Alfonso de Zamora

Alfonso de Zamora (1474 - ) was a Spanish rabbi, Hebrew scholar, and major contributor to the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. Like many Spanish Jews during the persecutions of the 15th century, Alfonso converted to Catholicism, although he may have remained a secret Jew.

Biography

Born in Zamora, Spain in 1474, Alfonso was the son of a rabbi named Juan de Zamora. He attended the Campanton yeshiva, and left Spain for Portugal in 1492, before returning in about 1497.  Sources disagree on the exact date of his baptism, with some suggesting 1492 or 1506. Historian Ahuva Ho argues that Alfonso likely continued to secretly practice Judaism for the rest of his life.

Alfonso was a professor of the Hebrew language at the University of Salamanca until 1512, when he moved to the University of Alcalá. Both Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros and Alfonso de Fonseca were patrons of his work.

In 1544, Alfonso wrote or translated letters to Pope Paul III and Cardinal Pierpaolo Parisio, appealing for protection against Grand Inquisitor Juan Pardo de Tavera's persecution of the university's Hebrew teachers. In these letters, Alfonso describes himself as the last to remain among those exiled by the Alhambra Decree, and says that he has had no happiness in his seventy years of life.

Works

Major works

Alfonso was a major contributor to the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, a project spearheaded by Cisneros. Alongside Alfonso de Alcalá and Pablo de Coronel, he revised the Hebrew text; he also translated the Targum Onkelos into Latin for the project, as well as preparing the dictionaries and study aids which form the sixth volume of the set. 

In 1526, Alfonso published , a second edition of a Hebrew grammar which he had originally contributed to the Polyglot Bible. Produced with editing help from Pedro Ciruelo, this work was published in Alcalá de Henares, and included an Epistle to the Hebrews () urging the Jews of Rome and Spain to convert to Christianity. This seven-chapter letter offers arguments for Christianity, Jesus, and the Trinity based on the Old Testament. Adolf Neubauer, a Hebrew scholar, describes the arguments as standard for their day, Ho calls their interpretations of scripture "distorted" and "out of context", and historian Paul Rieger questions whether the Jews of Rome actually received the letter at all.

Other translations and copies

Alfonso produced Latin and Spanish translations and annotated copies of a number of Hebrew works. These include:

 the Targum on Prophets, for Cisneros (1500)
 Solomon ibn Gabirol's "On Poetry" (1516)
 "The Accents according to the Italian and Sephardic rites" (1516)
 the Masoret Seyag La-Torah (1516)
 David Kimhi's dictionary (1516)
 the Targum on the Hagiographa, for Cisneros (1517)
 Joseph Ibn Kaspi's grammar and dictionary (1519)
 Moses Kimhi's  (1519)
 the Masora parva and Megillat Antiochus (1520)
 the Book of Genesis, for Ciruelo (1520)
 David Kimhi's dictionary without niqqud (1526)
 the Book of Genesis (1527)
 David Kimhi's grammar, for Eduardo Leo, English ambassador to Emperor Charles V, at the suggestion of Pablo de Coronel (1527)
 the Books of Isaiah, Daniel, and Lamentations (1530)
 introduction to the Targum on Isaiah (1532)
 David Kimhi's commentary on Isaiah (1534)
 David Kimhi's dictionary (1534)
 the Targum Onkelos and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (1534)
 the Pentateuch (1536)
 the Book of Exodus (1558)
 David Kimhi's  (undated)
 David Kimhi's dictionary (undated)
  (undated)

Many of these works include Hebrew colophons by Alfonso, which occasionally mention details of his life.

Notes

References

1476 births
1544 deaths
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism
Translators of the New Testament into Hebrew
Jewish translators of the Bible
16th-century Spanish theologians
Conversos
Spanish rabbis