(Anonymous). Brief van de Rabbinen der twee Synagogen van Amsterdam, aen Monsr. Jurieu. Uyt het Spaens vertaelt. [“Letter from the Rabbis of the Two Synagogues of Amsterdam, to Monsieur Jurieu. Translated from the Spanish.”]

(ATHIAS, JOSEPH)

Joseph Athias (i.e., Pierre Mortier)

Brussels (i.e., Amsterdam)

1686

Printer's device on title

Faux "Joseph Athias of Brussels" Edition. The illustrious Amsterdam printer Joseph Athias was never associated with the city of Brussels. That this false Brussels imprint bears his name, Fuks views as an attestation to the Jewish printer's fame. Famed theologian Pierre Jurieu (1637-1713) was a Huguenot (French Protestant) refugee in Holland. To escape the wrath of King Louis XIV of France, Jurieu settled in Rotterdam in 1681. In Jurieu's vision, the brutal persecutions of the Huguenots that he and his coreligionists endured, amounted to nothing less than the Biblically foretold War of Gog and Magog, auguring the end of the world in 1700 or 1702. These theories were given vent in his book L'Accomplissement des prophéties ou la délivrance prochaine de l'Eglise (Rotterdam, 1686). That work contained a Letter to the Jewish People, admonishing them to convert to Christianity before the imminent End. (A Dutch translation of the open letter appears on p. 3 of our pamphlet.) Enter our pamphlet. As Fuks tells the story: "Jurieu's adversaries made an effort to make his visions ridiculous and they concocted a pamphlet in the form of a Reply of the Rabbis of the Amsterdam Jewish communities to Jurieu in which they tried to prove with Bible-quotations that Jurieu's ideas were faulty. The pamphlet was allegedly translated from the Spanish and printed by Joseph Athias in Brussels in 1686. Of course, the pamphlet was not printed by Joseph Athias, and the Sephardic and Ashkenazic rabbis of Amsterdam would never have engaged themselves in debates with Christian theologians, as such activities would not be tolerated by the municipal authorities. But as Joseph Athias was the best known Jewish printer of his time, the anonymous pamphleteer borrowed his name to give the pamphlet an aura of authenticity." See Fuks, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands Vol. II, pp. 305-7. Preceding our Dutch version was a French version of the pamplet, whose true author was Richard Simon, another Huguenot refugee who was Jurieu's adversary. From Simon's correspondence one gathers that the French version was executed by Amsterdam printer Pierre Mortier. Fuks is convinced that Mortier printed the Dutch version as well. See Fuks, p. 307, n. 104; F.R.J. Knetsch, Pierre Jurieu, Theoloog en Politikus der Refuge (1967) pp. 208-9. We have not been able to locate another copy of this work, other that that noted by Fuks: "This Dutch version of the original French pamphlet reposes in the Royal Library in The Hague" (Fuks, n. 104)