Information Harvey Hames

I am interested in all aspects of medieval and modern religious polemics, interaction and dialogue, as well as Jewish, Christian and Muslim mysticism (whatever that last term may mean), apocalypticism and anything else that takes my fancy.
I have published articles and a book about Ramon Llull (ca. 1232-1316) and his interaction with Jews (and Muslims) particularly with Kabbalistic ideas and how he used them to try and convince Jews of the truth of Christianity (see The Art of Conversion). I have also delved into the fascinating, yet crazy, world of the ecstatic Kabbalist, Abraham Abulafia (end of 1239- ca. 1291) and his relations with Franciscans who were interested in the Calabrian abbot, Joachim of Fiore’s teachings (see Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder). I have looked at a text dealing with a supposed ritual murder (in Bristol), engaged with figures like Alfonso de Valladolid / Abner of Burgos (one and the same person), and famous disputations such as Paris 1240 and Barcelona 1263 (I am still very interested in the latter which I think has been misunderstood, to a certain degree, by scholarship) and other such fascinating bits and pieces.
I have completed an edition and translation (into English) of a Hebrew translation of Ramon Llull’s Ars brevis (his most popular work judging by the manuscripts written in 1308) carried out in Senigallia in 1474, and then copied and re-copied within two years. The colophon of the extant copy is very interesting and suggests that a circle of Jewish scholars viewed this work “short in quantity, but great in quality” as a way of achieving unio mystica.
I am working on the first extant complete translation of the four gospels into Hebrew which, it turns out, was not from Latin as might have been expected, but from Catalan. This fascinating translation is probably from the end of the fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The volume will appear in the Corpus Biblicum Catalanicum, and will contain the Hebrew text, a modern Catalan translation along with detailed notes, a glossary and introduction.
I have written a non-academic book for the educated public in Israel (in Hebrew) entitled, I (do not) Believe: Judaism and Israel – past, present, future, which has just appeared (October 2011) and can be bought as an electronic book as well (http://mendele.co.il).
Currently, I am working on the issue of religious polemics from Paris 1240 to the Disputation of Tortosa re-examining the motives and context of this Christian-Jewish interaction, and am writing a book about God, Monotheism and Religion [a sort of companion book to I (do not) Believe].
I am the Director of The Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters (I-CORE) which has received funding for five years (2013-2018) and is based at Ben-Gurion University

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