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Introduction the Brighter Side of Medieval Inter-Religious Medieval Medieval Encounters �� (�0�6) �–�� Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture Encounters in Confluence and Dialogue brill.com/me Introduction ⸪ The Brighter Side of Medieval Inter-Religious Encounters Harvey J. Hames History Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653. Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel [email protected] Religious polemical exchanges were relatively common in the Middle Ages and were probably not very pleasant experiences for those who took part, particularly if they were members of the minority faith. When held in public, the minority protagonists would have had to be very careful about what they said and how they said it so as to minimize any possible repercussions for their co-religionists. And even when held in private, these exchanges were fraught with danger and the disadvantages far outweighed any benefit that might accrue. The playing field was never level and there could ever only be one loser, and it was not the member of the majority faith. Hence, these interactions were not the ideal place for the exchange of ideas or the transfer of knowledge. Was there, notwithstanding the above, a more positive side to medieval inter-religious polemical exchanges? This is not a trivial question, as an exchange dedicated to proving the truth of one faith at the expense of all others, by necessity, has to be derogatory towards the other faiths in order to strengthen its own truth claims. It cannot admit that truth exists in the other faiths without undermining its own claims. Hence, most religious polemical works in general, and medieval ones in particular, are written to undermine the truth claims of the opposing faith (or faiths), and they tend to be very particularistic and exclusive in nature. Yet, in order to successfully oppose the teachings of the other faith, a good polemicist has to have some knowledge of © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�5700674-��34Downloaded���3 from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:44:38AM via free access 2 Hames what he is trying to negate, or at least, be able to use his knowledge of the other faith creatively in order to strengthen his position. Polemical encounters and polemical works have been intensively studied in order to understand the dynamics that lay behind relations and interactions between the various faiths and the pressures that were put on the members of the minority faiths to convert. However, what could be considered the more positive side, the growth and spread of knowledge as a result of these polem- ics, has not really been the focus of systematic study. Gad Freudenthal and I decided to explore this topic in a conference that we organized in Geneva in February 2012 entitled Religious Polemics and the Growth of Knowledge, and the articles in this special issue of Medieval Encounters are one of its outcomes.1 Philosophers and historians of science have emphasized that intellectual criticism tends to foster the growth of knowledge.2 In medieval philosophy and science, too, criticism played a major role in opening new avenues of research. From the twelfth century on, internal criticism was institutionalized within the cathedral schools and the emerging universities encouraged by the dia- lectic mode of study and argumentation. Polemics were relatively frequent in the Middle Ages; they were of different types, making appeal to different kinds of evidence and drawing on different kinds of proofs. By their very nature, polemics force participants to strengthen their own defensive strategies in the face of the adversary’s arguments and elaborate new methods for criticizing him in turn. When the proponents of Religion A introduce new intellectual resources (call them X) to formulate their critique of Religion B, the support- ers of the latter will perceive the need to elaborate new and adequate defense strategies, including counter-attacks. This will encourage them to appropriate, or at least become familiar with, X and, eventually, also invent new methods to expose the weaknesses of A, sometimes by repackaging X to show how it can undermine A.3 Yet X can also be a catalyst for developing new strategies 1 The conference was made possible with the generous support of the FNS, Department of Philosophy at the University of Geneva, and the Fondation Hardt, Société académique de Genève. I would like to thank Gad Freudenthal for his significant contribution in the formu- lation of the rational for the conference, which I have drawn on for this introduction. 2 Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 3 For a pertinent example of this, see H.J. Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans and Joachimism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007). Much the same holds for the criticism between different streams of thought within a particular religion. This is a systematic, built-in social mechanism of intellectual innovation that has not yet been sufficiently highlighted. While different instances of its operations have been described in isolation, the general phenomenon has escaped notice. medieval encountersDownloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 22 (2016) 1–12 03:44:38AM via free access The Brighter Side of Medieval Inter-Religious Encounters 3 for understanding one’s own religion as these new intellectual resources can provide strategies for examining and strengthening the foundations of faith. Hence, the transfer of knowledge via polemics can provide new intellectual vistas for both Religion A and Religion B.4 An example of how polemics can bring about the appropriation of new bodies of knowledge can be seen in the fields of biblical exegesis, the rise of Christian Hebraism, and the growing Jewish interest in philosophy. Scholars have repeatedly remarked that Jewish-Christian debates in northern Europe affected biblical exegesis. The influences went both ways, with interest in the literal interpretation of Scripture common among both Jews (Rashi and his school) and Christians (the monks of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris).5 This development needs to be highlighted because as a rule, Jews in northern Europe had relatively little intellectual contacts with their Christian neigh- bors; their intellectual culture developed mainly through internal dynamics.6 Against this background, religious polemics appear as a singular form of cul- tural contact, which (notwithstanding its antagonistic character) brought about a cultural change and a growth of knowledge on both sides of the divide due to the importance for both religions of the biblical text.7 4 For an interesting attempt to theorize this in the Judeo-Christian context, see J.-F. Lyotard and E. Gruber, The Hyphen: Between Judaism and Christianity (New York, NY: Humanity Books, 1999). 5 E.g., B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19833); D.E. Timmer, “Biblical Exegesis and the Jewish-Christian Controversy in the Early Twelfth Century,” Church History 58 (1989): 309–321; D. Berger, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576–591; R. Ben-Shalom, “Between Official and Private Dispute: The Case of Christian Spain and Provence in the Late Middle Ages,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 23–72; Sarah Kamin, Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, rev. edition, 2008; Hebrew and English); Elazar Touitou, Exegesis in Perpetual Motion: Studies in the Pentateuchal Commentary of Rabbi Samuel Ben Meir (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003) (in Hebrew). 6 See Gad Freudenthal, ed., Science and Philosophy in Ashkenazi Culture: Rejection, Toleration, and Accommodation, in: Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts; Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, vol. 8 (2009) (Leipzig: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 13‒315. See also Ivan G. Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. D. Biale (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 2002) 459–516; Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, 1961) 3–63. 7 Sefer Yoseph ha-Meqanneʾ is the first polemical treatise written in Northern Europe, but reflects religious dialogues that took place from the mid-twelfth century and into the thirteenth century between Jews and Christians. See H.J. Hames, “Urinating on the Cross: medieval encounters 22 (2016) 1–12 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:44:38AM via free access 4 Hames Similarly, throughout the Middle Ages, religious polemics spurred the rise of Christian Hebraism, an intellectual quest of great consequence all over Western Europe. An early example is the tradition of Christian Hebraism that emerged at Ramsey Abbey in East Anglia during the third quarter of the thirteenth century and which drew heavily on Jewish (rather than Patristic) sources, and persevered until the seventeenth century.8 A later example is Ramon Martí’s Pugio fidei (Dagger of Faith), which was written in the after- math of the Barcelona disputation held in 1263 and reflects a broad knowledge of the Jewish postbiblical texts. This work is an example of how the transfer of knowledge, in this case from Judaism to Christianity, was used to enhance Christian identity and belief.9 Another example is the growing interest of the Jewish community, particu- larly in the Mediterranean region, in philosophy. As a rule, Jewish philosophy and thought depended on Arabic sources and in a great measure was a Hebrew extension of Arabic culture.10 However, from the twelfth century, Christian religious polemics started to draw on “reason,” as distinguished from polem- ics grounded solely in Scripture.11 At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Christianity as seen in the Sefer Yoseph ha-Mekaneh (Book of Joseph the Zealot, ca.
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