Examination of Pharisaic Traditions

Da Costa's long-lost book rejects the divine origin of the rabbinic tradition. His insight was that what he calls Pharisaism is irreconcilable with the religion of the Pentateuch and therefore cannot derive from the same source. He claims, for example, that the Law of Moses does not allow for a belief in an afterlife for individual human beings. Concomitantly he denied the Mosaic origin of the notion of eternal punishment. The rabbinic reading of the Mosaic Law appeared to him almost as great a falsification as the Christian one. Yet there could be no reversion to Christianity and despite his deep rift with the synagogue he still believed in ultimate redemption for the Jewish people. As he so dramatically declares in his closing sonnet, Israel's rehabilitation depends on its shedding man-made doctrines, and holding fast to the Law in its purity.

"Of absolutely first rank in importance and interest..." Reference & Research Book News, 1994. "The volume is very well produced and includes an index of biblical references. This long-lost book is of great interest to on-going scholarship on the rejection by some Jewish intellectuals of belief in the authority of the rabbinical tradition." David Higgs, Portugese Studies Newsletter, 1994. "For specialists in the field of early-modern European Jewish history, the importance of the facsimile edition cannot be overstated." Miriam Bodian, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 1996.

H.P. Salomon, Doctor in Letters (1988), University of Nijmegen, teaches the Portuguese, French and Dutch literatures and Languages at the State University of New York in Albany. He has published extensively on the Portuguese New Christians, including Portrait of a New Christian (Paris, Gulbenkian, 1982).I.S.D. Sassoon was educated in his native England and in Israel. He teaches Rabbinics and Bible at the Institute for Traditional Judaism in Westchester (N.Y.). He is at present preparing for publication a commentary on the Pentateuch.