Bidspirit auction | MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL. De Creatione

MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL. De Creatione Problemata XXX [”Thirty Problems on the Creation”]. pp. (16), 156, (2). * BOUND WITH: De Resurrectione Mortuorum [on the resurrection of the dead]. pp. (24), 346, (6). Two works bound in one volume. Both first edition. Lightly stained in places. Contemporary limp vellum, worn. 12mo. Silva Rosa 25 and 21. Amsterdam, By the Author, 1636 and 1635.     The Amsterdam Jewish community at this time was comprised primarily of Marranos, who in their Iberian homeland knew Judaism, if at all, only through the lens of the Old Testament. Since the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is not elucidated in the Bible, many of the newly arrived Marranos came to doubt the belief in an After-life. In response to these skeptics (especially Uriel Acosta), Menasseh marshalled proofs from throughout Judaic literature as to the existence of a world to come. The second work, was the first of Menasseh's philosophical texts, dealing with the Jewish notion of creatio ex nihilo. Following in the footsteps of Maimonides, Menasseh sought to disprove the Aristotelian notion of the pre-eternity of the world. See C. Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (1945) pp. 91-4.