"The most significant chronicler of postbiblical Jewish history, Jacques Basnage, inevitably identified to some extent with the Jews who had been scattered all over the world, for as a Huguenot he himself had been driven out of France and had to live in exile in Holland. As a pastor in Rotterdam, Basnage consolidated the French Reformed Church in the Netherlands. He regarded his fifteen-volume History of the Jews, from Jesus Christ to the Present: To Serve as a Continuation of Josephus’s History (1716), as a continuation of the work of the ancient Jewish historian Josephus. He recognized that his work was unparalleled, even among Jewish authors. Basnage remarked that Jewish readers were satisfied “with the Sincerity & the Moderation with which this History has been written,” and emphasized—as did the French Encyclopedists, to whose circle he belonged—his impartiality: “I thought that I ought to be neither partial nor extravagant. I allowed the Jews their Reasons and their Apologies. I reported Events in the circumstances which appeared true and certain to me. I censured Injustice, Violence & Persecution. I followed the most exact Historians without heat of Faction, without having regard to the Preference of Persons.” Thus, he angered some Catholic readers with his open critique of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, or his rejection of the pope’s anti-Jewish policy. On the other hand, he proposed his Dutch exile as an example of religious tolerance for the Jews who had fled the Iberian Peninsula. Nonetheless, throughout Basnage’s whole work is found the unconcealed missionary conviction that the Jews must ultimately end up in the lap of the church. “If I offended some article of Religion, all Roman Catholics are interested in defending it with me, since I only worked to prove the Truth of Christianity against the Jews."
More evidence that the origins of “objectivity” and “rationality” and “pure thought” are based in Christian proselytization? And that “universalism” or “humanism” are Christian culture in disguise?
Michael Brenner, Prophets of the Past: Interpretations of Jewish History, 18-19.
