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Isaac Orobio, the Sceptic Dogmatiser Carsten Wilke Introduction: Isaac Orobio, the Sceptic Dogmatiser The present volume on the Jewishphysician and theological controversistIsaacOr- obio de Castro (1617– 1687) has its origin in an international workshop held on Feb- ruary 25,2016 at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies in Hamburgonthe occasion of the 400th anniversary of the year of Orobio’sbirth.¹ As areligious author, Orobio cannot be easilycategorised with an intellectual movement,and even less with aparticularphilosophicalschool; he was atypicallyeclectic thinker at an ageinwhich Neo-Scholasticism, the scientificrevolution and sceptic anti-rationalism competed for acceptance and forgedshifting alliances among themselves. YetOrobio is noteworthyfor the extensive use of philosophical arguments in his clandestine po- lemical writings. Expressinghimself in exquisite Spanish rhetoric, he defendedJuda- ism simultaneouslyagainst freethought and Christianity. Discussing Orobio’stwo-front battle in the thematic context of the earlymodern quest for certainty is afascinatingly ambiguous task, since his thoughtalternates be- tween moments of devastatingcritique and of staunchtraditionalism. The Portu- guese physician’smain polemical work, titled Divine Warnings against the Vain Idola- tryofthe Gentiles,became famous duringthe Enlightenmentperiod as an arsenal of anti-Christian arguments that served to subvert religious dogma of anysort.Voltaire found this Jewishscholar “profound, yetnever obscure, aman of refined literary taste, of apleasant wit and impeccable manners.”² Recent research on Orobio’seight- eenth-century reception³ has endowedthe author with newfound relevance to the history of philosophythat transcends the Jewish-Christian encounter.Heappears in this period as not onlyanopponentofChristianity,but also an enduringsource of European anti-religious criticism. In this way, he became an involuntary antago- nist of the religious worldview thatheshared with his adversaries. CarstenWilke, CentralEuropean University We cannot exactlydetermine Orobio’sdateofbirth because the parish registers of Bragança are onlypreserved beginningfrom1654. Conjectures by I.S. Révahand Yosef Kaplan suggest that Baltasar Álvares Oróbio must have been born and baptised between February and October 1617. Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes,vol. 34 (Paris:P.Dupont,1827), 340 –341. RichardH.Popkin, “Jewish Anti-Christian Arguments as aSource of Irreligion from the Seven- teenth to the EarlyNineteenth Century,” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment,edited by Michael Hunterand David Wootton (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1992):159–181;Jonathan Israel, “Or- obio de Castroand the EarlyEnlightenment,” in Mémorial I.-S.Révah: Études sur le marranisme, l’hé- térodoxie juive et Spinoza,edited by Henry Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon (Paris and Louvain: Peeters, 2001): 227–245; Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003), 170 – 173, and other studies quoted here. OpenAccess. ©2018 Carsten Wilke, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110576191-001 2 CarstenWilke Orobio’simageasamilitantlysectarian polemicist did nonetheless dominate his modernreception, especiallyamong religiouslypredisposed readers. The Spanish Hebraist Joseph Rodríguez de Castro offered the following horrified words on the Di- vine Warnings and its underlying controversy in 1781: Orobio seized the pretext for spittingall the Jewish poison against the Christians.Heprofaned, despised and trampled underfoot the most pureand sublime of their truthful dogmas with the most offensive expressions and the most insolent and outrageous sayings,sothat all across this work, Orobio showed himself as the most obdurateJew,the most cruel enemyofthe Christians.⁴ Appreciatingthis judgment from the opposite side, the scholars of the “Science of Judaism” were attracted by Orobio’senergetic language. He was, Heinrich Graetz wrote, “aman of valor,anacute mind, an enthusiastic partisanofJudaism, and an adversary of Christianity.”⁵ Graetz, in 1868, recommended Orobio as apresentable hero for afuture biographical monograph,⁶ and MeyerKayserling, chief rabbiof Switzerland, promised indeed to write such awork,⁷ while AristideAstruc, chief rabbi of Belgium, planned afirst edition of the Divine Warnings in its original Span- ish.⁸ Neither of these projects ever took shape: with the rising floodtide of antisem- itism, Orobio’sstrongJewish self-affirmation mayhaveappearedinappropriate.The man whom Jewish historians praised for his integrity was censored by Christians for his integralism. Nineteenth-century authors became accustomed to decrying his writ- ings, especiallyhis sharply polarisingstyle of expression, as an extreme abyss of dogmatism, bigotry,and intolerance.The Spanish philologist Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo observed in 1882that Orobio “fought the religion of the Crucified with all the rage and doggedness typicalofanapostate.”⁹ The historian of Protestant mis- sionary activity Johannes de le Roi gave the following biased summary of the Friendly Conversation between Orobio and the Protestant theologian Philip van Limborch: “Orobio attacked Christianity in the most aggressive way, Limborch however,even Joseph Rodríguez de Castro, Biblioteca española. Tomo primero, que contiene la noticia de los escri- tores rabinos españoles (Madrid: Imprenta Real de la Gazeta, 1781), I606. Heinrich Graetz, “Don Balthasar Isaak Orobio de Castro: Eine biographische Skizze,” Monatsschrift fürdie Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 16 (1867): 321–330, here321;Geschichteder Juden, 204: “als muthigerund geschickter Kämpfer für die Religion seiner Väter.” Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig: Leiner,1868), Vol. X, appendix, x: “Noch ist keine Monogra- phie über sein Leben und seine literarischeThätigkeit geschrieben, obwohl er sie weit eher verdiente, als so viele Andere, die weiter nichts als viel Papier und Tinteverbraucht haben.” Kayserling, Geschichte der Juden in Portugal (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner,1867), 304: “Das Weitere über Orobio de Castroineiner demnächst erscheinenden Monographie.” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle,January 1875,85. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (Madrid: Librería Católica de San José, 1880), vol. II, 599. Introduction:Isaac Orobio, the Sceptic Dogmatiser 3 when he was facing such an utterlyundignified individual, defended the Christian cause in acalm and even friendlymanner.”¹⁰ Building on awell-entrenched cliché of Orobio as an enraged dogmatist,Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberginhis TheJew’sTrace in History (1920)presented the au- thor as the embodiment of Jewish fanaticism. “His worldview is basedontypically Jewishpillars: an unshakeable dogma (in this case, the Sinaitic Law), the hatred of Christians, and the desire for world domination.”¹¹ Orobio’smind is locked “with unmistakable evidence in aclosed and immobile inner structure … When read- ing Jewishwritings, even greatlyerudite ones, one can be driventodespair by their block-headedness and narrow-mindedness.”¹² Rosenbergthen creates adirect histor- ical connection from Orobio to Marx by showing that the destructive Jewishdogma- tism of the formerflows into the latter’sfanatical belief in human equality.Marx,in short,isOrobio for proletarians. The Amsterdam polemicistdid not,however,fare anybetter among Marxist read- ers. Gabriel Albiac, aSpanish philosopher of the far left who in 1987published a highlyacclaimedessay TheEmpty Synagogue: Marranic Roots of Spinozism,lashed out against Orobio in terms that are strangelyakintoRosenberg’s, though the grief is about the author’sdisciplining of Jews rather than his contradicting of Chris- tians. Orobio, Albiac writes, is “the thinker of the radical rabbinic orthodoxy,” he is “the ghettoinside the ghetto, with the thinlyveiled incitement to purify the People in the name of the Torah,” he is dubbed “the merciless hammer of heretics and epicur- eans,” afanatic, an ultra-orthodox, a “great blacksmith of orthodoxy,” anarrow- minded “fool,” he has the “insolent self-indulgence of an heresy-exterminator.”¹³ With aquick exercise in psychoanalysis,the author concludes that when “Don [!] Isaac Orobio de Castro” opposed the deist Juan de Prado in 1663, he had become aJewishcopy of the Spanish Inquisitors who tortured him seven years earlier.Bygiv- ing the defender of Judaism afictional title of nobility,Albiac accuses him of clerical JohannesF.A.deleRoi, Die evangelische Christenheit und die Juden unter dem Gesichtspunkte der Mission geschichtlich betrachtet (Karlsruhe: Reuther,1884), I158. Alfred Rosenberg, Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten (Munich: DeutscherVolksverlag, 1920), 154: “Dieses Weltbild ruht aufden typisch jüdischen Tragsäulen: eines unabänderlichen Dog- mas (hier das Gesetz vomSinai), dem Christenhaß, der jüdischen Weltherrschaft.” Alfred Rosenberg, Die Spur des JudenimWandel der Zeiten,157: “Ichmuß mich mit diesen An- deutungenbegnügen, aber schon sie zeigen mit nicht mißzuverstehender Deutlichkeit ein in sich ab- geschlossenes, unbewegliches Wesensgefüge […]beim Lesen der jüdischen Schriften kann man über die Hartköpfigkeit und, bei großer Gelehrsamkeit,Borniertheit zur Verzweiflung getrieben werden.” Gabriel Albiac, La sinagoga vacía:unestudio de las fuentes marranas del espinosismo (Madrid: Hiperión, 1987), 89: “pensador de la radical ortodoxia rabínica,”“el ‘gueto’ dentro del ‘gueto,’ la in- citación, apenas
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