ATIAS, ISAAC. Thesoro de Preceptos a Donde Se Encierran Las joyas de los Seys cientos y treze Preceptos [“Thesaurus of the Commandments. Where are Locked the Jewels of the Six Hundred and Thirteen Commandments.”]

Isaac Atias was a disciple of Isaac Uziel in Amsterdam. He became Haham of the Portuguese Synagogue of Hamburg before accepting, in 1622, the call to serve as rabbi of Venice where he later died. (The first edition of Thesoro de Preceptos appeared in Venice in 1627). Following the lead of Maimonides in his Sepher HaMitzvoth, the author has divided the present book into two parts: The first, an enumeration of the 248 positive precepts; the second, an enumeration of the 365 negative precepts. The work was intended for the Spanish and Portuguese Marranos in such places as Amsterdam, Venice and Hamburg, who reverted to their ancestral faith but were now unfamiliar with the Hebrew language and largely ignorant of the traditional practices of Judaism. In the Prologue, Athias explicitly refers to his Marrano brethren as the "noblest nation of Spain" who had been punished with "exile, calamities, death and excessive suffering…whose major part had been miserably buried in the darkness of perdition until the Lord assisted them and they returned to adore His blessed service" (p. 3, right column). See JE, Vol. II, p. 268.