Du Rappel des Juifs.

(LA PEYRÈRE, ISAAC).

n.p

[Paris]

1643

Raised a Calvinist, Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676), millenarian theologian and Bible critic, was born to a French Huguenot family in Bordeaux, likely of Marrano descent. He was an unusually complex individual who combined radical Biblical criticism with a mystical Messianism. (The latter view he shared in common with Menasseh Ben Israel, who in negotiations with Oliver Cromwell, utilized the argument of the imminent arrival of the Messiah as grounds for the readmission of the Jews to England). In 1642–43 La Peyrère wrote Praeadamitae and Du Rappel des Juifs, the earliest works of Bible Criticism, thought to have had direct influence on Spinoza’s theories as spelled out in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. La Peyrère’s works were banned and subsequently burned everywhere for their heretical claims that Adam was not the first Man, that the Bible is not the history of mankind but only the history of the Jews and that no accurate copy of the Bible exists. See R. H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère: His Life, Work and Influence (1987); A. J. Saraiva, “Antonio Vieira, Menasseh Ben Israel et le Cinquieme Empire, “ Studia Rosenthaliana Vol. VI, No. 1 (January 1972), pp. 38-43; EJ, Vol. X, cols. 1425-6.