This book deals with the impact of the study of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah on Jewish-Christian relations. Dionysius Vossius, Guglielmus Vorstius, and Georgius Gentius constitute a major focus of the present study and attention is given to their attitudes to and opinions of Judaism and their relations with members of the Jewish community.

This book deals with the impact of the study of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah on Jewish-Christian relations. Dionysius Vossius, Guglielmus Vorstius, and Georgius Gentius constitute a major focus of the present study and attention is given to their attitudes to and opinions of Judaism and their relations with members of the Jewish community.

In 1665, as Jews abandoned reason for the ecstasy of enthusiasm for self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbetai Zevi, Jacob Sasportas watched in horror. Dweck tells the story of the Sephardic rabbi who challenged Sabbetai Zevi's improbable claims and warned his fellow Jews that their Messiah was not the answer to their prayers..

This volume contains a number of studies on Jewish-Christian re lations, in which special attention is given to the Netherlands and England, and the texts of some recently discovered and other rare documents in the same field. The work originates in a symposium on this subject held on 23 January 1985 at the University of Leiden under the auspices of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute for the study of Anglo-Dutch relations. Various authors have contributed to this volume. Each author is responsible for his own contribu tion; thus, in cases of discrepancies in interpretation, orthography or method of transcription we have made no attempt at harmoni zation. We thank all those who have made publication possible. The Stichting Dr Hendrik Muller's Vaderlandsch Fonds gave a gener ous grant in defrayal of the cost of printing, and the Ir. F.E.D. Enschede-Stichting kindly covered the additional expenses re sulting from the translation and editing of some of the contribu tions. Last but not least we should like to thank Prof. R.H. Pop kin for his stimulating interest in the publication of this volume.

According to a commonplace narrative, the rise of modern political thought in the West resulted from secularization—the exclusion of religious arguments from political discourse. But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book’s central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson’s work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light. Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse.

In 1975, a group of Dutch and British scholars published a conference volume of collected essays entitled "Some Political Mythologies." That conference sought to examine the political myth as an object of historical study, particularly in the context of the tumultuous and exceptional history of the Low Countries. Thirty years later, a more diverse group of scholars gathered to re-examine the history of Dutch myth-making in light of developments in theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the role of myths in national identity, moral geography, and community formation. The results of their efforts appear in this volume, "Myth in History: History in Myth." The essays cover developments in history, anthropology, cartography, philosophy, art history, and literature as they pertain to how the Dutch historically perceived these myths and how the myths have been treated by previous generations of historians.

The Christian Reception of the Hebrew name of God has not previously been described in such detail and over such an extended period. This work places that varied reception within the context of early Jewish and Christian texts; Patristic Studies; Jewish-Christian relationships; Mediaeval thought; the Renaissance and Reformation; the History of Printing; and the development of Christian Hebraism. The contribution of notions of the Tetragrammaton to orthodox doctrines and debates is exposed, as is the contribution its study made to non-orthodox imaginative constructs and theologies. Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Hermetic and magical texts are given equally detailed consideration. There emerge from this sustained and detailed examination several recurring themes concerning the difficulty of naming God, his being and his providence.