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Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age explores the hypothesis that in the long seventeenth century humanist-inspired biblical criticism contributed significantly to the decline of ecclesiastical truth claims. Historiography pictures this era as one in which the dominant position of religion and church began to show signs of erosion under the influence of vehement debates on the sacrosanct status of the Bible. Until quite recently, this gradual but decisive shift has been attributed to the rise of the sciences, in particular astronomy and physics. This authoritative volume looks at biblical criticism as an innovative force and as the outcome of developments in ph...
The Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.
The Spanish and Portuguese Jews of seventeenth-century Amsterdam cultivated a remarkable culture centered on the Bible. School children studied the Bible systematically, while rabbinic literature was pushed to levels reached by few students; adults met in confraternities to study Scripture; and families listened to Scripture-based sermons in synagogue, and to help pass the long, cold winter nights of northwest Europe. The community's rabbis produced creative, and often unprecedented scholarship on the Jewish Bible as well as the New Testament. Amsterdam's People of the Book shows that this unique, Bible-centered culture resulted from the confluence of the Jewish community's Catholic and conv...
Defending Judaism: Jewish Writing and Religious Toleration in Early Modern Europe explores the decisive contributions of Jewish writers to the expansion of religious toleration during the period 1600-1789. A key breakthrough for this development was the emergence of charismatic Jewish scholars who galvanized Christian audiences, garnering sufficiently broad recognition as trusted authorities that they were able to improve public perceptions of Judaism and, in some cases, motivate liberalization of governmental policies. They were Jewish experts whom Christians judged worthy of cultivating and whose writings became central elements in the larger Christian discourse on Judaism and toleration. ...
An illuminating biography of the great Amsterdam rabbi and celebrated popularizer of Judaism in the seventeenth century Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was among the most accomplished and cosmopolitan rabbis of his time, and a pivotal intellectual figure in early modern Jewish history. He was one of the three rabbis of the “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam, a community that quickly earned renown worldwide for its mercantile and scholarly vitality. Born in Lisbon, Menasseh and his family were forcibly converted to Catholicism but suspected of insincerity in their new faith. To avoid the horrors of the Inquisition, they fled first to southwestern France, and then to Amsterdam, where they finally settled. Menasseh played an important role during the formative decades of one of the most vital Jewish communities of early modern Europe, and was influential through his extraordinary work as a printer and his efforts on behalf of the readmission of Jews to England. In this lively biography, Steven Nadler provides a fresh perspective on this seminal figure.
Many small, early modern European states tried to follow in the footsteps of their bigger neighbours and expand beyond the oceans. Tuscan and Genoese Aspirations to Transoceanic Trade (17th Century) traces the little-known history of two of these states: the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Republic of Genoa. These two old and prestigious commercial centres found themselves gradually displaced over the 17th century as the centre of gravity of the European economy moved away from the Mediterranean. In an attempt to combat this, Florentine and Genoese elites collected information and reviewed projects, established joint-stock companies, and sent ships to East Asia and the Americas. While their plans failed, their vicissitudes illustrate the mechanisms that stood behind European expansion overseas, and how its results differed widely from expectations.
One of the most persistent, powerful, and dangerous notions in the history of the Jews in the diaspora is the prodigious talent attributed to them in all things economic. From the medieval Jewish usurer through the early-modern port-Jew and court-Jew to the grand financier of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and contemporary investors, Jews loom large in the economic imagination. For capitalists and Marxists, libertarians and radical reformers, Jews are intertwined with the economy. This association has become so natural that we often overlook the history behind the making and remaking of the complex cluster of perceptions about Jews and economy, which emerged within different historic...
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