“The Sincerity of their Historians”: Jacques Basnage and the Reception of Jewish History

Jacques Basnage (1653-1723) has long been celebrated as the founder of a new Christian historiography of Judaism that portrays the inherent dignity and importance of post-biblical Jewish history.

My paper will argue that Basnage’s decisive embrace of Jewish historians is the most significant innovation of his work. His history should be seen as a meta-discourse on Jewish historians and ethnographers. Basnage declared the absolute primacy of Jewish voices in his reconstruction of Jewish history: “we have preferred the authors of the Jewish nations to all others.”

Basnage derived significant perspectives from the apologetic writings of Solomon ibn Verga and Isaac Cardoso, especially for his extensive accounts of Christian persecutions. Basnage is one of the first scholars to subject Solomon ibn Verga to tests of historical plausibility, but he is also one of the first to adopt raw material from ibn Verga to paint a vivid picture of Jewish suffering and the nobility of Jewish perseverance against Christian violence. Ibn Verga’s secular view on the causation of Christian violence—as opposed to purely divine causation—informed Basnage’s portrayal of secular political causation, albeit occurring within a very loosely articulated framework of divine providence.

The paper will focus on two aspects of Basnage’s Jewish history: forced conversion; and allegations of Jewish crimes (especially blood libel and well poisoning). It was the productive reception of Jewish historiography that altered the Christian view of these significant subjects. As Basnage so poignantly says, “we must believe it upon the sincerity (‘bonne foi’) of their historians.”