Living letters of the law : ideas of the Jew in medieval Christianity / Jeremy Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Jeremy, Author.

Series:

S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies.

The S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Judaism (Christian theology)--History of doctrines--Middle Ages, 600-1500.

Judaism (Christian theology).

Jews--History.

Jews.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (468 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [1999]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Augustinian Foundations

2. The Augustinian Legacy in the Early Middle Ages: Adaptation, Reinterpretation, Resistance

3. Reconceptualizing Jewish Disbelief in the Twelfth Century

4. The Friars Reconsidered

Afterword

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 401-435) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780585370088

0585370087

9780520922914

0520922913

9780520218703

0520218701

OCLC:

48139723