Of the Term of Life (Tzeror ha-Hayyim), Menasseh Ben Israel, London: J. Nutt, 1699

Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657), was born in Portugal to a Marrano family, and escaped in 1614 to Amsterdam where he became a renowned scholar, printer and diplomat.  In addition to his own prolific scholarly works, he founded the earliest Jewish printing press in Amsterdam (1626), where he published works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English. His broad theological expertise allowed him to present Judaism in a sympathetic manner acceptable to the Christian world. His writings proved especially influential in England, where Jews had been forbidden to settle since their expulsion in the late 13th century. 

The present volume is the first English edition of the book initially published by Menasseh in Amsterdam, in1639 with the Latin title, De Termino Vitæ. One of a series of works written by Menasseh addressing important theological questions (the other two being De Creatione and De Resurrectione Mortuorum, both printed in Amsterdam in 1635). This first English edition, translated by Thomas Pococke, like the original, emphasizes the universality of salvation and on the freedom of man.  In it, Menasseh explains the Jewish viewpoint on the span of human life (book I, p.1), the possibility of extending life (book II, p. 23), and the thorny question of free will versus predestination (book III, p. 58.) In addition, the volume contains a bibliography of Menasseh’s writings, as well as a biographical sketch, in which details, unmentioned in any of his other works, are disclosed.  These include his father's imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, and the family's successful quest for safe haven in the Netherlands. References are also made to his teacher Rabbi Isaac Uziel, his marriage to Rachel Abravanel, his two sons Samuel and Joseph, his daughter Gracia, and his brother Ephraim.

As demonstrated by Hausherr, Menasseh assisted Rembrandt with the interpretation of a dramatic scene from the Book of Daniel (5:1-30) portrayed most famously in Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast of about 1635, hanging in the National Gallery, London. In this monumental painting, the prophecy of Belshazzar's demise, inscribed by a mysterious hand, the warning 'Mene, Mene Tekel u-Farsin,' reads vertically rather than horizontally. The same formulation is given by Menasseh in the present work (p. 81.)