PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

I respond: 1. In this entire comparison, no strength of argument is detected. Thus far, Abarbanel Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508), a prominent Jewish statesman and philosopher who frequently critiqued Christian interpretations of prophecy. has said nothing against us that all Jews do not also attribute to the Muhammedans Muslims., whom they nevertheless maintain are not Idumeans but Ishmaelites. 2. We do not deny that the Prophets sometimes derive the name of a people from the character of another; however, that naming is transitory and temporary, expiring if the sinners repent. See Jeremiah 18:7 and Ezekiel 18:22. Unless the Jews concede this, they themselves will forever be Sodomites and Gomorrhæans, because they are explicitly called so by Isaiah in chapter 1, verse 10. 3. The Rabbi objects to such crimes against genuine original Greek: γνησίως (gnēsiōs), meaning "sincerely" or "legitimately." Christians in vain. Hypocrites will expect no defense of themselves from us. Indeed, since in the Sacred Scriptures the name of "Idumeans" sometimes refers to any impious people—a view held by Eusebius in his Preparation for the Gospel, book 5, chapter 24—we say there is no reason why pseudo-Christians might not also be called Idumeans in this sense. This does not affect us: whether they be impious Trojans or Rutulians, they are held with no distinction. original Latin: impii Troës Rutilive fuant, nullo discrimine habentur. This is an adaptation of Virgil’s Aeneid (10.108), where Jupiter declares he will make no distinction between the warring factions. However, let the Jews also consider their own morals and those of their Rabbis (which Gerson treated in his work on the Talmud, part 2, chapter 17), and let them stop slandering us, lest they hear of their own misdeeds. 4. But let us touch briefly on the individual points. α. Abarbanel concedes that Jews and Christians know and grasp the same GOD. This is true not by way of formal concept, but objective concept. Yet, in his commentary on Isaiah, page 712, he clearly charges us with Idolatry. We, for our part, though we gladly absolve the Jews from the gross idolatry of the heathens, nevertheless prove that they are not free from every species of idolatry; this is shown by the Great Man, Dr. Calovius Abraham Calovius (1612–1686), a leading Lutheran orthodox theologian and the author’s teacher., our venerable teacher, in his System of Theology, volume 1, chapter 2, question 10, page 189, and in his Additional Remarks on the Syncretism of Calixtus. β. True Christians worship GOD without hypocrisy original Greek: ἀνυποκρίτως (anhypokritos), meaning "unfeignedly." and are not to be judged by the character of hypocrites. That the Jews of this time adhere to GOD with true faith—which is Abarbanel’s vain boast—is denied by everyone in the whole world. γ. And the delusions of the Romans, especially those not yet imbued with the Christian religion, must not be charged against all Christians. Meanwhile, now that the Messiah has been revealed, we are permitted with impunity to marry wives from outside our family and kinship, all else being equal. Let the Jews, however, look into themselves for a moment and examine their own Genealogy; they will certainly find an irreparable confusion. For today, after the genealogical records were burned in the destruction of Jerusalem and so many subsequent dispersions through the climates of the world, not one of them can prove himself a true ancestor original Greek: πρόγονον (progonon), though here used in the sense of a "descendant" or "scion" of a lineage. of Jacob or of his own lineage...