Parashat Korach and Early Modern Polemics

The story of Korach, which we read this week, was a popular epithet used by seventeenth century theologians for their adversaries. Amusingly, it would seem that everyone called everyone else 'Korach'.

Richard Hooker uses the term to describe the Presbyterians' desire to democratise ecclesiastical power amongst the laymen

Launcelot Andrewes made use of it from his earliest sermons at Cambridge in the late 1580s and throughout his career at court (the sermon that comes to mind is his 'Sacrilege a Snare', which is difficult to find online, so uploaded it here. Below is a different example of Andrewes alluding to Korach), as well as in his Catechism as an anti-Puritan polemical device.

As a royalist, Jeremy Taylor made frequent use of the story of Korach

Taylor also brings Korach in order to discuss the importance of purity of intention:

But, since everyone was vying to portray their masoret as the spiritual heir of Israel (Catholics, Protestants, and amongst the Protestant factions, Presbyterians, Conformers, Calvinists, Arminians, etc., etc.), republicans like John Milton compared royalists with Korach and his followers:

And of course, in his unfortunately-timed 'Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon' we have an example of a Puritan responding to the charge of being like Korach with a seventeenth-century scholarly version of 'I know you are but what am I?'


Milton also identified Satan's rebellion against God with Korah in Paradise Lost.
The examples are endless--i haven't even thrown in Hobbes!--and would make for an interesting survey, some day....

Religious Tolerance Continued

In the last post, we mentioned Tayor's attributing of a story about Abraham by the Persian poet Saadi to rabbinic sources. This we can trace to Taylor's reading of Gentius's (who, as did other scholars of the era-such as Grotius-Latinised his name. Gentius's given name was Georg Gentze) Historia Judaica, a translation of Rabbi Solomon Ibn Verga's Shevet Yehuda (or Scepter of Judah). One reader mentioned that George Alexander Kohut offers a plausible explanation for Gentius's interesting scholarly oversight in inserting the Saadi story into Historia Judaica. The article is reproduced below.

For information on Gentius which was well nigh impossible to find online, i turned to one of the definitive books on Early Modern Hebraism: Aaron L. Katchen's Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis: Seventeenth Century Apologetics and the Study of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. It's seriously one of my favourite books!

Another reader expressed curiosity about Gentius, which i found in Katchen's book. I've (rather poorly) scanned some biographical information that Katchen provides about Gentius, which can read here. Katchen also discusses the Abraham story, which is also available here.

Below is the article by Kohut, published in 1902:
Abraham's Lesson in Tolerance

Early Modern Hebraism as an Antecedent for Religious Toleration? Jeremy Taylor, John Locke, and Benjamin Franklin

Over forty years before Locke published his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Jeremy Taylor's A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying (1646) was a pioneering Protestant work on the subject of religious liberty. Interestingly, Taylor ends this treatise with a story he found in the 'Jews' books'; a story of Abraham being chastened by God for not being tolerant enough to an idolator! Below is Taylor's rendering of the story:

About a century later, Ben Franklin would paraphrase Taylor's story in order to argue in favour of religious toleration.

But from which of the 'Jews' books' did this story come? Surprisingly, from none; not the Talmud, Midrash, or any other mifarshim (commentators). Richard J. Newman, identifies the source of Taylor's story as Saadi's Bustan-a work which he has translated-in this post (header beginning with 'Benjamin Franklin').

But why did Taylor think that a medieval Persian poet was a 'Jewish doctor'? And what does a German Hebraist named Georg Gentze have to do with it? Stay tuned...

Jeremy Taylor, שמות רבה, and Going for the Gold

It's pretty cool to see midrash, specifically שמות רבה quoted by Jeremy Taylor. Since I like to keep my blog fairly apolitical, so i will try and resist from relating the idea of grabbing at shiny coal and getting burnt to some recent political developments:

And then, a few lines later, Taylor references another midrash, this time, i think it's from Pirke De Rabbi Eliezer:

Absalom, caught by his hair in the tree felt as if he was dangling directly over hell, and to cut himself down would be to effectively hasten his death. Therefore, he saw his painful

predicamentas buying him time, effectively. That's according to Rashi, who brings the midrash. Taylor continues:

Although doing the right thing is pretty clear, we tend to get our priorities a bit mixed up, so to speak. Perhaps Absalom was also entangled in his own delusions that he thought he wouldn't be caught. Hopefully on a personal level we won't sink that low. But as a voting population, hopefully

we'll know when to cut down our entangled, corrupt leadership. For a more politically explicit rendering of this story, see Dryden's 1681 poem 'Absalom and Achitophel,' by clicking here.

Taylor on Prayer

When you spend your days in research, with millions of ideas and tangents whirling around you, once in a while, out of the chaos, it is possible to view some order. In other words, there seems to be a divine nerd providence--you stumble upon certain things at the right time. This happens often. Sometimes it's refreshing to have the slightly different experience of stumbling on passages that are relevant to your personal life. Just as i was dreading the long hours of prayer prior to Rosh Hashanah, i happened to also be reviewing Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living (which you can read here), and i stumbled upon his section on prayer:

There is no greater proof in the world of our spiritual danger than the reluctance which most people always have and all people sometimes have to pray; so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so clever to excuse and neglect their opportunity. Yet, prayer is nothing but desiring God to give us the greatest and best things we can have and that can make us happy. It is a work so easy, so honorable, and to so great a purpose that […] God has never given us greater argument of his willingness to accept it, of His goodness and our gracelessness, of His infinite condescension and our folly, then by rewarding so easy a duty with such great blessing.

I considered myself scolded. But, like any good instructor, Taylor also explains the great benefits of prayer:

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest. Prayer is the issue of a quite mind, of untroubled thoughts. Prayer can obtain everything. It can open the windows of heaven and shut the gates of hell. It can put a holy constraint upon God and detain an angel till he leave a blessing. It can open the treasures of rain and soften the iron ribs of rocks till they melt into tears and a flowing river. Prayer can arrest the sun in the midst of its course and send the swift-winged winds upon our errand. All those strange things, secret decrees and unrevealed transactions which are of heaven, shall combine in ministry and advantages for the praying man.

And, for the more practical minded, within the section on prayer is a sub-section entitled 'Remedies Against Wandering Thoughts in Prayer.'