“Moses Germanus” and judeo-christian relations of the early Enlightenment

The second half of the 17th century was a turning point in religious life of the Protestant world of Europe. It was at this time that signifi cant changes occurred in relations between Christians and Jews. It was a time of amazing divergence, spiritual quest, of emergence of new religious groups and movements whose members considered personal mystical experience and collective eschatological expectations much more important than dogmatic diff erences and church rites. In this article, these features of that epoch are examined through an analysis of a concrete historical example of the biography of Johann Peter Speth, the theologian, mystic, and Hebraist, whose long journey through various Christian denominations ended with an adoption of Judaism. This act of a man well known in the Protestant world of German-speaking countries (among the pietists, he was even called the “second Luther”) made a very strong impression on his contemporaries. This event generated a great deal of controversy, not only about this person himself, who took the name Moses Germanus, but also on topics that were in the focus of attention of philosophers and theologians of that time, i.e. pantheism, materialism, atheism, the teaching of Spinoza, the attitude to Judaism and its signifi cance for the Christian world in anticipation of the end of time and coming of the Messiah, etc. At that time, a controversy erupted about how signifi cant the teaching of Kabbalah was for Spinoza’s philosophy, whether the study and use of Jewish mystical texts in Christian theology is acceptable, how well-founded is the idea of the existence of an “eternal philosophy” (philosophia perennis), following which one can find grains of true knowledge in religions and philosophies of ancient times. In the context of these disputes, the position of Johann Peter Speth himself, his argument in favour of his difficult choice, looks exceptional but interesting both in itself, and in connection with a broader question of forms and limits of religious tolerance, of problems of spiritual search and religious conversion.