TO everyone but themselves, it would seem, the Portuguese Jews of seventeenthcentury Amsterdam were living a contradiction—or alternatively, representing trends of which they were naturally unaware, and which they might not have favoured. These two perspectives, no doubt, underlie the ‘strangeness’ experienced by historians of an earlier generation in approaching the Portuguese Jews of the early modern era.

The most blatant contradiction—reiterated more frequently than any other— was summarized most famously in Gebhardt's pithy phrase: ‘The Marrano is a Catholic without faith and a Jew without knowledge, but a Jew by will.’ Some took the view that the loss of Catholic faith served to undermine subsequently any and all forms of faith, including the one to which the Marranos aspired, and that the lack of Jewish knowledge may conveniently hold the key to all manner of erratic or curious behaviour. And yet actual evidence for the difficulties Amsterdam's Portuguese Jews—or even the previous generation of Marranos—felt in living with a so-called split conscience is difficult to come by. Either they were unaware that a particular opinion on any issue was more attuned to Catholic traditions than Jewish ones, or they thought the splitting of opinions into separate traditions unnatural or meaningless. Even in the criticism of Daniel Levi de Barrios’ latitudinarianism the emphasis was entirely on flagrant misappropriations of Catholic imagery or attributions. The critics were more concerned about public impropriety than about any alleged exhibition of ‘false consciousness’. The divided national loyalties of the Portuguese Jews are another ‘hidden yet apparent’ contradiction occasionally brought into play to illuminate actions that seem foreign to our modern view.