MANASSEH BEN ISRAEL, as he is com monly called, but more properly MANASSE BEN JOSEPH BEN ISRAEL, for Israel was his grandfather and Joseph his father. This remarkable linguist, who successively published his voluminous works in Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, English, etc., was born in Lisbon 1604. Deprived of their health and wealth by the tortures and machinations of the Inquisition under Philip III. of Spain, his parents fled, with their youthful son Manasse and many of their suffering coreligionists, to hospitable Holland, which was then the asylum for the persecuted of all countries. Manasse was at once sent as pupil to the celebrated Talmudist, mathematician, phy sician, and Hebrew poet, Isaac Uzziel, the rabbi of Amsterdam, where he made such extraordinary progress that, after the death of his teacher (162o), he succeeded to the rabbinate before he was eighteen years of age (1622). To supplement his official stipend, which was insufficient for the support of his family, he established, when twenty-two years old (x626), the celebrated Amsterdam Hebrew printing-office, and two years after (1623) printed his own maiden production. When scarcely twenty eight he published, in Spanish, the first volume of his celebrated Conciliator, or Harmony of the Pen tateuch (1632), in which he quotes upwards of 210 Hebrew works, and 54 Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Portuguese authors, both sacred and profane, and which was the basis of his great fame. Henceforth he was not only the oracle of the Jewish commu nity, but Christian scholars wrote to him from far and wide, requesting explanations of difficulties which they encountered in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish history. The celebrated Vossius, Dionysius, Hugo Grotius, Huet, Episcopus, So bierre, Frankenberg, Thomas Fuller, Nathaniel Homesius, etc., were among his correspondents. lie solicited their influence in behalf of his suffer ing brethren, and was thereby enabled to petition the Long Parliament (I650) to readmit the Jews into England, whence they had been expelled ever since 1290. Shortly after he dedicated The Hope of Israel to the English Parliament, which was gratefully acknowledged in a letter written by Lord Middlesex, addressed To my dear brother AL B. I., the Hebrew philosopher. Encouraged thereby, Manasse came over to England in 1655, presented A Humble Address' in behalf of his coreligionists to Cromwell ; published in London, 1656, his Vin dication of yews, in answer to those Christians who opposed the readmission of the Jews into this island ; and though the desire of his heart was not accom plished, inasmuch as Cromwell, with all his power, could not carry through the cause of God's ancient people, yet some good was done, as some few Jews were allowed to settle in England, for shortly after (1657) a piece of land was obtained in Stepney for a Jewish burying-place. Cromwell, moreover,
granted `to Manasse ben Israel a pension of £m° per annum, payable quarterly, and commencing loth February 1656' (comp. Carlyle, ii. 163). Ma nasse, however, did not enjoy long this generous gift, for he died in Middleburg in 1657, on his way back to Amsterdam. The following are his works bearing on Biblical literature : (1.) 111 in Hebrew, being an index to all the passages of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Alidrash Rabboth on the Pentateuch and the Five Megilloth, Amsterdam 1628. (2.) Conciliator, Sive De convenientia locorum S. Seriptura, quce puptaz-e inter se videntur, etc., in Spanish, four volumes, Amsterdam 1632-1651. The first volume was translated into Latin by Vossius, Amst. 1633, and the whole has been translated in English by Lindo, London 1842. (3.) De Creatione Problemata, in Spanish, Amst. 1635. (4.) De Resurrectione Afortuorunz, Libri tres, Amst. 1636, in Spanish. (5.) D"r171 1111, De Termino Vitee, in Latin, Amst. 1639, translated into English by Thomas Pococke, London 1699. (6.) ',cm VTI, four books on the immortality of the soul, written in Hebrew, Amst. 1651, new ed., Leipzig 1862. These are valuable contributions to Biblical literature, inasmuch as Manasse gives in them all the passages from the Hebrew Scriptures, which, according to the explanations of the ancient rabbins, teach the immortality of the soul and the resurrec tion. (7.) Piedra Gloriosa a de la Estatua de Nebuchadnesar, Amst. 1655, an exposition of Daniel's dream, written in Spanish, which the im mortal Rembrandt did not think it below his dignity to adorn with four engravings. He also carried through his own press several beautiful and correctly printed editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, and wrote a Hebrew Grammar, entitled Granzmatica Hebrca, dividida en quatuor libros, which has not as yet been published. Comp. Fiirst, Bibliotheca yuclazea, ii. 354-358 ; Steinschneider, Catalogus Libr. Hebr. in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, col. z 645-1652 ; and especially the valuable bio graphy by Kayserling, ya h rb u ch far die Gcschichte der yuden, vol. ii., Leipzig 1861, p. 85, ff.— . D. G.