Beschreibung:

Kelimat ha-Goyim is a polemical treatise by Isaac ben Moses Profiat Duran (d. ca. 1414). Duran, a scholar and physician, was one of the outstanding anti-Christian polemicists of Spanish Jewry. Duran was probably born in Perpignan and later moved to Catalonia. The decisive event in his life was the wave of anti-Jewish persecutions in Spain in 1391. Duran himself had been forcibly converted to Christianity in 1391 but later reverted to Judaism. Kelimat ha-Goyim is an attack on the tenets of Christianity written in the historico-critical method. In this work, Duran reviewed the writings of the Church Fathers and clarified inaccuracies and fabrications in the translations of Jewish writings by those who attacked Judaism. Kelimat ha-Goyim served as a source for subsequent Jewish apologetic literature. On the final leaf, another hand has added polemical verses by Profet Duran which can also be found at the end of other copies of this work.
ProvenanceSolomon Halberstam (shelf no. 192)
Physical Description22 leaves on paper, 8 ¾ x 6 ¾ inches; 222 x 173 mm, written in Italian semi-cursive script in black ink, modern foliation in pencil; library stamp on first and last leaves. Library buckram.
LiteratureHirschfeld (ms. no. 447); edited from other manuscripts by F. Talmage, The Polemical Writings of Profiat Duran (Jerusalem, 1981, in Hebrew)