Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Introduction -- Retrieving a Jewish Renaissance Classic -- Three Portuguese in Marrakesh, 1581 -- The Author’s European Background, 1545–1581 -- The History of the Text, 1581–1595 -- Invention of a Literary Genre -- Inventory of Manuscript Sources -- Analysis of the Textual Transmission -- Editorial Criteria -- Conspectus Siglorum -- Argumento del primer diálogo de Obadia -- Al lector -- Diálogo primero -- Diálogo segundo -- Glosses -- Alphabetical Index in Ms. B -- Aleixo de Menezes on the Marrakesh Dialogues -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Indexes.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

In sixteenth-century Marrakesh, a Flemish merchant converts to Judaism and takes his Catholic brother on a subversive reading of the Gospels and an exploration of the Jewish faith. Their vivid Spanish dialogue, composed by an anonym in 1583, has until now escaped scholarly attention in spite of its success in anti-Christian clandestine literature until the Enlightenment. Based on all nine available manuscripts, this critical edition rediscovers a pioneering work of Jewish self-expression in European languages. The introductory study identifies the author, Estêvão Dias, locates him in insurgent Antwerp at the beginning of the Western Sephardi diaspora, and describes his hybrid culture shaped by the Iberian Renaissance, Portuguese crypto-Judaism, Mediterranean Jewish learning, Protestant theology, and European diplomacy in Africa.