Atelier Zweig · Fine Books, Manuscripts & Works of Art
A Rabbi’s Defence of Resurrection in Protestant Hands
Menasseh ben Israel’s Author-Printed First Latin Edition, Amsterdam 1636 — with Leipzig Ownership of 1746 and Provenance from the Protestant Library at Halle
MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL (1604–1657). De resurrectione mortuorum libri III. Quibus animae immortalitas & corporis resurrectio contra Zaducaeos comprobatur. Caussae item miraculosae resurrectionis exponuntur. Deque judicio extremo, & mundi instauratione agitur. Ex sacris Literis, & veteribus Rabbinis. Amstelodami: Typis & sumptibus Auctoris, 1636.
First Latin edition, author-imprint issue. Octavo, approximately 140 × 90 mm. [24], 133, [11], 137–241, [11], 245–346, [6] pp.; 196 leaves, complete with both inserted four-leaf dedication gatherings. Probably the copy of the Leipzig jurist and Pietist Johann Gottlob Bruchholtz, with a Bruchholtz ownership inscription dated Leipzig 1746, Latin marginalia and manuscript corrections, and the library stamp of the Waisenhaus of the Francke Foundations at Halle. Bound in nineteenth-century blind-tooled brown calf. [1–3, 6]
A RABBI WRITES TO CHRISTIANS
In 1636 Menasseh ben Israel published his defence of the resurrection twice, in Spanish for his own community and in this Latin version, which he wrote “directly for a Christian audience”. The work belongs to the controversy over immortality associated with Uriel da Costa. Menasseh’s dedication argues that Jews and Christians should defend the resurrection together, “because we all worship one God”, and to the Dutch diplomat Joachim de Wicquefort he wrote that all who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob share the hope of rising again. Menasseh then distinguishes the duties of friendship from religious profession, and holds that disagreement need not prevent people from wishing one another well. [1, 9]
Hugo Grotius reported from Paris in 1639 that his books were “much read and highly appreciated here”. John Selden and Queen Christina of Sweden bought from him, and the Protestant Nicolas Briot cut a Hebrew type for his press. When the Amsterdam professor Caspar Barlaeus wrote a Latin epigram for one of his books, pupils of the Utrecht theologian Gisbertus Voetius accused Barlaeus of Judaizing. [5, 9]
Menasseh was born into a New Christian family that left Portugal to escape the Inquisition and reached Amsterdam by way of La Rochelle in 1613–14. The city let its Portuguese Jews practise Judaism and govern their own community, without granting them equal citizenship. Rembrandt etched four illustrations to Menasseh’s Piedra gloriosa (1655). In 1675 Romeyn de Hooghe etched the inauguration of the Portuguese synagogue beneath an inscription on liberty of conscience. [5, 16–18, 20]
Menasseh taught in the elementary grades of the community’s Talmud Torah school while the young Baruch Spinoza was a pupil there, and reference works have long counted him among Spinoza’s teachers. No surviving record names Spinoza among his pupils. In 1655–56 Menasseh petitioned Oliver Cromwell for the resettlement of the Jews in England, which followed in practice without a formal act. [5, 15–16, 21–22]
THE WORK
Menasseh’s Latin defence of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body draws on biblical and rabbinic authorities. Its three books treat the doctrine of resurrection, miraculous resurrections, and the Last Judgment and renewal of the world. The imprint names the author as both printer and financier of the edition. Latin prose is interspersed with Hebrew quotations, and the title carries a square Hebrew device above the motto “Veritas e terra orietur. Psal. 85. 11.” Menasseh established Amsterdam’s first Jewish Hebrew press in 1626; its first book, a Sephardic prayer book, appeared on 1 January 1627. [1–2, 5, 16]
The three dedications address men of the Dutch Republic, the Amsterdam magistrates Laurens Reael and Albert Coenraadsz Burgh, Willem Nooms, and Joachim de Wicquefort. The preliminaries include a Hebrew poem subscribed by Gerbrandus C. F. Ansloo and a Latin epigram by Ant. Zilius. Both separately inserted four-leaf dedication gatherings survive in this copy. [1–2]
READING NOTES AND CORRECTIONS
A reader weighed Menasseh’s proofs in the opening chapters, marking them “Ratio”, “Simile”, “probabilis ratio” and “Fundamentum”. “Simile” on p. 28 accompanies the comparison with a newly extinguished candle. The note “non est fidei articulus”, not an article of faith, on p. 27 stands beside the discussion of the continuing sanctity of temples and sacred objects, including the fragments of the tablets. Manuscript corrections also follow the printed errata. On p. 49 earum natura is altered to rerum natura, and on p. 70 frustra is cancelled and tristia written above it. [1–2]
The ownership inscription on †2v reads “Sum ex libris Bruchholtzij cui est Symbolum, Jesus Goel Beat Me Miserum. Lips. 1746.” The Hebrew goel in the motto is the redeemer of Job 19:25, “I know that my redeemer liveth”. Book II, on the causes and manner of the resurrection, contains green underlining and NB marks. Green markings also occur in the index. The Latin notes include “Cur infans ploret ab initio” (p. 174) and “Qui non resurgent” (p. 178). On p. 174 the words are in dark ink beneath a green NB. The reading marks are not assigned to the named owner. [1–2, 6]
PROTESTANT OWNERSHIP AND JEWISH RECEPTION
The probable owner, Johann Gottlob Bruchholtz (Meissen 1699 – Leipzig 1758), was a Leipzig advocate, notary and Pietist. In his will he described his “Bücher-Seuche”, his book mania, and recalled buying books even when it meant going hungry. [6, 11, 13]
His 1758 will assigned 100 Taler to Johann Heinrich Callenberg’s Institutum Judaicum at Halle and 600 Taler to a fund at Langendorf for converts. The latter’s annual income of 30 Taler was intended to provide Protestant instruction, normally for a Jewish convert, and vocational training. Bruchholtz complained that converts were passed between the university and town authorities without adequate support. Bruchholtz intended his library itself for Langendorf, to remain together as the Bibliotheca Langendorffio Gottlobiana, with 500 Taler for a library room. [11]
Callenberg’s institute, founded in 1728, was the Protestant mission to the Jews at Halle, and its scholarship and printing served conversion. A rabbi’s appeal to Christian readers thus belonged to a collector who provided for that mission in his will. [1, 11–12]
On 18 July 1753 a chest from Bruchholtz reached Pastor Peter Brunnholtz in Philadelphia, with books and a list of them, coins for eight preachers and the schoolmasters, and fifty small Meissen coins for orphans. The Lutheran pastor Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg recorded the delivery and Bruchholtz’s accompanying letter in his diary in 1763. [10, 13]
In 1782 Moses Mendelssohn prefaced a German translation of another of Menasseh’s works, the Vindiciae Judaeorum of 1656, in the debate over civic rights for Jews. He observed that the waning zeal for conversion had not ended the exclusion of Jews from occupations and public life. [14]
The present copy’s violet stamp on ‡2r was confirmed by the Franckesche Stiftungen as that of the Bibliothek des Waisenhauses at Halle. In 1792 this Protestant library absorbed the Institutum Judaicum’s collection. The institute’s catalogue records this edition, and Halle’s early nineteenth-century catalogue lists six copies. [3, 7–8]
A faded stamp at the foot of p. 43 is apparently that of the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage, Munich (1936–1945). The Waisenhaus stamp records its earlier Protestant institutional ownership. The research notes record searches of Lost Art and Looted Cultural Assets on 11 October 2026, reporting no matching record. Later pencil collation notes on the pastedowns. [2, 4, 19]
COLLATION AND PRINTING STATES
Signatures in this copy’s bound sequence are ‡⁸ †⁴ A–H⁸ I⁸(I4+(a)⁴) K–P⁸ Q⁸(Q1+²(a)⁴) R–Y⁸. The index occupies Y6–Y8, with the printed errata, “Mendæ Typographicæ”, at the foot of Y8v. Compared with the copies at the Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam (448 G 11) and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Dogm. 687), this copy follows Amsterdam at six of the seven press variants and Munich at one (p. 83), a mixed copy of the kind usual for a book corrected at press. [1–2]
CONDITION
Nineteenth-century blind-tooled brown calf with raised bands, the spine untitled, edges green; a few light scratches to the boards. Title laid down, its inner margin made up. Dampstaining at the lower inner corners through much of the first half, with local repairs at A4, C4–C5 and D4, the repair at A4 just reaching the last line of text. Lighter staining later in the volume. Scattered ink blots, at pp. 231, 241, 245 and 258–259 among others. Index leaves browned and stained at the fore-edge. Manuscript notes, underlining, ownership inscription and institutional stamps as described. Complete, all 196 leaves present.
LITERATURE
STCN 084840250; USTC 1013254; Julius Fürst, Bibliotheca Judaica, II, p. 355; cf. Meyer Kayserling, Biblioteca española-portugueza-judaica, p. 69.
REFERENCES
[1] The present copy, title, preliminaries, dedication insertions, text, index and errata, as documented in the accompanying photographs.
[2] Atelier Zweig, collation, copy comparison and provenance records for this copy, September–October 2026; search log of the database searches made on 11 October 2026.
[3] Franckesche Stiftungen zu Halle, Studienzentrum August Hermann Francke, Archiv und Bibliothek, written communication of 29 September 2026, with extracts from the archive database.
[4] Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Provenienzforschung / NS-Raubgutforschung, written communication of 29 September 2026; Sven Kuttner, “Geraubte Bücher. Jüdische Provenienzen im Restbestand der Bibliothek der ‘Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage’ in der Bibliothek des Historicums der UB München”, Bibliotheksdienst 37 (2003), pp. 1059–1065.
[5] Lawrence Rabone, “Menasseh ben Israel”, in James Crossley and Alastair Lockhart (eds), Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (2021), citing Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (1945), p. 71.
[6] Gemeinsame Normdatei, GND 1065316062, and CERL Thesaurus cnp02116051, Bruchholtz, Johann Gottlob (1699–1758); his Leipzig disputation of 1727 under F. A. Hommel, K10plus 171721381; Personen im Gottsched-Briefwechsel, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig.
[7] Franckesche Stiftungen, “History of the library” and “August Hermann Francke”, francke-halle.de.
[8] Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände (Fabian), Franckesche Stiftungen”, on the 1792 union of the Institutum Judaicum library with the Waisenhaus library.
[9] Sina Rauschenbach, “Mediating Jewish Knowledge. Menasseh ben Israel and the Christian Respublica litteraria”, Jewish Quarterly Review 102 (2012), pp. 561–588, at pp. 571–575.
[10] Franckesche Stiftungen, Archiv, “Auszug aus dem Tagebuch von Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg”, 1763, digital.francke-halle.de, record 559391.
[11] Karsten Hommel, “Wer dich, sich und die Welt erkennt, der macht sein richtig Testament.” Der letzte Wille des Leipziger Pietisten Johann Gottlob Bruchholtz (1699–1758), pp. 101–111, especially pp. 105–106 and 108.
[12] Mark Häberlein and Paula Manstetten, “The Translation Policies of Protestant Reformers in the Early Eighteenth Century” (2024), pp. 311–313, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-67339-3_13.
[13] Kurt Aland, ed., Die Korrespondenz Heinrich Melchior Mühlenbergs aus der Anfangszeit des deutschen Luthertums in Nordamerika, II: 1753–1762 (Berlin and New York, 1987), pp. 26–27, note 4, quoting Mühlenberg’s diary of 19 October 1763.
[14] Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, VIII: Schriften zum Judentum II, ed. Alexander Altmann (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1983), pp. 5–6: preface to Manasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden (1782), original pp. VII–XI.
[15] Steven Nadler, “Spinoza and Menasseh ben Israel: Facts and Fictions”, Journal of the History of Ideas 80.4 (2019), pp. 533–554, DOI 10.1353/jhi.2019.0030.
[16] Lawrence J. Rabone, Eschatology and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1655–56 (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2021), pp. 54–57 and 183; Abraham Wolf Rosenberg, Blessings and Thanksgivings (PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2021), p. 119.
[17] Steven Nadler and Victor Tiribás, “Rembrandt’s Etchings for Menasseh ben Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa: A Mystery Solved?”, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2021), pp. 1–17, especially pp. 6–8, DOI 10.48296/KvhR2021.01; Morgan Library & Museum, RvR48, 1655.
[18] National Gallery of Victoria, Romeyn de Hooghe, Interior of the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam (1675), accession 1958.45-3, Hollstein IX.117.
[19] Elisabeth Kraus, “Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage”, NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, nsdoku.lexikon, published 16 January 2025.
[20] Marc de Wilde and Emma Rengers, “De rechten van Nederlandse joden in 1615 en 1796”, De Boekenwereld 32 (2016), pp. 17–18 and 21, on Dutch Jewish communal liberties and civic equality.
[21] Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 3.
[22] Carlos Fraenkel, “Spinoza, Baruch (Bento, Benedictus) de”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Detroit, 2007).
Atelier Zweig · Item AZ-MBI-RES-1636
