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JUDAISM DISCOVERED 644 MICHAEL HOFFMAN
The poisonous effects of the hermetic, Neoplatonic lobby inside the
Roman Catholic Church would bear bitter fruit for centuries, even unto our
own day, since for the modern popes, the Catholic-humanist Kabbalists are
exemplars of the "evolving" Christian "synthesis." Throughout the
Renaissance no Catholic theologian of which we are aware issued any
sustained critique of Judaism comparable in scope or power to Luther's Von
den Jüden vnd jren Lügen, a book which encouraged a candid Christian
scrutiny of Judaism on the part of generations of learned Lutheran
Hebraists, most notably the University of Heidelberg linguist, Johann
Andreas Eisenmenger, who issued his nonpareil two-volume scholarly study
of Judaism on the eve of the Enlightenment. 775
"In terms of its effect upon the status of the Jews, both in its time and in
the emancipation debate, the most important work on Judaism was Johann
Andreas Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Judenthum... Eisenmenger claimed that
the Talmud taught the Jew that he could cheat Christians, that he could
freely break solemn promises to Christians and that oaths before Christian
magistrates were not binding... Eisenmenger... became the authority for later
writers... At the end of the eighteenth century, the foremost Old Testament
scholar, Johann David Michaelis of Göttingen, could assert that The oath of a
Jew is one of the trickiest things in the world. It is not one of Eisenmenger's
unjust charges that one can seriously doubt whether that which we consider
to be an oath is so regarded by the Jews.'... Well into the 1830s Eisenmenger
remained the basis for works opposing equal rights for the Jews. In 1833,
Christian Friedrich Koch, associate judge of the superior court of appeals and
director of the city and county court of Kulm, wrote a history of the Jews in
Prussia... Citing Eisenmenger, Koch claimed that the Talmud permitted Jews
to give false testimony and to deceive non-Jews... Another typical follower of
775 We qualified this statement with the word "sustained" because Luther's most formidable
Roman Catholic theological opponent, Johannes Eck, professor of theology at Ingolstadt, wrote
extensively against Judaism in his Ains Judenbuechlins verlegung (Refutation of a Jew Book;
1541), which was centered mainly on charges of ritual murder, blasphemy and treason. Eck
had been a student of the Carthusian scholar Gregor Reisch, who had rendered an opinion
against Reuchlin. Unfortunately, Eck's reputation for opposition to Judaic usury was
compromised by his relationship with the (gentile) Fugger banking dynasty. Since
reaffirmation of the church's historic stand against usury was a centerpiece of Luther's
mission, Eck's effectiveness against Luther was considerably weakened by his defense of the
interest which the Puggers' charged on deposits, earning Eck the derisive nickname apostolus
mercatorum (apostle of merchants).