Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (ספר ניצחון) "The (old) Book of Victory" is an anonymous 13th-century Jewish apologetic text that originated in Germany. The word "old" (Hebrew ''yashan'', Latin ''vetus'') has become attached to the title to distinguish the work from the ''Sefer Nizzahon'' of Yom-Tov Lipmann-Muhlhausen of

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, written in the 15th century. A modern edition was published by Mordechai Breuer in 1978, and a critical edition by David Berger in 2008. The work was known and responded to by Protestant

Hebraists A Hebraist is a specialist in Jewish, Hebrew and Hebraic studies. Specifically, British and German scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries who were involved in the study of Hebrew language and literature were commonly known by this designation, a ...

and polemicists including

Johann Reuchlin Johann Reuchlin (; sometimes called Johannes; 29 January 1455 – 30 June 1522) was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, whose work also took him to modern-day Austria, Switzerland, and Italy and France. Most of Reuchlin' ...

Sebastian Münster Sebastian Münster (20 January 1488 – 26 May 1552) was a German cartographer and cosmographer. He also was a Christian Hebraist scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Basel. His well-known work, the highly accurate world map, '' ...

Wolfgang Capito Wolfgang Fabricius Capito (also Koepfel) ( – November 1541) was a German Protestant reformer in the Calvinist tradition. His life and revolutionary work Capito was born circa 1478 to a smith at Hagenau in Alsace. He attended the famous Lat ...

Immanuel Tremellius Immanuel Tremellius ( it, Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio; 1510 – 9 October 1580) was an Italian Jewish convert to Christianity. He was known as a leading Hebraist and Bible translator. Life He was born at Ferrara and educated at the University o ...

John Calvin John Calvin (; frm, Jehan Cauvin; french: link=no, Jean Calvin ; 10 July 150927 May 1564) was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system ...

, and

Martin Luther Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...

. Hanne Trautner-Kromann ''Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics Against Christianity and the'' 1993 p103 "The Sefer Nizzahon Vetus begins with a quite brief introduction where God's help is invoked. After this, the text follows the order of the ... Presumably the Nizzahon Vetus was much used because of its manageable and systematic form."

References

Jewish apologetics Jewish–Christian debate Works published anonymously 13th-century literature 13th-century Judaism {{Judaism-book-stub

See also

References