Jeremy Cohen. Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. x, 451 pp.
Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity traces the development of Jeremy Cohen's scholarship over almost two decades. Without abandoning the thesis he espoused in The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), that is, that a paradigm shift occurr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
2002
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 2002, Volume: 26, Issue: 1, Pages: 133-135 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity traces the development of Jeremy Cohen's scholarship over almost two decades. Without abandoning the thesis he espoused in The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), that is, that a paradigm shift occurred among thirteenth- century Christian mendicant theologians with respect to the role of the Jew in the divine economy, here Cohen attempts to respond to his critics with a more nuanced treatment. Living Letters of the Law examines adaptations to the “hermeneutical Jew”—the putative, ahistorical Jew created by Augustinian theology—as the cultural horizons of the medieval Latin world broadened. Cohen traces the contours of the “hermeneutical Jew” from Augustine through Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and Agobard of Lyons before he turns to the twelfth century. Because he now finds more persuasive Amos Funkenstein's contention that twelfth-century anti-Jewish polemics signal an important shift in medieval perceptions of Judaism, here Cohen pays much more attention to twelfth-century authors (e.g. Anselm of Canterbury, Gilbert Crispin, Odo of Cambrai, Guibert of Nogent, Peter Alfonsi, Peter the Venerable, and Bernard of Clairvaux) than he had done in The Friars and the Jews, and considerably less to thirteenth-century mendicants. Indeed, Cohen explains that “reactions to my thesis on the significance of the friars [in The Friars and the Jews] . . . quickly convinced me that a fair assessment of later medieval Christian ideas of the Jew demanded a more conscientious investigation of their antecedents. The present study constitutes my attempt to move backward . . . ” (p. 314). |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009402310043 |