When Portugal expelled its Jewish population in 1496 many families chose to stay by converting to Christianity. Known as conversos or New Christians, the Inquisition kept a close eye on them. They suspected, often correctly, that their conversion was insincere and that they were secretly continuing to practise Judaism. The Inquisition was so unyielding in its persecution of conversos that many fled the country. They settled across the Mediterranean and in the cities of Northern Europe.
Amsterdam was a particular magnet for conversos who aspired to return to their Jewish roots. Many who fled to Amsterdam were merchants with contacts to fellow conversos across Europe and in the Ottoman and Portuguese Empires. They helped to build Amsterdam into a prosperous, international trading hub and established a Sephardi Jewish community that was soon the most important and influential in Northern Europe. It was Sephardim from Amsterdam, often from former converso families, who established the first Jewish community in England. They came to England with the tacit permission of Oliver Cromwell. He let them stay, both for commercial reasons and because of the persuasive lobbying of Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel, the leader of the Sephardi community in Amsterdam.
In 1615 a young Portuguese converso named Gabriel da Costa Fiuza arrived in Amsterdam with his mother and brothers. When they arrived in Amsterdam, Gabriel changed his name to Uriel. The story of Uriel da Costa is one of the most tragic and disturbing in the history of the Amsterdam Jewish community.
Uriel da Costa was born into a wealthy Portuguese family. His father was a Catholic merchant and tax collector, his mother came from a converso family. Uriel received a good education and developed a religious outlook, spending his leisure time reading the Gospels and spiritual literature. He studied church law at the University of Coimbra and at the age of 24 was awarded a clerical position as Treasurer of the Collegiate Church. Unfortunately for him, the deeper he delved into Catholicism the greater his doubts grew, until he reached the point where he knew he would never be able to find the satisfaction that he craved in the Church.
Spiritually lost, he started to study the Hebrew Bible. He found it easier to believe because, as he put it, he was reading the word of God rather than a human Testament. He decided to convert to Judaism, a decision he could not have taken lightly as he knew that if he stayed in Portugal it would bring down the wrath of the Inquisition upon him and his family. Their only option was to flee, departing Portugal secretly because it was forbidden for those of Jewish ancestry to leave the country without permission.
Like so many before them they headed to Amsterdam. Delighted to be at last among Jews practising their religion freely, Uriel da Costa immediately applied to join the Amsterdam synagogue and had himself circumcised.
Amsterdam was Uriel da Costa’s first exposure to life in a Jewish community. It didn’t take long before he found himself deeply disappointed. His only knowledge of Judaism came from the Bible, yet the religion that he saw practised all around him seemed to bear very little relation to the strictures of the biblical text. He knew nothing of the concept of the Oral Law, the rabbinic belief that alongside the Bible there was another, equally binding, verbal tradition explaining how the regulations and rituals of Jewish life were to be carried out in practice. As he became familiar with the rabbinic tradition he realised that it included many practices and beliefs which were not mentioned in the written Bible. Da Costa felt let down and betrayed.
It is not surprising that he felt as he did. He had no Jewish family traditions to rely upon, he didn’t realise that, unlike Christianity, Judaism placed greater emphasis on action than on belief and he had no concept of the role of the Talmud in shaping the day to day activities of Jewish life. He was certainly not the first convert to encounter these difficulties. But his reaction differed from most. Rather than trying to understand, he took it upon himself to try to change things, to fit them more closely to his way of thinking.
Uriel da Costa moved to Hamburg, another flourishing ex-converso community, but he found Jewish life there no easier to come to terms with. Frustrated he sent a series of challenges to the rabbis of Hamburg, outlining what he saw as Judaism’s greatest deviations from the Bible. Most of all he challenged the concept of the Oral Law as having an authority equal to the Torah and the Bible. He challenged various practices that he believed were not sanctioned by the Bible, including the wearing of tefillin and the justification for saying blessings over things that were not biblical in origin.
The Hamburg rabbis sent a copy of his challenges to Leon Modena in Venice. Modena was one of the most learned and fascinating rabbis of his time, far more open-minded than most men of his generation. Nevertheless he replied much along the lines that one would expect, rebutting Da Costa’s challenges. He refused to refer to Da Costa by name, calling him the heretic from Hamburg and a foolish and stupid man, wise in his own eyes only. He advised the Hamburg rabbis to excommunicate Da Costa if he failed to recant. Da Costa did not recant and was duly excommunicated.
Da Costa returned to Amsterdam where his ideas had been attacked in a pamphlet written by another former converso. Da Costa responded to the attack in a book in which he condemned rabbinic Judaism and argued that the soul was not immortal. Arguing against the immortality of the soul was offensive both to Christians and Jews. The Amsterdam magistrates arrested him, threw him in gaol for ten days and issued an order to burn his books.
Shortly after this his wife died and Da Costa found himself completely alone. As a Jew he could not seek the company of Christians, as an excommunicate the Jews would have nothing to do with him either. He complained that the Jewish children would call him names in the streets, that they would throw stones at him and hammer on his door so he could get no peace. Unable to live in such a way Da Costa went to the Amsterdam rabbis, recanted his views and had his excommunication lifted.
The worst was yet to come. Da Costa met two Christians who told him they were thinking of converting to Judaism. He advised them not to and asked them not to tell the rabbis what he had said. Of course, they told the rabbis. Furious, the Amsterdam community excommunicated him again.
Uriel da Costa returned to his solitary life under excommunication. Seven more years went by until eventually he could stand it no longer. He went to the Amsterdam rabbis and once again offered to recant his views. This time they were less forgiving. They ordered him to make a public confession, then imposed a harsh, abusive and humiliating biblical punishment upon him. (This was in the days when wrongdoers were still burnt at the stake so perhaps we shouldn’t be too shocked). After he had made his confession in the synagogue they ordered him to strip to the waist. They tied his hands to a pole and inflicted 39 lashes upon him. Then they ordered him to lie in the doorway while the congregation stepped over him, treading on his lower legs as they did so. The only possible redeeming feature of the congregation’s behaviour is that when da Costa described it in his autobiography, he did not say that the lashes had hurt him. It was the humiliation that destroyed him. His complaint speaks for itself.
When they had all done I got up and being washed and made clean by the man who stood by me for that purpose I went home. Now let nobody say that they did not do me honour, for if they scourged me, yet they lamented over me and stroked my head. O shameless race of men! O detested fathers! You from whom I had nothing dishonourable to fear. You who said far be it from us to use you indecently. Now, let anyone who has heard my story judge how decent a spectacle it was to see an old man, a person of no mean rank, and who was moreover naturally exceedingly modest, stripped before a numerous congregation of men, women, and children and scourged by order of its judges, and those such as rather deserved the name of abject slaves. Let him imagine the confusion and anguish such a one must suffer, by being obliged to lay at the feet of his bitterest enemies, and be trampled on by those persons who had already loaded him with injuries and insults.
The humiliation was more than he could bear. Uriel da Costa went home, completed his autobiography and shot himself.
Uriel da Costa was not Amsterdam’s only excommunicated heretic. Thirty years later Baruch Spinoza suffered the same fate. It is often said that da Costa was Spinoza’s forerunner. There is a difference between them though. Spinoza grew up within the Jewish community. He knew what Judaism was, he was aware of the consequences of his ideas in the eyes of the Jewish community and it didn’t stop him from developing his philosophy. Da Costa did not grow up among Jews. He made an assumption about Judaism before converting and when he discovered that he had misunderstood, he insisted he was right and the religion was wrong. It doesn’t excuse the way he was humiliated by in the Amsterdam synagogue. But it reminds me of the story they used to tell about the Jewish mother whose son was conscripted into the army. “Look” she said, “they’re all marching out of step except my Johnny.”
Tanach is just a name (based on an acrostic) for the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is known to Christians as the Old Testament.
There are many translations; the best modern translation, in my opinion, is Robert Alter's recent "The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary." It is not cheap though.
There is a more recent Jewish Publication Society translation than the 1917 one, though I prefer the 1917 version. if you can get hold of it. Otherwise just search JPS Tanakh on Amazon. I don't know what the Aionian version is.
Questions about the authorship, genealogy, textual accuracy and editing of the Bible have been a controversial topic for the last 200 years among bible academics. There are many different opinions and lots of books on the subject. Just be aware that whatever you read will be just one point of view, nobody knows for certain. James Kugel is the most authoritative Jewish scholar of Bible history (but that doesn't mean he is always right!)
You might find my book The Murderous History of Bible Translations useful. It is not about the bible's composition but about the history of its translations. Matti Friedman's book The Aleppo Codex is also worth reading, its about the history of one of the only two ancient manuscripts of the Pentateuch.
Hope that helps
Harry
This case reminds me of the difference between people brought up in Judaism and a ba'al teshuvah from a non-religious background. The latter may not have the Jewish understanding of the former, and are more likely to be vulnerable to outreach organisations with outlandish views, leading to extreme behaviour.