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On false Jewish messiahs by the Christian theologian Dr. Johann Lent. The full title is Schediasma historico philogicum: de judaeorum pseudo-messiis. Schediasma historico philogicum is in Latin with occasional Hebrew. The text is comprised of twenty-five chapters with an addendum of several chapters. The title page has the printer’s pressmark, a pelican nursing its young with its own blood.
Johann Lent was a doctor of Theology and professor of Oriental Languages and Church history in the Protestant Academy of Herborn, Germany. The book, An off-hand historical study of Jewish false Messiahs, was first published in 1683 and is quite rare, as is the second 1697 edition, which the Center for Judaic Studies library possesses. The book consists of a long list of Jewish Pseudo-Messiahs, beginning with Bar Khokhba, and including two chapters (pp. 76-102) on Sabbatai Zevi, chapters which are largely based on the earlier accounts of Paul Rycaut and Thomas Coenen. It ends with a short report of the Pseudo-Messiah Mordechai from Eisenstadt who appeared in 1682. The book was quite influential and often quoted in Christian-Jewish polemics of the following generation. |
