Dialogue Against the Jews

by Petrus Alfonsi, Irven M. Resnick (Translator)

Petrus Alfonsi's Dialogue Against the Jews (ca. 1109) breaks new ground in the history of Christian anti-Jewish polemics. As a recent convert from Judaism, Alfonsi introduced an intimate knowledge of Jewish literature and contemporary practice absent from earlier Christian sources. This knowledge enabled him to attack for the first time the Talmud (or, more broadly, post-biblical Jewish literature) as a source of Jewish error, with arguments drawn from philosophy and theology, astronomy, medicine, and physics. Equally important, Alfonsi's Dialogue contains an extensive anti-Muslim polemic to explain not only why he abandoned Judaism but also why he rejected Islam and chose the Christian faith. For these reasons the Dialogue has been described as the most important anti-Jewish text of the Latin Middle Ages. This assessment is based not only on its innovative argumentation but also on the fact that it was one of the most popular medieval anti-Jewish polemics written. It was cited, often verbatim, by later Christian polemicists like Peter of Blois and used by Peter the Venerable. Alfonsi's Dialogue was known to Joachim of Fiore, who adapted its illustration of the mystery of the Trinity contained in the tetragrammaton; summarized by Vincent of Beauvais, who included a long extract from the Dialogue in his popular Speculum historiale ; exploited by Raymund Martini in his monumental Pugio Fidei ; and utilized by Abner de Burgos in his Mostrador de Justicia . It was also likely employed by Pablo Christiani to prepare for the public disputation at Barcelona (1263 C.E.) and later by Jerome de Santa Fe for the disputation at Tortosa (1413-1414 C.E.). Never before translated into English, this work presents to the reader perhaps the most important source for an intensifying medieval Christian-Jewish debate.

290 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Petrus Alfonsi (born Moses Sephardi) (c.1062 - 1110) was a Jewish Spanish physician, writer, astronomer, and polemicist, who converted to Christianity in 1106. He is also known just as Alphonsi, and as Pedro Alfonso, Peter Alfonsi or Peter Alphonse. Born in Islamic Spain, he mostly lived in England and France after his conversion.

He was born at an unknown date and place in the 11th century in Spain, and educated in al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain. As he describes himself, he was baptised at Huesca, capital of the Kingdom of Aragon, on St. Peter's Day, 29 June 1106, when he was probably approaching middle age; this is the first clear date we have in his biography. In honor of the saint Peter, and of his royal patron and godfather, the Aragonese King Alfonso I he took the name of Petrus Alfonsi (Alfonso's Peter).

By 1116 at the latest he had emigrated to England, where he seems to have remained some years, before moving to northern France. The date of his death is as unclear as that of his birth. He was famous as a writer during his lifetime, and remained so for the rest of the Middle Ages, with over 160 surviving medieval manuscripts containing works of his. The most common are his Dialogi contra Iudaeos (Dialogue Against the Jews), an imaginary conversation between a Jew and a Christian, and Disciplina Clericalis (A Training-school for the Clergy), in fact a collection of Eastern fables.

Reviews

[Yalla Balagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In twelfth-century Spain, a Jewish physician and polymath named Moses Sefardi strolled up to a baptismal font in Huesca, got himself renamed Petrus Alfonsi, chose King Alfonso I as godfather, and then sat down to explain himself to everyone who thought he had either lost his mind or found a better salary.

His chosen method was a debate with himself. Petrus plays the Christian; Moses plays the Jew. Both are him. The same man argues both sides.

"I have used the name that I now have as a Christian," he writes in the prologue, "whereas for refuting the arguments of the adversary, I have used the name Moses, which I had before baptism." Petrus and Moses are thus both present in the text at all times.

The book divides into twelve tituli, each one a fresh arena for the same tireless bout. Moses asks pointed questions. Petrus answers with reason, scripture, and occasional condescension. The first four rounds demolish rabbinic anthropomorphism. The Talmud, Petrus informs Moses, describes God wearing phylacteries on his head and arm, which Petrus uses as evidence of a theology that "cannot stand either on the authority of Scripture or on the power of any sort of reason." Moses puts up resistance, but Petrus is writing the script for both combatants.

Round five pivots sharply. Moses asks why Petrus chose Christianity over Islam, which opens a lengthy attack on the Quran, the five daily prayers, and the calculation of lunar months. From there, Petrus constructs the Trinity from substance, wisdom, and will; defends the Incarnation by analogy to Eve being made from Adam; and explains why a virgin birth in Judea was predicted by Isaiah to King Ahaz centuries before it allegedly occurred.

The later tituli push toward increasingly contested ground. Why Christ accepted crucifixion, why the Jews bear responsibility for it, what the Resurrection means, and, in the final round, how the apostles could abolish circumcision while claiming to fulfill rather than repeal Mosaic law.

"You have fallen into a trap from which you cannot be set free," Moses tells Petrus at one point, in what amounts to a man gleefully springing his own trap on himself. The book is a masterwork of rigged debate, a theological hall of mirrors where every objection has been helpfully supplied by the author so he can answer it at leisure.

The anxious psychology of conversion, the need to retroactively justify a life-altering choice by demolishing every alternative, stays entirely recognizable across every century. Alfonsi was a gifted astronomer, a capable physician, and a writer of genuine wit, but the Dialogue is, at its core, a very long letter of resignation from Judaism, addressed to Christians who had every reason to distrust the sender.

He converted the Talmud into a catalogue of absurdities and Islam into a faith of convenient ablutions and timed pleasures. Whether Moses Sefardi the Jew is arguing in good faith or auditioning for sainthood, the Dialogue strangely preserves, inside a Christian polemic, the most searching Jewish questions that a medieval Christian audience had probably ever read in Latin.
❤️ 🇮🇱

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been reading this for my thesis and probably read through it twice now (once in Jan. 2021).
Not gonna really count books I'm reading for my course unless I really properly read it cover to cover (i.e. not counting books where I just read a chapter or something)

[Ilya Kozlov · Rating 4 out of 5]

it should be clear to me why i am catholic and not a jew, a muslim , a protestant, a russian orthodox , a buddist....the path is narrow