Samuel Friedrich Brenz

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Samuel Friedrich Brenz (born in Osterburg, Bavaria, in the latter half of the sixteenth century; date and place of death unknown) was an anti-Jewish writer. He was converted to Christianity in 1610 in Feuchtwangen, and wrote Jüdischer Abgestreifter Schlangenbalg (The Jewish Serpent's Skin Stripped), in which he bitterly attacked his former coreligionists, whom he accused of hating "the most pious and innocent Jew, Jesus Christ," and in which he denounced their religious literature. This book, divided into seven chapters, appeared at Nuremberg in 1614, 1680, and 1715.

Against him Solomon Ẓebi Hirsch of Aufhausen^[1] wrote Der Jüdische Theriak (The Jewish Theriak or Antidote; Hanau, 1615), countering Brenz' accusations. For the use of Christians as well as Jews he had it printed in German and in Hebrew. A new edition of the "Theriak" appeared in Altorf in 1680, and a Latin translation by Johann Wülfer, together with the Schlangenbalg, was published in Nuremberg in 1681.

Wülfer strongly defended the Jews against Brenz, criticising him for plagiarism of Johannes Pfefferkorn, he exposed. A Hebrew translation under the title Ha-Yehudim, by Alexander ben Samuel, is extant in manuscript in the library of the University of Leyden.

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• Allg. Zeit. des Jud. 1846, pp. 340-342;
• Fürst, Bibl. Jud. i. 131, iii. 46, 537;
• Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. cols. 805, 2379, 2734;
• Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. i., Nos. 576, 2131
• J.M.Efron in History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim
• The Legend of the Golem' in Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture by Alberto Pérez Gómez and Stephen Parcell
• Old Yiddish Literature from Its Origins to the Haskalah Period by Israel Zinberg
• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "BRENZ, SAMUEL FRIEDRICH", a publication now in the public domain.