366 A History of Judaism
kabbalists was not always sympathetic to traditional Judaism. On the
contrary, they contrasted the kabbalah as true Judaism to the debased
teachings of the Talmud. Part of their aim was to use the kabbalah as a
weapon in a challenge to rigid Christian scholasticism.
In the early years much of this Christian kabbalistic learning was
derived from Latin translations from the Hebrew by converts to Chris-
tianity from Judaism, but some Christian humanists were also drawn
into discussion and debates with Jews who remained faithful to their
traditions. In 1571 a Jewish doctor named Azariah de’ Rossi, caught in
Ferrara at the time of a terrible earthquake and sheltering for safety in
fields in the outskirts of the city, met a Christian scholar who questioned
him about the true meaning of a passage in the Letter of Aristeas, which
the Christian assumed (wrongly) must exist in Hebrew as well as in
Greek. According to de’ Rossi, the results were striking:
During this frightening time in which, as I said, I was forced to leave the
ruins of my home and take up my abode wherever I could, my lot fell in
with many peace- loving people south of the river Po. One of our neigh-
bours, a Christian scholar, to pass the time and divert his mind from the
distressing earthquake, was enjoying himself by reading the book which I
had begun to discuss with him which relates the story of the Translation of
our Torah. It was at this time that he came up to greet me and then inquired
whether by means of the Hebrew version (for he thought that we Jews
possessed the book) I could clarify and elucidate some of the passages he
found obscure in the Latin, a language with which he had been conversant
for a long time. When I informed him that we had no such thing he was
utterly amazed as to how such glory could depart from Israel who could
deservedly win great prestige from it ...^6De’ Rossi, an astonishingly accomplished and independent scholar,
accordingly translated the Letter of Aristeas into Hebrew. In due course
this translation became part of de’ Rossi’s larger work, The Light of the
Eyes, which was published by him in Mantua in 1574 just a few years
before his death. It became part of a remarkable study of Jewish history,
chronology, poetry and culture which made use of a great swathe of
classical writers, both in Latin (which he read direct from the source)
and in Greek (for which he used Latin and Italian translations).
Of particular interest to de’ Rossi were the Jewish writings in Greek
from the Hellenistic period which had been forgotten in the rabbinic
tradition. He devoted himself to an intensive study of Philo (whom he
called in Hebrew Yedidiah ha- Alexandroni) and to demonstrating that