Fuente clara (Clear Fountain)

The polemical Judeo-Spanish work (written in Hebrew characters) Fuente clara (Clear Fountain; drawing on Psalm 84) was published in Salonika. Its anonymous author, a philosopher and physician, probably was from the Iberian Peninsula and may well have been a New Christian. Indeed, he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of Christianity and may even have studied in Christian schools. Judeo-Spanish anti-Christian polemics were rare in the sixteenth century, but this work is only nominally polemical. It is in fact a catechism outlining, for New Christians, the fundamental principles of Judaism, probably as part of the effort to encourage them to revert to Judaism. From historical references in the text, it seems Fuente clara was probably written in Italy between 1585 and 1590. A second edition was printed in Constantinople in 1740.

1.6. Christians Interpret Prophecies for Their Own Benefit

Thus the trumpeters of that torture [Catholicism] inserted the enemies of Israel into the holy law and into the prophets, imposing their own meanings on the prophetic verses, corrupting the verses and misunderstanding, as this book will show and as Isaiah the prophet prophesized in his chapter 22, which says: The enemy ripped away Judah’s defenses.

And to support this blasphemy and preserve this diabolic spiritual tower of Babel, they used one of the methods that the Romans employed to preserve their empire for so long. This involved creating expectations in the empire and among its dignitaries—including the heads of the empire, its emperors—that emperors would be chosen based not on ancestry or inheritance but only on worthiness, because lowly people with base occupations had become emperors or, more often, princes, as history shows. For example, one emperor was a former wood seller, stubborn about the price of his wood, who became an emperor called Pertinax, which means “stubborn.” And there are other examples. Therefore, anyone with such expectations sought to improve himself in arms and letters in hopes of rising to exalted posts. That is how the Roman Empire preserved itself for so long, creating what the prophet Isaiah, in his chapter 22, called a firm place, prophesizing that The peg (of the Wheel of Fortune) which is fastened in a firm place shall be torn away, as we shall show in Chapter 6 of this book.

The same can be said of those “corrupters,” those “serpents” who are as “beguiling” as their rabbi [i.e., Jesus], as prophesized by the prophet Jeremiah: Vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you (Jeremiah 8:17). And they held councils. The first of their councils, at a city in Antioch, brought together their dignitaries like those of the Roman Empire: their popes, cardinals, and other dignitaries who had attained rank not through inheritance or ancestry but only through vows and worthiness, and they made a “firm place,” which remains firm today as a punishment for our sins and the sins of our fathers, and each of them, in order to rise to exalted posts, seeks to keep that “torture” (as the prophets called it) going. It is well known that the current pope who sustains that so-called “faith” used to be a swineherd, and the others are the same: cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, who seek to avoid falling from their position. A pope named Leo once replied to someone who asked him a question, “Do not bother me, for this lie about oto [lit. “him”—i.e., Jesus] is how I preserve my position.” This appears in a book by a scholarly Lutheran who wrote against the popes.¹

1.7. The Need to Respond to Christian Attacks against Israel

Therefore, I understood and saw that our highly learned rabbis had written no books devoted to answering the arguments and citations that these “wise men out of Edom” put forward to preserve that faith of theirs by quoting the holy law and prophecies in ways so numerous and so effective upon the ignorant, to whom they proclaim the prophesies as literal truth and not as allegories, with the result that many have converted and still continue to convert to that “faith,” which the prophets called “torture.” Some who have read and who still continue to read the books by the sophists, by the so-called Beatus Jerome, and the books by Beatus Augustine, and the book by Beatus Thomas, and by the other sophists who were prophesized by the prophet Isaiah in his Chapter 9—Those who blithely induce others to err—end up not converting to that “faith” called “Catholicism.” Some, after hearing the preaching of these wise men out of Edom and the rhetoric of these orators, do not convert to that faith called Catholicism, and they did not say (and do not say today) these words that have no dawn (meaning “redemption”), as Isaiah prophesized in Chapter 8. Therefore these preachers focused on him and still focus on him today, their mouths uttering persuasive rhetoric that seems made of sweetness and precious gems, twisting everything to argue that a man formed of flesh and blood is God, who lives and reigns with the Holy One, Blessed Be He, his Creator, and that God no longer judges His world but gave His power to him.

Plato spoke of such deceivers in Gorgias, a book of rhetoric, saying that the sophists are a kind of deceivers who, in the guise of truth, twist things so the ignorant will believe falsehoods, which is what these “wise men out of Edom” do. Plato recommends banishing such people from the Republic as evil men. And thus the prophet Obadiah prophesized about them: I shall destroy the wise men out of Edom and remove understanding from the mount of Esau. Regarding orators, he said there are some who use false conjectures to deceive the ignorant. He recommends banishing them from the Republic as deceitful people. Plato compares these individuals, who have eloquence without wisdom, to a sharp sword in the hands of a raging madman. Another kind of deceivers, Plato says, are the poets, who use the bait of delight to deceive others, especially those who dishonestly accuse God of crude behavior. Plato recommends banishing such people from republics.

They borrow from the fable of Amphitryon, which says that Jupiter fell in love with Amphitryon’s wife and sent Mercury his angel to her as an emissary and go-between, and Jupiter was intimate with her and begot the god Apollo. Imitating this, these poetic wise men out of Edom dishonestly claim that the Lord committed adultery—heaven forbid—and they make the ignorant believe that the Lord fell in love with a Jewish woman and sent his angel Michael to convince her that she would have by Him a child, whom people now adore and burn incense for, as the pagans once adored and burned incense for, Apollo, son of Jupiter. And that is why these types of deceivers—these sophists, orators, poets—went forth from Greece: to deceive the people of Israel.

Therefore, Zechariah the prophet prophesized: Return to the stronghold, prisoners of hope. This day I declare that I shall repay you twofold. For I have bent Judah as my bow and filled the bow with Ephraim. And I shall stir up your sons, Zion, against your sons, Greece, and will make you resemble the sword of a mighty man. This was because the Greeks battled Israel more than any other people, not just with weapons against bodies but also against their souls, turning them away from the Lord their God and His Holy Law, with their rhetoric and fables, weapons that came from Greece, as we see even today. And therefore the prophet Isaiah prophesized in Chapter 22: Elam [i.e., Greece]² took up the quiver. It may well be that many of these sophists, bad preachers, and poets have a good understanding of the truth of the holy scripture and the prophesies, but to avoid losing their income and falling from their position, they dissemble, deceiving people, as the prophet Isaiah prophesized in Chapter 22, for these deceitful sophists could say, understanding the truth of the Holy Scripture and the prophets, as they say today: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!

As proof of this, before the Jews were expelled from Naples, Emperor Charles sent a wise preacher there to preach to the Christians during Lent, and he preached against the Jews, causing people to rise up against the Jews, and the Jews were terrified. It therefore became necessary for Don Samuel Abravanel and another prominent Jew to go talk to him and ask him to moderate his preaching, and they brought money so that if a mere request could not convince him to acquiesce, money might pacify him. And he told them to come in and asked them what they wanted. And they answered very humbly, in tears, urging His Grace to moderate his preaching so he would not put all the Jews in such danger with his preaching. He replied that God should annihilate his two visitors and destroy every Jew spread across the world, and that the earth should open and swallow them, for his kind claimed the power to deceive the ignorant into adoring and burning incense, as if for a god, but for a man formed of flesh and blood. They replied that bad people had already seen to that, and that as a result, all the people of Israel were now suffering a long, harsh exile, and that if God was content with that punishment, His Grace should be content. He promised to moderate his preaching and told them not to be afraid. And this is how the story was told by Don Samuel Abravanel’s wife, Dona Benvenida.