment we have earlier noted: “Indeed, Christians
spill blood more than the other nations.” To this he then adds, in an ut-
terly gratuitous way: “And they also commit acts of sexual impropriety.”35
For Nahmanides, as for Joseph Kimhi and Rabbi Meir bar Simon, sexual
licentiousness was almost a defining characteristic of medieval Christian
society.
Again, a sharp contrast is drawn between Christian failure and Jewish
success in restraining the powerful human sexual impulse. Joseph Kimhi,
who claimed that Christian training of the young, especially young women,
was deficient, claimed in contrast that Jews were zealous in all aspects of
moral education, never sparing the rod and thereby spoiling the child. He
noted with particular emphasis the Jewish concern for the upbringing of
young women, preparing them thereby for a life of chastity and modesty.
The contrast could hardly have been sharper.

Anna Sapir Abulafia has analyzed in considerable detail the cultural changes
that took place on the twelfth-century scene in medieval western Christen-
dom and has argued that these changes brought about a shift in the image
of Judaism and the Jews.36 According to Sapir Abulafia, twelfth-century
Christians viewed their Jewish neighbors in increasingly negative ways. In
her analysis, Sapir Abulafia focuses on three developments, all related to
the new emphasis on reason and reasonability – the growing sense of the
Jews as irrational; the accelerating conviction of Jewish inability to read
Scripture aright; and the deepening perception of the Jews as mired in the
physical and the corporeal, concretized in particular in the Jewish attraction
to moneylending.37 While these themes are by no means new to Christian
thinking about Judaism and the Jews, it is Sapir Abulafia’s contention that
they take on enhanced force during the twelfth century, as a result of the
major changes taking place in the culture of western Christendom. What
should be striking to us, at the end of the present inquiry, is the extent to
35 Vikuah. Barcelona, 311; The Disputation at Barcelona, 674–675.
36 Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance.
37 The three key chapters at the close of the Sapir Abulafia study are: “Christianized Reason at Work,”
“The Testimony of the Hebrew Bible,” and “Bodies and Money.”
 Fashioning identities – other and self 357
which this Christian critique of Judaism and the Jews runs parallel to the
twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish view of Christianity and Christians
just now identified.
Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christian thinkers would surely have
agreed with the criteria established by their Jewish counterparts for assess-
ing religious traditions. They would have acknowledged the Jewish claim
that religions must be judged in terms of both doctrine and practice, that
doctrine and practice are deeply intertwined, and that doctrine must be
formulated in a way that leads to achievement of goodness and decency in
practice. Christian thinkers would have agreed as well as to the ideals of
peacefulness, compassion and charity, and sexual restraint. To be sure, these
Christian thinkers would have – and in fact, as shown by Sapir Abulafia,
did – come to opposite conclusions as to the failures of Christian teachings
and behaviors and the successes of Jewish teachings and behaviors.
To cite briefly two points of intense disagreement in assessment of
Christianity and Judaism and of Christians and Jews, Christian thinkers
believed that Judaism – and not Christianity – was steeped in obvious ir-
rationality. For Christian thinkers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Judaism was mired in primitive conceptualization of the deity, conceptu-
alization far inferior to that of Christianity. Yet more strikingly, Christian
leadership saw Judaism and Jews – not Christianity and Christians – as
mired in the corporeal and the material. Jews were alleged to be corporeal
in theological thinking, in their reading of Scripture, in their sense of ser-
vice to God, in their everyday lives and behaviors. This striking agreement
in principle and divergence in detail is a fascinating aspect of medieval
Christian–Jewish interaction.
Since this study is focused upon the Jewish side of the Christian–Jewish
debate, what is of primary significance for us is the extent to which the
Jews of late twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and northern
Spain comfortably shared allegiance to the criteria espoused by majority
society for assessment of religious faith.38 To a significant extent, this as-
similation is yet another index of the common elements in the two sibling
religions. Certainly, for example, the highlighting of ideals such as peace
and compassion can be easily traced back to the Israelite teachings ab-
sorbed by both communities. From another perspective, the shared criteria

38 In earlier work, specifically on the patterns of martyrdom among Jews exposed to First-Crusade anti-
Jewish violence and on the narrative styles in which the reports of these events were written, I have
attempted to show the same kind of sharing of underlying views coupled with radically divergent
assessment of detail. See European Jewry and the First Crusade and God, Humanity, and History. See
further works along the same lines cited above, n. 21.
358 Underlying issues
we have identified suggest once again the extent to which the Jews of me-
dieval western Christendom were part and parcel of the larger ambience
in which they lived. Hardly isolated from major currents in twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Christian society, these Jewish communities were deeply
affected by the new emphasis on reason and rationality that is seen by recent
scholars as the core element in the so-called twelfth-century renaissance.
Christians may have believed that this new emphasis strengthened their
age-old case against Judaism and the Jews. Jews as well adopted the new
veneration for reason and its powers, but they felt that – to the contrary
– considerations of reason forged a new weapon in their struggle against a
larger and increasingly more aggressive foe.
Thus, what was most new and exciting in cultural terms quickly made
its way into the polemical arena, buttressing the case made by both the
Christian majority and the Jewish minority. This suggests once more that
the polemical debate of the Middle Ages was hardly a mindless and in-
transigent digging in of heels on the part of two thoughtless adversaries,
mired in traditional argumentation against one another. To the contrary,
all the innovations of a dynamic and rapidly changing cultural scene were
introduced into the ever-shifting argumentation of the two venerable ad-
versaries.

From the very beginning of this study, I have emphasized the embeddedness
of the polemical literature we have been analyzing in its social context.39 Our
five Jewish authors were communal leaders who took upon themselves the
important task of identifying potentially dangerous Christian claims and of-
fering guidance to their fellow-Jews in rebutting those claims. Our Jewish
polemicists utilized their traditional Jewish learning, their knowledge of
contemporary Christian and Jewish thinking, and their literary abilities in
this enterprise. They presented a wide range of Christian readings of the
Hebrew Bible and of Christian and Jewish history; they isolated a num-
ber of Christian contentions rooted in human reason. To each and every
one of these Christian assertions they offered vigorous counter-arguments;
they functioned as intellectual leaders in guiding their co-religionists in
understanding and countering significant religious dangers.
The role played by our Jewish polemicists in leading their commu-
nities has been obvious throughout most of this study. By virtue of
their knowledge, these authors provided requisite guidance by identifying

39 Recall my citation of Jacob Katz’s Exclusiveness and Tolerance, along with David Berger’s observations
on that important work, in the introduction.
 Fashioning identities – other and self 359
Christian claims and projecting Jewish responses. This leadership role is,
however, less obvious with respect to the closing and most significant of
the polemical strategies we have encountered, the drawing of contrastive
portraits of an irrational and debased Christian society and a rational and
dignified Jewish society. Here, I would tentatively suggest, the relationship
between intellectual leaders and their followers is more complex. It seems to
me highly likely that, in this area, our authors may have, on the one hand,
continued to lead, that is to suggest meaningful stances to their Jewish con-
temporaries. At the same time, they may well have acted as followers also,
working from a broad Jewish consensus with regard to the relative standing
of the two competing religio-cultural communities. To a significant extent,
our Jewish authors may have served in this regard as formulators of an
accepted Jewish consensus, rather than initiators of Jewish argumentation.
This is not meant to suggest any less significant an achievement. Formu-
lation of a communal consensus in an articulate and appealing format is
no less a contribution than clarification of threatening thrusts and creation
of meaningful parries. In both regards, our five Jewish authors served as
leaders – by and large as clarifiers and initiators, occasionally as formula-
tors and expositors of a pre-existent communal consensus. Both activities
were of great importance to a set of Jewish communities under accelerating
pressure from a vigorous and aggressive Christian majority.40

40 In the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, enormous attention has focused on Christian
teachings with regard to Judaism and the Jews. The creative – and at the same time destructive –
period we have been studying has attracted its fair share of attention in this effort to trace evolving
Christian perceptions of Judaism and the Jews and the implications of these perceptions. There has
been – for obvious reasons – far less concern with Jewish views of Christianity, since these Jewish views
had no real implications for Jewish treatment of Christians. Once again, however, it might well be
argued that this vibrant period created a set of Jewish images of Christians and Christianity destined
to remain alive in Jewish consciousness over the ages. Further study of this legacy is warranted.
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 Index of subjects and proper names

Abelard, Peter 328 confession, Christian (criticized) 308–310

Abraham bar Hiyya, R. 154 conversion (of Jews to Christianity), see Jews
Abraham ibn Ezra, R. 154 covenant
Adam, sin of 256, 257, 263–264, 269 transferred to Christians 188–190, 191–195
adversus Christianos literature, see polemic see also suffering, exile (Jewish)
adversus Judaeos literature, see Augustine of criteria for deciding religious truth 343–346
Hippo; polemic Crusade, see warfare
Almohade persecution 93, 94
Anselm of Canterbury 92, 251 Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammis. 77–78
Cur Deus Homo 328 degradation (Jewish), see suffering, exile
Aquila 124 divinity of Jesus, see Incarnation; Trinity
argumentation, Christian mode of, see Bible;
Law; miracles; prophecies Eucharist (criticized) 307–308
Augustine of Hippo 47, 58–66, 74, 154 exegesis, biblical, as new Jewish literary
Adversus Judaeos 58, 61–65, 125 genre 80, 81–83
City of God 58–61, 65 exile (Jewish)
Babylonian 185
Balaam 70, 71, 203–205 see also suffering
baptism
infant (criticised) 310 Fulcodi, Archbishop Guy of Narbonne, see
of Jesus 285 Clement IV
Barcelona disputation 116
see also Moses ben Nahman Gerona, Rabbi of, see Moses ben Nahman
Bible Gospels, see New Testament
Hebrew, as source of truth 61–62, 95, 122–123, Guillaume de Broue, Archbishop of
340 Narbonne 106
Latin 124–125
see also Vulgate Herman of Cologne
literal vs. allegorical reading of 125–138 Opusculum de Conversione Sua 324–325
translation of 123–125 Hexapla 124
see also Hexapla; New Testament; see also Origen
Septuagint history as evidence of religious truth 31–32, 39,
182, 215, 340–343
Christian, Christianity
behavior (compared to Jewish) 299–306 images, Christian (criticized) 308
society (criticized) 311–313 Incarnation
see also baptism; confession; Gospels; images; argumentation from morality 276–277
Incarnation; Law (Jewish); miracles; argumentation from reason 237–238,
missionising; New Testament; penance; 239–241, 245–246, 247, 255, 256–258,
prophecies; success; Trinity; warfare 264–265, 267, 268–273, 334, 349–350
Clement IV, Pope 13, 106 see also Trinity

373
374
Incarnation (cont.)
argumentation from Scripture 233–244,
245–249, 256
necessity for 328
Innocent III, Pope 306
Jacob ben Reuben 98, 325
argumentation from biblical truth 102–103
argumentation from reason 101–102
Milh.amot ha-Shem 8, 14–15, 16, 98–103,
120–121, 123, 127–129, 135–136, 153–155,
170–172, 184–185, 187, 236–238, 241,
265–276, 282–289, 298, 321, 322–323, 326,
327–328, 332–333, 341–342, 352–353
James I, King of Aragon 115, 195, 245
Jerome, S. 124–125, 128–129, 130, 131–132, 152,
154, 245, 246–247, 281, 326
Hieronymi presbyteri opera: Opera exegetica 152
Jesus
death and resurrection 168–170
as divine 172
as healer 166, 167
as historical figure 25, 27
as Messiah; prophesised
characteristics 166–170; refutation based
on Scripture 217–222, 223–229;
suffering 162; time of advent 143–152; see
also prophecies; miracles
mission to bring God’s word 166–167
see also Servant of the Lord
Jews, Jewish
behavior (compared to Christian) 299–306
conversion to Christianity 13, 17
witness to Christian truth 58, 60, 65, 246–247
Judah ha-Levi
Kitāb al-radd wa-’l-dalı̄l fi’l-dı̄n al-dhalı̄l 79
Justin Martyr
Dialogue with Trypho 56–58, 65, 66, 125
Kimhi, David 103–105
argumentation, method of 105
Commentary on Psalms (Ha-Perush ha-Shalem
‘al Tehillim) 8, 120–121, 226, 238–241,
246–247, 320, 322, 331
Kimhi, Joseph 94
argumentation, method of 98, 130
Sefer ha-Berit 7, 94–98, 120–121, 126–127,
130–135, 136–138, 155–157, 184, 186–187,
188–189, 192–193, 194–195, 228–229,
245–246, 254–258, 276, 298–304, 320–321,
322, 326, 332, 343, 356
Sefer ha-Galui 96
Lateran Council, Fourth 306, 308
Law (Jewish)
Index
in Gospels; intrusion of externals 40–41;
moral vs ritual 39–40, 41–42
status in Christianity 39–40, 46–47, 53–54,
57, 63
Maimonides, see Moses ben Maimon, Rabbi
Meir bar Simon, Rabbi 105–106
argumentation; from Scripture 107;
style 107–108
Milh.emet Miz.vah 8, 13, 105–114, 120–121,
185–186, 190–191, 193–194, 197, 198–200,
212–214, 218, 220–222, 223–228, 276–277,
290–297, 304–313, 321, 322, 329–330, 331,
343–346, 350–351
overview 108–114
Messiah, see Incarnation; Jesus; Servant of the
Lord
Midrashim 68–70
Milh.emet H . ovah 95–96
miracles (Christian)
early skepticism 34, 35–36
evidence of divine intervention 34–36, 49–50,
51, 53
evidence of divine status 32, 57, 122
genre familiar to Jews 29–30
medieval criticism 36, 292, 293–297
occurrence in medieval times 226–227
Mishnah 68–69
missionising, Christian
impetus for 91–93
result of spiritual confidence 9–10
result of spiritual doubt 11
Mordechai Ben Jehosafa of Avignon
Sefer Mah.azik Emunah 8
Moses ben Maimon, Rabbi 104, 115, 251, 348
Moses ben Nahman, Rabbi 8, 114–121
Book of Redemption, The (Sefer
ha-Ge’ulah) 120, 159–161, 186, 200–206,
208–210, 330
Disputation at Barcelona, The (Vikuah.
Barcelona) 116–120, 157–159, 172, 175–176,
187, 193, 195–197, 206–208, 211–212,
218–220, 244, 247–249, 258–265, 298, 320,
322, 333–335, 342–343
Perush Yisha‘yahu 118–119, 173–175, 217–218
Nahmanides, see Moses ben Nahman
New Testament
Book of Acts the authoritative version of
Church history 48
Gospels; authoritative for medieval
Christians 27–28; defining Christianity for
Jews 28; genre familiar to Jews 29–32
medieval Jewish criticism 282–297
Nicholas de Lyra
 Index
Responsio ad quendam Iudeum ex verbis
Evangelii secundum Mattheum contra
Christum nequiter arguentem 99, 103
Origen 123–124, 132, 281
Paul
conversion 52
epistles 46; citation in this study 47
innovator 26, 27, 46–47, 48–49
at Pisidian Antioch 52–54, 125, 167, 235–236
at Rome 54–55
Paul Christian, Friar 111
at Barcelona 115, 117–119, 158, 187, 207, 211,
219, 244, 248–249, 263–264
converted Jew 13
at Gerona 259–261
negative portrayal of 333–334, 337
penance, Christian (criticised) 309–310
philosophy, as new Jewish literary genre
76
polemic
adversus Judeaos 6, 7, 9, 340
medieval; modern disparagement of 12,
16–22; argument from reason 250–275;
evidence of intellectual exchange between
Jews and Christians 324–325
medieval Jewish; appeal to goal of
compassion 355; appeal to goal of
peace 354–355; appeal to
reasonability 348–354; audience for 14–15,
96–97, 318–319; caricature, absence of 329;
certitude, tone of 322–323; Christian
thinking, representation of 327–329;
Christian thinking, understanding
of 325–327; concern with sexual
propriety 355–356; constructing
identity 20–21; defensive 15–16; first such
in Christendom 7–8; genres 329–335;
impetus for 93–94, 97, 318–322;
offensive 16; prosaic, not poetic 335–338;
rebuttal of Christian argumentation
153–161, 170–177;
see also Jacob ben Reuben; Kimhi, David;
Kimhi, Joseph; Meir bar Simon; Moses ben
Nahman
pre-medieval Christian 139–140
pre-medieval Jewish 6, 67–87; in Muslim
world 76–81, 84–86; in northern
Europe 83–84; sparse 67
prophecies
fulfilled in Jesus’ time 36–39, 49–51, 53, 54–55,
57, 122, 151–152
nature and interpretation of 59–60
punishment threatened 54
375
punishment (Jewish), see suffering; exile
(Jewish)
Qis..sat Mujādalat al-Usquf 15, 84–86, 87, 318,
319
Qumran Jewish community 30
Ramban, see Moses ben Nahman
Rashi, see Solomon ben Isaac
Raymond, Friar, of Penaforte 259–260, 329
Raymond Martin
Pugio Fidei 181
redemption, Jewish
dating of 205–209
grounded in biblical revelation 198–210
see also suffering; exile (Jewish)
Saadia Gaon 78–79, 80–81, 154
Saul of Tarsus, see Paul
Scripture, see Bible
Sefer Nestor ha-Komer 15, 84–86, 87, 318, 319
Septuagint 123, 124, 125, 150
Servant of the Lord 54, 162–177
as Jewish people 176, 211–212
as Messiah 118, 172–175, 217–218
overview 162–166
Shem Tov ibn Shaprut
Even Boh.en 99
Solomon ben Isaac, Rabbi 83–84
success, Christian
contrasted with Jewish suffering, exile 63–64,
182–183
reality disputed 216–217
see also suffering; exile (Jewish); warfare
suffering, exile (Jewish)
contrasted with Christian success 63–64,
182–183
divinely predicted 111
evidence of advent of Messiah 186–188
evidence of rejection by God 181–183,
188–190
prelude to future redemption 183–186,
210–211, 212–214
punishment for rejection of Jesus 42–44, 47,
54, 55, 58, 60–61
reality not disputed 191, 215
Symmachus 124
Talmud(s) 68–72
Babylonian 69; tractate Avodah Zarah 70;
tractate Gittin 71; tractate Sanhedrin 71;
tractate Sotah 70; tractate Taanit 72
Jerusalem 68
references to Jesus; ambiguous 70–71; lack of
argumentation 71–72; scarce 69–70
376 Index
Ten Commandments (acknowledged by both usury, see behavior, Christian and Jewish
faiths) 229, 299, 300 compared
Theodotion 124
Titus 71 Vulgate 132, 150, 326
Toldot Yeshu 6, 72–75 see also Jerome
parentage and birth of Jesus
73–74 warfare, Christian
Trinity common in medieval Europe 354
argumentation from reason 259–263, 266, evidence of Christian failure 222–223
267–268 evidence of Christian success 10
argumentation from Scripture fulfilling prophecies 224–225
255 leading to familiarity with Muslim
pre-medieval Jewish polemic 79 world 10–11, 92
see also Incarnation sacralization 354
 Scripture index

h e b rew b i b le 12:3 147 2:15 128

12:7 147, 208 2:17 128
Chronicles 248 12:11–12 147, 159, 207, 208 4:6 311
6:5–7 189, 194
2 Chronicles 15:7 97, 184 Deuteronomy 6:8 136
4:25–31 202 15:13 209
Daniel 81, 102, 143–161, 188, 4:29–31 210 24:43 131
199–200, 205–209, 213, 4:30 209 49:10 182, 184, 186–187, 188,
223–224, 323 8:12–14 312 191–193, 326
2 146, 223–224, 233–234 17:8 295
2:32–35 146 18:15 133, 134, 184 Habakkuk
2:34–35 233–234 18:16 136 1:5 54
2:35 223 18:19 133
2:44 234 19:1–10 202 Hosea
2:44–45 146 27:15 308 11:1 37
3:18 174 30:1–10 202
7 39, 146, 147 31:16 203 Isaiah 30, 102
7:7 146 31:16–32:43 203 2:4 220, 221
7:13 72 32:21 199 6:11–12 55
7:13–14 146, 234 32:36 203 6:9–10 54–55
7:25 146, 208 34:10 133–134 7 96, 291
8 146–147 7:14 19, 37, 126–127, 131–133,
8:14 147, 208 Ecclesiastes 134, 234
9 147, 148–161, 205–207 1:13 175 9:5 130–131, 184, 234, 256, 299
9:2 145, 151 7:20 309 11:1 37
9:7 145, 151 11:9 220
9:8 145, 151 Exodus 157, 284 35:3–4 97, 184
9:10–12 145, 151 7:8–8:15 34 38 291
9:23 148 20:3 307 40:18 308
9:24 152, 153–154, 155, 156–157, 20:4 308 40:3 37
158, 160 20:5 308 42 166
9:24a 149 20:21–22 128 42:1–4 (1st Servant
9:24b 149–150 37:25–26 128 passage) 162, 163–164,
9:24–27 118, 119, 148–161, 184, 38:1–2 128 166–167
188, 206–207 45:1 156
9:25 150, 155 Ezekiel 102 49:1–6 (2nd Servant
9:25–26 156 18:23 286 passage) 162, 163–164,
9:25–27 150, 152, 160–161 33:11 286 166–167
9:26 152, 155 49:6 54, 62
10–12 147–148 Genesis 255 50:4–11 (3rd Servant
12:1 147 1:31 128, 129 passage) 162, 164–165

377
378 Scripture index
50:6 164 24:15–23 204 Zachariah
52:13–15 165 24:17 205 9:9 218
52:13–53:12 (4th Servant 24:5–7 204 9:10 221
passage) 118, 119, 127, 162, 12:2 225
165–166, 167–170, 171–177, Proverbs 102 3:9 221
211, 212, 217, 322, 331 21:16 131
53:1 167 30:19 131
53:3 165
53:4 167 Psalms 102, 104, n ew t e s ta m e n t
53:4–6 166 234–249
53:7–9 165 2 226, 235–241, 247 Acts 48–56, 125, 170
53:10–12 212 2:1–2 235 2:14–17 49–50
53:11–12 168 2:7 53, 236, 237, 2:22–28 50
53:12 165 239–240 2:29–33 50
55:3 53 2:7–9 235 2:29–36 243
56:7 40 2:8 238 2:34–36 51
60:12 221 2:11–12 236 3:12–16 51
2:12 238 3:17–21 51
Jeremiah 102 16 50, 125 6:8 52
2:2–3 200 16:8–11 50 7:58 52
11:16 171 16:10 53 8:1 52
11:19 174 19:5 62 8:30–35 170
25:11 148, 149, 160 27:1 293 9:1–22 52
26:1–19 43 31:25 97, 184 13:27–33 53
29:10 148, 149, 160 45 62 13:33 236
31 62 45:3 171 13:34–35 53
31:15 37 50 63–64 13:36–37 53
31:33 220 50:1 64 13:39 53
50:7 64 13:40–41 54
Job 102 59:12 64 13:46–47 54, 167
69 62 15:1–35 26
Joel 72 134–135, 138 28:25–28 54–55
2:28–32 49–50 72:11 218
72:8 219, 221 Colossians
Jonah 189, 194 80 62 2:17 63
89:27–28 237
Leviticus 110 38, 125, 241–249 Hebrews
3:17 307 110:1 51, 241, 242–245 1:5 236
26 198–199 110:2 241 5:5 236
26:32 225 110:3 246
26:36–38 199 110:4 246, 247 John
26:44–45 199 110:5–6 242 12:36–38 167
31 128, 129 118:22–23 44
90:2 238 Luke 35, 37–38, 43, 48,
Malachi 168–170
3 286 1 Samuel 1:32 34–35
1:16 175 1:5–38 30
Micah 17:56 131 3:23–38 292
5:2 37 7:21–23 33
5:12 307 2 Samuel 245 16:19–31 257
19:41–44 43
Numbers Song of Songs 135, 335 20:41–44 51
23:7–10 204 8:8 212–213 21:27 234
23:18–24 204 8:8–10 111 22:35–37 168
24:3–9 204 8:9 213–214 22:69 234
 Scripture index 379
24:25–26 169 5:25–34 33 2:16–18 37
24:25–27 37–38 5:35–42 33 2:19–23 37
24:44–47 38 11:15–17 40, 292 3:1–3 37
24:46–47 170 12:28–34 42 3:13–17 285
12:38–40 40 4:1–11 284, 285
Mark 13:2 43 5:22 41
1:9–11 35 13:7–20 151 8:16–17 167
1:23–26 33 13:26 234 12:18–21 166
1:30–31 33 13:35 242 12:30–32 289
1:32–34 33 14:62 234 13:10–13 286–287
1:40–42 33 14:62–65 38 15:21–25 286–287
2:2–5 33 15:29–31 34 18:11–13 286–287
3:1–5 33, 41 21:19 287, 288
3:10–11 33 Matthew 284 21:41–43 43–44
3:21–22 34 1:1–17 292 22:41–46 243
4:35–39 33 1:18–23 37 24:30 234
5:1–13 33 2:13–15 37 25:64 234
5:21–24 33 2:1–6 37 28:11–15 36
REVELATION