Rabbinic commentaries to the "New Testament".

I recently posted on R. Yakov Emden's attitude to early Christianity.  I just came across a relevant discussion, here

"...There was actually another Soloveitchik who also had a great interest in things Christian. I refer to R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik. Here is a picture of him.

He was the grandson of R. Hayyim of Volozhin and the uncle of R. Joseph Baer Soloveitchik, the Beit Halevi. He is also the subject of a comprehensive monograph by Dov Hyman, who was a medical doctor trained in London and who lived in Manhattan. For some reason this book was kept fairly secret, with only fifty copies published and never sold in stores. Here is the title page of the book.

Among Soloveitchik's works is a volume entitled Kol Kore (Paris, 1875). Friedberg, Beit Eked Seforim, describes this book as "in opposition to the New Testament." Yet Friedberg never looked carefully at the volume, for if he did he would have seen that rather than being in opposition to the New Testament, it is in favor of it. Yet it is not a missionary tract. Rather, Soloveitchik followed the approach of R. Jacob Emden (whom he cites in his introduction) that the New Testament is only directed towards Gentiles, and supports the Noahide Laws. However, it has nothing to say to Jews, whom it acknowledges are obligated to keep the Torah. In line with this conception, Soloveitchik felt comfortable in authoring a commentary on the book of Matthew, and that is what the Kol Kore is. Here are the title pages of the first edition as well as the 1985 reprint.

 

This is not the only rabbinic commentary on the book of Matthew. In 1900 R. Samuel Weintraub's commentary on this Gospel was published (Milhemet Shmuel). Yet unlike Soloveitchik's work, Weintraub's commentary is devoted to exposing the Gospel's faults.²⁹ Here are the two title pages of the book.

The book is an interesting polemic, which unlike most polemics is written in the form of a commentary.... "

Comments

[Toby J.]

Do you know where one could find a copy of Kol Koreh either online or in hard copy?

[Yehoshua]

here's a link where you can get the book. If the link is old just do a search for a seller on Ebay called JUDAICAMAN and he can get it for you.

[not fake]

That's the kind of image that i really thing is super image like. If more images very real like this were out there we'd be super full of graet images in the world.

[source]

There's certainly a lot to find out about this topic. I love all of the points you made.