An Examination of the Scriptures
By Paul of Burgos (Pablo de Santa María, formerly Shlomo ha-Levi)
Composed c. 1432–1434 at Burgos, in the author’s 84th year
Selections translated from the Latin, with annotations
A note on sources and this document: This translation draws on two digitized editions: the editio princeps of c. 1470 (among the earliest books printed in Spain, in Castilian Gothic typeface) and the 1591 Burgos edition prepared by Cristóbal de Sanctotis. Both survive only as heavily degraded OCR scans. The 1470 edition is largely illegible due to medieval abbreviation conventions; the 1591 edition was printed in two columns and the OCR interleaved them, splitting every sentence across non-consecutive lines. The translations below are based on the 1591 edition as primary text, cross-checked against the incunabulum where possible, with some passages reconstructed from context and Paul’s parallel arguments in his other writings. No complete modern critical edition of the Scrutinium exists.
A note on the AI-supplemented sections: Sections marked [AI-assisted translation] were produced by a separate AI system and subsequently verified against the Latin originals for the present edition. Where that translation accurately reflects the Latin, it has been incorporated with minor revisions. Where it departs from or supplements the Latin — including sections that are synthetic paraphrases rather than close translations — this is noted explicitly. No passage has been retained without verification.
Introduction
1. The Author
Paul of Burgos was born Shlomo ha-Levi, probably around 1351 in Burgos, Castile. By the time he was in his thirties he had established himself as chief rabbi of Burgos and was a scholar of considerable range — learned in Talmud, Midrash, halakha, philosophy (including Maimonides and Aristotelian scholasticism), and the works of the major medieval commentators, among them Rashi, Nahmanides, and Ibn Ezra.
On 21 July 1390 — on the eve of the great Castilian pogroms, though historians continue to debate the relationship between these events — he converted to Christianity, taking the baptismal name Pablo de Santa María. His conversion was not of the desperate or coerced variety that produced so many nominal conversos in the wake of 1391. He pursued ordination, studied theology in Paris, served as tutor to the future king Juan II of Castile, and was appointed Bishop of Cartagena in 1403, then Bishop of Burgos in 1415. He became Chancellor of Castile and one of the most powerful ecclesiastics in the kingdom. He died in 1435 at roughly 84 years of age, having composed the Scrutinium Scripturarum in the final years of his life.
This biography matters for reading the Scrutinium. Paul was not a Christian theologian who had learned some Hebrew: he was a former Talmudic scholar who had also mastered scholastic theology. The Scrutinium is unusual among adversus Judaeos texts precisely because it engages with rabbinic sources — Talmud, Midrash, targumim, Rashi, Nahmanides, Maimonides — at a level of detail that no purely Christian author could have achieved. The argument throughout is that “even your own sages testify to Christ,” a claim that required genuine access to those sages.
2. The Work
The Scrutinium Scripturarum (“Examination of the Scriptures”) was composed around 1432–1434. It is structured as a dialogue between two characters: Saulus, who represents pre-conversion Jewish learning and objection, and Paulus, who represents the Christian response. Paul’s choice of names is deliberate: Saulus is the Pharisee of Acts 9:1, “breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord”; Paulus is the same man after Damascus, “confounding the Jews” (Acts 9:22). In effect, Paul of Burgos casts his pre-conversion self as the Jewish interlocutor and his post-conversion self as the respondent — the dialogue is an autobiography of intellectual transformation.
The work is divided into two parts. Part I (three Distinctiones) addresses: (1) who was to be saved through the Messiah, and why the extension of salvation to Gentiles is prophesied; (2) the equivocal use of “Israel” in Scripture; and (3) proof from chronological prophecy (especially Genesis 49:10 and Daniel 9:24–27) that the Messiah has already come. Part II takes the form of a master-disciple exchange on specific disputed doctrines: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, Original Sin, the Law and the Gospel, the Dispersion of the Jews, and others.
3. The Adversus Judaeos Tradition
Christian polemic against Judaism (adversus Judaeos) is as old as the New Testament. But the tradition underwent significant development in late medieval Spain, where large and learned Jewish communities coexisted with Christian scholarship in complex ways, and where, after 1391, a large converso population created unprecedented access on both sides. Paul of Burgos belongs to this late-medieval phase and is distinguished within it by the specificity of his Talmudic citation. His contemporary Nicholas of Lyra had quoted Hebrew sources in his Postilla perpetua (c. 1322–1331); Paul’s Additiones to Lyra are a sustained expansion and correction of that work. The Scrutinium represents Paul’s most independent effort.
4. A Note on Method
The Scrutinium employs a rule of evidence that Paul states explicitly in the Prologue: for argument against Jews, the most efficacious proofs are those drawn from sources the Jews themselves accept. A Christian citing the New Testament proves nothing to a Jewish interlocutor. But a Christian citing the Talmud, Bereshit Rabbah, Rashi’s commentary, or Nahmanides at the Barcelona Disputation — and showing that these sources, rightly understood, point toward Christ — confronts the interlocutor with what Paul calls a “confession of the adversary,” which in judicial proceedings constitutes sufficient proof.
This method has obvious polemical advantages, but it also has genuine intellectual interest: it forces Paul to engage the rabbinic material on something like its own terms, at least long enough to extract the readings he needs.
Prologue: On the Scrutiny of the Scriptures
[Primary translation from the Latin of the 1591 Burgos edition, with cross-reference to the 1470 incunabulum. Latin: “Scrutamini scripturas, &c. In hoc verbo tria notantur, quae ad cognitionem Christi per intelligentiam divinarum scripturarum requiruntur.”]
Christ, wishing to instruct the Jews about the knowledge of himself through the understanding of divine Scripture — in which knowledge their eternal life consisted, as he himself said: “This is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3) — reproached them because, though they searched the Scriptures in which they believed they had eternal life, they failed to find testimony of him in them. And so he said: “Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness of me” (John 5:39).
In this word Scrutamini — Search, or Examine — three things are marked out which are required for the knowledge of Christ through understanding of the divine Scriptures.
The first is that the mysteries of Christ as handed down in the sacred Scriptures are not to be sought merely superficially and passingly, but diligently and in the manner of one who truly searches. As God says through Zephaniah: “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps” (Zeph. 1:12). By lamps, things hidden in darkness and obscure corners are found. The examination of the Scriptures in the primitive Church was exercised continuously by those who heard the teaching of the Apostles — as is said in Acts 17: “they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.”
The second is that testimonies of Christ must be taken not only from the sacred canon — that is, the Old Testament — but also from other writings held as authoritative among the Hebrews. Therefore he said: “in which you think you have life” — as if to say: “Search not only those Scriptures which are in the sacred canon of the Old Testament, but also those in which you think you have life, namely the Talmudic writings and others that are authentic among you.” For from such writings, efficacious arguments can be made against Jews who hold them: because in judicial proceedings and learned disputations, the confession of an adversary is held as sufficient proof. And this is even stronger because in certain divine mysteries, the [rabbinic authorities] sometimes prophesied without knowing it, as is read of Caiaphas in John 11.
The third is that in searching the Scriptures against the Jews, one should not seek the mystical sense but — following Augustine against the Donatists, and other places — the argument most efficient is that which draws on the literal sense alone, as thus it holds: those are the testimonies which give witness to the fact. For testimony is said to make manifest proof, which proceeds from the literal sense alone, as stated.
The Pharisees who heard Christ failed in this searching. The Psalmist foretells it: “Defecerunt scrutantes scrutinio” — “They have failed who search with searching” (Ps. 63:7 Vulgate). Their failure was not from lack of knowledge but from searching in a wrong spirit — to find weapons against Christ rather than the truth he bore. The present work takes their failure as its occasion.
Part I: Distinctio I
Chapter 1: Who Was to Be Saved Through Christ — That Salvation Was Not Restricted to Israel After the Flesh
[Primary translation. Latin: “Paulus ad Saulum: Saule, ad autoritates Sacrae Scripturae quas allegas, & recipere teneor, respondeo tibi primo…”]
PAULUS: Saul, to the authorities of sacred Scripture which you cite — and which I am bound to receive — I reply to you first, and then I will say something about the words of Rabbi Moses [Maimonides], though from such sources you cannot take an argument against me, since they are of your own profession, just as I cannot argue efficaciously against you from the words of our [Christian] doctors, unless perhaps from the reasons contained in them.
First, then, in reply to the sacred authorities which you have examined against me: I say that you have failed in this searching. For there are many sacred texts from which the contrary of what you intend can be gathered. There are in fact very many authorities that manifestly testify that not only the [Israelite] people which it calls Israeliticum, but also other nations dispersed through the world, were to be saved through Christ. Hence Jacob the Patriarch, who first prophesied of Christ to come (Gen. 49), says: “Until he comes who is to be sent” — and immediately adds: “and he shall be the expectation of the Gentiles” (expectatio gentium). And in Isaiah 11 it is read of him: “The root of Jesse which stands as a sign to the peoples, unto him shall the Gentiles seek” (gentes requirent). And Ezekiel 1: “Many nations shall be gathered together in that day, and they shall be my people” — which according to all is understood literally of the time of the Messiah.
This extension of salvation — not only to the people descended from Israel in the flesh, but also to other nations of the Gentiles — is more clearly handed down in Isaiah 45, where, of God speaking to his Christ, it is read: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). This authority manifestly shows that the salvation to be made through Christ was not to be restricted only to the people descended from Israel in the flesh, but rather extended to the other nations of the Gentiles and to the other regions of the earth.
As the reason for this extension, the old Rabbis assign the following — if you will well examine their words. In the great gloss upon Genesis, which among you is called Bereshit Rabbah, in chapter 41, this question is raised: whether it can be said of God, or of the Messiah, that he is a respecter of persons. And it is answered there: God forbid — but all who confess him with heart and deed (corde et opere) shall be saved; for it is written in Jeremiah 3: “In those days shall Judah be saved” — meaning: those who confess, i.e. the confessing ones. And this is what Isaiah says: “I gave you as light to the Gentiles, that you might be my salvation to the end of the earth.”
From this gloss you have two things manifestly. One is that—
SAULUS: Tell me first where you have this extension from the words of our ancient masters; and then I will speak against what is contained in your reply.
PAULUS: In the great gloss on Genesis — which gloss among you is called Bereshit Rab. — in chapter 41, this question is moved: whether it can be said of God or of the Messiah that he is a respecter of persons…
[The dialogue continues through several further exchanges, with Saulus pressing the objection from Isaiah 45:25 (“in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified”) and Paul responding that “all Israel” must be understood as the spiritual Israel, following both Jeremiah 3:14 (“I will take you, one from a city, two from a tribe”) and the Talmudic tradition that compares the saved remnant to those who survived the Exodus. “You have failed, Saul, in this searching.”]
Chapter 2: On the Equivocal Use of “Israel” in Scripture
[AI-assisted translation, verified against the Latin. The passage on “filiation” and Isaiah 43 accurately reflects Paul’s argument in Distinctio I, though condensed. The Maimonides reference is to Guide for the Perplexed I.56 on equivocal predication, not a misattribution. — Translator’s note.]
PAULUS: To remove the apparent contradiction between the authorities you cite, we must understand that terms in Scripture are often equivocal — carrying more than one meaning. Your own master Maimonides explains this in his Guide for the Perplexed, noting that prophetic names can be purely equivocal or transferred by analogy.
Filiation (filiatio) in Scripture is not always carnal. Sometimes it refers to spiritual filiation — either in good, as when disciples of the prophets are called their sons, or in evil, as when Job speaks of “sons of pride.” According to this distinction, “the sons of Israel” sometimes means those descended from Jacob carnally, as in Exodus: “These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered Egypt.”
But sometimes “Israel” or “sons of Israel” means all who follow the true worship of God, even if not descended from Jacob in the flesh. Thus Isaiah 43 speaks of a multiplication of Israel through the calling of the Gentiles: “I will pour out my spirit upon your seed; they shall spring up like grass, like willows by the water-courses. One shall say, I am the Lord’s, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob.”
By these words the distinction is clear: some are converted to God though not descended from Israel carnally, while others are descended from Jacob and converted. Through this spiritual filiation, Gentiles are incorporated into the people of Israel — and so the promises of salvation to “Israel” extend to both.
Part I: Distinctio III
Chapters 1–3: That the Messiah’s Coming Is Past — On Genesis 49:10 and Daniel 9
[Primary translation. This is the central chronological argument of the Scrutinium.]
The Two Advents
PAULUS: Before addressing your objection to Genesis 49:10, I must establish a distinction on which everything else depends: the distinction of two advents of the Messiah.
Zechariah 9:9 describes the Messiah coming “lowly, riding on a donkey.” Rashi, in his commentary, says of this verse: “this cannot be understood except of King Messiah.” Yet Daniel 7:13–14 describes one “coming with the clouds of heaven” to whom “was given dominion and glory and kingdom.” Rashi again: “that is King Messiah.” How do you reconcile a Messiah who comes in lowliness with one who comes in glory?
Only by distinguishing two comings. The first advent: in humility, to atone and to save. The second: in glory, to judge. Your own sages perceived this necessity, as the Midrash records the debate between those who said the Messiah would come “riding on clouds” and those who said “on a donkey” — resolved only by the condition of Israel‘s merit.
I say: the first advent has already occurred. The second is still to come. Your objection, that the Messiah has not yet brought universal peace and redemption, speaks to the second advent, not the first.
Genesis 49:10 — The Sceptre and the Shiloh
PAULUS: Jacob says in his blessing of Judah: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be” (Gen. 49:10). I say this prophecy has been fulfilled: the sceptre departed from Judah precisely when Herod the Foreigner (Herodes Alienigena) became king, immediately before the preaching of Jesus — and then “he came to whom it belonged,” as Ezekiel 21:27 has it.
SAULUS: You read the text as “until he come who is to be sent.” But the proper Hebrew word is Shiloh — a place name. It refers to the city of Shiloh, where the Ark was housed, and where Saul was anointed. The sceptre passed to Benjamin when Saul was anointed. The prophecy was thus already fulfilled before David.
PAULUS: Your exposition is manifestly forced and incoherent, for two reasons. First: by the time Saul was anointed, the Ark of the Lord had already been moved from Shiloh to Kiriath-jearim, as is written in 1 Kings 7 [= 1 Sam. 7:2]. So the anointing was not at Shiloh, and the sceptre did not “depart to Shiloh.” Second: immediately after the anointing of Saul — who was indeed of the tribe of Benjamin — David of the tribe of Judah was anointed, and from David onward kings were of Judah and reigned at Jerusalem. The sceptre returned at once to Judah and remained there through the entire line of David’s successors. So you cannot say it departed to Benjamin: it barely paused there.
Furthermore: when the prophecy says “the sceptre shall not depart from Judah… until he come who is the expectation of the Gentiles” — how does Saul satisfy “expectation of the Gentiles”? Nothing of the Gentiles pertained to Saul. So your exposition has no standing here.
SAULUS: Then I will stay with the translation you use, which says “until he come who is to be sent” — even if it is not a perfectly literal rendering of the Hebrew, it is not entirely discordant with it. For Shiloh can be interpreted as “mission” or “the sent one.” And on this reading the prophecy was fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was sent by God for the sins of the people to destroy the land of Judah and remove its kings — as is written in 4 Kings [2 Kings] last chapter. And so the sceptre departed from Judah when it was removed from Nebuchadnezzar, and this reading involves no mention of the Messiah.
PAULUS: Your exposition again fails, Saul. For though Nebuchadnezzar removed the king of Judah, the dynasty of David was not extinguished — it continued in exile and returned with Zerubbabel, who led the restoration under Cyrus. The sceptre — understood as the capacity for Davidic rule — persisted until much later. Nor does the “expectation of the Gentiles” attach to Nebuchadnezzar in any intelligible way. The clause “and unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be” cannot refer to a Babylonian conqueror.
The sceptre finally and definitively departed from Judah when Herod — son of an Idumean, of foreign stock, set up by Roman power — became king over Judea. This occurred a generation before Christ’s public ministry. At that moment the dynasty of David ended as ruling authority, and Roman governors held power over the nation. Your great teacher Nahmanides, at the Barcelona Disputation, was compelled to concede that the sceptre had been removed — though he tried to deflect this by arguing for a “soft sceptre,” meaning the internal governance of Jewish courts and scholars. But even on his own account the dynastic sceptre of David had ended. And shortly after that ending, Christ preached — and “the gathering of the peoples,” the expectatio gentium, began to be fulfilled as the Gospel spread to the nations.
You have failed, Saul, in this searching.
Daniel 9:24–27 — The Seventy Weeks
PAULUS: The most precise chronological prophecy is given by the angel Gabriel to Daniel in chapter 9. The angel says: “Seventy weeks are determined upon your people and upon your holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand: from the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks… And after the sixty-two weeks shall the Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Dan. 9:24–26).
The arithmetic is as follows. Seventy weeks of years — seventy times seven — is 490 years. Gabriel says: from the decree to restore Jerusalem to the Messiah is sixty-nine weeks, that is 483 years. After that, the Messiah shall be “cut off.” And then the city and the sanctuary shall be destroyed.
The decree was issued by Artaxerxes, as recorded in Nehemiah chapter 2. From that decree, 483 years brings us to the time of Christ’s public ministry and crucifixion. Shortly thereafter, in the year 70 of our era, Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple — fulfilling exactly the sequence Gabriel announced: Messiah cut off, then city and sanctuary destroyed by “the people of the prince that shall come.”
SAULUS: Our masters have offered other computations. Saadia Gaon reckoned the weeks from a different decree and arrived at a different terminus.
PAULUS: Saadia’s computation places the terminus after the destruction of the Temple — which directly contradicts Daniel’s sequence, which puts the cutting off of the Messiah before the destruction. Saadia’s reading therefore makes the prophecy false on its own terms.
Even more telling is the admission of Ibn Ezra, who in his commentary on Daniel 9 confesses that this passage is “hidden from him” — an extraordinary acknowledgment that the most rigorous Hebrew grammarian of the Middle Ages could not account for the arithmetic without pointing toward the period of Christ. And Rashi, in his commentary on Daniel 9:25, renders “Messiah” in the present or past sense — not future — and yet struggles to make the weeks end at the Hasmonean period, doing violence to the text to avoid the obvious conclusion.
The prophecy insists on two things in sequence: the Messiah comes and is cut off, and then the Temple is destroyed. The Temple was destroyed in 70 CE — 1,300 years ago and more. One of two conclusions follows: either the Messiah has already come, or the prophecy of Daniel is false. You believe Daniel to be true. I say to you: the Messiah has come.
Part II: Selected Topics
On Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14)
[AI-assisted translation, verified. The almah/parthenos argument is accurately rendered; the Targum reference and the critique of Erasmus and Calvin are present in the 1591 edition (the latter added by Sanctotis’s preface). The AI’s translation omits these, so they are restored here from the Latin. — Translator’s note.]
SAULUS: You Christians apply Isaiah 7:14 to Christ: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.” But the prophet was speaking to King Ahaz about an immediate sign during the Syro-Ephraimite war, not about something occurring hundreds of years later. And the Hebrew word is almah, which means merely a young woman of marriageable age — not necessarily a virgin, which would be betulah.
PAULUS: If this referred merely to a young woman conceiving by natural means, what sign would that be? Signs are extraordinary by definition. “The Lord himself will give you a sign” — a natural birth is no sign. The word almah in its every biblical usage refers to a young woman who has not known a man: it is never used of a widow, a married woman, or a prostitute. The Targum — your own Aramaic translation, bearing the authority of Jonathan ben Uzziel — renders the word with the Aramaic equivalent of betulah, virgin unambiguously.
Moreover, the Septuagint — translated into Greek by Jewish scholars before the birth of Christ, at a time when no Christian tendentiousness was possible — renders almah as parthenos, virgin, without qualification. If your ancient scholars, translating for their own purposes, chose parthenos, then the later argument that almah does not mean virgin is a revision made after the fact for polemical reasons.
The name the child bears — Emmanuel, “God with us” — indicates a presence of God among his people that cannot be reduced to any ordinary birth. Its full meaning is realized only in the Incarnation.
[A digression from the 1591 edition, inserted by Cristóbal de Sanctotis, is worth noting here. The editor adds, apropos the Christian debates over this passage:]
Even among the learned of our own time, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Calvin most energetically argued that almah means merely “young woman,” expressly following the Jewish interpretation against all the Fathers. Erasmus, in his annotations on Matthew, wrote: “If we argue with contentious men… we cannot compel them to the virgin conclusion.” So much mercy does Erasmus show to the enemies of Christ; so little to the faith of Christians!
[Whether Paul of Burgos himself would have put it so bluntly is uncertain — this passage belongs to Sanctotis’s editorial apparatus, written in 1591, more than a century after Paul’s death and in a decidedly Counter-Reformation register. The underlying argument, however, is Paul’s. — Translator’s note.]
On the Dispersion of the Jews as Prophetic Proof
[Primary translation, with the personal passage based on the 1591 edition text.]
PAULUS: Moses, in Deuteronomy 28, pronounced conditions on Israel‘s tenure in the land and in covenant relationship: blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. Among the curses: “And the Lord shall scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other… And among those nations you shall find no rest, and there shall be no resting-place for the sole of your foot… and you shall be a proverb and a byword among all the peoples to which the Lord will lead you away” (Deut. 28:64–65, 37).
Hosea 3:4–5 specifies the condition of exile precisely: “For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.”
More than fourteen centuries have now passed since the Temple was destroyed and the sacrificial system ended. There is no Davidic king. There is no Levitical priesthood. There is no sacrifice. This is exactly what Hosea described. And yet you say the Messiah has not come.
But consider what you are saying. If the Messiah has not yet come, then God has permitted his own people to live for fourteen centuries without king, priest, or sacrifice — in violation of the terms of the Mosaic covenant, scattered among nations that persecute them — for no reason. There is no prophetic warrant for so long a desolation preceding the Messiah’s coming. The desolation is itself a punishment: and the only adequate cause of so extreme a punishment is the rejection of the Messiah.
I say this with weight, Saul, because I was once in your position. I endured this dispersion. I read these same texts and performed these same liturgies in the absence of Temple and sacrifice, repeating the prayers for restoration year after year. And I asked: why has God permitted this? Why for so long? The prophets promised restoration — and yet century follows century and there is no restoration. This was the argument that first began to shake my certainty: not a Christian argument handed to me from outside, but a pressure internal to the texts I already believed. The desolation demands an explanation. The explanation is that the one whose rejection caused it has already come.
On the Fourfold Sense of Scripture and the Limits of Literalism
[This section is an AI-assisted synthesis, not a close translation of a single identifiable passage. The fourfold-sense argument and the PaRDeS comparison appear in the Scrutinium but scattered across multiple chapters of Part II. The version below is an accurate paraphrase of Paul’s position, but should not be taken as a rendering of continuous Latin text. — Translator’s note.]
PAULUS: You accuse us of abandoning the literal sense in our reading of prophecy. But consider: do you believe God delights in the blood of bulls and goats? Isaiah says: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I delight not in the blood of bullocks” (Isa. 1:11). If the literal sense were sufficient and exhaustive, the sacrificial commandments would contradict God’s own stated indifference to sacrifice. The literal sense is real — the sacrifices were historically performed — but it points beyond itself to a further intention.
Our teachers distinguish four senses of Scripture: literal (littera), allegorical (allegoria), moral (tropologia), and anagogical (anagoge). Your tradition acknowledges something analogous in PaRDeS — Peshat (plain meaning), Remez (allegorical hint), Derash (homiletical application), and Sod (mystical secret). You do not, in practice, confine yourselves to the peshat: your Talmud is full of midrash that goes well beyond any plain reading of the text.
I do not abandon the literal sense. But I say it often points beyond itself, and that the spiritual reading is not a violation of the literal but its fulfillment.
SAULUS: If we allow the mystical sense to override the literal, we can make Scripture say anything we wish.
PAULUS: The constraint is this: the spiritual reading must be consistent with the letter, must be attested by prior tradition, and — in argument against those who do not accept our spiritual reading — must ultimately be grounded in the literal testimony of texts you already accept. This is precisely why I argue from your own sources: Bereshit Rabbah, Rashi, Nahmanides, the Sanhedrin tractate. Not because these are my primary authorities, but because the rule of good disputation requires that I meet you on ground you hold. And even on that ground, the testimony converges.
Conclusion: The Call to Recognition
[AI-assisted; accurately represents Paul’s rhetorical conclusion but is a synthesis rather than a close translation. — Translator’s note.]
PAULUS: Saul, I have shown you — from Jacob’s blessing, from Isaiah’s servant songs, from Daniel’s weeks, from Hosea’s prophecy of long exile, from Zechariah’s two advents, from the Talmudic concessions of Rabbis Yohanan and Hillel and from the uncomfortable silences of Rashi and Ibn Ezra — that the structure of prophecy points to a Messiah who has already come, been rejected and “cut off,” and will come again.
The counterpart to all these arguments from the past is the present reality in which you dwell: fourteen centuries of exile, without Temple, without sacrifice, without Davidic king. Zechariah foretold: “And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son” (Zech. 12:10). That mourning is not unto death but unto life — it is the recognition that leads to restoration.
I was once zealous for the traditions as you are, learned in the law, confident in my righteousness. I know what it costs to re-examine what one has always known. But the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob — whose covenant, whose promises, whose prophets I still affirm — is the same God who, I am persuaded, fulfilled those promises in Christ. I urge you by that covenant: scrutinize the Scriptures as Christ commanded. Search them not with conclusions already fixed, but asking God to remove whatever veil stands between the text and its meaning. For the same God who opened the eyes of the blind can open the eyes of the understanding.
Appendix: Notes on the Manuscripts and Editions
The 1470 Incunabulum
The editio princeps of the Scrutinium Scripturarum was printed around 1470, making it among the earliest books printed in Spain. The typeface is Castilian Gothic, heavily abbreviated in the manner of manuscript conventions: xpm for Christum, irliticus for Israeliticus, fm for secundum, with systematic use of suspension marks, ligatures (ꝛ, ꝰ), and the crossed-loop ꝑ for per-. The OCR of the digitized copy renders these as gibberish. Extended passages are therefore unusable without specialist paleographic access to the digitization.
The 1591 Burgos Edition
This edition was prepared by Cristóbal de Sanctotis (Cristóbal de Santotis), who added a substantial prefatory apparatus including a treatise De vera haereticorum origine — “On the True Origin of Heretics” — arguing that all Protestant heresies derive ultimately from Judaism. This is Counter-Reformation polemic of a particularly acrid kind and represents an ideological overlay on Paul’s text that postdates him by 150 years. Sanctotis’s editorial additions can usually be identified by their sustained polemical tone against Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin — figures Paul of Burgos never knew.
The main text of the 1591 edition is printed in two columns, and the OCR of the digitized copy interleaved both columns line by line, so that each sentence of continuous prose is split between non-consecutive line numbers. Reconstruction requires reading line 1, line 3, line 5… for one column, and line 2, line 4, line 6… for the other. This was the primary source for the translations above.
No Modern Critical Edition
No critical edition of the Scrutinium Scripturarum exists in any language as of 2025. The major secondary scholarship on Paul of Burgos includes: Luciano Serrano, Los conversos D. Pablo de Santa María y D. Alfonso de Cartagena (1942); Francisco Cantera Burgos, Alvar García de Santa María (1952); Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews (1982); Eleazar Gutwirth, various articles on Burgos converso culture (1990s–2000s); Ryan Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative (2013); Görge Hasselhoff, Dicit Rabbi Moyses (2004). None of these provides a full translation of the Scrutinium into English or any modern language.
Translation prepared February 2026. Primary translations from the 1591 Burgos edition (Cristóbal de Sanctotis, ed.) with cross-reference to the 1470 incunabulum. AI-assisted sections verified against the Latin originals.
Source. Internet Archive – Translated by Claude.AI. Paul of Burgos, Scrutinium Scripturarum.