Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity

Jeremy Cohen

Published by University of California Press 1999

Living Letters of the Law

Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity

Jeremy Cohen

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520922914

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Living Letters of the Law, Jeremy Cohen investigates the images of Jews and Judaism in the works of medieval Christian theologians from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas. He reveals how—and why—medieval Christianity fashioned a Jew on the basis of its reading of the Bible, and how this hermeneutically crafted Jew assumed distinctive character and power in Christian thought and culture.

Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, which constructed the Jews so as to mandate their survival in a properly ordered Christian world, is the starting point for this illuminating study. Cohen demonstrates how adaptations of this doctrine reflected change in the self-consciousness of early medieval civilization. After exploring the effect of twelfth-century Europe's encounter with Islam on the value of Augustine's Jewish witnesses, he concludes with a new assessment of the reception of Augustine's ideas among thirteenth-century popes and friars.

Consistently linking the medieval idea of the Jew with broader issues of textual criticism, anthropology, and the philosophy of history, this book demonstrates the complex significance of Christianity's "hermeneutical Jew" not only in the history of antisemitism but also in the broad scope of Western intellectual history.

Author / Editor information

Cohen Jeremy :

Jeremy Cohen, Professor of Medieval Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, has written two prize-winning books, The Friars and the Jews (1982), and "Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It" (1989). He is the editor ofEssential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict (1991), and From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought (1996).

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Augustinian Foundations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. The Augustinian Legacy in the Early Middle Ages: Adaptation, Reinterpretation, Resistance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
3. Reconceptualizing Jewish Disbelief in the Twelfth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
4. The Friars Reconsidered Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	391
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	401
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	437

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 461

eBook

Published: November 11, 1999
ISBN: 9780520922914