Disputation of Barcelona - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Disputation
Disputation
In the scholastic system of education of the Middle Ages, disputations offered a formalized method of debate designed to uncover and establish truths in theology and in sciences...

of Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

(July 20–24, 1263) was held at the royal palace of King James I of Aragon

James I of Aragon

James I the Conqueror was the King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona, and Lord of Montpellier from 1213 to 1276...

in the presence of the King, his court, and many prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries and knights, between Dominican

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

Friar

A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...

Pablo Christiani

Pablo Christiani , a figure of the thirteenth century, was born to a pious Jewish family, with the name Saul. He became a Christian convert and Dominican friar....

, a convert from Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, and Rabbi

Rabbi

In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

Nachmanides (whose full name, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Gerondi, is often abbreviated as Ramban).

The disputation was organized by Raymond de Penyafort, the superior of Christiani and the confessor

Confessor

-Confessor of the Faith:Its oldest use is to indicate a saint who has suffered persecution and torture for the faith, but not to the point of death. The term is still used in this way in the East. In Latin Christianity it has come to signify any saint, as well as those who have been declared...

of King James. Christiani had been preaching to Jews of Provence

Provence

Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

. Relying upon the reserve his adversary would be forced to maintain through fear of wounding the feelings of the Christian dignitaries, Christiani assured the King that he could prove the truth of Christianity from the Talmud

Talmud

The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

and other rabbinical writings. Nahmanides complied with the order of the King, but stipulated that complete freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

should be granted.

Proceedings

The debate turned on the following questions:

whether the Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

had appeared or not
whether, according to Scripture, the Messiah is a divine or a human being
whether the Jews or the Christians held the true faith.

Had the Messiah appeared

Based upon several aggadic

Midrash

The Hebrew term Midrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....

passages, Christiani argued that Pharisaic sages believed that the Messiah had lived during the Talmudic period, and that they must therefore have believed that the Messiah was Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

.

Nahmanides argued that Jews were not required to believe the aggadic materials found in the Talmud. He countered that Christiani's interpretations of Talmudic passages were per-se distortions; the rabbis would not hint that Jesus was Messiah while, at the same time, explicitly opposing him as such:

"Does he mean to say that the sages of the Talmud believed in Jesus as the messiah and believed that he is both human and divine, as held by the Christians? However, it is well known that the incident of Jesus took place during the period of the Second Temple. He was born and killed prior to the destruction of the Temple, while the sages of the Talmud, like R. Akiba and his associates, followed this destruction. Those who compiled the Mishnah, Rabbi and R. Nathan, lived many years after the destruction. All the more so R. Ashi who compiled the Talmud, who lived about four hundred years after the destruction. If these sages believed that Jesus was the messiah and that his faith and religion were true and if they wrote these things from which Friar Paul intends to prove this, then how did they remain in the Jewish faith and in their former practice? For they were Jews, remained in the Jewish faith all their lives, and died Jews - they and their children and their students who heard their teachings. Why did they not convert and turn to the faith of Jesus, as Friar Paul did? ... If these sages believed in Jesus and in his faith, how is it that they did not do as Friar Paul, who understands their teachings better than they themselves do?"

Nahmanides noted that prophetic promises of the Messianic Age

Messianic Age

Messianic Age is a theological term referring to a future time of universal peace and brotherhood on the earth, without crime, war and poverty. Many religions believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the "Kingdom of God" or the "World to Come".- Terminology: "messianic" and...

, a reign of universal peace and justice had not yet been fulfilled. On the contrary, since the appearance of Jesus, the world had been filled with violence and injustice, and among all denominations the Christians were the most warlike. He asserted that questions of the Messiah are of less dogmatic importance to Jews than most Christians imagine, because it is more meritorious for the Jews to observe the precepts of the Torah

Torah

Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

under a Christian ruler, while in exile and suffering humiliation and abuse, than under the rule of the Messiah, when every one would perforce act in accordance with the Law.

Is the Messiah a divine or a human being

Nahmanides demonstrated from numerous biblical and Talmudic sources that traditional (rabbinic) Jewish belief ran contrary to Christiani's postulates, and showed that the Biblical prophets regarded the future messiah as a human, a person of flesh and blood, without ascribing him divine

Divinity

Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power or deity, or its attributes or manifestations in...

attributes.

"[... it seems most strange that... ] the Creator of Heaven and Earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewish lady, grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and that afterwards... he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, simply cannot tolerate these assertions. If you have listened all your life to the priests who have filled your brain and the marrow of your bones with this doctrine, and it has settled into you because of that accustomed habit. [I would argue that if you were hearing these ideas for the first time, now, as a grown adult], you would never have accepted them."

According to a report by Nahmanides,

Friar Paul claimed: "Behold the passage in Isaiah, chapter 53, tells of the death of the messiah and how he was to fall into the hands of his enemies and how he was placed alongside the wicked, as happened to Jesus. Do you believe that this section speaks of the messiah?

I said to him: "In terms of the true meaning of the section, it speaks only of the people of Israel, which the prophets regularly call 'Israel My servant' or 'Jacob My servant.'"

Conclusion

As the disputation turned in favor of Nahmanides the Jews of Barcelona, fearing the resentment of the Dominicans, entreated him to discontinue; but the King, whom Nahmanides had acquainted with the apprehensions of the Jews, desired him to proceed. At the end of the disputation, King James awarded Nachmanides a prize and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended."

Aftermath

Since the Dominicans claimed the victory, Nahmanides felt compelled to publish the controversy. From this publication Christiani selected certain passages which he construed as blasphemies against Christianity and denounced to his general Raymond de Penyafort. A capital charge was then instituted, and a formal complaint against the work and its author was lodged with the King. James mistrusted the Dominican court and called an extraordinary commission, ordering the proceedings to be conducted in his presence. Nahmanides admitted that he had stated many things against Christianity, but he had written nothing which he had not used in his disputation in the presence of the King, who had granted him freedom of speech.

The justice of his defense was recognized by the King and the commission, but to satisfy the Dominicans Nahmanides was sentenced to exile for two years and his pamphlet was condemned to be burned. The Dominicans, however, found this punishment too mild and, through Pope Clement IV

Pope Clement IV

Pope Clement IV , born Gui Faucoi called in later life le Gros , was elected Pope February 5, 1265, in a conclave held at Perugia that took four months, while cardinals argued over whether to call in Charles of Anjou, the youngest brother of Louis IX of France...

, they seem to have succeeded in turning the two years' exile into perpetual banishment. Nahmanides left Aragon never to return again and in 1267 he settled in the Land of Israel

Land of Israel

The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...

. There he founded a synagogue

Synagogue

A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...

in the Old City

Jerusalem's Old City walls

The Old City is a walled area within the modern city of Jerusalem. Until 1860, when the Jewish neighborhood, Mishkenot Sha'ananim, was established, this area constituted the entire city of Jerusalem...

of Jerusalem, the Ramban Synagogue

Ramban Synagogue

The Ramban Synagogue , is the oldest active synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was founded by Nahmanides in 1267. Today it is located at the corner of Ha-Yehudim Street and the square in the Jewish Quarter.-Features:The foundation of the building comprises vaults resting on Romanesque and...

: it is the oldest synagogue in Jerusalem, although a Karaite synagogue, the Anan ben David, also claims that honour.

King James appointed a censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

commission to remove the passages deemed offensive from the Talmud. It consisted of Bishop of Barcelona Arnoldo de Guerbo, Raymond de Penyafort, and the Dominicans Arnoldo de Legarra, Pedro de Janua and Ramón Martí

Ramón Martí

Ramón Martí was a 13th century Catalan Dominican friar and theologian. He is remembered for his polemic work Pugio Fidei . In 1250 he was one of eight friars appointed to make a study of oriental languages with the purpose of carrying on a mission to Jews and Moors. He worked in Spain as a...

(author of Pugio Fidei).

External links

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