This book, the results of a conference held in Israel in 1985, brings together many new perspectives on the significance of Menasseh ben Israel's ideas, and their relation to Christian millenarian views of the time and Jewish kabbalistic and messianistic thought. Scholars from America, Europe and Israel, working on various aspects of 17th century philosophy and religion present here in 18 essays important new data and interpretations of the Jewish and Christian background, and of Menasseh's ideas and their relation to those of Jewish and Christian thinkers of the time. Thus, this volume provides the grounds for reassessing, on the basis of recent scholarship, the ferment of messianic and millenarian ideas issuing from Holland and England in the mid-17th century.
Author(s): Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, Richard H. Popkin (eds.)
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 15
Publisher: E. J. Brill
Year: 1989
Language: English
Pages: 288
City: Leiden
Introduction / Richard H. Popkin vii
A Generation of Progress in the Historical Study of Dutch Sephardic Jewry / Yosef Kaplan 1
The Jewish Dimension of the Scottish Apocalypse: Climate, Covenant and World Renewal / Arthur H. Williamson 7
Thomas Brightman and English Apocalyptic Tradition / Avihu Zakai 31
Political Concepts in the World of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam during the Seventeenth Century: The Problem of Exclusion and the Boundaries of Self-Identity / Yosef Kaplan 45
The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory / Richard H. Popkin. 63
Menasseh ben Israel and the World of the Non-Jew / Henry Méchoulan 83
Menasseh ben Israel, Henry More and Johannes Hoornbeeck on the Pre-existence of the Soul / Jan van den Berg 98
Menasseh ben Israel's Christian Connection: Henry Jessey and the Jews / David S. Katz 117
Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement of the Mid-Seventeenth Century (1645-1657) / Jonathan I. Israel 139
Petrus Serrarius and Menasseh ben Israel: Christian Millenarianism and Jewish Messianism in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam / Ernestine G. E. van der Wall 164
Some Remarks regarding Six Autograph Letters by Menasseh ben Israel in the Amsterdam University Library / A. K. Offenberg 191
Menasseh ben Israel: Attitude Towards the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah / Joseph Dan 199
Kabbalah, Platonism and Prisca Theologia: The Case of R. Menasseh ben Israel / Moshe Idel 207
How Important Was Menasseh ben Israel? / Asa Kosher 220
The Messianic Politics of Menasseh ben Israel / Harold Fisch 228
Bocarro-Rosales and the Messianism of the Sixteenth Century / Antonio José Saraiva 240
Menasseh ben Israel's Approach to Messianism in the Jewish-Christian Context / Riuka Schatz 244
Menasseh ben Israel as a Meeting Point of Jewish and European History: Some Summary Comments / Michael Heyd 262
Place index 268
Name index 271
