Heresy II, Of the Old Testament in General

OF THE OLD TESTAMENT in general — Heresy II (De Veteri Testamento in universali. Haeresis II)

That in the Old scriptures, which the Church now holds, many things have been falsified — as much by the Jews as by the Christians — and that many things also have partly been super-added, and partly been subtracted.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

This most pestilent error the more recent Anabaptists profess in our age; with whom, in the same error, consent the Servetans — so called from a certain impious Michael Servetus, a Spaniard, whom, in the year 1554 (so printed “M.D.LIIII”; Servetus was in fact burned in 1553), on account of his execrable heresies, those same Lutherans burned by public fire in the city of the Allobroges, Geneva — [those Lutherans] who [nonetheless] contend that heretics, however pertinacious, are by no reason to be killed. These Servetans, therefore, since they know that many testimonies concerning the divinity of CHRIST and the holy Trinity (which they themselves deny) are written in the old testament, and those [testimonies] so open that they cannot be eluded, say that those testimonies were vitiated [corrupted] by the “Trinitarians” — for so those impious [men], by way of contempt, call the Catholic assertors of the Trinity.

IMPVGNATIO [The Refutation]

It cannot be said that the divine scriptures of the Old instrument were falsified by the malignity either of the Jews or of the Christians. For if we should say that they were corrupted by the Jews, then it is deservedly asked (says Origen) whether the Jews corrupted them before the advent of Christ, or after his advent. If before, then surely Christ and the Apostles — who accuse the scribes and Pharisees of the other crimes — would never have kept silent about this crime, which was the greatest; nor would Christ have sent his hearers to them, saying, “Upon (Super) the chair of Moses have sat the Scribes and Pharisees: whatsoever they shall say to you, do” — if he had known them to bring forth falsehoods from the chair of the Mosaic reading. But if any one should say that, after the advent of the Lord Savior and the preaching of the apostles, those books were falsified by the Hebrews, I shall not be able to hold my laughter (cachinnum): that the Savior, and the Evangelists, and the Apostles brought forth [their] testimonies just as the Jews were afterward going to falsify [them]! ¹ And if any one should say that those books were depraved by the Christians after Christ, Augustine responds that it was done by divine providence that not all the Jews were killed, but dispersed through the world by the power of God, so that from their intact volumes we might be able to recognize that ours are not falsified. And lest the Jews themselves should be able to hide those books from us, or to show [them as if] corrupted, God — two hundred and fifty years before the advent of Christ — inspired Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Alexandria, to take care that those scriptures should be translated by the seventy renowned interpreters of the Hebrews; and, through Demetrius, the prefect of the Library, [inspired] that [the volumes], together with the Hebrew exemplars, should be placed in his Library and diligently kept: which volumes, together with the Hebrew ² exemplars, Tertullian in the Apologetic testifies to have been, down to his own times, in the same Library, and frequently read by the Jews, and by them judged most faithful. Neither can any prudent [man] believe that the Jews — dispersed in codices so many, and so far and wide — should have come together into one [conspiracy] out of whatsoever perversity and malice, and, by hatred of the Christians, should have conspired in the corruption of their own volumes; namely, so that, while they envied to others the truth of scripture, they should deprive themselves of the truth. Who, even if they had wished to do this by unanimous consent, [it] can be persuaded to no one that Christ our Savior would have permitted so grave a crime by the hands of the enemies of his Church — lest the Church, founded in the truth of his word, should receive so great a detriment of the truth from her own enemies, and be held in the perpetual error of deception, embracing false things for true. Nor even is it credible that God would have wished to deny to the Church of his beloved Son, after the advent of Christ, that which — before his advent — he had conceded to the Synagogue of the Hebrews: namely, that no one should dare to add to, or take away from, his scriptures — evident miracles being also applied against those who presumed to attempt it. ³ For we read, in Aristeas and Josephus, that certain illustrious men, for this cause, were long afflicted with an adverse state of mind and a languor of body — as Theodorus [Theodectes] and Theopompus: of whom that one, the writer of tragedies, when he wished to refer some things out of the Jewish scripture, in [his own] words, into a certain fable, was deprived of the [light of his] eyes; but this other [Theopompus], when he had begun to translate something out of the divine law into the Greek tongue, was struck by a certain disturbance of mind and soul: whence afterwards, greatly praying to God [to know] why this had befallen him, he received answer through a dream, that he had defiled the divine scriptures. ⁴

To these are added so many labors and vigils of the most ancient fathers of the Church, who by unwearied studies applied themselves that they might leave to us the Hebrew scriptures free from all falsification and from the suspicion of vice — having for this cause bought, at great expense, the most ancient and most emended codices, with which they might compare our exemplars, and, having collated them, might translate [them], emend [them], and expound [them]; lest thereafter the infidels and heretics should be able to reprehend us concerning the falsity of the old scriptures. For “God knows” (says Jerome) “that I have sweated in the erudition of a foreign tongue, lest the Jews should any longer insult his churches concerning the falsity of the scriptures.” But if any one should again insist that the old books, which we now use, were falsified after the age of those fathers, we shall respond that this would have been to be feared, were it not that the people of the Jews is widely scattered and widely known — among whom their own codices have always been kept with such great diligence that they could not be vitiated by the Christians. For the Jews are our porters (geruli), who carry the books for themselves as a burden, but for us for erudition and faith: so that when a doubt shall arise concerning the sincerity of our codices, it may be removed by the incorrupt faith of the Hebrew volumes. Finally, the irrefragable and perpetual consensus of all the fathers in the reading of the Old Testament takes away every scruple of falsification: for thus, through all the successions of times, the writers and doctors succeeding one another in turn, the old ⁵

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[the writers and doctors, succeeding one another in turn,] read the old books just as we now read [them], and always cited the same sentences, and with the same words, which we now use in our codices — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. From these, therefore, and from very many other [things] which, on this argument, we set down in the preceding volume [Book VII], in the confutation of the first heresy, the scriptures of the Old instrument are freed from all suspicion of falsification.

OBJECTIONS OF THE HERETICS (Obiectiones Haereticorum)

1. That for many ages now — as much among the Christians as among the Hebrews — the scriptures of the old instrument have been corrupted, and on that account [are] various, and even dissonant among themselves, is convinced from the multitude of the mutually discrepant translations of the old testament. For there are the translations of the Seventy interpreters, and of Aquila, and of Symmachus, and of Theodotion; and, besides these, three others, which are called the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh; and after these also an Eighth, which is believed [to be] of Jerome — so various among themselves, and conflicting, that one of these contains more [things], another fewer, another diverse [things] and perversely transposed, another things contrary not only in words but also in the senses pertaining to faith, and things repugnant to the other editions: which indeed is by no means to be believed to have happened by the fault of so many most erudite interpreters, but rather to have befallen out of the diverse variety of the Hebrew exemplars. But since a dissonant variety never subsists without falsity, it is consequent that the Hebrew codices — whence so manifold a discord of the interpreters arose — were not only various, but even vitiated and falsified.

2. This also argues that the context of the old testament was, by the succession of times, changed from its ancient sincerity: that in the Hebrew codices of our age all the narration of scripture, from beginning even to end, is extended in prose alone; nor in them does there scarcely remain even one of the so many songs (carmina) with which many old books are handed down to have been written. For Jerome testifies — in the preface to the Chronicle of Eusebius, in the preface to the book of Kings, and in the preface to Isaiah — that very many Psalms, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and many other [things] of diverse kind of meter, are contained in them. And in the preface to the book of Job he writes that the same book is composed in hexameter verses, running by dactyl and spondee, intermingled sometimes with certain ringing and sweet rhythms; and that there are, in the sacred volumes, various kinds of songs, such as are in the poems of our Virgil and Horace, and of the Greek Pindar and Alcaeus — of which [kinds] the Psalter, and the Lamentations, and almost all the canticles of the scriptures consist. The same [Jerome], writing to Paula of the City [Paula Urbica], adds that the last part of the book of Proverbs is closed with an alphabet [acrostic], which is reckoned by iambic tetrameter; but the Lamentations, with a fourfold alphabet, of which the second, third, and fourth are written in Sapphic meter, out of three little verses, always with a heroic comma [clausula], or concluded by an Adonic [colon]. Eusebius likewise, of Caesarea, in book 10 of the Evangelical Preparation, affirms that there are found in the old testament most artful songs — as the great Canticle of Moses, and David’s hundred-and-eighteenth Psalm, composed in heroic verse, and many other songs, trimeter and tetrameter, most elegantly ⁶ composed, as far as pertains to diction. Josephus also, in the second book of the Hebrew Antiquities, writes that Moses, after the passage of the Erythraean [Red] Sea, sang that canticle which now exists, in hexameter verse. But now, in the Hebrew volumes, not even any vestige of this kind appears — whether of heroic or of lyric verses. And, to be silent about the other songs, in the whole old testament you will not find one hexameter woven together after the manner of the Latins or the Greeks, by dactyl and spondee; nor will you find two cola similarly [arranged], which are closed according to the custom of rhythm, either by an equal number of syllables, or by the same termination of the final syllable. Which, since they are none [such] in our exemplars, it remains that we say that the context of the old books, and the face of the whole narration, was changed, and that ancient sublimity of songs brought down into this humility of prose.

3. It makes to this [argument] also the testimony of some of the Latins, of the Greeks, and of illustrious Hebrew authors, who affirm that the Hebrew codices were of old depraved by the Hebrews themselves. Of whose number Justin the Philosopher and Martyr — a thousand four hundred years ago — writing against Trypho, shows that the Jews, in hatred of Christ, cut away and took away many prophetic testimonies from the holy scriptures. Origen, in Homily 12 on Jeremiah, writes that the Jews falsified their own exemplars, especially in the book of Jeremiah, where, for that which was read, “The sin (Peccatum) of Juda is written,” etc., they themselves — unwilling to confess themselves sinners — put, for “the sin of Juda,” “their sin.” ⁷ Jerome also, in the commentaries on the third chapter to the Galatians, expounding that saying, “Cursed (Maledictus) [is] every one who shall not have remained in all the things which are written in the book of the law,” says that in the exemplars of the Hebrews of his time those two words, “ALL” (Omnis) and “ALL [things]” (Omnibus), were lacking; and that he held it uncertain whether the Seventy interpreters had added them, or whether in the old Hebrew they were so [present] and afterward were deleted by the Jews; but that he was led into the suspicion of believing those particles to have been removed by the Jews — partly, lest the Hebrews should seem to be under the curse, [as being] not able to keep the things which are written; partly because Paul, a man of Hebrew skill and most learned in the law of the Lord, would never have brought them forth unless they were had in the Hebrew volumes; partly because, in his time, in the Hebrew, in the volumes of the Samaritans, there was found written chal [Hebrew כל], which is to be interpreted “ALL” (Omnes), or “ALL [things]” (Omnibus). ⁸ Similarly, that which is read in Deuteronomy, “Cursed (Maledictus) by God [is] every one who hangeth upon a tree,” Jerome judges to have been falsified in the same place by the Hebrews — unto the ignominy of Christ, as much in the Hebrew as in our codices — two particles being interposed, “BY GOD” (A Deo) and “EVERY ONE” (Omnis): namely, that they might brand infamy upon the Christians, who would believe in Christ [as] cursed by God. Of which thing Jerome brought no slight indication: that in the old testament in no place is it written that any one is cursed by God; and wherever a curse (maledictio) is placed, never is the name of God found joined [to it]. Jacobus [James] Christopolitanus, likewise, bishop, in the preface of his enarrations on the psalms, writes that the Hebrews, Arabs, and Chaldees did not of old have either vowels or points in their letters ⁹

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[the Hebrews, Arabs, and Chaldees did not of old have vowels or points in their letters,] but [that] all sacred scripture was written by Esdras [Ezra] without vowels and without points; but that the Rabbis of the Jews, after the conversion of Constantine the Great, in place of the vowels invented points, and, according to their own human senses, perverted sacred scripture — and this especially in those places where manifest mysteries lay hidden, either concerning Christ or concerning the Church. Whence he also concludes that no faith is to be given to the scriptures of the Hebrews [as] thus written by points, and interpreted.

4. But what need is there of external testimonies, when the Hebrews themselves spontaneously confess that their volumes have now, for many ages, been corrupted? — that is, from the very destruction of the city of Jerusalem, but especially when Nabuzardan [Nebuzaradan], prefect of the king of the Assyrians (as is had in the fourth [book] of the volume of Kings), set fire to the house of the Lord, and the house of the king, and burned all the houses of Jerusalem: then those sacred and authentic volumes, which were kept in public places, were all consumed by the fire, nor could they ever afterward be restored to their pristine sincerity — although many endeavored to do this, certain particular codices, which had remained among some of uncertain authority, being collated together with one another. ¹⁰ Witnesses of this thing are very many of the Rabbis, and among others David Kimhi (Kimki), whose opinion a great number of the Rabbis follows. He, in the exposition of the third book of Kings, and in the preface to the Prophets, thus speaks: “In the first captivity the exemplars were corrupted, and they drew out [readings] from one exemplar thus, and from another otherwise. And where they could not clearly have the [right] sense, they wrote one word (dictionem) within the context, and another at the margin. The exemplars also perished, and were pulled apart; and, the wise men dying who held the sense of scripture, these who were of the great synagogue endeavored to restore the law to its own antiquity; and, finding dissensions in the exemplars, they gave faith to the more numerous exemplars agreeing [together]. But where they could not have clear cognition, they wrote one word without points, or wrote [it] in the margin and not within the context.” ¹¹ These [things] R. David [Kimhi]. But the Thalmudists, almost all, in the Thalmudic books frequently make mention of a certain correction of the old testament, which of old their Rabbis used in emending the text of holy scripture — which תיקון סופרים (Tikun sophrim), that is, “the Correction of the wise scribes,” they call [it]; according to which the scribes, even before Christ was born, changed certain things in the books of the law and the prophets — now distinguishing the scripture by certain points, now placing other [words] in the margins, which, in place of those that were written in the context, might, for the sake of urbanity and modesty, be read more honestly and more decently: as, for coire cum concubina [to lie with a concubine], “iacere cum illa” [to lie with her]; and, for “human dung” (humano stercore), “evacuation” (egestionem). For the sake of which thing, sometimes also that which was written by the prophet they, erasing, put in its place that which they themselves judged more decorous for scripture. Whence it came to pass that a sense far diverse from the Prophet’s meaning emerged. Of which thing the witness is Prochetus [Porchetus], a most diligent observer of the Hebrew volumes, in the first book of the Victory against the Hebrews, indicating that of old, at the foot (in calce) of the first chapter of Malachi, was written אותי (‘othi), that is, “me”; in whose place the scribes substituted אותו (‘otho), that is, “him,” or “that one” — from which it follows that where we now read, according to the correction of the scribes, “Behold, [ye have brought] of your labor, and you have blown it away” (Ecce de labore vestro, & exufflastis illum), there it was once said by the prophet, “Behold, of your labor, and you have blown me away, saith the Lord” (Ecce de labore vestro, & exufflastis me, dicit dominus) — or “you have afflicted, vexed, or made me to expire, saith the Lord.” ¹² Similarly, that which we now read in Micah, first chapter, “In the house of dust, sprinkle yourselves with dust” (In domo pulveris, pulvere aspergite vos), “roll thyself” (involue te) — according to another translation, this (says R. Scelomo [Shelomo]) is a correction of the scribes, who, making the points, corrected [it], and said חתפלשתי (chit palascithi), that is, “ROLL YOURSELVES” (Involvite), where by Micah it had been written התפלשׁי (hith palasci), that is, “ROLL ME” (Involve me); for thus in the Prophet it was written: “In the house of dust, sprinkle me [with] dust.” ¹³ Likewise, that which we now read in Osee [Hosea], the ninth [chapter], “In my departure [from them]” (In recessu meo), or “my departure,” or “When I shall have departed from them” — R. Scelomo and R. Kimhi say that it is read [thus] according to the correction of the scribes, namely בשורי מהם (bessuri mechem), that is, “IN MY DEPARTURE FROM THEM” (In recessu meo) — whereas the true text of the Prophet once had בשורי מהם (besuri mechem) [pointed otherwise], that is, “MY INCARNATION [is] to them” (Incarnatio mea eis). The sense of which sentences, as we now have [it] according to the text corrected by the scribes, differs greatly from the sense of those sentences which the first [original] scripture once had — in which the Son of God, speaking through those prophets, designated the mystery (“according to you”) of [his] future incarnation: [he] whom you now say to have, in the house of dust, sprinkled himself with dust, when he put on the dust of our flesh — [he] whom the Jews afflicted and made to expire. These, and very many other [things], Rabbi Scelomo, R. Kimhi, R. Simon, and R. Iohannam [Yohanan] testify to have been of old corrected by the scribes; whose example of scribes the later Rabbis, imitating, did the same, and persuaded their disciples to do the same — as R. Iohannam, out of the opinion of R. Simeon, said in the book Ievamoth [the tractate Yevamot]: “It is good that thou pluck out one letter from the law, and [that] ח [Chet] be pronounced in public.” These [things] Prochetus. From all these [things], therefore, it is manifest that the old books were falsified by the correction — or rather the corruption — of the scribes.

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OBJECTIONS (Dissolutio Obiectorum)

1. So foolish is the hypothesis on which the argument of the Anabaptists leans, that nothing [is] more foolish. For the diversity of translations can arise not from that sole cause which they themselves adduce, but from many others — as from the varied talent (ingenium) and judgment of the interpreters, or sometimes [their] inexperience, or negligence, or even malice: by all of which it happens that interpretations of the same scripture frequently differ among themselves, and in many [places]. It can also happen that editions of diverse interpreters, which before agreed among themselves, afterward differ among themselves as much as possible — whether by the carelessness, or ignorance, or fraud of the writers and copyists (librarii), who copied them perversely from emended and sincere exemplars: as, in all the editions of the old testament put forth before the times of Jerome, it came to pass that individual [copies] differed from individual [copies], as much on account of the writers as on account of the variety of the interpreters — from which

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some prudently, some malignly, some through ignorance, changed many things, or kept silent, or added. Prudently, indeed, the Seventy interpreters kept silent about many things — both lest they should betray the secrets of the faith to the heathen, and give what is holy to dogs; and because they did not fully understand many things, being interpreters before the advent of Christ: and the things which they did not understand, or omitted, or brought forth with doubtful sentences, [they did] so, the divine Spirit working in them, who — for [reason of] time and place — willed the forms of the mysteries to be covered over (obtectas) in the scriptures, so that the manifestation of them might be reserved to the Evangelists and apostles, Christ being manifested. But maliciously, indeed, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and very many other Judaizing and heretical translators, permuted, subtracted, and added many things — whose editions the Church of Christ cast away, content with the sole edition of the Seventy interpreters down to the times of Jerome. Many things also, through inexperience and negligence, the drowsy copyists (librarii), copying perversely the things which had been well edited, perverted. Whence, all these causes concurring into one, it came to pass that, from one and the same fountain of Hebrew truth, so great a variety of editions and of codices emanated. Concerning the diversity of these editions — and how and when the Church used them — we shall speak more fully at the end of this work, when we shall treat of the editions of holy scripture. ¹⁴

2. But concerning the diverse kinds of songs (carmina), with which the Anabaptists say that of old very many books of the old instrument were composed — which now among us are read in loosed [prose] speech — either they lie most impudently, or they are most imprudently deceived out of ignorance of Hebrew poesy: just as of old, for a like cause, Julian the apostate deceived himself, accusing Eusebius of Caesarea, [saying] that he had falsely persuaded [men] that many species of songs are found in the holy scriptures. Yet it is nearer the truth that the unskilled heretics are deceived from ignorance. For since they have neither skill of the Hebrew arts, nor have considered the words of Jerome, they think that those hexameters, and trimeters, and tetrameters, which Jerome, Eusebius, and Josephus commemorate, are of the same kind with the songs of our poets, and consist of the same quality of feet, quantity, and disposition — because Jerome said that among the Hebrews there are verses running by spondee and dactyl: which words the unlearned Anabaptists do not understand. ¹⁵ For neither is Jerome’s similitude to be understood thus — that the verses of the Hebrews are in all respects like to the songs of the Greeks and Latins — but in this part only: that that very ancient poesy of the Hebrews has, just as ours [does], not only many feet like to ours, apt for making songs (namely dactyls, spondees, iambs, and many others), but also several kinds of songs — hexameter, trimeter, tetrameter, and others of this sort — which proceed with an equal number of feet as our hexameters and trimeters, but differ from ours by the varied quality, position, and order of the feet: because the hexameters of the Hebrews often receive, among the dactyls and spondees, also other feet, the order of the feet in which among us they are wont to be placed being also varied. For frequently (as Jerome says) the hexameters of the Hebrews, ¹⁶ on account of the property of the tongue, receive other feet besides the dactyl and the spondee — not of the same syllables, but of the same times [durations]. The Hebrews also, against the custom of our poets, interpose in their songs certain unusual rhythms, which (as Jerome says) the simple reader cannot understand, but only one most skilled in the metric art. Wherefore let not the Anabaptists wonder if in the old testament they have not found rhythms like to ours, and having an equal number of syllables, and recurring [each] into the same final syllable after a certain compass of verses — since not even among us do the several kinds of rhythms retain the same number of syllables and the same endings of songs: but some (as is in use among the Etruscans [the Tuscans]) consist of eleven syllables, accommodated to chanting heroic [verse]; others of seven syllables, most apt for odes to be modulated to the lyre, and most delightful; others of twelve syllables, always ending in a dactyl, hurried and slippery, wonderfully serving the stage; and out of all these rhythms, again, others ¹⁷ — among the Etruscan poets — always keep the law of rhythm, closed by the similitude of the final syllables; but others, loosed from that law, and the similitude of the final syllables being neglected, are moved [along] — whence they are called “loosed” rhythms. So, therefore, in the Hebrew divine scriptures there are many kinds of such rhythms and verses, whose canons and measures to narrate now would be long and superfluous. But if any one is held by desire of them, let him read the Hebrew poets, and among others Rabbi Scelomo, surnamed Gabirol [Ibn Gabirol], an eminent poet among his own, and the poem of Rabbi Iosephi Hyssopaeus, written in iambic song, which is inscribed “The Silver Dish” (Scutella argentea): among which two [poets] he will find almost all the aforesaid songs. But why the sacred interpreters, in translating the divine letters, did not keep the laws of the Hebrew songs, Augustine, in the epistle to Memorius the bishop, assigns the cause in these words: “For neither did the interpreter wish to express the [metrical] numbers out of the Hebrew tongue, lest he should be compelled, by the necessity of meter, to digress from the truth of interpreting further than the reason of the sentences [meaning] allowed: yet I believe the Davidic Psalms consist of certain measures. For that holy man loved pious music, and himself kindled us to those studies more than any other author.”

3. But as much as pertains to the testimonies of the fathers which indicate that the old books were of old falsified, we freely confess that they were, in some places, depraved by certain Jews; but we do not believe such a depravation to have been of such moment but that it could easily be emended by Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and the other fathers skilled in the Hebrew tongue — a collation being made with the other most ancient exemplars of the Hebrews: both because very few were those places corrupted by the Jews, and because the corruption of those same places was not so universal that, in all the exemplars of the Hebrews at once — dispersed over the whole globe of lands — the selfsame places and the selfsame words should be corrupted (divine providence of Christ not permitting this, lest the Church, his spouse, should be defrauded of the truth of the divine scripture). Wherefore, since the corruption of the old scripture was neither universal nor great, easily, out of the more numerous codices in which the integral

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[out of the more numerous codices in which the] integral [text] had remained — [those] which in others had been vitiated — the Hebrew reading could be restored to its pristine sincerity; and in very fact it was restored by Jerome and other erudite fathers. Whence it is foolish, and without reason, to wish now to assert that the Hebrew codices were of old falsified in those places in which all the codices of all the Hebrews — as much the recent as the ancient — agree. Neither does the addition of vowel-points, made by the Jews, derogate anything from the perpetual sincerity of the divine volumes. For although now the Hebrews, points being added beneath the consonants, may interpret otherwise, and understand the scripture otherwise than they ought, yet they cannot, by this addition of points, so universally deprave and contaminate that [scripture] that it does not always retain its old integrity; for, the points of the Rabbis being removed, it is necessary that the old scripture always remain, with its radical and servile letters, in its purity, integral and incorrupt. Although (that I may confess the truth) it has never befallen me to see any volume of the Hebrews in which the points added to the consonants so rendered the signification of the words diverse from that ancient signification and sense which they had in the time of Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome, that from that diversity anything absurd should follow in those [things] which pertain to the dogmas of our faith.

4. To the last [argument], which they adduce concerning the תיקון סופרים (Tikun sophrim), it pleases [me] to respond nothing else, except that we do not receive the portentous testimonies of the Thalmudic volumes — inasmuch as [they are the testimonies] of those books which are full of every lie, contumely, and blasphemy, not only against Christ, whom they themselves hold for an enemy, but also against God the creator of heaven and earth, whom the Jews alone confess themselves to worship: which [books] also have been damned by the public decree of the whole Church, and, through all the cities of the Christians, in recent years have been burned in the midst of the marketplace. Whose testimony even if we should receive, nevertheless the Anabaptists would obtain nothing thence for the defense of their cause. For the individual [things] which the Sophrim — that is, the scribes — are said to have erased are, in many and authentic Hebrew commentaries, annotated, and diligently handed down to memory. Out of which annotations (as has already often been seen, and can still be seen) all the things which were erased by the scribes in the Hebrew exemplars, which now exist in the whole world, have been restored down to the least jot or apex; and the Jews themselves damn the opinion of those who dared, among them, to say that the sacred books were at some time corrupted. Whence Jacob Benhaym [ben Chayyim], of the kingdom of Thunetum [Tunis], reproving the aforesaid opinion of R. Kimhi introduced by the heretics, writes against it in this manner: “The opinion of those is far from me; for I cannot be led to believe, and confess with [my] lips, that Ezra the scribe found the book of the divine law, and the books of the prophets, doubtful, corrupted, and confused. Nay rather, this is my opinion: that Ezra and his colleagues found the sacred Bible integral and unharmed; and that Ezra, by his own judgment, recognized which books were written by that excellent wisdom [inspiration], and why certain letters should be written, but certain [others] not — why also certain extraneous words (dictiones) were written; and he left them in the very text as they were written, adding in the margin, as it were, a gloss which might explain the nature of the extraneous word.” These [things] R. Jacob [ben Chayyim]. From which the delirious trifles of the Anabaptists are exploded.