Bidspirit auction | LEVI, DAVID.  A Defence of

LEVI, DAVID.  A Defence of the Old Testament, in a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas Paine. FIRST EDITION. pp. 240. Foxed and stained. Contemporary calf-backed marbled boards, worn, spine distressed. 12mo. Singerman 114. New York, William A. Davis for Naphtali Judah, 1797.  AN 18TH-CENTURY JEWISH RESPONSE TO PATRIOT THOMAS PAINE.  Anglo-Jewish scholar David Levi (1742-1801) here defends the Hebrew Bible against rationalist critiques of Scriptural authority, voiced by none other than American patriot, Thomas Paine.  Paine made the attack in his 1793 work ”The Age of Reason” and Levi's responses are here addressed directly and defiantly to Paine himself. The work is surprising in that most religious defenders of the Bible against Paine’s attacks were Christian, while Levi was of course Jewish. In fact, LEVI IS CONSIDERED THE FIRST JEWISH WRITER TO THEOLOGICALLY DEFEND JUDAISM AS SUCH IN ENGLISH. The work was distributed by Naphtali Judah, one of the first Jewish booksellers in America.