Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

De veritate religionis Christianae amica collatio cum erudito Judaeo (A Friendly Conversation with a Jew Concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion [WITH] Exemplar humanae vitae (An Example of a Human Life) [AND] Brevis refutatio argumentorum quibus Acosta omnem religionem revelatam impugnat (A Brief Refutation of the Arguments in Which Acosta Attacks All Revealed Religion)

Limborch, Philippus van; Isaac de Orobio de Castro; Uriel da Costa

Gouda: Justus van der Hoeve, 1687. First edition. Hardcover. Three parts, quarto. [asterisk]-[2 asterisk]4 A-3A4 3B (= 197 leaves; K2 signed H2). [16], 364, [14, index]pp. Title in red and black, printed marginalia, woodcut tailpieces. Contemporary paneled calf (expertly rebacked to style), gilt lettering piece. Occasional touch of mild foxing, else a fine, crisp, amply-margined copy.

First edition of this remarkable collection, modeled on a work of Hugo Grotius with the same title, including the transcription of an epistolary debate between the Dutch theologian, Phillip van Limborch (1633-1712) and the Jewish scholar, Isaac Orobio de Castro (ca.1617-1687). Jonathan Israel views the work as "a key exemplum of the new 'enlightened' method of upholding Christianity." Limborch was a leading Dutch theologian aligned with the Arminians, and professor in the Seminary of the Remonstrants at Amsterdam. Orobio de Castro had been Professor of Theology at Salamanca who was imprisoned by the Inquisition on account of his sympathy with the Jews of Spain. He fled the country, going first to France and then to Holland, where he abjured Christianity, and became deeply involved in the philosophico-religious controversies in the Low Countries. In the present work, Limborch publishes three letters written by Orobio de Castro, along with his own detailed responses. In arguing against the "truth" of the Christian religion "Orobio retorted that the advent of Christ has done nothing to render mankind less sinful or to lessen suffering, that the rise of Christianity, far from being unparalleled, was surpassed by the expansion of Islam... and that far from being unchallengeable, Christ's miracles had not been performed publicly, like the miracle at Mount Sinai, but virtually in secret, a circumstance which renders them entirely dubious. These responses and his further claims that the New Testament is unreliable, providing no basis for trust in Christ's miracles, since the text exists only in Greek, a language neither Jesus nor the Apostles had the slightest knowledge of... made no impact on Limborch, Le Clerc, or Locke, who were convinced of their triumph over Orobio. Nevertheless, Orobio's arguments were fully and objectively reported in the text, and subsequently widely read across Europe, and some of those who read it were not so sure that Orobio was 'vanquished'. Boulainvilliers, who meticulously examined the text, concluded that Limborch's arguments were less securely grounded on reason than he and his allies supposed and that, even without their realizing it, it was Orobio who won the contest, a verdict echoed in other anti-Christian clandestine philosophical literature of the early eighteenth century" (Israel).

Edited from a manuscript formerly in the possession of the Leiden professor of theology, Simon Episcopius, and now in the University Library Amsterdam, the Exemplar Humanae Vitae is the autobiography of the Portuguese Jew, Uriel da Costa (ca.1585-1640), who was excommunicated from the Sephardi Jewish community of Hamburg in 1618 after addressing a polemical broadside to the leaders fo the Sephardi congregation of Venice, in which he criticized rabbinic Judaism as incompatible with the Torah. He later settled in Amsterdam where he submitted to a public recantation of his views before the Portuguese Jewish congregation, and committed suicide shortly thereafter. A radical freethinker who here makes an imposing plea against dogmatics, da Costa may be viewed as a forerunner of Spinoza. An English translation was published at London in 1740; a complete edition of his (few) works was edited in 1922 by Carl Gebhardt (Schriften des Uriel da Costa), and published as the second volume of the Bibliotheca Spinozana. At the conclusion, Limborch offers his refutation of da Costa's challenge to revealed religion. Fine. Item #48832

References: Bamberger, no. 67. Fürst 1:17. De Graaf, Cat. 70: Spiritualists, Nonconformists & Dissenters, no. 360. J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment (OUP, 2001), esp. pp. 464-466. Oscott Catalogues: Recusant Books (part 2), no. 2286; The Old Library (part 2: Bible Collections), no. 895. For Da Costa's Exemplar, cf. Roth B18.30, citing the English version of 1740. The work was already scarce and much sought after in the early modern era, as evidenced by: DeBure (Theology), no. 583: “ouvrage estime & recherche, les exemplaires en sont peu communs” and Osmont, Dictionnaire, vol. 1, p.406: “rare et estimé.” In his 1694 catalogue of Christian Hebraic works, Bibliotheca Latino-Hebraica, Carlo Imbonati offers a surprisingly long discussion of De Veritate on pp. 201-209.

Price: $3,750.00