The Nuremberg preacher, Andreas Osiander, at that time one of the greatest authorities on Hebrew and on Rabbinic writings, wrote so strong a letter about the untruth of certain of Luther’s anti-Jewish strictures that no one ventured to bring it under the Reformer’s notice. Cruciger relates that Osiander afterwards withdrew some of the strongest things he had said in the letter, but that he still maintained that Luther had not in the least understood what the Shem Hammephorash meant to educated Jews.[1628]
The Shem Hammephorash or “peculiar name” was, according to Luther, a cabalistic formula of the Jews, supposed to be endowed with the most marvellous magic power; it was made up of seventy-two three-lettered names of angels, themselves formed from a rearrangement of the letters of the Scripture text, Ex. xiv. 19-21, concerning the pillar of cloud that went before the Jews on their departure from Egypt. To each of these angelic names was appended a verse from the Psalter with the “great name of God, Jehovah, also called the Tetragrammaton.” So great was the power of this magic formula that it could strike blind or dumb all Christians everywhere in the world, could drive them mad, nay, kill them outright, if only the words were rightly uttered and in a mood pious enough. Even the superstitious use of the Tetragrammaton alone, was, according to Luther, responsible, in the case “of the devil and the Jews,” for “much sorcery and all kinds of abuse and idolatry.”[1629] They call it the Tetragrammaton because they are chary of pronouncing the four consonants of the all-too-sacred name of Jehovah, but, “in their heart they abuse and blaspheme God.” They do not see that they are “using the Holy Name in the shameful abuse they practise with their ‘Scham Hamperes.’”[1630]
The cause of the mad aberrations of the Jews is, however, in Luther’s eyes, due to the “Word of God not enlightening them and showing them the way.” Now, however, God’s Word has risen and shines brightly; it even casts its beam into those parts where the Papacy reigns ... for there “thick darkness, lies and abominations were worshipped with Masses, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, monkery and one’s own works.”[1631] It was a great and godly work that he had undertaken in unmasking not only these but also the many Jewish abominations.
As to the sources whence Luther derived his information, he uncritically took his material mainly from anti-Jewish writings. The book “Victoria adversus impios Hebrœos” of the Carthusian, Porchetus de Salvaticis, dating from the beginning of the 14th century, provided him with the Jewish blasphemies against Christ, and in particular with the supposed mysteries of the Shem Hammephorash; Antonius Margaritha supplied him with more recent material in his work “Der gantz jüdisch Glaub” of 1530. It is probable that he also made use of the “Dialogus” against the Jews by Paul of Burgos (1350-1435), which he quotes in his lectures on Genesis. He also mentions incidentally as his authorities Jerome, Eusebius, and Sebastian Münster.[1632]
Comparison with an earlier Jewish writing of Luther’s
A more accurate insight into the psychological and historical significance of the two screeds against Judaism is obtained by comparing them with an earlier writing of Luther’s, dating from 1523, which is perfectly fair to the Jews. The comparison will lead the reader to ask what was the real reason for his extraordinary change of attitude.
Filled as yet with great and unrealisable hopes of that conversion of the whole Jewish race which he fancied he saw coming, Luther had, in 1523, published a booklet entitled “Das Jhesus Christus eyn geborner Jude sey.”[1633]
In it he points out that the Jews were blood-relations, cousins and kinsmen of the Saviour. No other people, so he warmly declared, had been so marked out by God, hence they must be dealt with amicably and soberly instructed out of Holy Scripture and not be scared away by pride and contempt, as had hitherto been the wont; the fools, Popes, bishops, sophists and monks, the great dunderheads, had hitherto indeed behaved in such a way that any good Christian would have preferred to become a Jew. Hence he exerts himself in this work, in a calm and friendly way, to prove to the Jews from the Bible, that their Messias had already come. At the same time he indignantly scourges “the lying tales” and false charges brought against them, as for instance, that, “to repress their stench they must have the blood of Christians.” The main thing was to treat them according to Christian, not Popish, charity.
So far was he disposed to go the better to win over the Jews, that he was even desirous that Christ should not at the outset be put before them as the God-man, but merely as the Messias. He also declared in a sermon shortly after, that, when instructing a Jew on Christ, the catechumen was only to be told that Christ was a man like other men, sent by God to do good to mankind; only when the heart had been stirred to love of Him was mention to be made of His Godhead.[1634]