The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes

In this history Manuel ranges over the centuries, from antiquity to recent times, analyzing the diverse responses of European Christendom - Catholic, Protestant, and freethinking - to the culture and religious thought of the Judaism that survived, even thrived, in its midst. It is a history of marked contrasts. Though prolific in the outpouring of diatribes, European writers never agreed about Jewish thought and religion. should the worlds embodying Jewish beliefs be burned or ignored? Should they be consulted for what might be learned from them? Manuel shows the "rediscovery" of historical Judaism by Renaissance humanists alongside the vicious attacks mounted by Reformation leaders. He surveys the Christian Hebraists in the period that followed: clergymen, university professors, and gentlemen-scholars who studied Jewish religious thought and Hebrew to further Christian purposes. And he discusses the many ends - missionary, political, eschatological, Judeophobic - to which Christian thinkers turned their learning. In the 18th century the English deists and French "philosophes" - notably Voltaire - virulently attacked what they described as a primitive oriental religion. Manuel's picture of writers in 19th-century Germany encompasses the learned research, negative image-making, and polemics of the period.