The appearance of religious toleration combined with the intensification of the search for theological truth led to a unique phenomenon in early modern Europe: Jewish Christians and Christian Jews. These essays will demonstrate that the cross-fertilization of these two religions, which for so long had a tradition of hostility towards each other, not only affected developments within the two groups but in many ways foreshadowed the emergence of the Enlightenment and the evolution of modern religious freedom.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Cabalists and Christians: Reflections on Cabala in Medieval and Renaissance Thought.- 3. The Myth of Jewish Antiquity: New Christians and Christian-Hebraica in Early Modern Europe.- 4. Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the 17th Century.- 5. The Kabbala Denudata: Converting Jews or Seducing Christians.- 6. British Israel and Roman Britain: The Jews and Scottish Models of Polity from George Buchanan to Samuel Rutherford.- 7. Jewish Sabbath and Christian Sunday in Early Modern England.- 8. Newton, the Lord God of Israel and Knowledge of Nature.- 9. Jews and Romantics: The Puzzle of Identity, Rahel Levin von Varnhagen.- 10. Sephardic Philo- and Anti-Semitism in the Early Modern Era: The Jewish Adoption of Christian Attitudes.