"Spiritual Feminism" and Christian Hebraism: Women and the Study of Hebrew in Seventeenth Century Europe (Essay‪)‬

I. INTRODUCTION As Raphael Loewe noted in his authoritative survey, the first step in the study of Christian Hebraism is the identification and evaluation of the approximately 1500 scholars of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries who contributed to the emerging Christian survey and assessment of Jewish languages and texts. "Only then can a conceptualization and analysis of the phenomenon take place." (1) In the quarter century since Loewe wrote this exhortation, a new body of scholarship on Christian Hebraism has emerged. None of these studies has focused on the subject of this paper: the participation of women in Hebraism's larger scholarly project. In the discussion that follows, I will explore this previously undescribed phenomenon and offer an interpretation of its significance.