Adversus Judaeos Arguments in the Disputation of Tortosa (1413–1414)

Selected and Translated from Antonio Pacios López, La Disputa de Tortosa, 2 vols. (Madrid–Barcelona, 1957)

Introduction

The Disputation of Tortosa was a formal theological debate convened by Antipope Benedict XIII and held in the city of Tortosa (and later San Mateo) between February 1413 and November 1414. The principal Christian advocate was Geronimo de Santa Fe (Maestro Jerónimo), formerly known as Joshua ha-Lorki, a Jewish convert to Christianity who served as Pope Benedict XIII’s personal physician. He debated a delegation of Jewish rabbis representing the aljamas of Aragon.

The debate was recorded in Latin and compiled by Antonio Pacios López from the Gerona and Vatican manuscripts (Volume II: the Actas or official minutes). Volume I contains Pacios’s own historical-critical-doctrinal study of the proceedings, including a Spanish-language summary and evaluation of every argument deployed — a uniquely valuable guide to understanding the debate’s structure and force.

The debate centered on sixteen major topics (materiae). The most important, and those generating the most extensive argumentation, concerned whether the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets had already come, and specifically whether that Messiah was Jesus Christ. The arguments deployed by Geronimo de Santa Fe belong squarely to the Adversus Judaeos tradition: they attempt to prove Christian doctrines by turning the Jews‘ own authoritative texts — the Talmud, the Midrashim, and the Aramaic Targums — against the position that the Messiah had not yet arrived. According to the Actas, over three thousand Jews converted to Christianity during and immediately following the disputation.

What follows is a translation of the most significant arguments, organized thematically, drawn from both volumes.

I. The Appointed Times Have Passed: The Messiah Must Have Already Come

The Authority of the Six Thousand Years (Sessions 2, 10–11)

One of the opening arguments concerns a celebrated Talmudic passage attributed to the school of the prophet Elijah, recorded in tractate Sanhedrin 97a–b:

“It was taught in the school of Elijah: The world shall last no less than six thousand years — two thousand of vanity, two thousand of Torah, and two thousand of the Messianic age. And on account of our sins, however many of these have passed, [the Messiah] has not come.”

Geronimo argued that if one calculates two thousand years from the giving of the Torah to Moses, and two thousand years of the Messianic era, the total of four thousand years — which had been surpassed long before the debate — meant that the Messiah’s appointed window had already opened and closed. The final phrase, “on account of our sins,” he argued, does not mean the Messiah failed to come altogether; rather, it laments that Israel did not recognize him when he did come.

The rabbis responded that the phrase “two thousand of the Messianic age” should be read as indicating an era of readiness, not of the Messiah’s actual arrival — i.e., that the world would be disposed to receive him, rather than that he would necessarily appear. Geronimo rebutted this by arguing that if every prophetic statement were similarly reduced to mere potentiality rather than actuality, then no prophecy could ever be said to have been fulfilled, reducing all prophetic literature to empty words.

He pressed further: the text says veniet — he shall come — in the indicative future, not the conditional or subjunctive. If this word is watered down to mean only that Israel would be capable of receiving the Messiah during that period, then the same logic could apply to every prophecy, rendering the entire prophetic corpus meaningless.

The Eighty-Five Jubilees (Session 3)

A related argument was drawn from another passage in Sanhedrin 97b, where Elijah says to Rabbi Judah, brother of Rabbi Sala the Pious:

“The world shall last no less than eighty-five jubilees, and in the final jubilee the son of David shall come.” Rabbi Judah asked: “At the beginning of that jubilee, or at its end?” Elijah answered: “At its end.”

Rabbi Solomon’s gloss calculates: eighty-five jubilees of fifty years each equals four thousand two hundred and fifty years. Since this time had long since elapsed, Geronimo concluded that the Messiah had already come.

Rabbi Yosef Albo countered by arguing that the passage means the last jubilee of the world, however long the world might endure — not the last of the eighty-five. He argued this could refer to the final jubilee before the end of time, whenever that might be.

The Pope himself intervened: if the Messiah was only to come in the final fifty-year jubilee of the world, the prosperity of Israel under his reign would be absurdly brief. Furthermore, the text states Elijah said the Messiah would come at the end of that jubilee — further compressing the blessed era to nearly nothing. The crowd of Jews assembled at the disputation reportedly mocked Rabbi Albo’s interpretation and judged him confuted on this point.

II. The Scepter of Judah: Genesis 49:10 (Sessions 6–9)

This prophecy — Jacob’s blessing to his son Judah — was the cornerstone of the entire disputation and was debated across multiple sessions:

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Gen. 49:10)

Geronimo adduced alongside this a Talmudic passage from the Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin 41a; cf. ‘Aboda Zara 8b) and from the Bereshit Rabbah of Moses ha-Darshan, which stated:

“Forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin — the consistorial judges of the Gazith chamber — had the power of capital judgment taken from them and were driven out.”

The passage further records that at that moment the seventy judges of the Sanhedrin, together with the elders of Israel, clad themselves in sackcloth and rent their garments, crying out:

“Alas for us! For now has the scepter been taken from Judah, and yet the son of David has not come!”

Geronimo’s argument was syllogistic and pointed: the very Talmudic sages whose authority the rabbis accepted had themselves testified that the scepter of Judah had been removed — which the prophecy declared would happen only when the Messiah came. The Sanhedrin’s own lamentation implies they recognized the sign had arrived; and yet, Geronimo argued, Christ’s passion occurred precisely in that forty-year window between the removal of the Sanhedrin’s authority and the destruction of the Temple. Therefore, “he who was to be sent” — the Messiah — had come in that very period.

Rabbi Astruch de Sestiers responded that even granting these authorities were authentic, the Jews as a people remained convinced the Messiah had not yet appeared, and would willingly die for that conviction. The Pope ordered him to address the prophecy directly.

The debate then turned on the Hebrew word עַד (‘ad / had in the Latin transcription), which can mean either “until” or “always/forever.” Rabbi Astruch and Rabbi Ferrer argued it should be rendered “always” — meaning the scepter would never depart from Judah, since the Messiah would eventually restore it. Geronimo replied that this reading destroyed the logic of the blessing: it would reduce Jacob’s gift to Judah to a tautology. Furthermore, the Aramaic Targum (Targum Onkelos) translates had not as “always” but as “until the age” (‘ad ‘alma), which in rabbinic idiom designates the present captivity, in contrast to the Messianic era — a distinction the rabbis themselves customarily drew. He demonstrated this through the Hebrew vowel pointing (punctuation) of the word, through its cantillation accent (ta’am), and through the method by which Jewish teachers actually pronounced and explained the word when teaching pupils in Synagogues — all of which, he argued, confirmed the translation “until” rather than “always.”

When Rabbi Ferrer finally conceded that his own school taught the “until” reading, Geronimo pressed the syllogism home:

If we accept the ‘until’ reading: ‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah until the Messiah comes.’ But the scepter has in fact been taken away. Therefore the Messiah has already come.

Rabbi Ferrer attempted to deflect by arguing that the scepter had merely ceased temporarily, not been permanently removed — the prophecy referring to perpetual loss. Geronimo responded that interpreting the text this way destroyed it as a blessing: Judah had spent two thousand years in captivity with only a few days of promised sovereignty remaining — this would be no blessing at all.

III. The Messiah Was Born Before the Destruction of the Temple (Sessions 4–5)

In Session 4, Geronimo produced a passage from the Jerusalem Talmud (Berakhot 5a), the celebrated story of the Jewish farmer and the Arab traveler:

“It happened to a certain Jew who was plowing, that his ox bellowed. An Arab passing by said to him: ‘Hebrew, son of a Hebrew, unharness your ox and undo your plow, for your Temple has been destroyed.’ His ox bellowed a second time, and the Arab said: ‘Hebrew, son of a Hebrew, harness your oxen and set up your plow again, for the king Messiah has been born.’ The Jew asked: ‘What is his name?’ The Arab answered: ‘Menahem’ — meaning Comforter. ‘And his father’s name?’ — ‘Hezekiah.’ ‘And where was he born?’ — ‘In Bethlehem of Judah.’

After hearing this, the Jew sold his plow and oxen, became a seller of infant sandals, and traveled about seeking the Messiah and his mother. He found the woman, whose child had been born on the day the Temple fell and had subsequently vanished, borne away by winds.

Geronimo used this narrative — which the rabbis could not deny belonged to their own traditions, since one of their own number (the master called Doctor of Gerona) had cited it — to establish two points: first, that the Messiah had been born at the time of the Temple’s destruction; and second, that his birthplace was Bethlehem of Judah, as also taught by the prophet Micah.

Rabbi Mathatias responded that nasci (“to be born”) could be interpreted “dispositively” — meaning that at any given time there is a person already disposed to become the Messiah, so that when Israel merits it, that person will be revealed. Geronimo rejected this with a reductio ad absurdum: if birth merely means disposition, then the farmer’s joy, his journey, his selling of oxen and sandals — all of this would have been for nothing. And by that logic, every human being is potentially king and pope, since everyone is in some potential relation to any role. Rabbi Mathatias fell silent.

The Prophecy of Isaiah 66:7 (Session 5)

“Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.”

The Aramaic Targum Jonathan renders this: “Before anguish came upon her, she was saved; before tribulations came upon her, the king Messiah was revealed.”

Geronimo argued: therefore, before the destruction of Jerusalem, the Messiah was not merely born but publicly manifested and revealed. The Targum — which the rabbis considered authoritative and which was composed in the period of the Second Temple — explicitly names the Messiah in this passage.

IV. Bethlehem as the Messianic Birthplace (Session 27)

Geronimo marshaled five independent authorities to prove that the Messiah was destined to be born in Bethlehem:

The prophetic text (Micah 5:2):

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, small among the thousands of Judah — from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from old, from ancient days.”

The Aramaic Targum (Jonathan ben Uzziel):

“From you shall come forth for me the Messiah, the son of David; his name is spoken from of old, from the days of eternity.”

Rabbi Solomon (Rashi)’s gloss:

“From you shall come forth for me the Messiah, the son of David” — on account of whom the psalmist says: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.”

The Talmudic narrative (Jerusalem Talmud, Berakhot 5a): The Arab traveler in the story cited above explicitly tells the farmer: “He was born in Bethlehem of Judah.”

The ancient Bereshit Rabbah (attributed to Moses ha-Darshan): A passage records that on the day the Temple was destroyed, Elijah heard a heavenly voice announcing the birth of “the Savior of Israel“ — and when he went to find the child, he went to Bethlehem of Judah.

Geronimo noted that the prophet Micah spoke this during the reign of King Hezekiah, and from that day until the birth of Jesus, no figure had emerged from Bethlehem of whom this prophecy could be verified — confirming that it pointed uniquely to Christ.

V. The Messiah Was to Be Both True God and True Man (Session 29)

Geronimo argued that the Messiah could not be a purely human figure and must possess divine nature, marshaling several Talmudic and prophetic authorities:

Daniel 7:13–14:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

Both Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra and Rabbi Solomon (Rashi) explicitly gloss this passage as referring to the Messiah. Geronimo argued that Daniel’s formulation — “like a son of man” (quasi filium hominis) — carefully avoids saying “a son of man” outright, precisely to signal that the Messiah’s origin was not that of ordinary human generation.

The Spirit of the Messiah as the Spirit of God: From the Bereshit Rabbah (on Genesis 1:2): “The spirit of God moved over the waters — this is the spirit of the Messiah” (Rabbi Simeon), which is confirmed by Isaiah 11: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” If the Messiah’s spirit is the Spirit of God, he cannot be a merely human person born of carnal generation.

Psalm 2:7 and the Midrash on Psalms:

“The LORD said to me: ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.'” Rabbi Huna, in the name of Rabbi Iddi, applies this verse to the Messiah: “God said, concerning the Messiah: I will create him as a new creation — for it is written: ‘Today I have begotten you.'”

Psalm 2:12 (Kiss the Son): Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra interprets bar (son) in this verse as referring to the Messiah, linking it to the verse “The LORD said to me: you are my Son.” Since Scripture attributes to the Messiah qualities of divine trust and saving hope (“Blessed are all who take refuge in him”), the Messiah must himself possess divine nature — for such beatitude cannot be ascribed to a mere mortal.

The Virgin Birth (Session 28): Geronimo presented two Talmudic passages to prove the Messiah’s birth would be miraculous:

From the Bereshit Rabbah of Moses ha-Darshan (on Genesis 4:25):

“Rabbi Tanhuma said in the name of Rabbi Samuel: ‘God has appointed for me another seed’ — this is the seed that shall come from another place. And who is it? This is the king Messiah.”

From the Bereshit Rabbah (on Genesis 19:32), concerning the daughters of Lot:

“Let us preserve offspring from our father” — it does not say ‘a son,’ but ‘seed’; and this is the seed that was to come from another place: and that is the king Messiah.”

Geronimo argued that the phrase “from another place” — consistently used in these midrashic sources — indicates a generation outside the ordinary course of human paternal descent, i.e., a virginal conception.

VI. The Messiah Had to Suffer and Die (Session 30)

Geronimo argued that the Messiah came not to establish a temporal kingdom or liberate Israel from political enemies, but to redeem souls and atone for original sin. He cited Talmudic sources that acknowledged the Messiah would be afflicted:

Isaiah 53 and Talmudic interpretation: From tractate Sanhedrin 98b, the passage describes the Messiah sitting among the sick and suffering at the gate of Rome, constantly binding and unbinding his wounds one by one so as to be instantly ready. Geronimo asked: if a surgeon neither cures the sick nor performs his healing work, what good is he to the wounded? Likewise, the Messiah born into the world must accomplish that for which he was sent — which the Talmud itself describes in terms of bearing affliction.

The Removal of Original Sin: Geronimo argued that all the patriarchs, prophets, and righteous souls who died before the Messiah’s coming descended to sheol (the underworld), not to paradise — a point he claimed was supported by numerous Talmudic passages. The Messiah’s purpose was to liberate these souls, and this liberation required his suffering and death as a redemptive act. The rabbis had answered the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth of his twelve questions about the Messiah’s deeds by denying that the Messiah would suffer — and Geronimo devoted Session 30 to refuting this systematically through prophetic and Talmudic testimony.

VII. The Universal Scope of the Messiah’s Mission (Session 31)

The rabbis had argued in response to the seventh of Geronimo’s twelve questions that the Messiah would save only the house of Israel, and that Israel referred literally to the Jewish people. Geronimo contested both claims.

He argued that the name Israel in the prophetic literature, when used in the context of the Messianic age, refers to all those who accept the teaching of the Messiah, regardless of ethnic origin. He cited Talmudic passages to the effect that converts and righteous gentiles in the Messianic era were included in the promises made to Israel.

He further argued that prophecies such as Zechariah 2:11 (“Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD in that day and shall be my people”) and Jeremiah 3:14–15 (“I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion — and I will give you shepherds after my own heart”) explicitly extend the Messiah’s mission beyond Israel‘s ethnic boundaries, since the gentiles gathered from one in a city and two in a family cannot refer to the dispersion of Israel — already known to be numerous — but to the sparse scattering of believing gentiles throughout the nations.

VIII. The Mosaic Law Is Neither Perfect Nor Eternal (Session 32)

This argument, among the most theologically charged in the entire disputation, asserted that the Torah of Moses was by design incomplete and provisional — destined to be superseded by the new law of the Messiah.

Geronimo opened with the Midrash Qohelet Rabbah (on Ecclesiastes 2:1):

A teacher asked: What did Solomon mean when he said ‘I will have joy of good things, yet I saw that this also was vanity’? A teacher answered: ‘Joy of good things’ refers to the joy of the Torah. But Ezekias the teacher says: all the Torah that a man learns in this world is vanity compared to the Torah of the World to Come. And Rabbi Rahamon says: this [Torah of the World to Come] is the Torah of the king Messiah.

And again from the same Midrash (on Ecclesiastes 11:8): “Whatever law a man learns in this world is entirely vanity compared to the Torah of the Messiah.”

Geronimo also invoked the Aramaic Targum of Isaiah 12:3 (“You shall draw water with joy from the springs of salvation”), in which the translator Jonathan renders “water” as “the new law”: “And you shall receive the new law with joy, you the elect of the righteous.”

He then cited Isaiah 2:2–3, where the prophet says that in the last days “out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” together with Rashi’s gloss that this miracle would surpass even the revelation at Sinai — since the Torah of Sinai had already gone out from that mountain long before the Messianic era.

The argument’s climax was the New Covenant passage of Jeremiah 31:31–34:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt… But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be my people… for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”

Geronimo argued this passage unambiguously promises a new covenant, explicitly distinguished from the Mosaic law — not a renewal of it, but a replacement. The Talmud itself (Mekhilta) confirms: “covenant means nothing other than Torah” (berit = tora). Therefore this prophecy announces a new Torah. The claim that the Mosaic law is eternal is thus contradicted by Israel‘s own prophets and sages.

IX. The Messianic Year: The Passion of Christ (Sessions 18, 21)

Geronimo argued that the Messiah was obligated to come precisely in the year of Jesus Christ’s passion, demonstrating this through three converging authorities:

Isaiah 9:6:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Genesis 49:10 (as discussed above): The removal of the Sanhedrin’s capital jurisdiction forty years before the Temple’s destruction places the scepter’s removal — and thus the Messiah’s arrival — squarely in the period of Christ’s ministry.

The Talmudic passage on the ten miracles of the Temple (Yoma 39a): The Talmud records that during the forty years before the Temple’s destruction, ten miracles ceased — including the lot for Yom Kippur always falling in the left hand (a bad omen), the lamp on the menorah going out, and the doors of the Temple opening of their own accord (which Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai interpreted as a sign that enemies would soon enter). These signs, occurring precisely during the forty-year period preceding 70 CE, pointed to a cosmic rupture — which Geronimo identified as the crucifixion.

The Weeks of Daniel (Daniel 9:24–27) were deployed in Sessions 18 and 21 to demonstrate a precise chronological framework placing the Messiah’s advent at the time of the Second Temple. Geronimo divided Daniel’s seventy weeks into their traditional periods, argued that the sixty-ninth week ended with the anointing of Jesus and the cutting off of “the anointed one” (the crucifixion), and that the final week saw the confirmation of a covenant with many and the cessation of sacrifice and offering — all of which, he argued, corresponded exactly to the events of Christ’s life and the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction.

X. The Jews‘ Present Captivity as Punishment for Rejecting the True Messiah (Sessions 13, 35)

The final major argument concerned the cause of the Jews‘ ongoing exile. The traditional Jewish explanation held that the captivity was the result of sins committed in connection with the First Temple, or of the sin of sinat hinam (causeless hatred between Israelites) that brought about the Second Temple’s destruction.

Geronimo argued that none of these explanations were sufficient to account for an exile already lasting over thirteen hundred years by the time of the disputation — far longer than any previous punishment. He marshaled Talmudic passages about the sin of causeless hatred but argued that the punishment for this sin could not logically extend to thousands of years when earlier and arguably graver sins (including idolatry) had resulted in far shorter exiles.

His conclusion was that the true and proportionate cause of the Jews‘ present captivity was their rejection of, and rebellion against, the true Messiah — the Lord Jesus Christ. This sin, unlike those of the earlier periods, was one whose gravity corresponded uniquely to an indefinitely prolonged punishment, since it constituted a rejection of God himself made manifest.

He cited the Talmudic maxim (Shabbat 63a; Sanhedrin 91b, 99a): “There is no difference between this world and the Messianic era except for the subjugation of kingdoms” — arguing that the rabbis’ own tradition acknowledged the Messianic era would look much like the present world, only without Israel‘s political subjugation. Since Israel was in subjugation, the Messiah had not yet fulfilled his mission in their eyes — but the reason for this was precisely their failure to accept him when he came.

Concluding Observation

Throughout the disputation, Geronimo de Santa Fe’s strategy was consistent: he did not primarily appeal to Christian tradition or to the authority of Church Fathers, but to the authority of the Talmud, Midrashim, and Targums as accepted by the Jewish rabbis themselves. His contention was that the rabbinical literature, properly read, not only admitted the possibility of the Messiah’s prior advent but in many places actively confirmed it. The rabbis responded with a combination of textual counter-readings, appeals to allegorical or dispositional interpretations, and, ultimately, the simple assertion that whatever the texts might seem to say, no argument could shake their faith that the Messiah had not yet come. The records show that as the sessions wore on, an increasing number of the assembled Jews converted to Christianity — a fact the Acts record with evident satisfaction.

XI. The Messiah at the Gates of Rome (Session 15 and Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 1)

Among the seven main Talmudic authorities Geronimo marshaled to prove the Messiah had already come, the third is particularly striking. Drawn from Sanhedrin 98a, it presents the Messiah as waiting — already present in the world — at the gates of Rome:

“Rabbi Josué, son of Leví, found Elijah standing at the entrance to the cave of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai. He said to him: Will I have a share in the world to come? Elijah replied: If this Lord of ours wishes it. Rabbi Josué then asked: When will the Messiah come? Elijah answered: Go, ask him yourself. — Where is he? — At the gate of Rome, among those who suffer from sickness. — Rabbi Josué went and found him there as Elijah had said. He said to him: Peace be upon you, my Master. — The Messiah replied: Peace be upon you, son of Leví. — Rabbi Josué asked: When will my Lord come? — The Messiah answered: Today. — Rabbi Josué returned to Elijah, who asked: What did he say to you? — He said: Peace be upon you, son of Leví. — Elijah told him: With that he gave security to you and to your father that you will have a share in the world to come. — Rabbi Josué said: But he told me he would come today, and he did not come — was that a lie? — Elijah answered: He said: ‘Today, if you will hear his voice’ (Psalm 95:7).”

And alongside this, from the same tractate (Sanhedrin 98a):

“Rabbi Josué, son of Leví, found Elijah and Rabbi Simeon at the gate of Paradise, and asked them: When will the Messiah come? — They answered: When the Lord our God wishes it. — Rabbi Josué said: I could see only two men, but I heard the voice of three.”

Rashi’s gloss on this last passage: the third voice was that of the Messiah himself.

Geronimo argued that these passages together establish a crucial fact: that according to the Talmud itself, the Messiah was already present in the world during the period when the Talmud‘s own sages were alive — bound, sick, hidden at the gate of Rome, waiting to be recognized. The condition for his revelation was not any political event but something purely spiritual: whether Israel would “hear his voice today.” Geronimo identified this as a description of Jesus Christ: present in the world, rejected, and recognized only by those who opened their ears to his word.

A related fourth authority also from Sanhedrin 98a, cited in the same session, extends the narrative: Elijah tells the Messiah’s mother that her child was born on the day the Temple fell, but was swept away by winds and now lives hidden in the great sea, then in the regions of the sons of Korah, then at the gate of Rome — and will spend the remainder of his time distributed across the great cities of the world. Geronimo took this to mean that the Messiah was dispersed among the nations in an unrecognized form, present everywhere yet unacknowledged — a description he applied to the spiritual reign of Christ in the Church.

Pacios López, in his doctrinal evaluation (Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 1), notes that the persistence of these traditions in the Talmud despite their evident tension with rabbinic theology — they place the Messiah’s coming squarely in the era of the Second Temple — constitutes strong evidence that the sages themselves believed they were transmitting ancient revealed truth, not personal speculation. No scribe would have invented traditions that so conspicuously contradicted his own belief that the Messiah had not yet come.

XII. Isaiah 9:6 and the Divine Titles of the Messiah (Sessions 18–19; Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 1)

Geronimo deployed Isaiah 9:6 as one of three converging chronological proofs that the Messiah was obligated to come precisely in the year of Christ’s passion:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.” (Isaiah 9:6–7)

He noted that this passage was universally accepted in the Jewish tradition as Messianic, citing the Talmudic authority of Rabbi Yosé the Galilean (Eka Rabbah): “The Messiah shall be called Peace, as it is written: Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

The primary significance of this text for the Tortosa disputation, however, lay in the peculiar Hebrew spelling of the word lémarbé (“of the increase”) in verse 7, where the letter mem is written in its closed form rather than the open form that grammar requires at the beginning of a syllable. In kabbalistic numerology, the closed mem carries the numerical value of 600. Several traditional Christian interpreters, following Raymond Martí’s Pugio Fidei, had argued that this scribal anomaly was placed there deliberately to encode a number of years — pointing to the six-hundred-year interval between the reign of Ahaz (when the prophecy was given) and the time of Christ’s birth or passion.

Pacios López is candid in his critical evaluation: the chronological argument from the closed mem is ingenious but ultimately unsupported, as modern historians cannot confirm that exactly six hundred years elapsed between the fourth year of Ahaz and the crucifixion. Nonetheless, the unmistakably Messianic and divine titles of the passage — Mighty God (El Gibbor), Everlasting Father (Abi ‘Ad) — remained for Geronimo powerful evidence that the Messiah was to be understood as possessing divine nature.

XIII. Haggai 2:7–10 and Malachi 3:1 — The Messiah Must Appear in the Second Temple (Sessions 22, 26, 37; Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 1)

Two prophetic texts were cited as supplementary proofs that the Messiah was bound to appear before the destruction of the Second Temple — and therefore must already have come:

Haggai 2:7–10:

“Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.”

Malachi 3:1:

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.”

Neither text specifies the exact date of the Messiah’s coming, but both make clear — as Geronimo and Pacios López both affirm — that the Messiah would appear in the Second Temple itself, thereby granting that Temple a glory surpassing the First. Since the Second Temple had been destroyed for over thirteen centuries by the time of the disputation, without any Messiah having appeared there (by the rabbis’ reckoning), the prophecy of greater glory could only have been fulfilled if someone recognized as Messiah had in fact entered it. Geronimo identified that person as Jesus Christ, who taught in the Temple courts and whose arrival was heralded by John the Baptist — “my messenger” of Malachi 3:1.

Pacios López notes that these two texts had been standard weapons in the Adversus Judaeos arsenal since antiquity: they were used by St. Isidore of Seville (Contra Judaeos II.2), St. Julian of Toledo (De Comprobatione Aetatis Sextae), and Pedro Alfonso (Dialogi, tit. 2). The rabbis of Tortosa did not deny the Messianic application of either prophecy, but argued that their fulfillment was still in the future — a position Geronimo attacked as incompatible with the texts’ plain reference to the existing Second Temple, now long demolished.

XIV. The Allegorical Interpretation of Messianic Prophecies (Sessions 23–26, 37–38; Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 2)

One of the most structurally important arguments in the entire disputation, developed at length in both the Actas and in Pacios López’s doctrinal analysis, concerned the proper hermeneutical method for reading the Messianic prophecies. The rabbis’ principal objection to Geronimo’s case was that Jesus had not fulfilled the material and political conditions the prophets announced for the Messianic age: the rebuilding of the Temple, the ingathering of all the dispersed of Israel, the universal peace, the subjugation of foreign kingdoms, and the physical restoration of Jerusalem.

Geronimo’s response was twofold. First, he argued that the Jewish interpretation of these prophecies as referring to literal, temporal, and political events was itself a hermeneutical choice — not an obvious reading forced by the texts — and was internally inconsistent, since the rabbis applied allegorical readings when texts were inconvenient and literal readings when texts were favorable to their national hopes. Second, he deployed a series of arguments to show that the prophecies required a spiritual interpretation:

From Maimónides’ own introduction to Scripture (cited at Session 1): Sacred Scripture is like a golden apple within a silver lattice. At first glance one sees only silver; but on closer inspection one perceives that the gold is inside. The literal surface of Scripture reveals what is needed for moral life and temporal ordering; but the deeper, allegorical meaning discloses truths that surpass natural capacity.

From the Talmud itself: The Midrash Kohelet Rabbah (on Ecclesiastes 2:1 and 11:8) explicitly teaches that all Torah learned in this world is vanity compared to the Torah of the Messianic age — which is the Torah of the king Messiah. If the Messianic era will bring a fundamentally new spiritual reality, prophecies about it cannot be read as though they describe only a continuation of the present material order.

From the distinction between Jerusalem and Israel: The prophets use the words Jerusalem, Israel, Zion, Temple, and David with two registers of meaning: material-historical and spiritual-eschatological. Jeremiah 3:17 says that “all nations shall gather to Jerusalem” — an impossibility if Jerusalem means only the physical city in Judea. Therefore the name must carry a broader, spiritual reference: what Christians call the Church. Jeremiah 3:16 explicitly states that in the Messianic age, no one will speak of the Ark of the Covenant, no one will remember it, no one will visit it, and it will not be made again — which means the entire sacrificial apparatus of the Mosaic law will cease to have any relevance, refuting the idea of a Messianic age that simply reinstates the old covenant worship.

From Maimonides’ own doctrinal writing: Rabbi Moses of Egypt (Maimonides), in his laws concerning the Messiah, acknowledged that all the details of the Messianic age are matters of profound uncertainty — that no one knows how they will unfold until they actually happen, that no interpretation of them has firm Scriptural roots, and that one must hold them with a summary belief rather than confident literalism. Geronimo turned this admission against the rabbis: if Maimonides himself admitted that prophetic descriptions of the Messianic era are uncertain and should not be taken as a rigid program, the rabbis had no basis for demanding that the Messiah fulfill those descriptions on their preferred literal terms before they would accept him.

Pacios López’s own summary of this hermeneutical exchange (Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 2) is pointed: the rabbis had a consistent double standard — they read prophecies of Israel‘s glorification literally when it suited them, and read Talmudic passages that implied the Messiah had already come as figurative midrash. The logical inversion was so conspicuous to the assembled audience, he writes, that it contributed more to the mass conversions than any single scriptural argument.

Furthermore, Geronimo offered a comprehensive four-point justification for the spiritual reading of Messianic prophecy:

  1. The changed condition of the world in the Messianic era demands it: the Law itself, according to the sages, undergoes a transformation.
  2. The prophets themselves use language that cannot be understood materially — e.g., “all nations shall gather to Jerusalem” — and so signal that a spiritual referent is intended.
  3. The Jewish doctors themselves spiritualize words like Sanctuary, House of God, Zion, Israel, and David in other contexts; once those terms carry a spiritual valence, there is no reason to exclude that valence from their Messianic usage.
  4. The actual facts of history: the Messianic era’s appointed times arrived; in that era came Jesus Christ, who confirmed his mission with miracles; the prophetic details of his life match the announcements of the prophets; and those Jews who refused to accept him have been in captivity for nearly two thousand years — itself a sign of divine displeasure, and a confirmation that the spiritual reading of the prophecies is the true one.

XV. The Talmud as Self-Refuting Authority on the Messiah’s Coming (Sessions 44–48, 54, 63–67; Vol. I, Part II, Chs. 3–4)

The second great strand of the disputation — which the organizers explicitly regarded as co-equal in importance to the proof that the Messiah had come — concerned the authority of the Talmud itself. Geronimo argued on two fronts: first, that the Talmudic haggadah (narrative and homiletical material), when taken seriously, actually confirmed the Messiah’s prior advent; and second, that the Talmud as a whole could not be binding divine law, since it contained errors, contradictions, and even heretical propositions.

The underlying logic was strategic: if the rabbis’ authority ultimately derived from the Talmud, undermining the Talmud‘s claim to divine status would simultaneously undermine the authority of their interpretation of Messianic prophecy. Conversely, showing that the Talmud‘s own most ancient stratum of tradition — attributed to Elijah and other prophetic figures — consistently placed the Messiah’s coming in the era of the Second Temple would turn the rabbis’ own supreme religious authority against their theological position.

Pacios López identifies the core of Geronimo’s argument about Talmudic authority as follows (Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 3): The compilers of the Talmud were redactors, not authors, of the traditions they transmitted. When those traditions — the Six Thousand Years, the Eighty-Five Jubilees, the Birth at Bethlehem, the Messiah sitting among the sick at Rome’s gate — contradict the compilers’ own faith that the Messiah had not yet come, the only explanation is that the compilers were bound by tradition too strong and too ancient to suppress. Had these been merely human opinions, the compilers would have omitted them rather than strain their readers’ faith with embarrassing texts that seemed to announce a Messiah already overdue. The very fact that they recorded them — and then labored to explain them away — proves that they were received as revealed truth. And if they were revealed truth, they point unmistakably to the time of Christ.

Regarding the Talmud‘s errors: Geronimo devoted sessions 63 through 67 to exposing what he characterized as abominations (abominationes), heresies, impurities, and vanities in the Talmud‘s text. The Actas record that Benedict XIII subsequently incorporated Geronimo’s findings into his bull Etsi doctoris gentium (1415), which condemned the Talmud as containing material harmful to Christianity and ordered the expurgation of offending passages.

XVI. The Argument from the Jews‘ Prolonged Captivity as Divine Punishment (Sessions 13, 35; Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 2)

Geronimo returned repeatedly to what he regarded as the most empirically compelling argument in the entire disputation: the fact of the Jews‘ present and seemingly endless exile. He framed it as follows:

Every previous punishment of Israel recorded in Scripture was proportionate to its cause and of limited duration. The Babylonian captivity lasted seventy years, corresponding to the seventy sabbatical years that had been violated. Even the sin of the Golden Calf, one of the gravest apostasies in Israel‘s history, did not produce a captivity lasting more than a generation. But the present exile had already endured — by the date of the disputation — for more than thirteen hundred years, with no end in sight.

What sin could be proportionate to so enormous and so open-ended a punishment? The rabbis attributed it to sinat hinam — the causeless hatred between Israelites that had infected the Second Temple period — and to the accumulated sins of earlier generations. Geronimo argued that neither explanation was adequate. Sinat hinam was a serious sin, but it was internal to the Jewish community and did not involve a rejection of God or His appointed agent. The weight of the punishment implied a crime of cosmic proportions: the deliberate rejection and killing of the true Messiah — of God Himself made manifest in human flesh.

He cited the Talmudic maxim from the closing sessions: there is no difference between this world and the Messianic age except the political subjugation of kingdoms. If the Jews remain in subjugation, it is because they are still living in the world-without-Messiah, not because the Messiah has failed to come, but because they have failed to receive him. Their own Talmud acknowledges their subjugation; the prophets announced the captivity as the consequence of Israel‘s rejection of divine guidance; and the punishment’s unprecedented duration points to an unprecedented cause: deicide.

Pacios López endorses this argument as among the strongest in the disputation, noting that St. Isidore of Seville had made the same case in his Contra Judaeos (II.12–13), calling the present captivity perpetua and irrevocabilis — permanent and irreversible insofar as the Jewish political nation is concerned — with the promise of restoration belonging only to that portion of Israel that would come to faith in Christ.

Concluding Observation

Throughout the disputation, Geronimo de Santa Fe’s strategy was consistent: he did not primarily appeal to Christian tradition or to the authority of the Church Fathers, but to the authority of the Talmud, Midrashim, and Targums as accepted by the Jewish rabbis themselves. His contention was that the rabbinic literature, properly read, not only admitted the possibility of the Messiah’s prior advent but in many places actively confirmed it. The rabbis responded with a combination of textual counter-readings, appeals to allegorical or dispositional interpretations, and ultimately the simple assertion that whatever the texts might seem to say, no argument could shake their faith that the Messiah had not yet come.

The Actas record that as the sessions wore on, an increasing number of the assembled Jews converted to Christianity — more than three thousand by the close of proceedings, according to Geronimo’s own final summary (Session 67) and Benedict XIII’s bull. Pacios López notes that the mass conversions came not during the early sessions of proof-building, but at the point when the rabbis’ defenses finally collapsed under the accumulated weight of argument. So long as the rabbis appeared capable of mounting a coherent response, the general Jewish audience held firm; only when the rabbinic delegation fell publicly silent did whole communities convert en masse.

Sources

The Latin and Spanish texts were translated and summarized for this document.