Riccardo Brighenti

This article reassesses Alessandro Farra (1540s-after 1577) through the chapter Filosofia simbolica of his Settenario (1st ed. 1571), establishing his work as a decisive Renaissance philosophical formulation of the Hebrew Primacy Claim (HPC, after Dmitri Levitin) – the general thesis that Pagans were indebted to the Hebrews of the Old Testament in some respect. In his paragraph On the Antiquity of the Hebrews, Farra articulates this claim with unusual precision: the pagan prisci theologi, from Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus to Pythagoras and Plato, possessed a symbolic, theonymic wisdom – which Farra takes as ultimately derived from the Cabala of Moses. More unexpectedly, Farra articulates the HPC, with all its consequences in history and chronology, as part of his own theory of imprese (allegorical badges). Particular weight is given to Farra’s commitment to a cratylian conception of names and to his principal argument for the HPC, which considers a triad of divine names from Iamblichus’ Reply of Abammon. Moreover, I demonstrate that this framework, in the spirit of Eusebius’ Preparation of the Gospel, governs Farra’s reconstruction of chronology. Through close readings of key passages and extensive contextualization, the article reconstructs the structure of his arguments and shows the internal coherence, as well as shortcomings, of his case. Finally, by situating Farra within the longer history of the HPC, this article establishes his contribution as both unusual and programmatic.