Johann Andreas Eisenmenger
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (1654, Mannheim – 20 December 1704, Heidelberg) was a German orientalist scholar from the Electorate of the Palatinate, now best known as the author of Entdecktes Judenthum (Judaism Unmasked), which was published in two volumes in 1711 and 1714.
In this work, Eisenmenger sought to expose the allegedly secret and nefarious practices of Jews, and he claimed that Judaism was a false religion that had been invented by the ancient Israelites in an attempt to deceive the world.
Financier Samuel Oppenheimer, one of the most influential Jewish members of the Court of the House of Habsburg, fearing that the book's publication would give additional strength to the prejudice against them, denounced it as a malicious libel, and tried to have the work banned.
The son of an official in the service of the Elector of the Palatinate Charles I Louis (who had, in 1673, offered Spinoza a chair in philosophy at Heidelberg), Eisenmenger received a good education, despite the early loss of his father to plague when he was 12 years old.
[2][3] In Holland he established amicable relations with figures like Rabbi David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida,[4] formerly of Lithuania, and then head of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam.
[2][5] Anti-Christian polemics were, uniquely to Europe, published in Amsterdam and Eisenmenger's anger was aroused when Lida quoted Rabbi Isaiah ben Abraham Horowitz to the effect that the archangel Samael, king of the devils, was a celestial representation of Christians.
The work, in two large quarto volumes, appeared in Frankfurt in 1700, and the Elector, Prince Johann Wilhelm, took great interest in it, appointing Eisenmenger professor of Oriental languages in the University of Heidelberg.
[11] To this end he urged that several measures be undertaken, including restricting their economic liberties and rights, banning them from writing criticisms of Christianity, and proscribing both their synagogues and law courts.
Paul Lawrence Rose writes: 'Eisenmenger proceeded to amass quotations from the Talmud and other Hebrew sources revealing to all how the Jewish religion was barbarous, superstitious, and even murderous.
All this was done in an apparently scholarly and reasonable way that belied the author's evident preoccupation (like Luther) with tales of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children and poisoning of wells.
Jacob Katz writes: ‘Eisenmenger was acquainted with all the literature a Jewish scholar of standing would have known ... [He] surpassed his [non-Jewish] predecessors in his mastery of the sources and his ability to interpret them tendentiously.
There was a nucleus of truth in all his claims: the Jews lived in a world of legendary or mythical concepts, of ethical duality-following different standards of morality in their internal and external relationships- and they dreamed with imaginative speculation of their future in the time of the Messiah.
It is claimed that he tore citations from their context, while the correctness of specific interpretations and, more importantly, his use of a relatively small number of texts within the huge chain of rabbinical commentary to characterise Judaism as a whole is challenged.
Some passages are misinterpreted; others are insinuations based on one-sided inferences; and even if this were not the case, a work which has for its object the presentation of the dark side of Jewish literature can not give us a proper understanding of Judaism.
[25] The Lutheran biblical scholar Franz Delitzsch subjected Rohling's book to a close examination and found that he not only drew on Eisenmenger, but introduced many significant distortions.
