Heresies of a Renaissance Jew

Includes two Hebrew texts from the Renaissance, published here for the first time, together with English translations. The first is a memoir of a German Jew, Eliezer Eilburg, a younger contemporary of Martin Luther. In the second text, The Ten Questions, Eilburg challenges nearly all of the Jewish beliefs of his time, and especially belief in the Bible.

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This volume includes two Hebrew texts from the Renaissance, published here for the first time, together with English translations. The first is a memoir of a German Jew, Eliezer Eilburg, a younger contemporary of Martin Luther (who mentions Luther, although not in a complimentary way). Eilburg tells stories of how his family was driven from Germany, how his involvement in lawsuits in Poland, his imprisonment, and his study and practice of medicine in Italy. The story is interspersed with kabbalistic visions, including a vision of the ghost of the author's mother. The memoir is a fascinating and authentic vista into the world of the Renaissance Jew.

In the second text, The Ten Questions, Eilburg challenges nearly all of the Jewish beliefs of his time, and especially belief in the Bible. It is the most radical Jewish text of the sixteenth century, bar none. Eilburg's heretical doubts, a century before Spinoza, are a crucial link between the rationalism of medieval Jewish philosophy and the seventeenth and eighteenth century Enlightenment. The text sheds important new light on the Renaissance origins of modern Bible criticism.