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Three books on the resurrection of the dead (1)

Menasseh ben Israel imprint
Explore the work of Menasseh Ben Israel, rabbi, scholar, philosopher, diplomat and Hebrew printer, through books in the Cecil Roth Collection.
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Biography of Menasseh ben Israel
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Vindication of the Jews crop
Early printed witnesses to Menasseh ben Israel’s mission to England, including Christian responses.
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Roth_723
Apologia por la noble nacion de los Iudios y hijos de Israel
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Mikveh Yisra’el, Esto es, Esperança De Israel: : Obra con suma curiosidad conpuesta
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Light of the Jews
Arise Evans, Light for the Iews
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William Prynne, Short demurrer to the Jewes long discontinued remitter into England:
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Manasseh ben Israel, Vindiciae Judeorum
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Birkbeck 32.4
Margaret Fox, A loving salutation to the seed of Abraham among the Jewes
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Untitled
Imprints from Menasseh’s press and its Christian publishers, in Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew (with Latin) with those of his Jewish competitors.
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Hamishah Humshe Torah: Menasseh ben Israel’s Liturgical Bible: Pentateuch, Five Scrolls and the Prophetic Portions (1)
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Hamishah Humshe Torah: Menasseh ben Israel's Liturgical Bible: Pentateuch, Five Scrolls and the Prophetic Portions (3)
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TheTratado del Temor Divino: A mystical treatise on the fear of God
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Esrim ve-arba’ah: Complete Hebrew Bible
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Thesouro dos dinim: que o povo de Israel, he obrigado saber, e observar: A Treasury of [religious] Laws which the people of Israel is obligated to know and keep.
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Hamishim derushim yekarim; va-yikra et shemo Giv’at Sha’ul: Fifty precious sermons by Amsterdam’s senior rabbi
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Sefer Asarah ma’amarot: The book of ten [kabbalistic] Addresses
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Shevet Yehudah: The Sceptre of Judah
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Untitled
This section is devoted to Menasseh as author in the context of Jewish-Christian intellectual contacts in Holland.
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The Conciliator (1)
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Conciliador, o de la conveniencia de los Lugares de la S. Escriptura que repugnantes entre si parecen: The Conciliator (2)
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Strong Room for. 8vo 1633/MAN_001
the Latin translation of the Conciliator
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De creatione problemata XXX: Thirty problems concerning Creation
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De resurrectione mortuorum libri III: Three books on the resurrection of the dead (1)
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De resurrectione mortuorum libri: Three books on the resurrection of the dead (2)
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De resurrectione mortuorum libri: Three books on the resurrection of the dead (3)
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Of the term of life
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Sefer Nishmat hayim: treatise on the immortality of the soul
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Retrato del tabernaculo de Moseh: Portrait of the Tabernacle of Moses
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Retrato del tabernaculo de Moseh: Portrait of the Tabernacle of Moses (2)
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Retrato del tabernaculo de Moseh: Portrait of the Tabernacle of Moses (3)
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Research Resources on Menasseh ben Israel
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'Three books on the resurrection of the dead' (Roth Collection 631) is in Latin, which suggests it was for a Christian audience. It is preceded by epigrams by various Christian authors, letters by the author to various Christian scholars, and an extraordinary Hebrew echo-poem by Gerbrandus C.F. Ansloo, the owner of a noted Oriental library and patron of translations from Persian and Hebrew.

The printer’s device is the same ’magical square‘ as in the De Creatione Problemata.

A Spanish version also exists, however, which indicates that this text was also written for a Jewish audience, which in 1636 was split by theological dissent. This and the Sefer Nishmat hayim can be seen as a response to the challenges of Uriel Acosta (1585–1640).

Acosta was a sceptic philosopher who in 1624 had published ‘An Examination of the Traditions of the Pharisees’. Acosta was suggesting that rabbis were descended from the Pharisees. The Pharisees were theologically opposed by the Sadducees. Menasseh notes that his work is written “contra Zaducaeos” (“against the Sadducee”), almost certainly a reference to Acosta. Acosta questioned the idea of the immortality of the soul, regarding it as a concept invented by the rabbis without any biblical foundation. He was excommunicated several times, and committed suicide in 1640.

His fate, more even than that of Baruch Spinoza, embodied the tremendous psychological, intellectual and social tensions experienced by the refugee Conversos. They were returning to a form of Judaism that they had yearned for but never known, and that they often struggled to understand and integrate with.