In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Tradition, Heterodoxy and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period
  • Marianna D. Birnbaum
Chanita R. Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel, eds. Tradition, Heterodoxy and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period. The Goldstein-Goren Library of Jewish Thought 6. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006. 488 pp. illus. $26.55. ISBN: 965–342–926–4.

The papers in the volume under review investigate religious cultures during the early modern period. The large variety of essays covers almost all issues prevailing in the religious life of the time. The authors consider documents, treatises, literature, and illustrations created during that period, focusing on intra- and interreligious manifestations. The collapse of a uniform religious worldview and the impact of science provide a unifying thread among the essays. The spread of printing facilitated contact between the various faiths; their interpretation of the Bible also demonstrates how Jewish and Christian thinkers dealt with the concerns of their own communities. Thus essays investigating the issues of religious identity make up an important part of the volume. The contributions also underscore the idea of the interrelationship between the dominant Christian cultures and rabbinical Judaism. The treatises discussed in the volume therefore do not just define the identity of their authors but also establish their relationship to the “other.” The fear of the other began with the presence of Jews and Muslims in Europe. The bonus the reader receives from the volume is the several insightful references to the Muslims.

Three papers (by Achsah Guibbory, Jeanne Shami, and Matt Goldish) deal with the English Church, the Catholics, and the Jews. Matt Goldish analyzes the sermons of the famed Rabbi Aailion against the backdrop of seventeenth-century London. Two contributors (Cedric-Cohen-Skalli and Abraham Gross) render analyses of Isaac Abravanel and Solomon Malkho (Molhko), demonstrating that in their writing on the biblical Daniel, the two sages created and conveyed to their readers their very own self-perceptions.

The seminal role of printing is demonstrated by Cedric Cohen-Skalli’s paper on the first printed edition of Abravanel’s Ma‘aynei ha-Yeshu‘a (1551) and Ann Brener’s piece on Joseph Sarfati’s (Zarfati) greeting poem to the printer Daniel Bromberg, upon the second printing of the Biblia Rabbinica (1525). Boaz Huss analyzes the 1684 Sulzbach edition of the Zohar from a contextual point of view.

Religion’s powerful position in early modern literature is shown as Lawrence Besserman broaches Job’s role in the Reformation Bible. Albert C. Labriola argues that in Paradise Lost, the Angel of the Lord is comparable to the martyrdom and ascension of Isaiah in earlier Jewish theology. Sanford Budick discusses Kant’s engagement with both Milton’s poetry and the Book of Job. Noam Flinker gives a new meaning to literary theurgy in Shakespeare and Milton. Chanita Goodblatt reveals Christian Hebraisms and Jewish exegetical features in Sidnean Psalmes. In a number of essays the authors such as Amnon Raz-Krakozkin and Michael N. Rony connect the dots between religious issues and their social and political backdrop. Rony investigates the social and political ideas that informed Jewish commentaries on the story of the Tower of Babel. Regarding religion’s role in early [End Page 550] modern fiction and drama, Aaron Landau discusses the issue of female cultural crossing as it appears in Don Quixote and The Merchant of Venice. Anne Lake Prescott compares the sonnets of Anne Locke, a Protestant English woman, and Anne de Marquets, a nun, with David as a topic uniting them.

A number of papers are devoted to religious polemics: Golda Akhiezer explains how the Karaite Isaac of Troki had to develop special strategies in his polemics to argue with the Christians and the rabbis of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Daniel J. Lasker points to the continuity in the subject matter but also to the changes in style and structure of the Jewish anti-Christian polemics of the period. Arthur F. Marotti identifies the features defining early modern Catholic writing. William Kolbrener considers Mary Astell’s conceptions of love and science as they appear in the published form of Letters Concerning the Love of God.

Some contributions bring...

pdf

Share