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Humanism and Hebraism: Christian Scholars and Hebrew Sources in the Renaissance

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Humanism and Hebraism: Christian Scholars and Hebrew Sources in the Renaissance Humanism and Hebraism: Christian Scholars and Hebrew Sources in the Renaissance Kathryn Christine Puzzanghera Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in Religion April 2016 © 2016 Kathryn C. Puzzanghera, All Rights Reserved This thesis is dedicated to the glory of God Who gave us reason, creativity, and curiosity, that they might be used AND To the mixed Protestant-Catholic family I was born into, and the Jewish family we chose Table of Contents Chapter I: Christian Humanist Hebraism in Context .................................... 1 Christian Thought and Biblical Exegesis ......................................................................... 8 Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Anti-Semitism .............................................................. 17 Scholastics and Humanists in dialogue .......................................................................... 29 Christian Hebraists: Medieval Exegetes, Renaissance Humanists, and Protestant Reformers ....................................................................................................................... 43 Renaissance Hebraists: Nicholas of Lyra, Johannes Reuchlin, and Philip Melanchthon ........................................................................................................................................ 55 Chapter II: Nicholas of Lyra ...........................................................................58 Nicholas in Dialogue: Influences and Critiques ............................................................. 71 Nicholas’s Relationship with the Jewish People ............................................................ 81 Nicholas’s use of Jewish sources ................................................................................... 85 Subsequent Influence ...................................................................................................... 92 Chapter III: Johannes Reuchlin ......................................................................95 Reuchlin in Dialogue: Influences and Critiques ........................................................... 105 The Reuchlin Affair ...................................................................................................... 109 Writings ........................................................................................................................ 126 Reuchlin’s Relationship with the Jewish People .......................................................... 139 Reuchlin’s use of Jewish Sources ................................................................................. 143 Subsequent Influence .................................................................................................... 144 Chapter IV: Philip Melanchthon ..................................................................148 Melanchthon in Dialogue: Influences and Critiques .................................................... 158 Old Testament Exegesis ............................................................................................... 160 Melanchthon’s Relationship with the Jewish People ................................................... 164 Melanchthon’s use of Jewish Sources .......................................................................... 167 Subsequent Influence .................................................................................................... 169 Conclusion .......................................................................................................171 Bibliography ....................................................................................................177 Acknowledgements First of all, I want to thank all of my Wellesley religion professors who I have been lucky enough to study with: Professor Stephen Marini, Professor James Kodera, Professor Louise Marlow, Professor Sharon Elkins, Professor Barbara Geller, and Professor Edward Silver. It has been such a privilege to learn from each of you and I am so grateful for the support you have shown me. I particularly want to thank Professor Elkins for doing an independent study to prepare me for this thesis and Professor Geller for answering all the little questions that have come up during this process. I want to thank Professor Marlow and Professor Silver for serving on my thesis committee and for their encouragement and guidance over the past several years and during this process. Above all, I want to thank my advisor Professor Marini for helping me on this thesis with advice and support, and for encouraging me in this endeavor from the very beginning. I also want to thank Professor Roxanne Euben for serving as my visitor on my thesis examination. I would be remiss if I did not also express my appreciation to my many doctors and medical practitioners who have tried to ensure that I was healthy enough to have this experience, and many others. I want to thank my parents for their support and, above all, their patience as I struggled with this thesis and my medical condition, especially my Dad for helping with the formatting of the thesis and assuring me that he was just as insane as me when he did his thesis. I want to thank my friends at Wellesley and at home for their support and their faith in me. I particularly want to thank Leah Ferguson, who spent most her Tuesday dinners of first semester listening to me stress; Sara Wegman, for her boundless love, encouragement, and confidence; and James Wyrwicz who studied and ‘thesised’ with me this past year, I’m glad this is another experience we have gotten to share. Chapter I: Christian Humanist Hebraism in Context rom the beginning of Christianity, the relationship between Christian thought and the Hebrew Bible has been fraught with problems. This thesis aims to examine a crucial F point in this contentious history, by exploring the late medieval and Renaissance moment that Christian thinkers began to re-appropriate the Hebrew Bible, its language, and Jewish thought. This introductory chapter briefly outlines the relevant history of the development of Christian thought as it pertains to Hebrew exegesis and Christian Humanism. It presents the shift in Christian Hebraism through three stages from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, through the work of the late medieval exegete Nicholas of Lyra (1270-1349), to the Renaissance humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), and ending with the Protestant Reformer, Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). Humanism is a term that was adopted to describe the main cultural force that drove intellectual and artistic development during the Renaissance. This brand of Humanism grew and changed over the course of three centuries, continuously developing from the mid-14th century to the mid-17th century.1 Despite this, the term ‘Humanism,’ or umanesimo in Italian,2 was not coined until 1808 by the German theologian F. J Niethammer (1766-1846) “to refer to a philosophy of education that favored classical studies”3 and it was not until five decades later that two historians, Karl Hagen (1810-1868) and Georg Voigt (1827-1891), in their research, “first used the word Humanismus as a historical event and an intellectual phenomenon associated 1 Spitz, Lewis W. Luther and German Humanism. Great Britain: Galliard Printers, 1996. IX, 381. Print. 2 Ibid, IX 381 3 Ibid, 1 Chapter I: Christian Humanist Hebraism in Context Page 2 with the Renaissance.”4 It was “coined…to express the emphasis on the Greek and Latin classics in secondary education as against the rising demands for a more practical and more scientific training.”5 The term ‘humanist,’ of course, changed over the course of the Renaissance. In fifteenth century Italy, ‘humanista’ meant “teacher of the humanities.” By the sixteenth century in Germany, the term was “no longer limited to any particular profession or discipline.”6 As Erika Rummel notes, in the lifetime of the scholar Reuchlin, “the term ‘humanist’ had undergone considerable modification…changing from a professional designation to a cultural affiliation.”7 The term Humanism was derived from the phrase studia humanitatis, or, what we would today call, the liberal arts.8 The studia humanitatis was the core of a Humanist’s intellectual life and curriculum. Studia humanitatis was apparently used in the general sense of a liberal or literary education by such ancient Roman authors as Cicero and Gellius, and this use was resumed by the Italian scholars of the fourteenth century. By the first half of the fifteenth century, the studia humanitatis came to stand for a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines…and the study of each of the subjects was understood to include the reading and interpretation of tis standard ancient writers in Latin and, to a lesser extent, in Greek. This meaning of the studia humanitatis remained in general use throughout the sixteenth century and later, and we may still find echo of it in our use of the term ‘humanities.’9 4 Ibid 5 Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and its Sources. Edited by Michael Mooney. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979, p. 22 6 Rummel, Erika. The Case against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002, pp. viii-ix 7 Ibid, p. viii 8 Spitz, Luther and German Humanism, p. 2 9 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, p. 22 Chapter I: Christian Humanist Hebraism in Context Page 3 The five subjects that were traditionally included in the studia humanitatis were grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history,
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