PASCAL AND THE JEWS.
Item
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Title
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PASCAL AND THE JEWS.
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Identifier
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AAI8112764
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identifier
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8112764
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Creator
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STERN, ESTHER HANNAH.
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Contributor
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Prof. Henri Peyre
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Date
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1981
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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This study examines the subject of Pascal and the Jews, their Bible, and their religion. Since there were very few Jews in the cities which Pascal frequented in the seventeenth century in France, the many references to them found mainly in the Pensees deal more with the Jewish religion and the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament, than with the Jewish people per se.;The prime motive which led Pascal to confront the Jews was their rejection of the divinity of Jesus. For Pascal, Christ was the key to both man's salvation and to Scripture.;Pascal's preoccupation with the Jews is shown to have influenced many of his key concepts: "Dieu cache," "aveuglement," "misere," "vanite," "ab(')ime," and "coeur.".;This study introduces psychoanalytic interpretations and an understanding of the history of the Christian-Jewish encounter throughout the ages to help clarify Pascal's ambivalent attitude of admiration and hate toward the Jews. Special note is made of Pascal's use of the Pugio Fidei, a medieval polemic which tried to prove that the Talmud admits the divinity of Jesus, as a source of Pascal's emphasis on the figural interpretation of the Bible as well as his vocabulary.;Our study suggests that although Pascal's understanding of the Jews and their Bible bears many resemblances to the writings of Christian apologists of earlier centuries as well as to the works of his contemporaries, it also reveals a unique subtlety and modernity. These qualities which have prompted many thinkers to label Pascal as a precursor of modern existentialism are reflected both in his style and in his thinking. Our thesis is that the Hebrew Prophets and the book of Job in particular as well as other Biblical books influenced both his style which depends heavily on dialogue, antithesis, exclamation, and interrogation, and his concepts of faith, mystery, and man's relationship to God.;The question of Pascal's anti-Semitism is touched upon briefly since he stands among the many polemicists in the long tradition of the Christian-Jewish encounter.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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French
