- Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus
Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus was a French Jewish philosopher and controversialist. He lived at
Arles , perhaps atAvignon also, and in other places, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.He belonged to the well-known Nathan family, which claimed its descent from David; he was probably the grandson of the translator Maestro
Bongodas Judah Nathan . According to the statement of Isaac himself, in the introduction to his concordance (see below), he was completely ignorant of theBible until his fifteenth year, his studies having been restricted to theTalmud and to religious philosophy.Later he took up other branches of learning, and owing to his frequent association with Christians and to the numerous anti-Jewish writings of Jewish
apostate s that appeared at that time, he turned his attention to religious controversy.Works
Isaac was the author of the following works (some are still extant, and some are known only through citations): a refutation of the arguments contained in the epistle of the fictitious
Samuel of Morocco , who endeavored to demonstrate from the Bible the Messiahship of Jesus (introduction to Nathan's concordance); "Tokaḥat Mat'eh", againstJoshua Lorki (Geronimo de Santa Fé after baptism;Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi , "Bibliotheca Antichristiana", pp. 76-77); "Mibẓar Yiẓḥaḳ", anti-Christian polemics (De Rossi, l.c.); "Me'ah Debarim", for the instruction of youth, twenty-one essays on various topics, the Biblical names of God forming one, another being on theMasorah (collection of I. S. Reggio and Schorr); "Me'ammeẓ Koaḥ", on virtue and vice, in three parts (Neubauer, "Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS." No. 2232); "Meïr Netib", aBiblical concordance upon which the author worked from 1437 to 1447, with a philosophico-exegetical introduction ("Petiḥat Meïr Netib").The "Meïr Netib" was the first Bible concordance in Hebrew, and was distinguished from the similar Latin work of
Arlotus of Prato in that its vocabulary was arranged in the order of the roots. In the introduction the author says that his work aimed to facilitate the study of Biblicalexegesis and to prevent Jewish converts to Christianity from making, in their religious controversies, incorrect quotations from the Bible, as was often the case with Geronimo de Santa Fé. The "Meïr Netib," with its complete introduction, was first published at Venice (erroneously under the name of Mordecai Nathan) in 1523; in 1556 it was published at Basel byBuxtorf , but with only a part of the introduction.References
*
Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi , "Dizionario", p. 77;
*I. S. Reggio , "Iggerot", i. 71;
*Moses Schorr , in "He-Ḥaluẓ", i. 29, note 6;
*Moritz Steinschneider , "Cat. Bodl." col. 1141;
*Ernest Renan -Adolf Neubauer , "Les Ecrivains Juifs Français", p. 582;
*Heinrich Grätz , "Gesch." viii. 162;
*Henri Gross , in "Monatsschrift", xxix. 518 et seq.;
*idem, "Gallia Judaica", p. 89;
*Zunz , "G. S." iii. 190
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