Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Anticipation of the Consolation of Israel: His Latin Translation of Isaac Abarbanel’s “Introduction to the Prophet Isaiah” and Its Possible Place within His Work

Abstract

This article examines a previously ignored and unpublished manuscript of the Christian kabbalistic scholar Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, the compiler of Kabbala Denudata, restores it to its proper order, and conclusively identifies it as his personal translation into Latin of Isaac Abarbanel’s Introduction to the Prophet Isaiah prepared, we suggest, for this own use and not for publication. Though much of Knorr’s previously known work was based upon kabbalistic materials, Abarbanel’s Introduction—not a kabbalistic work by contrast—offered a comprehensive view of the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic hope. Knorr’s Messias Puer, also newly recovered, enables us to discover several of his personal convictions otherwise previously unattested. One of these is his anticipation of a future, this-worldly, Davidic kingdom in the Holy Land. It is in the context of this anticipation of the Consolation of Israel that the translation of the Introduction to the Prophet Isaiah may now be plausibly placed.