Bidspirit auction | MUELHAUSEN, YOM-TOV LIPMANN. Sepher Nitzachon

MUELHAUSEN, YOM-TOV LIPMANN. Sepher Nitzachon - Liber Nizachon. FIRST EDITION. Edited by Theodor Hackspan. Engraved Hebrew title with additional Latin letter-press title. Hebrew text followed by Hackspan’s Latin notes. Includes Teshuvoth Rada’k LaNotzrim [“Responses of R. David Kimchi to the Christians”] (pp. 196-200). Wide margins.  An uncut copy. pp. (16), 512, (24). Occasionally foxed and dampstained, old tape on margins of couple pages. Later half-roan, rubbed, 4to. Vinograd, Altdorf 1. Nuremberg, W. Endter, 1644. An important polemic. A defense of Rabbinic Judaism and an attack upon Christianity and Karaism. The intent of Muelhausen’s Sepher Nitzachon was to serve as an instruction to the ordinary Jew as to how to respond if confronted by Christians seeking to prove the veracity of their religion over Judaism. Written in a rationalistic vein, it sets forth a systematic debate against Christianity, following the Biblical order in the presentation of its arguments. Muelhausen refutes the Christian interpretation of the Bible and the doctrines derived from them, and in so doing, incidentally provides many exegetic insights. His method is to expose the Christian lack of understanding of Hebrew sources with their linguistic and contextual associations and to ridicule aspects of the Christian religion. Muelhausen’s great superiority over other polemicists was his fluency in Latin and an intimate knowledge of Christian literature including the Evangelion, the Vulgate, the leading Church Fathers, as well as the works of the late Christian scholars. Sepher Nitzachon was much copied in manuscript, but was first published by a Christian, the priest Theodore Hackspan, who strove to edit it with maximum faithfulness to the source, with the aim of enabling Christian scholars to oppose it. However, neither he nor the workers at his press had a full understanding of the language of the sources or of their subject matter, and as a result, this edition is full of errors. Birth date unknown, death some time after 1420, there is no comprehensive account of Yom-Tov Lipmann Muhlhausen’s life and career, which must be reconstructed from fragmentary references. His influence spanned the Jewish communities of Bohemia, Poland, Austria and various parts of Germany, and his dispute with the principles of Christianity left a lasting imprint on the relations between Christianity and Judaism. Yom Tov Lipmann’s activities as a polemicist gave him lasting renown. Subsequent rebuttals by Christians to this polemical text of his gave rise to “anti-Lipmanniana.” See M. Carmilly-Weinberger, Censorship and Freedom of Expression in Jewish History (1977) pp. 186-87. For an in-depth treatment of Muelhausen, see Judah (Even Shmuel) Kaufman, R. Yom Tov Lipmann Muelhausen (1927); and J. Rosenthal, Anti-Christian Polemics from Its Beginnings to the End of the 18th Century, Aresheth II, pp. 142-146; EJ vol. XI, cols. 499-502.