ALBO, JOSEF. - Spanish Jewish apologist and theologian. He lived successively in Daroca (province of Saragossa) and in Soria (Castile); d. in 1444. He took part in the disputation promoted by the antipope Benedict XIII at Tortosa and San Mateo, where (in 1414) he defended the Talmûd against the attacks of Geronimo da Santa Fé (before his conversion: Josué Lorki).
His work, completed in 1425, Séfer ha-'iqqārīm ("Book of principles and dogmas"; ed. Husik), is apologetic in character. The book sets out the "principles or foundations", the "roots" and the "branches". The first two contain the fundamental truths and others deduced from them (revealed doctrine) which constitute the basis of every divine religion: the unity of God, his incorporeality, his independence from time and his supreme perfection; from which derive God's omniscience, the truth of prophetism, the legitimization of God's messenger. "Branches", that is, general theses whose denial no longer implies the sin of heresy, are: creation from nothing, Moses the supreme prophet, faith in the coming of the Messiah, the conviction that the fulfillment of a single precept suffices to ensure participation in the life to come. The whole is inspired by the principle that in the different religions the legislative provisions may vary, but not the dogmas. Therefore the dogmas proper to Christianity (for example, the Trinitarian concept of God) cannot represent an absolute religious truth. In this polemic of his the A. is inspired, even in his terminology, by Al-Gazali. His anti-Christian tendency was pointed out by Gilberto Genebrardo (1566) and by G. Bern. De Rossi, Dizionario storico, Parma 1802, pp. 43-44, and Bibliotheca Iudaica anticristiana, Parma 1800, p. 14 ff. Jewish authors, beginning with I. Abrabanel, noted his, albeit apparent, indifferentism regarding the messianic question.
Bibliography4 works
Eugenio Zolli