Jewish-Christian Polemic

This paper examines the polemical arguments with Christianity in Yom Tov Lipman Mühlhausen’s Sefer ha-Niẓaḥon. Focusing on Lipman’s attack on Christian image worship in his account of a disputation with the convert Peter (Pesaḥ), I argue that Lipman’s anti-Christian rhetoric drew on the vocabulary of contemporary Christian reform preachers in order to reshape Christian perceptions of the Jews while reinforcing his readers’ Jewish identity.

This article examines Yom Ṭov Lipman Mühlhausen’s treatise Sefer Niẓaḥon and argues that polemic against Christianity constitute only one facet of the book’s broader project, which aimed at popularising a Maimonidean reinterpretation of Jewish religion and redefining the boundaries of the Jewish community along intellectual lines.