come here to discuss which religion is true, yours or ours. I am certain mine is the truest. Your law was formerlj- the only true law, but it is now abrogated, Y'ou are convoked here solely by Geronimo, who has engaged to prove to you that the Messiah has come by the evidence of your Talmud, which was composed long since by rabbins far superior to yourselves in wisdom ; therefore be careful of your arguments." Two treatises were prepared for this controversy by Joshua Lorqui, or Geronimo de Santa Fe, the antipope's cham])ion, entitled Tractutiis contra perfidiam Judaorum et contra Talmud, printed in the Bibliothtcu Marima Patrum, torn, xxvi, and separately in J/ebrceomastix (Frankf. a. M., 1602). It was in reply to these tracts that K. Nathan wrote the work entitled nrr - rnz'^r, Cor- rection of the Misguided, which has not as yet been pub- lished. To the same cause is to be ascribed his He- brew concordance, entitled 3T2 "I'^X'S, "IIT "I'S, or nsim, which was designed to enable his brethren to rebut the attacks on Judaism, bj' helping them to lind easily the passages of the O. T. (juoted in support of the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, and by aiding them to see what legitimate construction can be put on these passages in accordance with the context in which they occur. This concordance, to which K. Kathan devoted eight years of his life (1437-1445), and in which he adopted the plan of the Latin concordance of Arlotti, general of the order of Minorites (cir. 1290), first appeared with an elaborate introduction (PriTS D''D;X1"i'^p3ipn) inVenice, 1523, then again, with the introduction castrated by the Inquisition (ibid. 15G4, and Basle, 1581). The great value of this work can be best ascertained from what Jacob bon-Chajim, who carried through the press the Kabbinic Bible (1524-25) in Bom- berg's printing- establishment, where the concordance appeared only a few months previously, says of it in his celebrated introduction (transl. by (iinsburg, Lond. 18G7): "But for a certain book, called Concordance, the author of which is the learned Ii. Isaac Nathan, who lived some forty years ago, ])ublished in our print ing- otRce at Venice, I could not have corrected the verses. This is a precious work; it embraces all the jioints of the Holy Bible, and explains all the sacred Scriptures by stating all nouns and verbs, with their analogous forms, and giving at the heading of every noun and verb an explanation, saying the meaning of the word is so and so, and branches out in sucli and such a manner, and comments upon each one separately. It also marks the division of each chapter, and the number of chap- ters in every prophetical book, and tells in which chap- ter and verse every word occurs. The advantage to be derived from this book is indescribable ; without it there is no way of examining the references of the Jlassorah, since one who studies the Massorah must look into the verse which the JIassorah quotes, and which, without a concordance, would take a very long time to lind, as you might not know in which prophet the passage referred to occurs, and if you knew the prophet, you still might not know the chapter and verse. Besides, all the world is not so learned in the Scriptures. Whosoever has this concordance does not require any more the lexicon of Kimchi, for it contains all the roots, whercunto is added an index of all the verses in the Bible; none of them is wanted. In conclusion, without it I could not have done the work which I have done." Nathan's concordance was also translated into Latin by lieucli- lin (Basle, 1556), and was inserted by the Minorite Jla- ria di Calasio, in his four-volume concordance (Home, 1G22). It is the basis both of Buxtorf's and FUrst's concordances. See Steinschncider, Catalogus Libronim llebr. in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, col. 1141-1143; id. Bibliographischcs llandbuch, p. 100; Fllrst, Bibtiolhica Judaica, iii, 22; (Jriitz, Gesch. der Juden (Leips. 187.5), viii. 150, 161; Kitto, Cyclop, s. v.; Wolf, Bibl. Ihbr. ii, G81; Lc Long, Bibl. iiacra (ed. Boernes), ii, 398; De
NATHANAEL
859
NATHANIEL
Rossi, Dizionano storico degli autoH Ebrei, p. 125 (Ger- man transl.) ; id. Bibliotheca Judaica A ntichristiana, p. 76 sq. ; Etheridge, Introd. to Hehr. Literature, p. 289 ; Liudo, Hist, of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, p. 209 sq. ; jMilman, Hist, of the Jews (new ed. New York, 1870), iii, 299 sq. (B. P.)
Nathan'ael (^aSfavaijX, but "S aSravdrjXoc in 1 Esdr. ix, 22; for the Heb. bxiPp, given of God, i. q. esociopot.-; comp. Nathan), the name of three men in the Apocrypha and one in the N. T. See also Ne-
THAXEEL.
1. A brother of Samaras the Levite, in the time of Josias (1 Esdr. i, 8) ; evidently the Nethaneel (q. v.) of the Heb. text (2 Chron.xxv, 9).
2. One of the " sons of Phaisus" who renounced their Gentile wives after the captivity (1 Esdr. ix, 32) ; evi- dently the Nethaneel (s. v.) of the Heb. text (Esdr. X, 22).
3. Son of Samael and father of Eliab among the an- cestry of Judith (Jud. viii, 1), and therefore a Simeon- ite (ix, 2). See Judith.