Religious Polemics in a Philosophical Encyclopedia: Judah Ha-Cohen on ‘The Chosen People’

Abstract

The religious disputation that constitutes the subject of this ‘zuta’ may itself be fittingly called a ‘zuta’. It is found towards the end of the Midrash ha-Hokhmah (‘The Exposition of the Sciences’, hereafter MH), an encyclopedic work composed by Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen of Toledo during the third and fourth decades of the thirteenth century. This quite voluminous work (209 fols) encompasses logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, geometry, astronomy, astrology and religious subjects.¹ The disputation to be discussed is spread over slightly more than two folios of the encyclopedia. It consists of the question posed by an otherwise unspecified non-Jewish scholar of how the position of the Jews as the ‘chosen people’ may be reconciled with their troublesome history and existence (195v) and Judah’s reply to it(196r–197r 17), to which two related questions and their respective answers are added(197r 17–197v7). In the following I will summarize the contents of the disputation and comment on its background and its relation to the rest of the MH.