Raymundus Martini

These are some notes and quotes on Raymundus Martini. Someday I’ll put together a real article, but for now the notes are here for your use.

*** w70 6/1 343 A New Bible Translation-Does It Honor God? ***
But French scribes did not invent the name “Jehovah.” It was in use centuries before, Raymond Martin’s Pugio Fidei using it in the form “Jehova” in the year 1270.

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Note on Martin’s Pugio Fidei from :
ANTISEMITISM ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES by Bernard LAZARE Translated from the French
Chapter Seven ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES

The best known among all these theological lampoons are those published by the Dominican Raymund Martin, “a man as remarkable for his knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic writings as for that of Latin works.”82 These squibs bear characteristic enough titles: Capistrum Judaeorum(Muzzle of the Jews) and Pugio Fidei (Dagger of the Faith). 33The second had the greatest circulation. “It is well,” RaymundMartin said therein, “that the Christians take in hand the sword of their enemies, the Jews, to strike them with it?”

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Pugio Fidei was quite in vogue among the monks, especially the Dominicans, ardent defenders of the faith. It was studied, consulted, plagiarized.The number of writings which were inspired by Raymund Martin and for which the Pugio Fidei served as the prototype and even mould, was considerable.Among others those of Porchet Salvaticus, 84 Pierre de Barcelona, 85 and Pietro Galatini 86 may be named.

Found at http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziantisem/ziantisem7.sht

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Additional note on Pugio Fidei from University of Pennsylvania Center for Judaic Studies Library.

Marti, Ramon, d. ca. 1286.
Pugio Fidei, … adversus Mauros, et Iudaeos; nunc primum in lucem editus.
Paris, apud Ioannem Henault, 1651.

Raymundus Maritini (Ramon Marti, 1220 – 1285) was the greatest Hebraist and orientalist of the Middle Ages, and the leading representative of the Spanish Dominican school in the polemic against the Jews. His knowledge of languages and his outstanding command of Biblical and post-Biblical Jewish literature knew no equal, neither in his own time nor in the following centuries.

Raymundus studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. In his opus magnum Pugio fidei adversus Mauros and Iudaeos (Dagger of Faith against Moslems and Jews), written around 1280, he tried to prove Christianity’s truth using Jewish sources: Talmud, Midrashic literature, Jewish exegesis, Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah. He believed that these sources hide old traditions which prove the main tenets of Christianity and which should be extracted from the Jewish books “like pearls from a dunghill”. His method was to bring the Jewish section in its Hebrew or Aramaic original, followed by a Latin translation and a commentary. Raymundus’ aim was not to refute Jewish sources or to annihilate Jewish books, but to use them for Christian purposes. He looked for the sources – legends in particular – which included, so he believed, Christian truth, but also those that proved that contemporary Judaism was no longer the Biblical Judaism deserving of Christian tolerance.

The Pugio made an immense contribution to Christian Hebrew scholarship and to Christian anti-Jewish polemics. For the first time Jewish rabbinical sources were exposed to Christian eyes. Christian polemicists in the following centuries (for example, in the Tortosa Disputation of 1413-1414) based their arguments on the Pugio, making it their polemical platform. The work also brings several rabbinical sayings which were later erased from Jewish manuscripts and printed editions, and for which it serves as the only source.

Ten manuscripts of the Pugio fidei are known today. The book was printed in 1651 in Paris, and again in 1687 in Leipzig. It still awaits a critical edition.

Found at: http://www.library.upenn.edu/cjs/exhibit/toc.htm

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A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM
by ANDREW DICKSON WHITE

CHAPTER XVII. FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

This idea threw out roots and branches in every direction, and so developed ever into new and strong forms. As all scholars now know, the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not adopted until at some period between the second and tenth centuries; but in the mediaeval Church they soon came to be considered as part of the great miracle,–as the work of the right hand of the Almighty; and never until the eighteenth century was there any doubt allowed as to the divine origin of these rabbinical additions to the text. To hesitate in believing that these points were dotted virtually by the very hand of God himself came to be considered a fearful heresy.

The series of battles between theology and science in the field of comparative philology opened just on this point, apparently so insignificant: the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation. The first to impugn this divine origin of these vocal points and accents appears to have been a Spanish monk, Raymundus Martinus, in his _Pugio Fidei_, or Poniard of the Faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth century. But he and his doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the orthodox ocean, and apparently left no trace. For nearly three hundred years longer the full sacred theory held its ground; but about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse of the truth was given by a Jew, Elias Levita, and this seems to have had some little effect, at least in keeping the germ of scientific truth alive.

Found at http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whiteq01.html

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*** w64 7/15 423 What Is The Name? ***
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, 1910 edition, page 329, notes the correctness of using “Jehovah” in English when it states: “Jehovah, the proper name of God in the Old Testament.” Interestingly, it adds: “It has been maintained by some recent scholars that the word Jehovah dates only from the year 1520. . . . But the writers of the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant, are perfectly familiar with the word. . . . Besides, Drusius discovered it in Porchetus, a theologian of the fourteenth century. Finally, the word is found even in the ‘Pugio fidei’ of Raymund Martin, a work written about 1270. Probably the introduction of the name Jehovah antedates even R. Martin.”

*** w60 8/1 455 Not Forgetting the Name of God ***
The name-form Jehovah came to be when early translators took the vowels of Adonay’ and inserted them between the consonants JHVH, and then changed the original “a” to “e” to aid in pronunciation of the name. Recent discoveries show this form of the name as early as A.D. 1270 in Raymond Martini’s Pugio Fidei. So the name-form Jehovah is one of long usage.

*** na 17 God’s Name and Bible Translators *** (1984)
In time, God’s name came back into use. In 1278 it appeared in Latin in the work Pugio fidei (Dagger of Faith), by Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk. Raymundus Martini used the spelling Yohoua. Soon after, in 1303, Porchetus de Salvaticis completed a work entitled Victoria Porcheti adversus impios Hebraeos (Porchetus’ Victory Against the Ungodly Hebrews). In this he, too, mentioned God’s name, spelling it variously Iohouah, Iohoua and Ihouah. Then, in 1518, Petrus Galatinus published a work entitled De arcanis catholicae veritatis (Concerning Secrets of the Universal Truth) in which he spells God’s name Iehoua.

*** na 17 God’s Name and Bible Translators (ftn) ***
Printings of this work dated some centuries later, however, have the divine name spelled Jehova.