the questions of zapata
(Translated by Dr. Tamponet, of the Sorbonne)
The licentiate Zapata, being appointed Professor of Theology at the University of Salamanca, presented these questions to a committee of doctors in 1629. They were suppressed. The Spanish copy is in the Brunswick Library.
Wise Masters:
1°. How ought I to proceed with the object of showing that the Jews, whom we burn by the hundred, were for four thousand years God's chosen people?
2°. How could God, whom one cannot without blasphemy regard as unjust, forsake the whole earth for the little Jewish tribe, and then abandon this little group for another, which, during two hundred years, was even smaller and more despised?
3°. Why did he perform a number of incomprehensible miracles in favour of this miserable nation before the period which is called historical? Why did he, some centuries ago, cease to perform them? And why do we, who are God's people, never witness any?
4°. If God is the God of Abraham, why do you burn the children of Abraham? And, when you burn
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