De Resurrectione Mortuorum [on the resurrection of the dead]

MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL.

by the Author

Amsterdam

1636

FIRST EDITION. Printer’s Hebrew device on title. On f.1v. deaccession date from British Museum, 1787.

Silva Rosa 25

The Amsterdam Jewish community at this time was comprised primarily of Marranos, who in their Iberian homeland knew Judaism, if at all, only through the lenses of the Old Testament. Since the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is not spelled out in the Bible, some of the newly arrived Marranos came to doubt the belief in an afterlife. The most notorious of these modern-day “Sadducees” was one Uriel Acosta. In response to these sceptics, Menasseh marshaled proofs from throughout Judaic literature as to the existence of an afterlife. See Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (Philadeplhia, 1945), pp. 92-94.