“You shall surely die”. Elijah Montalto’s Tratado and the Critique of Original Sin

Abstract

This essay focuses on Elijah Montalto’s critique of original sin, as articulated in his anti-Christian work Tratado sobre o capitulo 53 de Isaias. The aim of this paper is to investigate the argumentative strategy employed by Montalto against the Christian doctrine of Adam’s Fall, which will be referred to as the “philological argument”. The analysis begins with an examination of the translation of Gen 2:17 (“but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”) in Jerome’s Vulgate and its reception by Augustine. Following this, the focus shifts to Montalto’s exegesis of the same verse and his use of the Ferrara Bible to contest the Christian interpretation of the Gan Eden narrative. Finally, the discussion will address Montalto’s employment of the medical concept of radical moisture to explore Adam’s prelapsarian condition. By analyzing Montalto’s arguments, this essay seeks to demonstrate that the notion of mors duplex – encompassing both physical and spiritual death –, which Christians associate with Gen 2:17, is not explicitly articulated within the verse itself.