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influenced by this kind of literature in his literary purposes: both the skeptical tradition and anti-Christian Jewish literature flowed into Collins’ works as “use- ful tools to undermine every rational, philological and historical justification of Christian revelation and to denounce the imposture of the churches”.66 He cited Sefer Ḥizzuq Emunah in his famous work A Discourse on the Grounds and Rea- sons of the Christian Religion (1724) when he gave examples of books against the Christian religion written by Jewish authors.67 Collins’ work is documented as present in the impressive library of his contemporary Voltaire, who did not hesitate to define the English freethinker as “one of the most terrible enemies of Christian religion”.68 The French philosopher referred to Isaac ben Abraham’s text in his famous Dictionnaire Philosophique, under the entry “Prophecy”. Vol- taire asserted that Sefer Ḥizzuq Emunah was one of the most dangerous Jewish books, one in which it was possible to find horrible profanations against Chris- tian prophecies, and he furnished examples and demonstrated a very good knowledge of the text.69 These few selected examples demonstrate that despite censorship this type of Jewish literature, criticism and polemical content circulated widely. It may have influenced European thinkers in various ways, becoming, for example, an important source of anti-Christian ideas among non-Jewish intellectuals and contributing to undermining respect for Christian theology, the Gospel and the authority of the church.70 BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Gerhard, 1972, Hermann Samuel Reimarus. Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünf- tigen Verehrer Gottes, Frankfurt/M.: Insel. Akhiezer, Golda, 2006, The Karaite Isaac ben Abraham of Troki and his Polemics against Rabbanites, in: Goodblatt, Chanita / Kreisel, Howart T. (eds.), Tradition, Heterodoxy, and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 437–468. Benfatto, Miriam, 2017, Il Gesù del Ḥizzuk Emunah. Fra ricostruzione critica e costruzione polemica, in: Destro, Adriana / Pesce, Mauro (eds.), Texts, Practices, and Groups. Multidisciplinary Ap- proaches to the History of Jesus’ Followers in the First Two Centuries First Annual Meeting of Bertinoro (2–4 October 2014), Turnhout: Brepols, 807–827. Benfatto, Miriam, 2018, Gesù nella letteratura polemica ebraica anticristiana: studi sul Sefer Ḥizzuq Emunah di Yiṣḥaq ben Avraham Troqi (c. 1533–1594), PhD Thesis, Bologna: University of Bologna. 66 Tarantino 2007, 78. The translation from Italian is mine. 67 Collins 1724, 82; Tarantino 2007, 110–111. 68 The quote comes from a letter by Voltaire of 1767 that read in French: “un des plus terribles ennemis de la religion chrétienne”. See Tarantino 2007, 75. 69 Voltaire 1843, 367–368. See also Szechtman, 1957. 70 Popkin 1992 and 2007. The Hidden Jesus | 25www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1