Wissenschaft des Judentums Beyond Tradition: Jewish scholarship on the Sacred Texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam 9783110592672, 9783110590388

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Wissenschaft des Judentums Beyond Tradition

Wissenschaft des Judentums Beyond Tradition Jewish Scholarship on the Sacred Texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Edited by Dorothea M. Salzer, Chanan Gafni and Hanan Harif

ISBN 978-3-11-059038-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-059267-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-059051-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964620 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover Image: Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main/Digitale Sammlungen Judaica, http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/periodical/titleinfo/2969093 Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Acknowledgements | VII

Introduction  Stefan Schorch  Philology of the Jewish Spirit: Wissenschaft des Judentums and Jewish Scholarship on the Sacred Texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam | 3

Part 1: Hebrew Bible  Dorothea M. Salzer  Re-writing the Hebrew Bible for Jewish Children? Isaak Markus Jost’s “Neue Jugend-Bibel” in Context | 25 Michah Gottlieb  Orthodoxy and the Orient: Samson Raphael Hirsch on the Location of Judaism | 53

Part 2: Apocrypha and New Testament  Chanan Gafni  “They are ours!” Reclaiming the Apocrypha as Jewish Texts | 75 Stefan Schorch  Isaac Mayer Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity” (1868) in the Context of 19th Century Research on the New Testament | 99

Part 3: The Qurʾān  Katalin Franciska Rac  The Qurʾān and Arabic Literary History in Ignaz Goldziher’s Scholarship | 129 Hanan Harif  Between Sacred and Profane: Three Modern Hebrew Translators of the Qurʾān | 149

VI | Table of Contents

Part 4: The Talmud  Ismar Schorsch  Missing in Translation: The Fate of the Talmud in the Struggle for Equality and Integration in Germany | 167 List of Contributors | 185 Index of Persons | 187

Acknowledgements The present volume is based on papers presented at the workshop titled “Sacred texts? Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qurʾān in Jewish research of the Nineteenth Century and beyond” held at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Philadelphia, on December 10, 2014. This workshop was the concluding event for the fall semester of an academic year (2014/15) dedicated to research on “New Perspectives on the Origins, Context, and Diffusion of the Academic Study of Judaism” and was organized by several of the fellows together with staff members. We wish to extend our gratitude to the wonderful staff of the Herbert D. Katz Center for all the assistance we received in organizing this day of study, especially to Natalie B. Dohrmann, Associate Director, who was part of the organizing committee, contributed her own insights and helped us to develop our ideas and to understand the requirements for organizing a workshop in an academic setting that was very new for most of us, to Carry Michelle Love, Fellowship Coordinator and Assistant to the Director, who was the woman behind the scenes before and during the day of the workshop, and to Steven Weitzman, Director of the center, whose own studies in the field of Hebrew Bible were a source of inspiration for many of us, and whose deep confidence in our work always encouraged us to put our academic visions into practice. During the course of preparing this volume, we once again received generous and skilled assistance from various individuals: Matthew Chalmers (University of Pennsylvania) helped with the English language editing, Christoph Tödter (Universität Leipzig) provided the typesetting of the book, and Alice Meroz, Florian Ruppenstein and Sophie Wagenhofer at the publishing house De Gruyter in Berlin unfailingly and diligently oversaw the technical aspects of publishing this volume.

Berlin and Jerusalem, 1st October 2018

Dorothea M. Salzer (Berlin/Potsdam) Chanan Gafni (Jerusalem) Hanan Harif (Jerusalem)

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| Introduction

Stefan Schorch

Philology of the Jewish Spirit Wissenschaft des Judentums and Jewish Scholarship on the Sacred Texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Among the many attempts to provide a definition of Wissenschaft des Judentums,1 Abraham Geiger’s following description still stands as of special interest:2 Die Wissenschaft des Judenthums ist die Betrachtung der eigenthümlichen Richtung des Geisteslebens, welche in einem besondern Kreise thätig war, der eben das Judenthum begründete, entwickelte, und weithin verkündete, und es bis zur Stunde lebenskräftig erhält. (“Wissenschaft des Judentums is the examination of the characteristic way of intellectual life operative in the particular circle that founded, developed and promulgated Judaism, and provides it with vital energy to this hour.”)

The lasting importance of this statement is not only that it seems to reflect theorization by one of the most important and influential protagonists within Wissenschaft des Judentums, but that it also expresses the goal of the author’s educational activity as a professor at one of its foremost institutions. After all, the above quote begins the first of the introductory lectures which Abraham Geiger (1810– 1874) delivered at the “Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums” in Berlin in the years 1872–1874. Moreover, according to Ismar Elbogen (1874–1943) in his “Ein Jahrhundert Wissenschaft des Judentums” (1922), these lectures contain “the only detailed treatment of the subject at our disposal.”3 It is obvious that

|| 1 See e.g. SCHULTE, Christoph: Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums: Die ursprüngliche Konzeption der Wissenschaft des Judentums und ihre Aktualität nach 175 Jahren. Aschkenas 7 (1997), 277–302; SCHORSCH, Ismar: Das erste Jahrhundert der Wissenschaft des Judentums (1818– 1919). In: Michael Brenner/Stefan Rohrbacher (eds.), Wissenschaft vom Judentum: Annäherung nach dem Holocaust. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000, 11–24; MEYER, Michael A.: Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums. In: Andreas Gotzmann/Christian Wiese (eds.), Modern Judaism and historical consciousness: Identities, encounters, perspectives. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007, 73–89; STALLMANN, Imke: Abraham Geigers Wissenschaftsverständnis: Eine Studie zur jüdischen Rezeption von Friedrich Schleiermachers Theologiebegriff. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2013 (Beiträge zur rationalen Theologie; 20), 304–315. 2 GEIGER, Abraham: Allgemeine Einleitung in die Wissenschaft des Judentums. In: Abraham Geigers Nachgelassene Schriften, vol. II/Ludwig Geiger (ed.). Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875, 7. 3 ELBOGEN, Ismar: Ein Jahrhundert Wissenschaft des Judentums. Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1922, 40.

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4 | Stefan Schorch

Geiger’s concept of Wissenschaft des Judentums had a lasting influence and shaped the field. After all, the force of this impact is still apparent in Elbogen’s own comprehensive retrospect, written on the occasion of the centenary of the “Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums,” edited by Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) and first published in 1823, even if Elbogen criticizes Geiger’s definition for being “certainly too narrow.” The reason Elbogen provides for his verdict is the exclusive focus on Jewish religious culture he finds in Geiger’s statement,4 instead of which he claims that Wissenschaft des Judentums ought to encompass a much broader range of positions, refering to Zunz’s “Etwas zur rabbinischen Literatur” (1818) as well as the article “Ueber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums” by Immanuel Wolf (1799–1847), which opens the first issue of the “Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums:”5 Wenn von einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums die Rede ist, so versteht es sich von selbst, daß hier das Wort Judenthum in seiner umfassendsten Bedeutung genommen wird, als Inbegriff der gesamten Verhältnisse, Eigenthümlichkeiten und Leistungen der Juden, in Beziehung auf Religion, Philosophie, Geschichte, Rechtswesen, Litteratur überhaupt, Bürgerleben und alle menschlichen Angelegenheiten; nicht aber in jenem beschränkteren Sinne, in welchem es nur die Religion der Juden bedeutet. (“If we are to talk of a science of Judaism, then it is self-evident that the word ‘Judaism’ is here being taken in its comprehensive sense – as the essence of all the circumstances, characteristics, and achievements of the Jewish people in relation to religion, philosophy, history, law, literature in general, civil live, and all the affairs of man – and not in that more limited sense in which it only means the religion of the Jews.”)

Elbogen’s way of confronting Geiger’s and Wolf’s definitions insinuates that the difference between the two concepts primarily relates to the question of whether Wissenschaft des Judentums should occupy itself with subjects beyond the obvious scope of religion. In this, however, he emphasizes a rather marginal point,

|| 4 “Diese Definition ist sicher zu eng und wird dem vollen Umfang der Wissenschaft des Judentums ebensowenig gerecht wie die Erklärung ihres Ziels als ‘die volle Erkenntnis des religiösen Gedankengehalts, welcher das Judentum erfüllt, ihm als seine eigentümliche Lebenskraft innewohnt.’” (“This definition is certainly too narrow and does not do justice to the full extent of Wissenschaft des Judentums, nor does the declaration of its goal being ‘the full cognition of religious ideas, which are inherent to Judaism as its characteristic vigor.’”) – ELBOGEN, Ein Jahrhundert Wissenschaft des Judentums [see footnote 3], 41. 5 WOLF, Immanuel: Ueber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums. Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 1 (1823), 1–24, here: 1. Translation: MEYER, Michael A. (ed.), Ideas of Jewish History: Edited, with introductions and notes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987 (Reprint. Originally published New York, 1974), 143.

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apparently missing the fundamental difference between the two concepts related to the conceptualization of coherence inherent to Judaism.6 On the one hand, for Wolf, coherence is established and made manifest through historical events and achievements. Consequently, he conceives of Wissenschaft des Judentums as a comprehensive historical enterprise. Similarly Zunz, whose “Etwas zur rabbinischen Literatur” is generally understood as the founding document of Wissenschaft des Judentums, also embraced this broad and secular concept,7 although it seems that at least in his pioneering essay, as Amos Bitzan has convincingly argued, he proposes speculative philosophy as the means to gain a “comprehensive knowledge of the Jewish spirit in its totality.”8 Both Wolf and Zunz, however, do propose a “secular” approach.9 On the other hand, for Geiger as for other central protagonists of Wissenschaft des Judentums from its second generation onwards,10 Judaism is founded upon and created by eternal core ideas. Geiger identifies these as the original revelation reflected in the Biblical account, which is the essential product of the “Age of revelation”11 and the only revelation ever: “Es giebt blos eine Religion der Offen-

|| 6 The distinction between these two ways of conceptualizing Wissenschaft des Judentums has been masterfully carved out and analyzed by MEYER, Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums [see footnote 1], 73–80. 7 See SCHORSCH, Ismar: From text to context: The turn to history in modern Judaism. Hanover, NH.: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 1994 (Tauber Institute series; 19), 276–278. Differences between Wolf’s and Zunz’ concept of Wissenschaft des Judentums are discussed in STALLMANN, Abraham Geigers Wissenschaftsverständnis [see footnote 1], 311–313. 8 BITZAN, Amos: Leopold Zunz and the Meanings of Wissenschaft. Journal of the History of Ideas 78 (2017), 233–254, here: 238. 9 See MEYER, Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums [see footnote 1], 73– 80. 10 As Imke Stallmann has shown, Geiger was the first to apply this concept: “Geigers Selbstverständnis als jüdischer Theologe und seine Konzeptionalisierung der Wissenschaft des Judentums als jüdische Theologie divergieren vom Selbst- und Wissenschaftsverständnis des intellektuellen Judentums. Vorrangig das theologische Gepräge und die Ausbildungsfunktion markieren den Unterschied zu den Wissenschaftsbegriffen der ersten Generation der Wissenschaft des Judentums.” – STALLMANN, Abraham Geigers Wissenschaftsverständnis [see footnote 1], 314. 11 According to Geiger’s periodization of Jewish history, its first stage is the “Periode der Offenbarung” (“Age of revelation”), lasting “bis zum Abschlusse der biblischen Zeit” (“until the end of the Biblical time”) and followed by the “Periode der Tradition” (“Age of tradition,” until the completion of the Babylonian Talmud), the “Periode der starren Gesetzlichkeit” (“Age of rigid legalism,” until the mid 18th century), and the “Periode der Kritik” (“Age of critic”) – GEIGER, Allgemeine Einleitung, 31–32 [see footnote 2], and see MEYER, Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums [see footnote 1], 75.

6 | Stefan Schorch

barung, das Judenthum” (“There is only one religion of revelation – Judaism.”)12 Accordingly, Geiger conceptualizes Wissenschaft des Judentums as a primarily theological enterprise of universal importance, although this theology requires the application of the methods of historical criticism. The extra-historical truth of Judaism can be approached only through its manifestations in historical documents,13 especially the different textual witnesses of the Biblical text. Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, ultimately aiming at the reconstruction and recovery of the original text, was therefore for Geiger an endeavor of fundamental theological weight. Probably his most significant, and certainly his most substantial and voluminous, book “Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel” (1857) witnesses this. Describing the aim of his work, Geiger writes as follows:14 Wir werden die Trümmer, welche die spätere Tradition aus der alten Zeit aufbewahrt, […] aufsuchen, aussondern und […] zusammenfügen müssen, so die Zeugnisse aus der Vorzeit wieder beleben […] (“We will have to search for, separate, and assemble the debris from ancient times that is preserved in the later tradition, in order to reanimate the documents from antiquity.”)

The quote seems to confirm Gösta Lindeskog’s assessment of Geiger and his magnum opus: “As a theologian, he is above all a historian, and through his ‘Urschrift’ he establishes Jewish Bible criticism.”15 According to Geiger, although the Urtext of God’s revelation was distorted in the course of its transmission and was not preserved in a single later witness, its pieces were preserved in different documents and could be reassembled through critical study.

|| 12 GEIGER, Abraham: Review of “Das Leben und die Lehren des Mohammad, nach bisher größtentheils unbenutzten Quellen bearbeitet von A. Sprenger. Erster Band. Berlin 1861.” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 1 (1862), 185–191, here: 186. 13 The centrality of Geiger’s attempt to recover the extra-historical revelation that forms the core principle of Judaism seems to have been overlooked by Imke Stallmann in her otherwise excellent book on Geiger’s concept of Wissenschaft. Her following conclusion in regard to the primary aim of Geiger’s work is therefore misleading: “Betrachtet man Geigers Ausführungen in toto, lässt sich zusammenfassen, dass es primär gilt, mittels wissenschaftlicher Arbeit die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Judentums und die seiner Lehren und Traditionen nachzuzeichnen, um dadurch die Prozessualität zu veranschaulichen.” – STALLMANN, Abraham Geigers Wissenschaftsverständnis [see footnote 1], 95. 14 GEIGER, Abraham: Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der inneren Entwickelung des Judenthums. Breslau: Julius Hainauer, 1857. 15 “Als Theologe ist er vor allem Historiker, und durch diese seine ‘Urschrift’ schafft er die jüdische Bibelkritik.” – LINDESKOG, Gösta: Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Uppsala/Leipzig: Almqvist & Wiksell/Lorentz, 1938 (Arbeiten und Mitteilungen aus dem Neutestamentlichen Seminar zu Uppsala; 8), 42.

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Geiger’s extensive scholarly work venturing beyond the Masoretic text, which had been the almost exclusive point of reference for Jewish readers of the Bible before the emergence of Wissenschaft des Judentums,16 is motivated precisely by this impetus. In his view, the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch are no less significant for the recovery of the original religious legacy of Judaism than the Masoretic text and other traditional sources of Rabbinic Judaism. Often, the former are even more important. Consistent with his perspective on the piecemeal conservation of the original Biblical text in later documents transmitted in non-Jewish contexts, like the Greek translation amongst Christians or the Samaritan Pentateuch in the Samaritan community, Geiger was also convinced that the original spirit of Judaism was not only instrumental for the emergence of Christianity and Islam, but preserved and perpetuated in them:17 Die Thatsache ist unverwischbar, dass das Judenthum […] am Ende des Alterthums das Christenthum aus sich herausgeboren, im Mittelalter den Islam hervorgerufen, und mit dem wesentlichen Inhalte genährt, in der Neuzeit den Anstoss zur Umgestaltung der philosophischen Anschauung gegeben, indem es Spinoza ausgerüstet hat. Wenn diese Weltmächte nicht in ihm geblieben sind, so ist doch sein Geist weiter in ihnen mitthätig gewesen. (“It is an undeniable fact that Judaism gave birth to Christianity at the end of the Ancient Era, induced Islam in the Middle Ages, and initiated the transformation of philosophical inquiry in the Modern Era by accoutering Spinoza. While these global powers did not remain in Judaism, its spirit remained active in them.”)

|| 16 There are a few exceptions, the most prominent of which is Azariah de Rossi, for whom see WEINBERG, Joanna: Azariah de’ Rossi and Septuagint Traditions. Italia: studi e ricerche sulla cultura e sulla letteratura degli ebrei d’Italia 5 (1985), 7–35. However, since Azariah’s knowledge of Greek was meagre, his use of the Septuagint was less concerned with the details of the text, and more with a general assessment of the origins of this text, see ibidem, 11. 17 GEIGER, Allgemeine Einleitung [see footnote 2], 8. A similar account of the relation between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is already found in Geiger’s 1862 review of Aloys Sprenger’s “Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad (see above, footnote 12): “Der Islam ist die jüngste große Religionsform, nicht – eine neue Religion. Es gibt blos eine Religion der Offenbarung, das Judentum. Das Christenthum ist im Mutterschoße dieser Religion getragen, der Islam mehr mittelbar von ihr gesäugt und genährt worden.” (“Islam is the youngest great form of religion, not – a new religion. There is only one religion of revelation, Judaism. Christianity was carried in the womb of this religion, Islam more indirectly suckled and nurtured by it.”) – English translation from: HESCHEL, Susannah: Abraham Geiger and the Emergence of Jewish Philoislamism. In: Dirk Hartwig et al. (eds.), “Im vollen Licht der Geschichte:” Die Wissenschaft des Judentums und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2008 (Ex Oriente Lux; 8), 65– 86, here: 69.

8 | Stefan Schorch

Thus, Geiger conceives the critical study of Christianity and Islam as a pivotal part of Wissenschaft des Judentums not only because these two world views shaped the historical environments in which Jews lived, but also, and more profoundly, insofar as he regarded them as instrumental for the reconstruction, comprehension, and reanimation of Judaism’s original legacy. For Geiger, therefore, and for the majority of Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars, Christianity and Islam became both text and context for scrutiny within Jewish Studies. The seminal importance of Geiger’s contributions towards the study of Christianity and Islam can hardly be overrated, especially within Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he introduced both areas of study.18 His effects, however, also made themselves felt beyond the movement, in terms of relation to the general scholarly discourses. For example, in the context of the long and extensive history of research on the New Testament, “Geiger is actually the first who understood that the correct perception and appreciation of the New Testament inevitable requires a meticulous investigation of the contemporary Judaism,”19 success-

|| 18 Gösta Lindeskog’s book “Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum” (1938) seems still the most valuable account of Jewish research on Jesus and the New Testament, but see also the collected volume edited by Görge K. HASSELHOFF: Die Entdeckung des Christentums in der Wissenschaft des Judentums [Workshop des Internationalen Kollegs für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung (IKGF) “Dynamiken der Religionsgeschichte zwischen Asien und Europa” in Bochum am 10. Dezember 2008]. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010 (Studia Judaica; 54), which contains several studies that are most relevant to the subject, among which Hasselhoff’s own useful introduction “Idee und Leitgedanken des Buches” (3–16) as well as Martin Vahrenhorst’s article “’Nicht Neues zu lehren, ist mein Beruf…:’ Jesus im Licht der Wissenschaft des Judentums” (101–136) should receive special mention. On the influence of Geiger’s study among Jewish scholars of the Qurʾān and Islam see HUGHES, Aaron W.: Orientalism and Geiger’s Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? Reconsidered. In: Hartwig et al. (ed.), Im vollen Licht der Geschichte [see above, footnote 17], 87–98, here: 96–97. More comprehensive analyses of the role scholars associated with Wissenschaft des Judentums played in the scholarly study of the Qurʾān were published by NEUWIRTH, Angelika: “In the Full Light of History:” The Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Beginnings of Critical Qurʾān Research. In: Hartwig et al. (eds.), Im vollen Licht der Geschichte [see above, footnote 17], 11–24, and HARTWIG, Dirk: Die “Wissenschaft des Judentums” und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung: Perspektiven einer modernen Koranhermeneutik. Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 61 (2009), 234–256. A detailed account of the role of Jewish scholars in the study of Islam beyond the Qurʾān, is provided by KRAMER, Martin: Introduction. In: idem (ed.), The Jewish Discovery of Islam. Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis. Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999, 1–48. 19 “Geiger ist eigentlich der erste, der einsah, dass die unumgängliche Voraussetzung einer richtigen Auffassung und Würdigung des Neuen Testaments in einer sorgfältigen Erforschung

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fully demonstrating that the earlier academic reconstructions of Jesus’ Jewish background lacked any rigorous historical basis.20 Moreover, Geiger’s contributions to this field, as well as his approach to the text of the New Testament and early Christianity through the lens of Jewish theology, also had a substantial impact within Wissenschaft des Judentums itself.21 Similarly, Geiger’s role in academic discourse on Islam, both within Wissenschaft des Judentums and in the broader framework of Oriental Studies, also had groundbreaking significance. Geiger was pioneering primarily in his “attempt to identify the Biblical and post-Biblical traditions variously reflected in the Qurʾān.”22 Thus, he became one of the founders of historical-critical Qurʾān scholarship.23 The most important figure in this narrative is Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921), generally credited as the founder of modern Islamic Studies24 while at the same time firmly connected to the project of Wissenschaft des Judentums.25 Goldziher

|| des damaligen Judentums zu suchen ist.” – LINDESKOG, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum [see footnote 15], 102. 20 LINDESKOG, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum [see footnote 15], 103. The historical, theological and ethical background of these publications, almost exclusively written by Protestant theologians from universities in German lands, has been explored by Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 (Chicago studies in the history of Judaism). 21 Exemplary proof for this claim can be found in Moritz Güdemann’s and Lajos (Ludwig) Venetianer’s oeuvre, see HASSELHOFF, Idee und Leitgedanken des Buches. In: Idem (ed.), Die Entdeckung des Christentums in der Wissenschaft des Judentums, 8–13. 22 NEUWIRTH, In the Full Light of History [see footnote 18], 13. 23 SINAI, Nicolai: Orientalism, Authorship, and the Onset of Revelation: Abraham Geiger and Theodor Nöldeke on Muḥammad and the Qurʾān. In: Hartwig et al. (ed.), Im vollen Licht der Geschichte [see above, footnote 17], 145–154; here: 145. Unlike in the case of Geiger’s contributions to the study of the New Testament and early Christianity, the importance of his work was already appreciated by contemporary orientalists beyond Wissenschaft des Judentums, see HESCHEL, Abraham Geiger and the Emergence of Jewish Philoislamism [see footnote 17], 70–72. Geiger’s formative influence on the history of research on Islam and Arabic literature was first described in greater detail by Johann Fück: Die arabischen Studien in Europa: bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz with the conclusion: “Diese Schrift [i.e. Geiger’s Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?] hat für ein Jahrhundert lang die Beurteilung der zwischen Koran und Judentum bestehenden Berührungen entscheidend beeinflußt.” (174–175). 24 See e.g. FÜCK, Die arabischen Studien in Europa [see footnote 23], 226–231. 25 For Goldziher’s contextualization within Wissenschaft des Judentums see FRAISSE, Ottfried: Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft: Zur Historisierung des Islam. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014 (‫ תולדות‬Toldot: Essays zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur; 12), 34.

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not only “acknowledges Geiger’s profound influence on his method of studying Jewish and Islamic religious sources”26 in his personal diaries, but became also “Geiger’s closest follower and the most influential propagator of his ideas in Hungary.”27 Friedrich Niewöhner correctly emphasized Geiger’s unpolemical attitude as a novelty within European studies of Muhammad and the origins of Islam, interconnected with an aspiration towards historicization and objectivization. Niewöhner’s claim that “Islam became a ‘neutralized’ subject matter; theological critique was supplanted by historical description,”28 however, is overstated insofar as it disregards the eminently theological nature of Geiger’s approach. For Geiger, as for the majority29 of scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums, occupation with the study of Christianity and Islam was part of their pursuit of Jewish theology. This peculiar perspective also explains why the study of the New Testament and the Qurʾān played a particular important role in Wissenschaft des Judentums. On the one hand, these founding documents of Christianity and Islam were regarded as the historical interfaces between Judaism and its two subsidiary religions. On the other hand, from a theological point of view, they were most valuable, and possibly even dignified, primarily in terms of how far they preserved the original religious legacy of Judaism. The extent to which scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums studied scriptures traditionally regarded as sacred in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the significance of this phenomenon as a whole, is remarkable. It is all the more so

|| 26 TURÁN, Tamás: Academic Religion: Goldziher as a Scholar and a Jew. In: Tamás Turán/Carsten Wilke (eds.), Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary: The ‘Science of Judaism’ between East and West. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter (Europäisch-jüdische Studien – Beiträge; 14), 223–270; here: 231. 27 Ibidem, 256. 28 “Statt Muhammad als Betrüger und Scharlatan zu diffamieren, versucht Geiger, ihn zu historisieren, in aus seiner Zeit und seiner Lebenswelt heraus zu verstehen und den Lesern seines Buches verständlich werden zu lassen. [Diese Sichtweise] hatte zur Folge, daß der Islam quasi ‘neutralisiert’ betrachtet werden konnte; an die Stelle der theologischen Kritik trat die historische Beschreibung.” – NIEWÖHNER, Friedrich: Von Muhammad zu Jesus. Abraham Geiger’s Schrift über den Koran. In: Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? Mit einem Vorwort herausgegeben von Friedrich Niewöhner. Berlin: Parerga, 2005 (Jüdische Geistesgeschichte; 5), 7–33, here: 9 (English translation by Paul Bowman from: NEUWIRTH, In the Full Light of History [see footnote 18], 14). 29 Following Michael A. Meyer, according to whom the opposition of Zunz, Jost, and Steinschneider to “Wissenschaft des Judentums as a theological enterprise” “represented a minority view” – MEYER, Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums [see footnote 1], 75– 77.

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since it manifested itself in a historical setting characterized as moving “from text to context,” in part of a “turn to history.”30 To be sure, none of these “sacred” texts was regarded as “sacrosanct” in this intellectual environment. Rather, they were treated as literary sources from the perspective of historical criticism. Nevertheless, as historical documents referring to what Jewish theologians following in Geiger’s footsteps regarded as the only true and authoritative revelation, and due to the relation of these documents to that revelation even if only through a generally misguided tradition, they were still the most important access route to the original sacred legacy of Jewish religion. The present volume collects some aspects of Wissenschaft des Judentums, which as a phenomenon seems to have received little attention in current scholarship, and brings them into conversation. The articles originated in lectures presented during a workshop entitled “Sacred Texts? Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qurʾān in Jewish Research of the 19th Century and Beyond,” held at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, December 10, 2014, and organized by fellows and staff of the center. In the engagement of Wissenschaft des Judentums with sacred scriptures, and for Wissenschaft des Judentums as a whole, the scholarly study of the Hebrew Bible was central,31 even if the importance of these contributions was not always understood and appreciated by contemporary critics of Wissenschaft des Judentums. For example, as Ahad Ha-ʿam (= Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, 1856–1927) wrote:32 ‫ אשר‬,‫ המקורית‬,‫ התקופה הקדמונית‬. ‫חכמת ישׂ ראל ]…[ לא דאגה אף היא הרבה לתעודתה ב פ ו ע ל‬ ‫בה נוצר והתפתח רוח עמנו ב ד ר ך מ י ו ח ד ת ל ו ובה איפוא שמור המפתח האמתי לפתרון כל‬ ‫ העמלים בדרישתה בכל‬,‫ התקופה הזאת מלאכתה נעשׂית בעיקרה על ידי אחרים‬,"‫"השאלות והתמיהות‬ ‫כוחם ומשתדלים לבנותה בנין שלם על פי ד ר כ ם ה ם ) הספרים היותר מצוינים שנכתבו בדורותינו‬ ‫ לא בידי ישראל‬,‫ וביחוד על כתבי הקודש וכל צפונותיהם‬,‫על תולדות ישראל והתפתחות רוחו בימי קדם‬ […] ֹ‫ בחורבות הגֶ טו‬,‫ שקועה בראשה ורובה במחשכי הגלות‬,‫ ו ה י א "חכמת ישראל" שלנו‬,(!‫נכתבו‬ (“Wissenschaft des Judentum […] did not care much for its assignment in practice. The ancient period, the original one, in which the spirit of our people was created and developed in its own special way, and in which therefore the true key is preserved for all “questions and problems”, the task of that period was taken up by others, who with all their energies

|| 30 SCHORSCH, From text to context [see footnote 7]. 31 This is true from the very beginning of Wissenschaft des Judentums, as demonstrated by Dorothea Salzer in her contribution to this volume in regard to Isaac Marcus Jost’s Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage (1820–1828), see SALZER, Re-writing the Hebrew Bible for Jewish Children, 26–51 (in this volume). 32 1921 ,‫ הוצאת יודישער פערלאג‬:‫ ברלין‬.‫ חלק ראשון‬.‫ קובץ מאמרים‬.‫ על פרשת דרכים‬:‫אחד העם‬, VI.

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labor in order to meet its requirements and make every effort to construct it as a whole building, but they do it in accordance with their own way. [The more remarkable books that were written in our times about Israel’s history and the development of its spirit in ancient times, especially on the Holy scriptures and all its treasures – they were not written by Jews!], and this is our ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums,’ immersed almost entirely up to their heads in the deep darkness of the exile, the ruins of the Ghetto […]”)

Ahad Ha-ʿam’s harsh verdict was reiterated in more recent scholarship on Wissenschaft des Judentums,33 but Ismar Schorsch has pointed out that “Ahad Haam’s denunciation of German Jewish Wissenschaft for skirting the study of the Bible […] was […] only partially correct.”34 This judgement should be reinforced and amplified, both with respect to the role of Bible Studies within Wissenschaft des Judentums from an inner-Jewish point of view as well as with respect to the seminal importance and lasting impact of several publications by Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars in the history of research on the Hebrew Bible. In this regard, at least the following two authors must be mentioned for their groundbreaking importance. Abraham Geiger’s “Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der inneren Entwickelung des Judenthums” (1857) was the first attempt at a cultural history of the Biblical text, a truly pioneering method that became central in the field only after the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls profoundly changed the general perception of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible. This later method often mirrored Geiger’s suggestions, even if “the Qumran and other finds have also exposed the great complexity of the issues involved, far beyond

|| 33 E.g., Nahum Glatzer writes: “There was one field in particular which suffered gross neglect: Biblical, and more specifically, Pentateuchal studies.” – GLATZER, Nahum N.: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Studies. In: Alexander Altmann (ed.), Studies in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Intellectual History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964 (Philip W. Lown Institute of Advanced Judaic Studies, Brandeis University. Studies and Texts; 2), here: 32; similar GORDIS, Robert: Jewish Learning and Jewish Existence – Retrospect and Prospect. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1963 (The Leo Baeck Memorial Lectures; 6), 20. Andreas Brämer’s statement with regard to Zacharias Frankel: “Daß die moderne Bibelkritik im 19. Jahrhundert weitgehend Domäne protestantischer Theologien geblieben ist, läßt sich auch mit Blick auf Frankels Forschungen bestätigen.” (B RÄMER, Andreas: Rabbiner Zacharias Frankel: Wissenschaft des Judentums und konservative Reform im 19. Jahrhundert. Hildesheim/New York: Olms, 2000 [Netiva; 3], 264) seems to focus on the active engagement with a particular stream of Biblical scholarship, namely source criticism of the Pentateuch, as a litmus test of critical Biblical scholarship, but this monopolization of one methodological approach is certainly misleading, even if the latter was without doubt quite important at the time. 34 SCHORSCH, Ismar: Leopold Zunz on the Hebrew Bible. JQR 102 (2012), 431–454.

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what Geiger could possibly have imagined.”35 It is probably at least partly due to a greater awareness of the problems involved that Geiger’s magnum opus has remained the only “major synthesis of the data regarding exegetical aspects of the transmission of biblical law in the Second Temple period,” and no further “attempt to assess these comprehensive data with regard to their socio-religious background” has been made.36 Nevertheless, besides being the first to aim at a synthesis, Geiger was the first to identify the shape of this task at all, established ever since as one of the central topics in Biblical studies. Of similar importance, although in an area of Biblical scholarship that until recently received much less attention than the study of the Hebrew text itself, are Zacharias Frankel’s studies of the influence of Jewish exegesis on the Septuagint.37 Frankel (1801–1875) was the first to aim at a reconstruction of the philosophical, theological and hermeneutical world of the translators of this central text of Greek-speaking Jewry. He is thus justly recognized today as one of the founders of this area of studies,38 which has recently become a focus of Biblical scholarship. Further important examples in emerging fields of Biblical Studies could be adduced, such as the seminal contributions to the study of the Samaritan Pentateuch by Samuel Kohn (1841–1920), a graduate from the “Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar” in Breslau and Rabbi in Budapest since 1866 (since 1905 Chief Rabbi), Moses Gaster (1856–1939), another Breslau graduate and Hakham of the Sephardic congregation of London from 1887, or Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951), professor at the “Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums” in Berlin 1904–1914.39

|| 35 SARNA, Nahum M.: Abraham Geiger and Biblical Scholarship. In: Idem (ed.), Studies in Biblical interpretation. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society (JPS Scholar of distinction series), 161–172, here: 167. 36 See TEETER, David Andrew: Scribal Laws. Exegetical variation in the textual transmission of biblical law in the late Second Temple period. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014 (FAT; 92), 4: “[S]ince A. Geiger, there has been no major synthesis of the data regarding exegetical aspects of the transmission of biblical law in the Second Temple period, and no attempt to assess these comprehensive data with regard to their socio-religious background.” 37 Particular important in this regard are FRANKEL, Zacharias: Vorstudien zur Septuaginta. Leipzig: Vogel, 1841, and IDEM : Ueber den Einfluss der palästinischen Exegese auf die alexandrinische Hermeneutik. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1851. 38 See RÖSEL, Martin: Towards a “Theology of the Septuagint”. In: Wolfgang Kraus/R. Glenn Wooden (eds.), Septuagint Research: Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006 (SBL.SCS; 53), 239–252, here: 239, and COOK, Johann: A Theology of the Septuagint? Old Testament Essays 30 (2017), 265–282, here: 265. 39 On Yahuda’s contribution to Samaritan studies see SCHORCH, Stefan: Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s Contributions to Samaritan Studies as Wissenschaft des Judentums (forthcoming).

14 | Stefan Schorch

In light of this evidence, to which more could be added, we can conclude that scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums authored some of the most remarkable and important books on biblical scholarship published in the 19th and early 20th century – in blunt contradiction to Ahad Ha-ʿam’s statement quoted above.40 Moreover, while certainly participating in more general academic discourse, most of these scholars regarded their pursuit of biblical scholarship as part of their identity as Jews, facing “inward toward the Jewish community, the Jewish people, and the Jewish religion with the intent of strengthening these,”41 a conclusion most definitely correct in the case of Abraham Geiger, as stated by Nahum Sarna: “Perhaps his [i.e. Geiger’s] greatest achievement in the field was to reclaim biblical studies as the legitimate concern of Jewish scholarship.”42 The inner-Jewish motivations of their Biblical studies led Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars also to extensive literary production aimed at the popularization of the Hebrew Bible. Study of the Bible had been rather marginal for traditional Ashkenazi Jewry, a situation that was changed only after the Berlin Haskalah when a renewed interest in the Hebrew Bible arose. Wissenschaft des Judentums continued the efforts of the Maskilim to introduce the Hebrew Bible into the curricula of Jewish learning.43 New translations of the Hebrew Bible into

|| 40 Ahad Ha-ʿam’s statement seems to have been dictated one the one hand by his own uncritical and ahistorical concept of the role of the Bible in Judaism: “Ahad Ha-Am admits that reflection on the past has little other purpose than to supply aspirations for the future. If this is the basic frame of reference, then facts per se have no value except as they further this goal. If the ‘archeological truths’ of history deny the practicability of these goals, then these ‘truths’ must be declared as useless. Hope, not truth, is the lesson that Ahad Ha-Am wishes to derive from the Jewish past for the beleaguered generation of his time.” – GOTTSCHALK, Alfred: Ahad Ha-Am as Biblical Critic. Hebrew Annual Review 7 (1982), 105–119, here: 118. The polemical confrontation of the achievements of Jewish scholars with Christian scholarship, on the other hand, is apparently a means to denounce Wissenschaft des Judentums: “For Aḥad Ha-Am, the Bible was the blueprint of the evolution of Jewish national existence. Criticism of a radical nature would revise the lines of that blueprint, blur its outlines and undermine its authority. For this reason, he had little taste and no use for modern Bible studies […] Thus, to his strong doubts about the validity of Jewish Wissenschaft he added an even stronger rejection of modern Biblical studies. This negativism with respect to two comprehensive attempts at bringing about secure knowledge in two main fields of Jewish learning, Bible and Jewish History, facilitated his unmethodical way of handling ideas. He was no systematizer, he was an essayist […] and a political ad hoc pamphleteer […]” – GOTTSCHALK, Alfred: Ahad Ha-Am and Leopold Zunz: two perspectives on the "Wissenschaft des Judentums.” Judaism 29 (1980), 286–294, here: 294. 41 MEYER, Two persistent Tensions [see footnote 1], 80. 42 SARNA, Abraham Geiger and Biblical Scholarship [see footnote 35], 170. 43 See SALZER, Dorothea M. : Adam, Eve, and Jewish Children: Rewriting the Creation of Eve for the Jewish Young at the Beginning of Jewish Modernization. JQR 106 (2016), 396−411, here: 396,

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German, as epitomized in Zunz’ translation, formed an especially prominent aspect of this attempt.44 This emphasis on the Hebrew Bible is also represented by the commitment to Bible education that characterizes the work of many Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars. The Jewish children’s Bibles authored by these scholars and educators played an important role in popularizing the Hebrew Bible among German speaking Jewry, as argued by Dorothea M. Salzer in her contribution to this volume.45 Her article focuses on the “Neue Jugend-Bibel” (“New Bible for the Young”) authored by one of the first Wissenschaft scholars, Isaak Marcus Jost (1793–1860), who earned his living as an educator of Jewish children. His Jewish Children’s Bible was published in 1823, one of the first representatives of the genre published in German language and letters. Reading this work in the context of Jost’s early enthusiasm for biblical criticism, as well as in the context of new pedagogical ideas about the role of the Bible in the framework of education, Salzer demonstrates that despite his opinion that the Hebrew Bible had to undergo a scholarly reassessment, Jost aimed for “evoking the fondness for the Bible by adapting it to contemporary aesthetics rather than presenting a it for historical scrutiny […] in order to develop a German-Jewish identity.”46 Salzer also demonstrates that Jost’s commitment to Bible education was fully compliant with his work as a Bible critic. The impact of this scholarly and educational promotion of the study of the Bible reached far beyond the circles of Wissenschaft des Judentums, and Neo-Orthodox engagement with the Bible is in many regards a response to the challenges posed by Wissenschaft scholars. A particularly important point of contention between Wissenschaft and Neo-Orthodox exegetical approaches was the extent to which historicization should be applied to the texts of the Pentateuch.

|| IDEM: “Das alte Gebäude fast einzureißen und von demselben Material wieder aufzustellen”: Jüdische Kinderbibeln als Übersetzungszeignisse. transversal 10 (2009), 41−58, here: 42−45. 44 “What motivated Zunz to throw himself into the translation seems to have been a desire to dissipate the apathy among Jews toward the Bible itself […]” – SCHORSCH, Leopold Zunz on the Hebrew Bible [see footnote 34], 438. Abigail Gillman recently published a comprehensive history of German Jewish Bible translation, in which she also provides profound insight into Zunz’ Bible translation, see GILLMAN, Abigail: A History of German Jewish Bible Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, 102−125. 45 SALZER, Dorothea M. : Re-writing the Hebrew Bible for Jewish Children? Isaak Markus Jost’s “Neue Jugend-Bibel” in Context, 26–51. 46 Ibidem, 51.

16 | Stefan Schorch

Michah Gottlieb, in his article in the present collection,47 discusses the case of Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), whose focus on the “metaphysical and historical truth” of the Torah led him to resist attempts to read it in an “Oriental” context, even while he emphasized that the Bible originated in a geographical and intellectual setting that interconnects Orient and Occident. Gottlieb demonstrates that Hirsch thus “provides a theoretical basis for Jewish participation in the world without recasting oriental Judaism in an occidental image.”48 In contrast to Hirsch’s very limited attempt to apply historicizing readings to the Hebrew Bible, Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars went much further, historicizing even the Jewish canon of sacred scriptures itself. Consequently, the traditional Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible came to be understood, especially after Geiger’s Urschrift, as the Bible of Rabbinic Judaism, i.e. the historical product of a highly selective process that departed from the much broader literary and cultural environment of Second Temple Judaism. For many Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars, the books that failed to become part of the Rabbinic canon were as Jewish as the Hebrew Bible itself, even if they had survived only because they had been included into different Christian canonic collections, often not in their Hebrew and Aramaic original but as translations into Greek, Latin, Geʿez and other languages used within different Christian churches. This understanding motivated Jewish scholars to aim for the rediscovery of these texts as Jewish texts, a process which often involved the preparation of a Hebrew translation as demonstrated by Chanan Gafni in his contribution to this volume.49 Gafni also shows that some of the Maskilim, especially Naphtali Herz Wessely (1725–1804) and Judah Leib Ben-Zeʾev (1764–1811), preceded Wissenschaft des Judentums in their attempts to “reclaim the Apocrypha as Jewish texts,”50 and that the intellectual framework of historicism that enabled this reclamation also operated in more traditional Jewish circles, leading to different localizations of these texts within Judaism. Accordingly, Wissenschaft des Judentums had a general tendency to assess them as proof of the diversity and dynamics of intellectual processes in Ancient Judaism. For example, besides referring to readings from several of these books as alternative halakhic traditions in his Urschrift, Abraham Geiger regarded these books as witnesses for the period “in which Judaism transformed

|| 47 GOTTLIEB, Michah: Orthodoxy and the Orient: Samson Raphael Hirsch on the Location of Judaism, 53–71 (in this volume). 48 Ibidem, 69. 49 GAFNI, Chanan: “They are ours!” Reclaiming the Apocrypha as Jewish Texts, 75–97 (in this volume). 50 See 79– .

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itself, into Talmudism on the one hand, into Christianity on the other,” thereby raising a special interest in them.51 At the same time, however, other Jewish scholars aimed for the incorporation of the Apocrypha into Rabbinic Judaism, as Gafni shows, trying “to identify parallels between the Apocrypha and rabbinic literature and to trace conceptual similarities.”52 The consequent historicization of Christianity as a branch of Judaism, and Christian scripture as fundamentally Jewish literature, had a huge impact. As with many other facets of Wissenschaft des Judentums, it is certainly fair to say of Jewish research in the New Testament and Early Christianity that “The period after Geiger is dominated by his influence. He created a school of learned Jews, who followed in his tracks and enriched New Testament research with a number of important studies.”53 On the other hand, the more general impact of the historicizing approach itself seems to have allowed other scholars from similar intellectual backgrounds to reach similar or even more robust conclusions than those of Geiger. Proof of this can be found in the book “The Origin of Christianity, and a Commentary to the Acts of the Apostles”, authored by Isaac Mayer Wise (1819– 1900) and published in 1868 in Cincinatti, as I demonstrate in my own contribution to this volume.54 Wise provides a critique of the New Testament accounts of Jesus as historical sources that “is not only unparalleled in the broad and || 51 “Das Gesagte gilt ganz besonders von der Zeit, in welcher das Judenthum aus dem biblischen Abschlusse in neue Gestaltungen sich umwandelte, auf der einen Seite zum Thalmudismus hin, auf der andern zum Christenthume. […] Nur wenig dringt aus jener Zeit und aus dem Kreise der in ihr Thätigen zu uns, und was aufbewahrt geblieben, ist mit dem Banne des Unfertigen belegt, in den Hintergrund geschoben, als ‘apokryph’ bezeichnet worden. Mit um so größerem Eifer wirft man sich in unsern, der Entwickelung dieser weltgeschichtlichen Ereignisse sorgsam nachspürenden Tagen gerade über die Schriften her, welche nachweislich oder vermuthlich jener Zeit angehören, um ihnen das damalige stille Werden und Wachsen der Gedanken abzulauschen. So lenkt sich denn die Aufmerksamkeit sehr stark auf die Bücher, welche zu allen Zeiten in der Kirche in Ansehen standen, auch dem Judenthume, wenn es ihnen auch keine Anerkennung zollte und gerade von ihm aus der Richtspruch des Apokryphismus über sie verhängt wurde, nicht ganz unbekannt geblieben; sie haben heutigen Tages, wenn auch hie und da mit schelem Blicke angesehen, dennoch eine sehr weite Verbreitung, finden fortdauernde Beachtung, eine Beachtung, welche einige von ihnen mit vollem Rechte verdienen.” – GEIGER, Abraham: Apokryphen zweiter Ordnung (das vierte Makkabäerbuch; die Testamente der zwölf Patriarchen). Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 7 (1869), 111–160, here: 112–113. 52 See ibidem, 92. 53 “Die Zeit nach Geiger ist durch ihn bestimmt. Er bildete eine Schule gelehrter Juden, die seinen Spuren folgten und die neutestamentliche Literatur um eine Reihe bedeutender Darstellungen bereicherten.” – LINDESKOG, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum [see footnote 15], 103. 54 SCHORCH, Stefan: Isaac Mayer Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity” (1868) in the Context of 19th Century Research on the New Testament, 100–125 (in this volume).

18 | Stefan Schorch

generally quite important contemporary Jewish research on the New Testament, especially with Wissenschaft des Judentums, but it appears also highly innovative in comparison with the contributions of leading Christian scholars,”55 preceding by almost 40 years the sobering résumé of Albert Schweitzer’s book “Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung” (1906).56 Moreover, Wise’s book comprehensively presents a groundbreaking account of Paul’s teachings as part of the intellectual currents of Second Temple Judaism, interpreting him as a Jewish mystic. According to Wise, Paul’s abolition of the Torah is not to be understood as apostasy from Judaism, but rather as a means of transforming Jewish particularism into Jewish universalism. A slightly younger contemporary of Geiger, connected to Wissenschaft des Judentums mainly through his teacher Solomon Judah Rappaport (1786–1867), Wise seems to have reached his conclusions via his own work on the New Testament texts themselves, which he carried out with almost no access to current academic research and discourse, including Geiger’s work. In spite of its remarkable approach and results, Wise’s book remained almost completely unnoticed by research scholars; and its author was even misjudged as having “added little new to the study of Jesus and Paul; all his statements can be found in Christian writings of the time.”57 My contribution aims to demonstrate that this verdict cannot withstand contextual analysis of Wise’s 1868 book. In fact, the fate of Wise illustrates some of the difficulties the transfer of Wissenschaft des Judentums from Europe to the United States, and its translation from German into English, met in the process of its “Americanization,” especially in the early years.58 Just as the importance of Wissenschaft des Judentums for the study of the New Testament and Early Christianity has long escaped general recognition, so too its

|| 55 Ibidem, 122. 56 Since the 2nd edition from 1913, this book appeared under the title “Geschichte der LebenJesu-Forschung.” 57 JACOB, Walter: Isaac Mayer Wise's Views on Christianity. Judaism 15 (1966), 437–449, here: 449. 58 Christian Wiese has published an account of the early history of Wissenschaft des Judentums in its American context: WIESE, Christian: Translating Wissenschaft: The Emergence and Self-Emancipation of American Jewish Scholarship, 1860–1920. In: Christian Wiese/Cornelia Wilhelm (eds.), American Jewry: Transcending the European experience? London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 185–211. Among the problems that might have hampered the reception of Wise’s work, he was one of the first scholars to promote the use of English as part of the “Americanization” of Jewish scholarship, in opposition to other scholars of the first generation of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the United States who favoured German, most prominently David Einhorn (1809– 1879), see ibidem, 194.

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seminal role for establishing Qurʾānic and Islamic studies. In both cases, however, this situation has now changed, and the interrelated phenomena have become a subject of scholarly recognition and scrutiny. Katalin Franciska Rac, in her article in this volume, adds further to this area of research.59 Focusing on Ignác Goldziher’s literary-historical investigation of the Qurʾān, Rac shows that “Goldziher recognizes Muhammad’s originality in his synthesis of foreign elements with Arabic traditions” as the basis for the capability of Islam “to adapt to diverse cultural settings.”60 For Goldziher, Muhammad’s originality is best measured by his enormous impact on Arabian literature and society,61 an approach to the Qurʾān that generally parallels the approach of Geiger and others to the Hebrew Bible, both in terms of historicization and the foundation of a new religion. That the educational thrust of Wissenschaft des Judentums also influenced the field of Qurʾānic and Islamic studies is shown also by Hanan Harif’s discussion of three Hebrew translations of the Qurʾān.62 The first of these – the first Hebrew translation of the Qurʾān ever published – was carried out by Hermann (Zevi Hayyim) Reckendorf (1825–1875) and published in 1856–1857 in Leipzig. Although it should be seen primarily as an “exceptional maskilic enterprise,” and “as part of the 19th century Hebrew Haskalah of Eastern Europe,” as Harif argues,63 the introduction to this translation also contains a larger section under the heading ‫מה ליקט מוחמד מאמונת ומספרי היהודים‬, translating the title of Geiger’s “Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?” and quoting from Geiger’s book. Reckendorf’s enterprise therefore substantially interconnects with Wissenschaft des Judentums, and his encouragement to the reader of his translation, found in the introduction, to compare Torah and Qurʾān,64 fully complies with this background. Parallels between the Hebrew Bible and the Qurʾān also occupied the author of the second Hebrew translation, Yosef Yoel Rivlin (1889–1971). In Rivlin’s view, however, these parallels did not result from adoption from Hebrew into Arabic. Rather, both the Hebrew Bible and the Qurʾān belong to the same literary corpus, emerging from a shared Semitic cultural background.65 The third translation scrutinized by Harif was produced by Aharon Ben-Shemesh (1899– || 59 RAC, Katalin Franciska: The Qurʾān and Arabic Literary History in Ignaz Goldziher’s Scholarship, 129–147 (in this volume). 60 Ibidem, 145. 61 Ibidem, 143– . 62 HARIF, Hanan: Between Sacred and Profane: Three Modern Hebrew Translators of the Qurʾān, 149–164 (in this volume). 63 Ibidem, 151. 64 Ibidem, 152. 65 Ibidem, 156.

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1988), who regarded the Qurʾān as “nothing but an Arabic version of the Torah of Moses”66 on the background of an essential congruence of Judaism and Islam. Though reaching far beyond Wissenschaft des Judentums in terms of affiliation and time, Harif’s study reveals that an approach that connected the study of the Qurʾān with the study of the Hebrew Bible, once introduced and established by Abraham Geiger, remained a constant frame of reference for Qurʾān studies by Jewish scholars. Finally, Ismar Schorsch’s contribution focuses on the text that for centuries determined Jewish identity and Jewish learning much more than the sacred text of the Hebrew Bible, namely, the Talmud.67 In open contradiction to previous generations and contemporary orthodox circles, Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars had a rather complicated relationship to this text, the product of the essentially problematic “Zeitalter der Tradition” (“age of tradition”), in Geiger’s words. Since the end of this period, on his account, the Talmud dominated Judaism, preventing it from further intellectual and spiritual development:68 es hielt und hält der Thalmud seit vierzehn Jahrhunderten das Judenthum umklammert, so oft auch die Wissenschaft an ihm rüttelte, und er wird, so lange das Mittelalter nicht überhaupt überwunden ist, seine Herrschaft nicht ganz einbüssen. (“The Talmud has gripped Judaism for fourteen centuries, no matter how often science shook it. It will not lose its dominion, for as long as the Middle Ages are not overcome.”)

To Geiger’s eyes, the Talmud remained an important historical document and a promising field of scholarly criticism:69 der Thalmud ist […] ein bedeutsames historisches Document von einem etwa 700jährigen Zeitraum, das Entwicklung und Hemmung in dem Judenthum uns darlegt und erklärt und Vieles enthält, was auch für die Erkenntniss der Bibel und ihrer Geschichte von Wichtigkeit ist, aber freilich muss er noch mit der Fackel der Kritik beleuchtet werden. […] Der Kritik bietet sich hier noch ein weites Arbeitsfeld, das aber auch lohnend ist. (“The Talmud is […] an important historical document spanning a period of about 700 years. It covers and explains progress and constraint within Judaism and contains much that is also important for the perception of the Bible and its history, but it has to be illuminated with the torch of critique. […] It offers a wide field of research for critique, which is also rewarding.”)

|| 66 Ibidem, 162. 67 SCHORSCH, Ismar: Missing in Translation: The Fate of the Talmud in the Struggle for Equality and Integration in Germany, 167–184 (in this volume). 68 GEIGER, Allgemeine Einleitung [see footnote 2], 95. 69 Ibidem.

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Nevertheless, despite its historical importance Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars seem to have seen no particular reason to make the Talmud easily accessible in German translation. The main motive for widespread reluctance to such an endeavor, Schorsch demonstrates, was that “to keep the Talmud out of the hands of our enemies outweighed putting it in the hands of our young.”70 In light of this consensus, which reached far beyond scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums, change came only from an individual enterprise. Lazarus Goldschmidt (1871– 1950) was not only the first to translate the Talmud into German, but he was the first to produce a translation of the entire Talmud at all. As Schorsch writes, “Goldschmidt performed a service of existential import that enabled German speaking Jews to embark on a return to a Heimat from which they had been estranged for 150 years.”71 Remarkably, although scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums certainly had been particularly active proponents of this estrangement, they had also provided the means to overcome it, through promoting and establishing critical philology among a wide audience of Jewish scholars. For most of them, however, a Heimat in the above sense could only be provided by the Hebrew Bible.

|| 70 SCHORSCH, Missing in Translation, 178. 71 Ibidem, 182.

| Part 1: Hebrew Bible

Dorothea M. Salzer

Re-writing the Hebrew Bible for Jewish Children? Isaak Markus Jost’s “Neue Jugend-Bibel” in Context It is widely accepted that the scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums aimed at defining a new Jewish identity by subjecting the Jewish past and culture to systematic scientific investigation.1 Their academic discussions was intended to create a new discourse about Judaism, according to which it could be described as an important part of European culture. One source highly charged with religious and cultural meaning, as well as ripe with possibilities for a historically-oriented discussion of the origins and development of Jewish religion and identity, was the Hebrew Bible, part of the Christian as well as the Jewish canon and simultaneously the subject of an emerging critical study of the Bible among Christian scholars. The discussion of the origin and history of the Hebrew Bible seemed to provide one possible means to face ‒ and maybe even to solve ‒ the tension between particularism and universalism felt by German Jewry. During the early formative phase of Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1823, the historian and pedagogue Isaak Marcus Jost (1793–1860), one of the founding figures of the movement, published his children’s Bible, entitled Neue Jugend-Bibel (“New Bible for the Young”). Jost is widely known as the first Jewish historian to write a modern history of the Jews (Geschichte der Israeliten – “History of the Israelites,” 1820–1828), but the fact that he was also a prolific writer of textbooks for Jewish children is mostly forgotten. Although the Neue Jugend-Bibel was not the first Jewish children’s bible to be published – the genre had arisen among German speaking Jewry almost three decades earlier2 – the book and its context deserve closer analysis for several reasons stemming from the genre’s history, as well as Jost’s scholarly assessment of the Hebrew Bible.

|| 1 For an early definition of Wissenschaft des Judentums and a description of various fields of a systematic scientific approach to Judaism see: WOLF, Ueber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums, 17–20; on the purpose of creating a new Jewish identity see ibidem, 22–24. 2 The first Jewish children’s bible to be published was Peter Beer’s Sefer Toledot Israel (Prague 1796).

https://doi.org/9783110592672-003

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The Neue Jugend-Bibel was a pioneering work, as one of the first children’s Bibles both published in the German language and printed in German letters. This is such a meaningful change in the publication history of these books because it paved the way for the genre to become particularly popular and widespread in Jewish religious education during the 19th century. Furthermore, Jost published his abbreviated Bible only one year after he had published the third volume of his Geschichte der Israeliten, which very clearly exhibits influence by biblical criticism. This leads to the question if Jost’s enthusiasm for biblical criticism can be traced in his children’s bible as well. In this article, I will explore the context of Jost’s scholarly reassessment of the Hebrew Bible, on the one hand, and the context of its pedagogical meaning and use, on the other hand. I then turn to an analysis of Jost’s children’s Bible itself, with a particular focus on the adaptive strategies applied by Jost to translate the Hebrew Bible for his young readers (literally as well as figuratively), putting the book it into a diachronic and synchronic comparison with other works of the genre.

1 Jost and the Scholarly Reassessment of the Hebrew Bible When the question of Jewish reception of biblical criticism is raised, Jost’s name in particular is one of the first to be mentioned.3 This is due to the fact that he was heavily influenced by Protestant biblical criticism, especially the biblical scholar and orientalist Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), who had been his teacher when he studied languages, theology and philosophy at the university in Göttingen in 1813 and 1814. This influence is clearest in three of Jost’s works: first and foremost, in his Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage (“History of the Israelites since Maccabean times”), published in nine volumes between 1820 and 1828; second, in his lesser known Allgemeine Geschichte des israelitischen Volkes (“General history of the Israelite People”), published 1831–1832; and third, in his Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Sekten (“History of Judaism and its Sects”) which appeared in three volumes between 1857– 1859. In the following, I focus on Jost’s remarks in the first of these works, the || 3 The following summary of Jost’s reception of Biblical criticism is based on the more detailed studies by HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, part 1, chapter 3; IDEM, Gehörst du zu uns oder zu unseren Feinden?, 65–72.

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“History of the Israelites,” especially on the third volume. This volume was published in 1822, only one year before Jost published the book of biblical stories for Jewish children discussed later in this article. The “History of the Israelites” is often referred to as the first attempt of a Jewish scholar since Josephus to write a comprehensive history of the Jews. Notably, that comprehensive history begins with the Maccabees and skips the biblical period, a decision based above all in the conceptual implications of Jost’s periodisation. Like other historians and biblical scholars of his time, Jost draw a clear line between the time before the Babylonian Exile and the time afterwards, with the emergence of the Hebrew Bible at the moment of separation:4 Beginning at this moment, when the Jewish people became owners of this work [i.e., the Bible, DMS], it became evident that they had an entirely new spiritual orientation, and it was only at this moment that the history of Judaism begins – fundamentally different than the history of the Israelites which may be inferred from the work itself.

Thus, Jost declared the historical emergence of the Hebrew Bible as the point of departure for Jewish identity, in opposition to a former “Israelite” identity. In both this periodization and the distinction between “Israelites” and “Jews,” the influence of Jost’s teacher Eichhorn is obvious, for it was Eichhorn who brought the distinction between these two terms into academic discourse at the end of the 18th century.5 Jost accepted this distinction, as did the other members of the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews”), the first organization for the study of Judaism with a historical focus. And although the somewhat misleading title of his “History of the Israelites” suggests otherwise, the separation between “Israelites” and “Jews” is the fundamental starting point for Jost’s historical narrative. On numerous occasions, Jost clearly states that Judaism is something decidedly different from Mosaism.6

|| 4 “Von dem Augenblicke an, da das jüdische Volk in den Besitz dieses Werkes trat, wird daher eine ganz und gar neue Geistesrichtung in demselben bemerkt, und erst von dieser Zeit an beginnt die Geschichte des Judenthumes und der Juden, wesentlich verschieden von der aus dem Werke selbst zu ziehenden Geschichte der Israeliten.” – JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 3, “Excurs,” 217; translation by HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 56. 5 See EICHHORN, Nachricht, 393; During the 19th century, this differentiation became increasingly accepted, becoming a fundamental distinction within German biblical criticism. 6 This is also very obvious looking at the titles of some chapters of volume III of the “History of the Israelites.” There, we find chapters like “The Jews no Mosaic People” or “Judaism no Mosaic Empire of Priests.” For a detailed analysis of the book’s title see HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 52–53.

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The “Israelites,” for Jost, were an ancient people that only distinguished itself from other peoples through a special law, the law of Moses called by Jost “legislation” (“Gesetzgebung”) “constitution” (“Verfassung”), or “Mosaism” (“Mosesthum”).7 This notion was rather common in his contemporaneous biblical criticism, which regarded the law as a central concept of Israelite history. What set Jost apart from these bible scholars was his assumption that the Mosaic law was never a living law. In other words, the Israelites never practiced the Mosaic Law. It was preserved by the priests and later by the prophets, who wanted to conserve it mainly for those of its religious-moral aspects which gave special attention to monotheism.8 In Jost’s narrative, the Hebrew Bible is the pillar of Jewish identity not of Israelite identity, because the Jews were an entirely different historical phenomenon from the Israelites. When returning from the Babylonian Exile, the Jews did not build another political body. Instead they built a religious community, based on the Hebrew Bible as well as their interpretation of it.9 With this perspective, Jost could support the emancipatory discourses of his time by reinforcing the position that Jews do not aspire political independence as a nation. Rather, from the beginning they formed a group of citizens loyal to the states in which they resided, distinguished only by their religion. The historical position that the Jews were not an immediate continuation of the Israelites, but a newly founded community based on the Hebrew Bible, also sets Jost apart from Christian scholars of biblical criticism, who argued fiercely that Judaism was merely a regression from the sacred and divine period of the Israelites, a position often merged with antiJewish ideas.

|| 7 JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 3, “Anhang zum zehnte Buche,” 116 (note the new pagination starting with page 111). 8 “Das Mosethum ist nie in Kraft getreten, nie in seinem ganzen Umfange versucht worden; […] Eine Folge aber hatte die Abtrünnigkeit der Israeliten, und der daraus hervorgegangene Eifer der Priester und Propheten für [das] Mosesthum, nämlich die Erhaltung des Gesetzes und der Geschichte durch letztere. Und das Dasein dieser Bücher wirkte allerdings entscheidend auf den Geist der spätern Juden.” – “Mosaism never came into practice, was never tried in its whole extent. [...] But the defection of the Israelites and the eagerness of the priests and the prophets resulting from it had one consequence for Mosaism, this is the preservation of the history and the law through the latter. And the existence of these books heavily influenced the spirit of the later Jews.” – JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 3, 9. 9 JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol 3, 16; 26–36; 157 et passim. For an interpretation of this concept in line with Hegel’s distinction between res gestae and historia rerum gestarum, see HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 66–67.

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Despite this fundamental distinction between “Israelites” and “Jews,”10 and although his work deals with the history of the Jewish people since the days of the Maccabees, thus with “Jews” rather than with “Israelites,” Jost decided to call his work “History of the Israelites.” At first glance, this seems confusing. But as Ran HaCohen has shown,11 Jost’s choice seems to have been facilitated or even motivated by the contradictory position he found himself in. While as a historian he rejected the use of the term “Israelites” for “Jews,” this use had an important and even central role within the contemporary discourse on Jewish emancipation. At the end of the 18th century, German Jews had begun to refer to themselves as “Israelites” rather than “Jews” to escape the negative connotations which their German environment associated with the latter term. In choosing his title, Jost put his definition of German-Jewish identity before his position as a historian. Jost, thus, not only adopted modern contemporary approaches of biblical criticism to develop his historical narrative, he also translated these approaches into a theory serving the emancipatory efforts of his time, fending off anti-Jewish implications and arguments proclaimed by scholars of biblical criticism who argued that “Israelites” and “Jews” were separate groups.12 In addition to these activities, Jost was the first Jewish scholar who tried to introduce biblical criticism as a tool for Jewish scholarly work. At the end of the third volume of his “History of the Israelites,” he presented an excursus about the Hebrew Bible. Across twenty pages, he defends the aim of biblical criticism, argues against anticipated objections, and develops a detailed and practical outline of how to apply a methodical approach to the biblical text. This excursus is important evidence for Jost’s understanding of the nature of biblical scriptures. For Jost, the Hebrew Bible as we know it goes back to the Babylonian Exile, when one redactor or several ones began to combine shorter texts and fragments into longer texts to glorify God. After the exile, redactors rendered these compiled texts as canon. Thus, every biblical book is created by human beings:13

|| 10 For a detailed comparative list about Jost’s perception of “Israelites” and “Jews” see HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 58. 11 See HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 52–53. 12 For a detailed analysis of Jost’s historical narrative with regard to the emancipatory discourse see HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 59–62. 13 “[...] folgen wir zunächst der Ansicht, daß ein jedes vor unsern Augen liegende Buch ganz und gar das Werk eines oder mehrerer Menschen sei, den Schicksalen der Zeit ebenso unterworfen, wie alles, was der Mensch ins Dasein ruft. Der Theil des Bibel-Inhalts, den man einem höhern Wesen zuschreibt, ist nicht der körperliche, sondern nur ein geistiger Ausfluß des Allregieres in die Seele desjenigen, welcher durch seine Schrift ein Organ der Weltregierung wird.” – JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 3, “Excurs,” 202–203.

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[…] every book before our eyes is entirely the creation of one or more men and is subject to the events of its time as much as any other human creation. The part of the content of the Bible, which is attributed to a supreme being, is not the material one, but only a spiritual effluence of the almighty into the soul of the one, who through his writings becomes an instrument to rule the world.

As this passage demonstrates, Jost still holds that the spiritual origin of these scriptures is divine, even though he is convinced that the material aspect of the Hebrew Bible is of human origin. In the course of time, the scriptures were changed and corrupted by external circumstances, and by men who wanted to reinforce their interpretation of the texts by adding signs, words, sentences, or even smaller parts like vocalization and punctuation to the original text.14 Hence, Jost argued, the Bible we hold is not the original one composed by the inspired men of the past. The Hebrew Bible as a historical source is corrupted by its history of transmission. The primary task of the scholar, therefore, is to find the original text of Scripture. For Jost, a fundamental qualification required of the scholar setting out for this task is knowledge of the language, because using a translation would mean to rely on the interpretation of somebody else. Furthermore, the scholar must not be influenced by interpretations or disputes he might know beforehand, such as traditional Jewish readings of the text. He should instead apply his knowledge of geography, his grasp of the history of antiquity, and a quiet and calm spirit of inquiry. The original text can be uncovered by following several steps of research related to the so-called “exterior appearance” and the “interior appearance” of the bible. These steps can be summarized as follows: 1.

2.

3.

First, the scholar should search for the original text by identifying interpolations, eliminating all additional material, and identifying missing or omitted parts. This can be accomplished by comparing parallel texts, manuscripts, translations, and quotations, as well as by using intratextual assessments. Once the revised version of the Hebrew Bible is established, the scholar should progress to examine the “interior” of the scripture. Using skills of linguistic differentiation, he will be able to identify different texts and fragments. After this, these fragments should be dated and then arranged in chronological order according to the date of their composition.

|| 14 JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 3, “Excurs,” 203.

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Jost asserts that in this way many contradictions could be solved and new conclusions could be derived, unveiling the true history of the Israelite people in a systematic and scholarly manner. As noted above, this true history would not concern Judaism, since Judaism is built on the interpretation of the text rather than on the events themselves. The method described by Jost is based on linguistic analysis followed by chronological synthesis. These methodical approaches were shared by his Christian scholarly contemporaries. In this, Jost was hardly groundbreaking. Jost was, however, the first Jewish scholar to introduce a consistent outline of approaching and understanding the Hebrew Bible based on scholarly and methodical guidelines rather than on traditional ones. Interestingly, Jost himself only partially followed this approach. In his “History of the Israelites” he does not cover the biblical period, and therefore has no need to reassess the narrative of the Hebrew Bible. He did apply his method, however, to several books of the Hebrew Bible, and detailed his results in the appendix to the third volume. In this addendum, Jost mainly follows only the second step of his model. That is, he attempts to reassess the scripture’s “interior.” Following the structure of chapters, he examines the biblical text using linguistic and textual observations, sometimes pointing out contradictions or distinguishing the author of smaller text units, sometimes trying to find connections between parts of several different chapters or establishing a careful evaluation concerning the age of parts and fragments.15 Nevertheless, in his “General History of the Israelite people,” published ten years later in 1832, and the first volume of which is entirely dedicated to the biblical period, Jost presents a narrative loyal to the biblical historiography. HaCohen links this shift in attitude to changes in the reputation of biblical criticism in Protestant theology, arguing that Jost did not want to be connected to a contested method.16

|| 15 JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, “Anhang zum zehnten Buche,” 111–141. Jost closes both his examination of Genesis and the Pentateuch with the conclusion that the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is improbable: “It would be a daring venture to impose on Moses, this brilliant mind, the unification of so many contradictions a child can see […] I would rather believe with the Cabbalists that the whole story is symbolic, and that it contains nothing but religious philosophy,” “I consider it a crime to impose contradictions on Moses or God himself,” see ibidem, 123–124; 132. 16 HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 69.

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2 The Reform of Jewish Education and the Emergence of Jewish Children’s Bibles As shown above, Jost declared the historical emergence of the Hebrew Bible to be the point of departure for Jewish identity, in opposition to a former “Israelite” identity. The emphasis on the importance of the biblical text for Jewish identity can be traced back one or two generations earlier to the Prussian Haskalah movement. For the Maskilim in Prussia, the Bible was an important tool for emphasizing their own goals and tasks. Moreover, they expected their study of the Bible to reap dividends for their integration into German culture. After all, preoccupation with a text shared by Christians and Jews could be used to stress the similarities between Christian and Jewish religion, emphasizing universal common ground and arguing against particularism. By emphasizing the importance of the Hebrew Bible as the fundament and the essence of Judaism, the Maskilim could more effectively use it both as an instrument for the integration of Jews and simultaneously as fons et origo for a new Jewish identity. In traditional Ashkenazic culture, in contrast, the Bible was used as a means of language teaching rather than as text to be understood and studied for its own value in its own right. The Talmud was the central core of Jewish education. Fully aware of the transformative power of education, the Maskilim criticized this traditional approach for neglecting the study of the Hebrew Bible and called for a reform of the Jewish educational system.17 One might say that the Jewish enlighteners put the bible back into the Ashkenazic canon. Even more significantly, they made it the binding text of Judaism and Jewish education, and thus transformed it into a fulcrum for Jewish renewal. The first fruit of this new approach was the publication of the Sefer Netivot ha-Shalom – the annotated German translation of the Pentateuch conceived and edited by Moses Mendelssohn (the so-called Be’ur) and published between 1780 and 1783. In his Geschichte der Israeliten Jost mentions that he, like so many of his colleagues, had learned German as a schoolboy via Moses Mendelssohn’s Bible translation.18 The Maskilic reform of Jewish education, however, went far beyond stressing the study of the Hebrew Bible. Influenced by the idea that schools

|| 17 Naftali Herz Wessely in his Divre Emet we-Shalom (1782) and many others called for a reform of the Jewish educational system and assigned biblical studies a central role in a new Jewish curriculum. 18 JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 9, 64, note 1.

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could bridge the gap between Jewish and general culture, as well as by philanthropic ideas of education, the enlighteners established Jewish schools with new learning curricula. According to these curricula, a significant portion of the lessons were devoted to secular education. Moreover, religious instruction was based on principles other than the traditional learning of the chadarim. Judaism was presented as focused on the Hebrew Bible rather than on the Talmud and was taught with textbooks especially designed for Jewish children. The Maskilic schools also emphasized the use of the vernacular of the predominantly Christian surrounding culture, as well as expressing concern for taking into account the emotional and intellectual development of the child. Jost, along with another of the founding fathers of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), was an immediate witness of these changes to traditional education. Jost and Zunz began their studies at the Samsonschule in Wolfenbüttel when it still was a traditional school. During their studies they then experienced the changes introduced by Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg (1773–1853), who became headmaster of this school in 1807 and re-organized it as a Maskilic institution. Zunz writes that Ehrenberg did “wonders” in educating the pupils at the school and compares the change they felt as a step from medieval times and imprisonment forward to civic freedom.19 Jost, in his own memories, refers to Ehrenberg with the theologically charged term “redeemer” (“Erlöser”).20 He dedicated the first volume of his “History of the Israelites” to Ehrenberg, calling him his “highly respected and beloved foster father, educator, teacher, and friend.”21 Both Jost and his friend Zunz, however, were not to remain passive recipients of the new educational ideas. Subsequently, they became active proponents as well. For Jost, there was no nobler profession than teaching his fellow Jews in order “to free them from all lopsidedness of a segregated education.”22 As a con-

|| 19 ZUNZ, Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg, 22; In the memoirs of his time in Wolfenbüttel, Zunz writes: “Wir sind buchstäblich aus einer mittelalterlichen Zeit in eine neue an einem Tage übergegangen, zugleich mit dem Heraustreten aus der jüdischen Helotie in bürgerliche Freiheit.“ – “We virtually moved on from medieval times to modern ones in only one day, together with breaking free from Jewish imprisonment to civil freedom.” –ZUNZ, Mein erster Unterricht, 136–137. 20 JOST, Vor einem halben Jahrhundert, 156. 21 “Seinem hochverehrten und geliebten Pflegevater, Erzieher, Lehrer und Freunde” – JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 1, 1. 22 “Ich dachte mir keinen edlern Beruf, als die künftige Einwirkung auf unsre Glaubensgenossen in demselben Sinn, und die Befreiung derselben von aller Einseitigkeit der abgeschiedenen Erziehung.”– JOST, Vor einem halben Jahrhundert, 161.

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sequence, he became himself a teacher and pedagogue in the Maskilic educational system. From 1816 onwards he was head of the Bock school in Berlin, which he left only in 1835 for Frankfurt/Main. There he taught at the famous Philantropin until his death in 1860. Additionally, he published several educational works, among them an English language manual, a textbook on German stylistics, a guidebook on manners, and the biblical story book that will be dealt with in the third part of this study.23 Jost, therefore, was biographically entrenched in the new Jewish educational system. He understood the improvement of education as a task for creating a modern Jewish identity, both following and further developing the Maskilic path. As argued above, the Maskilim wanted to establish the Hebrew Bible at the center of evolving Jewish-German identity via educational means. Influenced as they were by new educational ideas, and especially the philanthropist approach, they also faced a dilemma. The philanthropists, an influential group of progressive pedagogues, aimed to teach children to become philanthropic, natural, and rational personalities. At the same time, they realized that the form of this education account for a child’s mental capacities and stage of development. Consequently, the Maskilim felt that not all of the Hebrew Bible was suited for the education of children. For this reason, a new literary genre arose in the Germanspeaking areas of Europe: Jewish children’s Bibles, containing a selection of biblical narratives especially reworked for Jewish children. In creating these textbooks, the Maskilim draw upon a genre already well established in the surrounding Christian culture, since children’s Bibles were a popular means of Protestant religious education. The genre of Jewish children’s Bibles per se, thus, is a translation. It is the transformation of a Christian literary form into a Jewish one. In these children’s Bibles, selected stories from the Hebrew Bible were paraphrased or summarized so as to be considered appropriate for a young Jewish readership. The selection and reworking of the biblical stories followed a clear agenda. The children should learn both Hebrew and German. They should learn about the history of the Jewish people. And at the same time, they should acquire universal moral values and rationalist paradigms for a new cultural and religious identity based on the biblical texts. Thus, these textbooks were meant to support acculturation on the one hand, and to redefine and reshape Jewish identity on the other hand. As a result, the retold sections of the

|| 23 JOST, Practische englische Sprachlehre für Schulen und Privatunterricht; IDEM, Theoretischpractisches Handbuch zum Unterrichte im deutschen Styl mit sehr vielen Übungs-Beispielen; IDEM, Anweisung zum anständigen und sittsamen Verhalten für die Schuljugend.

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Hebrew Bible in these storybooks differ from the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible in numerous ways: 1.

Most importantly, they usually present only a selection from the original text. The biblical narrative is broken into separate story units, considering appropriateness for children and focusing on one or two main characters. 2. The stories themselves are modified. This modification takes a variety of forms. Stories are shortened, embellished, emphasized, or put into a new literary structure. 3. Sometimes narrative lacunae are filled. In other stories, content is obscured or summarized. 4. The language of the stories is often simplified or softened. 5. The editors provide supplementary material like front and back matter, as well as peritexts such as prefaces, captions and commentaries. All of these serve to guide and shape how the texts are perceived. These collections provide an often extensively revised version of the holy text, following an educational, philosophical and religious agenda, and aiming at a distinct readership. From the beginning of the genre in the last decade of the 18th century, throughout the 19th century, and until the 1930s, Jewish children’s Bibles were very popular in German speaking areas and some of them were printed in numerous editions.

3 Jost’s “Neue-Jugendbibel” 3.1 Jost’s Perception of the Hebrew Bible as Presented in the Book Jost published his children’s Bible in 1823 in Berlin, entitled Neue Jugend-Bibel, enthaltend: Die religiösen und geschichtlichen Urkunden der Hebräer – “New Bible for the young, containing the religious and historical documents of the Hebrews.” He was one of the first three authors of Jewish children’s Bibles to decide to publish their books in German language and letters. The other two Bibles published in German letters were Heimann Schwabacher’s “The historical parts of the Bi-

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ble” (Das Geschichtliche der Bibel, published in 1822), and Moses Mordechai Büdinger’s “Way of Faith” (Der Weg des Glaubens, published in 1823).24 In contrast to these three early children’s Bibles, their Maskilic predecessors had been published either in Hebrew only, or as bilingual editions with the German parts printed in Hebrew (so called Jewish-German) letters. Jost’s “New Children’s Bible,” therefore, is one of the first examples of the genre to represent the accelerated language switch that took place in the decades prior to its publication. Printing these textbooks in German language and letters also meant a considerable change of educational goals when using them. The Maskilic authors had argued that their textbooks were meant primarily for teaching language skills, but this argument was not valid after switching to German and German letters. On the one hand, children were already able to read German texts. On the other hand, there was no Hebrew version to be studied and compared. The main aims of children’s Bibles thus changed considerably, emphasizing the books’ function for moral and religious instruction, as well as the acquisition of historical knowledge. Schwabacher and Büdinger both explicitly emphasize moral and religious education in the introductions to their books.25 In this way they also inadvertently signal that the genre of children’s bibles was already well accepted when these authors published their works. They did not need the “disguise” of books for language instruction. In contrast to Schwabacher und Büdinger, Jost emphasized the historical aspect of his approach. This is obvious from the title of the book, which reflects some of the concepts laid out in his “History of the Israelites.” In particular, Jost calls the protagonists of the biblical account “Hebräer” (“Hebrews“), thus marking a clear difference between the historical protagonists of the Hebrew Bible – the Hebrews – and the Jewish readership of his textbook. At the same time, he avoids the complications connected to the term “Israelites,” at his time used for the ancient people of the Hebrew Bible as well as for contemporary Jewry. The term “Urkunden” (“documents”) used in the subtitle of the book renders this distinction even more clearly. Many of Jost’s contemporary scholars of biblical criticism applied this term to denote the different strata of sources identified in the Hebrew Pentateuch. For example, Jost’s teacher Eichhorn developed the nowadays so-called “older documentary hypothesis” and distinguished between the “Jehovist-document” and the “Elohist-document.” The use of the term, thus, illustrates Jost’s perception of the biblical texts as historical sources to be studied || 24 SCHWABACHER, Das Geschichtliche der Bibel, and B ÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens. 25 SCHWABACHER, Das Geschichtliche, III–VI; BÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, VI–XI.

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from a historian’s, and a biblical scholar’s, point of view. This decidedly historical approach implies an even more fundamental break with his Maskilic predecessors than Schwabacher and Büdinger. While the Maskilim used terms invoking traditional contexts like Toledot Israel (“History of Israel”), Toledot Avot (“History of the Fathers”), Mikra Katzar (“Short Bible”), Jost related his book to the current debates in scholarly criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Jost’s volume also narrates its stories differently from the earlier biblical storybooks. The Maskilim generally paraphrased the biblical stories, either in new words or by combining single verses of the biblical text into a new account. This approach, however, met Jost’s disapproval. In his introduction, he explicitly refers to these earlier storybooks, criticizing them for not prioritizing the original text: 26 Mostly, the young learn the religious and historical content of the Hebrew documents through so-called biblical stories only. These certainly are valuable; but it is desirable that the young acquaint themselves with the source, as far as they can relate to it and see with their own eyes.

From the onset, therefore, Jost was more interested in the source as historical document than in either retelling the content or giving moral education. In his short introduction to the book, he emphasizes this approach by referring to his book as a “manual on the knowledge about religion and history of the Hebrews.”27 Again, compared to the other authors of children’s bibles, his predecessors as well as his contemporaries, Jost is unique in this historical approach to the Hebrew Bible as well as in his avoidance of explicit references to any concrete educational goals. The guiding principle for Jost’s presentation of the text seems instead to have been the preservation of the sources. He describes his method as “a pure and simple translation of the original text [‘Urtext’] by eliminating all repetitions and passages that are inexplicable to the young.”28 Jost does not go any further, however, in detailing the reason for his selection: “The reasons for selection and mode of

|| 26 “Die Jugend lernt den religiösen und geschichtlichen Inhalt der Hebräischen Urkunden meist nur aus sogenannten Biblischen Geschichten. Diese haben freilich ihren Werth; aber es ist dennoch zu wünschen, daß die Jugend auch die Quelle selbst, so weit sie aus ihr zu schöpfen vermag, öffne, und mit eigenen Augen sehe.” – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, III. 27 “Handbuch für die Kenntniß der Religion und Geschichte der Hebräer.” – JOST, Neue JugendBibel, IV. 28 “Eine reine und leichte Uebersetzung des Urtexts, bei Auslassung aller Wiederholungen und aller der Jugend unerklärlichen Stellen [...].”– JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, III–IV.

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expression cannot be explained here, because they belong partly to criticism, partly to pedagogy.”29

3.2 Content, Peritexts and Narration as Translational Strategies 3.2.1 Content Selection is one of the first steps in reworking the biblical text for children. By dividing the Bible into single story units, thereby applying categories for selection such as narrative structure, moral implications, contemporary cultural norms or values and suchlike, the authors of these biblical storybooks can shape the narrative structure of the original to their taste, as well as emphasize their own ideals and goals by omitting whatever is in conflict with them. Studying the content of children’s Bibles, thus, enables us to trace back the translational strategies of these authors, i.e. their interpretation of the Hebrew Bible and their intentions and paradigms for the reception of the texts. In this way, children’s Bibles from the 18th and 19th century allow us glimpses into the cultural background of the evolving transformation of Judaism in the German-speaking areas of Europe. Jost’s “New Bible for the Young” begins with the story of creation and ends with the death of Moses, thus focusing on the Pentateuch. From overall 124 stories, 42 are taken from Genesis, 17 from Exodus, 9 from Leviticus, 25 from Numbers, and 31 from Deuteronomy, each presented in a separate book following the original scriptural order. Thus, Jost tried to present biblical texts from all five Mosaic books. From a comparative perspective on the genre, this is noteworthy. The Maskilic storybooks show a clear emphasis on narrative stories, centred mostly around prominent figures such as the patriarchs and Moses and largely neglecting the last three books of the Pentateuch. Legal content, if present at all, was generally reduced to universal ethical regulations and neighborly love. This changed partly along with the genre’s turn to German, as a comparison of Jost’s, Schwabacher’s and Büdinger’s children’s Bibles shows. Schwabacher concentrated on narrative sections, put a clear emphasis on moral education and || 29 “Die Gründe, welche die Wahl und den Ausdruck geleitet haben, können hier nicht auseinander gesetzt warden, da sie theils der Critik, theils der Pädagogik angehören.” – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, IV.

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avoided the inclusion of legal texts, following the Maskilic model. Büdinger and Jost, however, aimed at a representative selection of texts from all the books of the Pentateuch, thus including legal material as well. A closer look at even the two books published in 1823 and their presented texts, however, reveals interesting similarities and differences. In their selections from Genesis, both authors develop a linear narrative that evolves around the patriarchs as main characters. They both make the same basic selection of stories. They differ, however, in dividing them into story units. Moreover, Büdinger generally shortens the biblical stories more rigorously than Jost does, often summarizing several chapters of the Hebrew Bible in one story unit, whereas Jost follows largely the structure of the biblical chapters.30 Both authors tend to avoid texts that deal with sexual contents or body functions. For example, they often circumvent or skip accounts of barrenness, conceiving and birth. This obviously follows the perception of bourgeois morality according to which it was unbefitting to speak openly about these topics, let alone with children. In comparative terms, Jost seems to be more lenient in this respect than Büdinger. Thus, for instance, Jost included the story about Jacob’s daughter Dinah, whose rape by Shechem subsequently led to a violent act of vengeance by her brothers (Gen 34).31 Büdinger omits this story.32 Further differences between Jost and Büdinger emerge in their characterization of the patriarchs. Büdinger clearly intends to shape them as positive exemplars for his young readers. He therefore presents them as consistently good, circumventing the moral ambiguity of some of their actions. Contrary to this, Jost allows for complexity in the character of the patriarchs. Consequently, the tricks played by Jacob on his brother Esau (Gen 25 and 27) or his uncle Lot (Gen 30) are absent from Büdinger’s “Way of Faith,” but appear in Jost’s “New Bible for the Young.”33 Similarly, the polygamist family structures of the patriarchs appear to have been troublesome for Büdinger, who obscures the explicit facts whenever possible. Jost, in contrast, is very frank about these family structures, thus doing the biblical text justice.34 || 30 Jost breaks Genesis into 42 story units whereas Büdinger has 25 story units for Genesis. 31 Although it has to be stated that Jost circumvents the problem by mode of translation, on this see below. 32 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 77–79. BÜDINGER, Der Weg des Glaubens, 33. 33 BÜDINGER, Der Weg des Glaubens, 23; 27; JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 51–52; 54–58; 65–66. 34 See for example the story about Hagar and Ismael (Gen 21). – BÜDINGER, Der Weg des Glaubens, 17. For the story about Jacob, Rachel and Lea (Gen 28), though, it is difficult to circumvent the facts. Therefore Büdinger makes a point to explain this as the customs of those times. JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 38.

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As in the case of Genesis, Jost and Büdinger provide similar basic texts for the Book of Exodus. Both concentrate on a chronological narrative with Moses as the main character. Nevertheless, some interesting minor differences can be observed. Overall, Büdinger is more determined to avoid stories about wonders than Jost. For instance, the latter includes the story about the miraculous signs that God orders Moses to carry out in order to convince the Israelites about Moses’ revelation (Exod 4), whereas Büdinger omits these passages from his account.35 Jost’s self-image as a historian presenting the sources apparently did not compel him to give a rationalistic version. Büdinger, however, was determined to teach a rational approach to religion and thus carefully edited these passages. There is one exception: Büdinger narrates the parting of the Red Sea without any rationalizing strategy or commentary that might reduce the miraculous parts of the story. The similarity to Jost in this case might be due to the enormous prominence of this story in the Jewish tradition.36 The difference between a primarily historical and a primarily educational approach is also visible in the different ways Büdinger and Jost present the covenant at Sinai. Büdinger offers a commentary along with the Decalogue that serves to put these laws into the context of contemporary Jewish religious thought. Although comparatively short, this commentary still reflects an educational decision introduced by the Maskilim. The Maskilim had ascribed a central function in religious education to the Ten Commandments as the universal core of Judaism. As a result, Maskilic textbooks generally presented the Ten Commandments together with extensive explanations. Contrary to this, Jost provides only the biblical text, without any additional commentary.37 The text that follows the Ten Commandments in the biblical original, the Sefer ha-Berit (Exod 20:19–24:18), is presented in a much more extensive form in Jost’s version compared to Büdinger’s. The latter’s “The Way of Faith” selects mainly passages concerning social justice (Exod 22 and 23), whereas the former’s also includes other regulations, such as agricultural laws.38 Hence, we can again differentiate between an educator’s selection, which aims at contemporary religious needs, and that of a historian aiming at broader and thus representative spectrum from the original sources. In Leviticus, both authors forgo the laws of sacrifice and purification. This is an interesting departure from tradition, according to which children often began

|| 35 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 127–128; B ÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 63; 66. 36 BÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 71–72; JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 144–146. 37 BÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 76–80; JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 153–156. 38 BÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 80–82; JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 156–159.

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their Bible studies by reading these laws on the basis that the pure should engage in the study of pure things (LevR 7:2). Consequently, the texts presented from Leviticus show a clear emphasis on universal values, practical moral applicability, and laws that are relevant for contemporary religious practice, such as regulations for kosher animals and holy days. This can be explained by reference to the intentions of both authors. Büdinger, in the introduction to his Bible, explains that his intention is to give Jewish women a solid basis for religious knowledge. Therefore, the obvious orientation toward the needs of contemporary Jewry interested in adapting Judaism to bourgeois norms and religion was a logical principle of selection. Apart from these religious considerations it was also important to adapt the texts to the cultural norms of the time, according to which it was improper to mention sexual or other bodily functions to children. Omitting the regulations about purifications of lepers and bodily discharges, for example, formed part of the translational act of adapting the biblical text to contemporary cultural expectations and norms. Jost’s intention, however, was to present historical sources. Consequently, selective sensitivities regarding contemporary religious practices and norms like those shaping his presentation of Leviticus seem initially out of place. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the book devoted to Leviticus, Jost gives a reason for his selection in a metatextual annotation: “The biggest part of the book consists of instructions for sacrifices and purifications of all kinds, the benefit and purpose of which cannot be expounded easily now.”39 In other words, the representation of texts dealing with sacrifices and other regulations for the biblical religious practice needed a more complex historical explanation than possible in the framework of his children’s bible. But despite this note, it seems obvious that Jost chose at least some of the texts with an eye to contemporary needs or cultural norms. This becomes evident from some of the captions he added to his story units, as will be shown below.40 From Numbers, both authors only chose from narrative texts, omitting all legal content. But when selecting from Deuteronomy, their strategies differ considerably. Whereas Büdinger presents only narrative texts, Jost provides a representative sample of legal regulations as well. Many of these regulations are universal in content, such as the request for human kindness, fear of God and

|| 39 “Der größte Theil des Inhalts bestehet in Anordnungen über Opfer und Reinigungen aller Art, deren Werth und Zweck jetzt nicht leicht durchdrungen werden kann.” – JOST, Neue JugendBibel, 170. 40 See below, 43–48.

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virtue. Others, however, clearly underscore Jost’s historical approach to the Hebrew Bible as laid out in his “History of the Israelites.” Jost’s choice of texts, from the onset, aims to root the regulations in the historical situation of the Israelites prior to the conquest of the promised land, referring to behavior in war and to the mandated details for the biblical cult. Many of the texts he chose include expressions41 and/or content referring specifically to the land of Israel, thus communicating the historicity of the texts and their cultural embedment. For example, Jost includes the regulations on courts, judges, and the limitations of royal authority (Deut 17:8–20) in a chapter entitled “Constitutional rights,” the term pointing at his conception of the Mosaic law as constitutional law for the Israelite nation.42 Interestingly enough, he left out an immediately adjacent text in the Hebrew Bible, namely prescribing stoning as a punishment for forbidden forms of worship (Deut 17:1–7). Furthermore, in his version of the rules of warfare (Deut 20) he omits regulations that go into too much detail or seem especially cruel such as assignment and eating of booty (Deut 20:14). From this we may conclude that Jost was interested in giving a fair general conspectus of the texts from the Pentateuch, trying to do justice to the historical situation. He was aware, however, of the difficulties and pitfalls accompanying the emancipatory discourse of his times and the probability that supposed negative behavior or cultural practices ascribed to the Israelites might easily be associated with German speaking Jewry of his time. Out of consideration for the contemporary situation, he therefore avoided texts that might be taken as signifying the brutality of Israelite law. This highlights the ambiguity in which Jost found himself as a historian and as a Jew. Jost incorporated legal regulations but at the same time applied reductive steps on these texts. Consequently, Jost’s children’s Bible selects different texts than the Maskilic Bibles published earlier, or Büdinger’s book released in the same year. It nevertheless makes that selection with an eye on the contemporary situation, with the intention to convey Judaism as a religion that is based on universal and humane values in line with pragmatic morals.43 || 41 For example: Deut 12:1 (“These are the laws and rules that you must carefully observe in the land that the Lord, God of your fathers, is giving you to possess, as long as you live on earth”). JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 236. 42 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 244. 43 On the other hand, Jost included verse Exod 12:36 about the Israelites on the prowl before leaving Egypt, something, the Maskilim strove to avoid in their children’s Bibles. Jost obviously did not care to omit this part because he regarded it as the historical account of a certain event, not a law that could be connected to contemporary Jewry. Cf. JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 142. In comparison, Büdinger does not mention this in his account of the events.

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3.2.2 Peritexts Apart from selecting specific texts, the authors of children’s bibles directed understanding of the Biblical stories by attaching peritexts such as captions, commentaries, poems, morals and the like. These additions highlighted a certain aspect of a story or emphasized a specific interpretational approach. Peritexts, therefore, are instruments of the translational act required to make the biblical text understandable and relevant for the contemporary reader. Setting aside the introduction, however, the only peritexts used by Jost are captions for the individual story units and commentaries. Captions lend meaning to the attached story even before that story is read, providing a lens through which the subsequent text should be understood. Inserting captions, therefore, was a popular way for the authors of children’s bibles to establish a unitary meaning for the story and to define a line of interpretation. In Jost’s children’s Bible, every single story is consecutively numbered and accompanied by a caption. Some of these captions summarize upcoming events like “Jacob’s escape” (“Jakobs Flucht,” on Gen 27–29).44 Others simply state a name like “Rebekka” (on Gen 24),45 thus highlighting the main character of the following story. Additionally, some programmatic captions have another function. These might be classified into two groups. The first group contains captions that underscore Jost’s historical understanding. Headings like “Constitution outlined” (“Verfassungsentwurf”),46 “Constitutional rights” (“Rechtsverfassung”)47 or “Criminal laws” (“Strafgesetze”)48 point to Jost’s interpretation of the Mosaic law as constitution for the Israelite nation. Captions belonging to the second group cover a range of topics, but often emphasized religious meaning of contemporary relevance. For example, the story about the promise for a son to Abraham (Gen 18) is headed “Reward for the man of virtue” (“Lohn des Tugendhaften”), and the narrative about the depravity of Sodom (Gen 19) features the title “Punishment for the vicious” (“Strafe des Lasterhaften”).49 Since the Enlightenment, morality and ethics (“Sittenlehre”)

|| 44 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 59–61. 45 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 44–49. 46 On Jethro’s advice to Moses to install judges (Exod 18). – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 151. 47 On Deut 16 and 17. – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel,. 244. 48 On Lev 24. – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 178. 49 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 29; 32.

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played key roles in Christian as well as in Jewish religious discourses, and educating Jewish children to be morally upright citizens was one of the most important goals of Jewish religious textbooks since their invention at the end of the 18th century. Using these captions, therefore, Jost could highlight fundamental keywords and concepts like “virtue” and “vice” and connect them to the biblical text in ways which otherwise were not immediately apparent. Additionally, he could feature a positive role model for virtue (Abraham) and a negative one for vice (the Sodomites). This strong emphasis on morality becomes even more obvious from other captions like “Praise of morals” (“Lob der Sittlichkeit” on Gen 9–11),50 “Luck chooses the virtuous ones” (“Das Glück folgt den Tugendhaften,” on Deut 11),51 “Reward and punishment” (“Belohnung und Strafe,” on Deut 28),52 “Duties of human kindness” (“Pflichten der Menschenliebe” on Deut 14),53 and ones. Another distinct feature of Jost’s bourgeois milieu was how middle-class values such as gratitude, honesty, or modesty become charged with religious connotations. Jost reflects this through captions like “Mose’s modesty” (“Moses Bescheidenheit,” on Num 12, Miriam’s leprosy!),54 “Warning of ingratitude and foolishness” (“Warnung vor Undank und Leichtsinn,” on Deut 8),55 or “Honesty” (“Ehrlichkeit”). In this way, he constructs these values as part of the biblical text. Jost provides this latter caption, “Honesty,” as the title for the opening story of his Leviticus account, the regulations about the sin offering from Lev 5:21–24. The original text concerns restitution for trespasses against others required before one was permitted to offer the sin-offering.56 Through the connection of these lines with the headline “Honesty,” Jost transforms the offering ritual into an abstract expression of individual responsibility for fellow human beings. The biblical sacrifice, thus, becomes a paradigm of morality and applied ethics. The caption added to the text helps to codify it as an element of the contemporary religious system. A similar reinterpretation appears in Büdinger’s children’s Bible “Way of Faith.” Like in Jost’s Bible, the account of Leviticus opens with sacrificial regula-

|| 50 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 17. 51 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 233. 52 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 266. 53 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 241. 54 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 188. 55 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 229. 56 See JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 170–171 (Lev 5:21–24).

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tions, but Büdinger broadens his perspective to sacrifices in general, and the caption “Regulations concerning the sacrifices” (“Verordnungen über die Opfer”)57 is rather descriptive in nature. Büdinger connects the reinterpretation of these rituals to another kind of peritext, a commentary added at the end of the text unit:58 We see, therefore, that repentance, confession, and restitution are the actual atoning sacrifices, but the animal and meal sacrifice are regarded only as an external accessory. And it is the same with our prayers, fasting, observing the holidays and all the external actions of worship, which are our sacrifices. [...] – First, one should reconcile with one’s own conscience and one’s neighbor, and then one would expect reconciliation from the All-merciful.

The reinterpretation of the biblical sacrificial cult is well-known in the history of Rabbinic Judaism,59 but the form of that reinterpretation varies. Jost and Büdinger, for their part, integrate the sacrificial texts into the evolving system of Jewish bourgeois religion concerned with a shift from halakha to morality. Bourgeois religion also prominently features a demand for self-reflection and self-improvement, deeply rooted in an Enlightenment anthropology within which the perfectibility of human nature was conceptualized as God’s assignment to the individual to work on their own moral improvement. This notion is especially apparent in Büdinger’s commentary, but it is also present in Jost’s reinterpretation, as in another caption applied in the Leviticus account which reads “Improvement of ethos” (“Verbesserung der Gesinnungen”).60 Further captions in Jost’s children’s Bible highlight central theological catchphrases of his time such as “God is the donor of all good” (“Gott ist der Geber alles Guten,” on Deut 6, the Shema Israel)61 and “Confidence in God’s greatness” (“Vertrauen auf Gottes Größe,” on Deut 9).62

|| 57 BÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 90–91. 58 “Wir sehen also, daß Reue, Bekenntniß und Wiedererstattung die eigentlichen Sühnopfer sind, die dargebrachten Thier- und Speiße-Opfer selbst aber, nur als äußere Nebensache dabei angesehen werden. Und eben so verhält es sich auch mit unserm Beten, Fasten, Feiertage halten und allen äußern gottesdienstlichen Handlungen, – als welche unsere heutzeitigen Opfer sind. […] – Erst söhne man sich aus mit dem eigenen Gewissen und dem Nebenmenschen, und dann erwarte man Versöhnung vom Allbarmherzigen.” – BÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 91–92. 59 See, for example bBer 6b; 26b; 32b; bMen 110a. 60 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 175 (on Lev 19). 61 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 226. 62 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 231.

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A substantial number of Jost’s captions, therefore, lay out a theological system in line with contemporary religious discourses in Christianity as well as in Judaism. Exactly this purposeful application of captions demonstrates that Jost, despite his claim in the introduction, intended to present the biblical texts not only as a historian of a people long gone, but also as an educator aiming to direct the interpretation of these documents in accordance with the contemporary discourse about religion. In addition to captions, Jost used commentaries to guide the attention of the reader. These commentaries are either inserted in brackets into the text itself or footnotes at the end of the page. Their functions vary. In some places they clarify expressions63 or interpret the text,64 whereas elsewhere they provide the reader with historical65 or metatextual66 information. It is noteworthy, however, that they hardly ever explain a translation decision or linguistic observation.67 Some of these commentaries do illustrate Jost’s perception of the Hebrew Bible as a historical source. For example, in his account of the revelation in the burning bush (Exod 3), Jost comments on Moses’ request to know the name of the God who is speaking to him with the following explanation: “It should be noted that polytheism was prevailing in Egypt, and the Israelites had already adopted many elements of it, so that they had several idols with different names.”68 This remark contextualizes Exod 3 as a source for the religious history of Ancient Egypt and the Israelite people, and it constructs Israelite religion as subject to foreign influences and fundamental historical changes. It also implies a development of Israelite religion. Jost understood this as a process, as we see in his commentary on the regulations concerning the ark of the covenant (Exod 25) which

|| 63 See for example: JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 61; 71; 118; 161; 163; 166; 189; 198f; 215; 233; 237; 242; 251; 253; 254; 260; 268. 64 See for example: JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 20; 21; 35; 164; 233; 173; 176–177; 179; 238; 251; 258– 259. 65 See for example: JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 43; 85; 160; 171. 66 See for example: JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 48; 64; 81; 142; 167; 170; 221; 255–256; 232; 274. 67 The only remarks concerning language or translation can be found in JOST, Neue JugendBibel, 8; 117; 166; 274. 68 “Hierbei ist zu bemerken, daß in Ägypten Vielgötterei herrschte und die Israeliten schon vieles davon angenommen hatten so daß sie mehrere Götzen unter verschiedenen Namen hatten.” – Jost, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 126. Compare the same argument in B ÜDINGER, Weg des Glaubens, 62.

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implies a gradual education of the Israelite people from polytheism to monotheism: “By this arrangement, the Israelites were gradually removed from the idea that any pagan oracle was sacred.”69 Other commentaries are used to avoid understanding biblical expressions in particular ways. For example, Jost takes care to construe anthropomorphic language in relation to God as metaphorical, painstakingly adding a respective explanation in brackets whenever it occurs. In this way, he explains “And the Lord would speak to Moses face to face” (Exod 33:11) to mean “revealing himself directly.”70 He provides similar explanations for the expression “stone tablets, written with the finger of God” (Exod 31:18),71 as well as in relation to the claim that God will live in the sanctuary (Exod 25:8).72 In numerous cases, moreover, Jost’s commentaries aim at the rationalization of the biblical text. For example, Jost provides a rationalistic explanation for how Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked behind herself at the destruction of Sodom (Gen 19:26): “She choked in the steam and afterwards she was covered by salt.”73 Laws were also rationalized sometimes, as in the regulations concerning kosher animals from Lev 11. In his commentary accompanying the shortened text (the caption reads “Enjoyable animals,” avoiding the term “kosher”), Jost explains these laws as a means to do away with pagan customs and to avoid shared meals between Israelites and pagans.74 These examples show Jost’s interest in shaping the reader’s perception of the texts according to modern interpretation. They therefore signal Jost’s interest in conveying not only historical knowledge but religious education as well. Such a realization also makes sense of Jost’s occasional engagement with contemporary emancipatory discourses and their pitfalls, as in his commentary on the lex talionis in Lev 24:20 (“an eye for an eye”). Here he is eager to comment in a footnote that this regulation was later replaced by monetary compensation,75 obviously

|| 69 “Durch diese Einrichtung wurden die Israeliten von dem Gedanken, daß irgendein heidnisches Orakel heilig sei, nach und nach abgebracht.” – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 160. See also the commentary on kosher animals (Lev 11) arguing that these regulations were introduced to prevent the Israelites to eat with pagans. – ibidem, 173. 70 “Das heißt, unmittelbar sich offenbarend.“ – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 164. 71 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 161. 72 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 160. 73 “Sie ward vom Dampfe erstickt und nachher mit Salz überzogen.” – JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 35. 74 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 172–173. 75 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 179, obviously referring to rabbinic interpretations as in bBQ 83b– 84a or Mekhilta de Rabbi Yishmael on Exod 21:25.

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basing himself on a rabbinic interpretation. At first, this seems rather an exception, because Jost generally refrained from applying traditional Jewish sources.76 In the present case, however, we have seen how he is willing to use such references when they fit his own line of interpretation.

3.2.3 Narrative and translation As mentioned above, Jost’s children’s Bible differs from the children’s Bibles of the Maskilim in the presentation of the texts above all else. Whereas the latter generally paraphrase, Jost favors to provide the texts as historical documents. He therefore prefers literal translation. It seems, however, that the methods Jost expounded in his excursus about biblical criticism (see above, p. 29–30) could have been used in a much more sweeping way than Jost in fact practiced in his “History of the Israelites.”77 He refrained from an extensive application of historical critique, but rather translated and arranged the texts in accordance with the canon of the Hebrew Bible. In cases in which he presents a more thoroughly reworked account he often marks the changes, e.g. by putting summaries into brackets, or pointing out passages he had skipped over.78 This approach differs considerably from those of the Maskilim and of Büdinger. The former retold and paraphrased the stories without any marking of deliberate changes, and the latter similarly shortened the biblical text without making this visible. Interestingly enough, despite these differences in approach none of these authors (including Jost) provides exact references to the text of the Hebrew Bible they present, and it is therefore often not an easy task for the reader to consult and compare the original. This feature seems to indicate that the children’s Bibles were in fact conceived of as a replacement of the Hebrew Bible rather than a supplementary reading. Along with selection, the application of peritexts, and paraphrase, translation is another instrument to guide perceptions of a source text in the target culture. By making translational choices, translators can domesticate a text, that is, they can make it seem familiar to the target culture’s language and norms, or they can put emphasis on the differences and thus make the source text foreign for the target audience.79 Therefore, translation itself always is an act of hermeneutics.

|| 76 HACOHEN, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible, 65. 77 JOST, Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 3, “Anhang zum zehnten Buche,” 121–132. 78 See for example: JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 48; 64; 142; 218; 225; 232. 79 On this see VENUTI, The Translator’s Invisibility, 18–20.

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In this final section, looking at Jost’s translational choices and strategies may help us to further contextualize his children’s Bible. In the syntax of his translation Jost follows German usage, omitting Hebrew conjunctions and adverbs whenever they disturb the sentence structure of the target language, or adding them whenever it seems necessary. The same is true for other characteristic features of the Hebrew text. He may choose to leave them out, or he may preserve them whenever they fit the German sentence. Names, both personal and geographical, appear to in their common German form, and not a transcribed version of the Hebrew word like in Büdinger’s “Way of Faith.”80 Jost sometimes applies the term “the Eternal” (“der Ewige”) for the Tetragrammaton, following Mendelssohn’s suggestion from the Be'ur, but most of the time he prefers “God” regardless of the word in the Hebrew Vorlage. Given his inclination to preserve the original as historical record this is somewhat surprising, because the different designations for God were regarded as a crucial criterion for differentiating the literary sources of the Torah, from the perspective of biblical criticism ever since Jean Astruc. Also, significantly, Jost’s translation is not always consistent. In his account of creation from Genesis 1, for example, he renders the repeated formula ‫וַ ַ ּי ְרא‬ ִ ‫“( ֱא‬and God saw that it was good”) with different phrases, thus ignor‫הים ִּכי־טֹוב‬ ing how the phrase structures the text in a very significant way and foregoing a feature inherent to the source text. In Jost’s text one finds the translations “God saw that it was beautiful,” “God thought this excellent,” “God thought them beautiful,” “and [he] thought it very beautiful,” “and it was exceedingly beautiful.”81 Thus, each occurrence of the original formula is rendered by a different translation. Jost’s text, therefore, misses the Hebrew style of that passage, which applies repetition as a literary technique. Instead, it seems to follow the aesthetic norm of the target culture, contemporary German literature, building upon variation. Jost, it seems, aims at diminishing the cultural distance between the Hebrew and the German text even by translation, domesticating the source text and making it more agreeable for readers for whom German was their mother tongue even when that meant abandoning characteristic features of the Hebrew source text.

|| 80 See his note on this in JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 8. 81 “Gott sah, daß es schön war” (Gen 1:10); “Gott fand dies vortrefflich” (Gen 1:18); “Gott fand sie schön”; (Gen 1:21); “und fand es sehr schön” (Gen 1:25); “und es war äußerst schön” (Gen 1:31, translating ‫)וְ ִה ֵ ּנה טוֹ ב ְמאֹד‬.

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This was hardly a coincidence. On the contrary, Jost was very aware of the power of translational choices, as demonstrated by his application of circumlocutions, whenever troublesome phrases seemed to require the adaptation of the text to the norms and taboos of his contemporary readers. For example, the story about Jacob’s manipulation of Lot’s flock from Gen 30 receives significant attention. According to the biblical text, Jacob agrees with Lot on the wages for his work – he could claim all spotted and speckled animals from the latter’s livestock. Jacob, however, then sets out to manipulate that ration, putting striped rods into their watering troughs so that the animals would come into heat when drinking from the water and bear only spotted and speckled young. This text was problematic for several reasons. First, it seems to narrate the patriarch performing a magical act, based on the principle of analogy. For Jost’s time and its generally rational worldview, this was a disturbing notion. And second, the text’s frank mention of animals “coming into heat” offended contemporary mores that preferred not to mention sexual matters, whether human or animal. Jost eliminated the difficulty by rendering the Biblical Hebrew verb ‫“( יחם‬to be in heat”) as “to be startled,” a translation that matches Rashi’s rationalistic explanation of the verse.82 As a result, the animals were startled by the rods, according to Jost’s version, and this is what caused them to give birth to colorful offspring.83 By changing a single word, Jost gives a (pseudo-)rational explanation for the effect of the rods in the drinking water while simultaneously avoiding a description offensive to contemporary prudish readers. Further examples of the avoidance of sexual content appear throughout Jost’s book. Thus, Potifar’s wife does not try to seduce Joseph (Gen 39), according to Jost, but rather suggests “stay with me.”84 Jacob’s daughter Dinah is not raped by Shechem (Gen 34) but rather “maltreated.” Rationalization of the biblical text is also a general feature of Jost’s work. Thus, when God appears to Abraham to promise him countless progeny (Gen 15), Jost portrays him in a dream and not in a vision (‫ )מחזה‬as in the Hebrew Bible,85 hereby doing away with direct revelation, regarded as a problematic concept since the Enlightenment. Hence, in his translational practice Jost both levels the linguistic idiosyncrasies of the Hebrew text and smooths over problematic features of the original. His general approach to the Hebrew Bible as historical document is not reflected in the ways he renders the actual text. Instead, Jost adapts his translation above all

|| 82 Rashi refers to an interpretation found in GenR 73:10. 83 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 66. 84 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 86. 85 JOST, Neue Jugend-Bibel, 25.

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51

else to common usage in its German target language, and to bourgeois morals and taste. In fact, he rewrites the text specifically for contemporary German readers and their cultural values.

Conclusion Isaak Markus Jost’s views on the Hebrew Bible generally follow contemporary biblical criticism. This is especially apparent in the fundamental distinction between Israelites and Jews in his “History of the Israelites,” as well as in his evaluation of the Hebrew Bible as a source corrupted by its history of transmission. In his “History of the Israelites,” Jost therefore develops a method for a historical re-assessment of the Hebrew Bible based on contemporary methods of biblical criticism. Although the distinction between Israelites and Jews is central for Jost’s children’s Bible as well, the enthusiastic approach to biblical criticism that characterizes his “History of the Israelites” did not lead him into applying it in his “New Bible for the Young,” which shows no traces of textual revisions. Even though in the introduction to his children’s Bible Jost claims to provide his readers with the “source itself,” this agenda seems to have had no larger impact on the representation of the text. Apart from providing only a selection of texts, in itself an act of interpretation, Jost prefers to give textual versions that meet the aesthetic and moral perceptions of his target audience rather than the demands of a translated primary source. Additionally, the use of peritexts like captions and commentaries suggest that contemporary religious practice was another point of reference for Jost’s children’s Bible. Hence, it seems probable that Jost’s agenda as exhibited in this book goes far beyond the reproduction of historical sources, instead aiming at intentional presentation. According to the historical narrative Jost developed in the third volume of his “History of the Israelites,” Jewish identity is defined not by the history of the Israelites, but by the relationship of the Jews to the Hebrew Bible. This presupposition may hint at the pedagogical purpose at which Jost aimed in his abbreviated re-writing: to evoke fondness for the Bible by adapting it to contemporary aesthetics rather than presenting it for historical scrutiny. By this means, perhaps, he tried to build a link between Jewish children and the biblical text in order to develop a modern Jewish identity for German-speaking Jewry. In this regard, his children’s Bible clearly presents the “documents of the Hebrews” as a text which Jost himself conceptualized as Jewish.

52 | Dorothea M. Salzer

Bibliography BEER, Peretz [Peter]: ‫ והוא ספור כולל כל הקורות אשר קרו לכלל עם ישראל מיום ברא יי‬.‫ספר תולדות ישראל‬ ‫ ובין כל פרק ופרק נרמזו לתועלת המלמדים ותלמידיהם‬.‫אלהים את האדם עד שוב ישראל מגלות בבל ירושלימה‬ ‫ ונוסף עליו קצור כללי דקדוק קריאת לשון עבר למען יבינו המלמדים ויספרו‬.‫רמזי מדות טבות ומוסר השכל‬ ‫ לתועלת נערי בני ישראל‬.‫ וגם הנהגות טובות אשר יתנהג בהם הנער כל היום מקומ ו עד שכבו‬.‫לתלמידיהם‬ ‫ומוריהם מנחה היא נתונה מאת אוהביהם‬. Prag, 5556 [1796]. BÜDINGER, Moses Mordechai: ‫ דרך אמונה‬Der Weg des Glaubens, oder kleine Bibel: enthaltend einen vollständigen Auszug aus den Büchern der heiligen Schrift; zunächst für israelitische Frauen und Mädchen, und mit Rücksicht auf den Unterricht in der Religion und Sittenlehre bearbeitet. Stuttgart: Löflund, 1823. HACOHEN, Ran: Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible. German-Jewish Reception of Biblical Criticism. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2010 (Studia Judaica; 56). — : Die jüdische Auseinandersetzung mit der “Höheren Bibelkritik”. In: Die Entdeckung des Christentums in der Wissenschaft des Judentums/ed. Görke K. Hasselhoff. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010 (Studia Judaica; 54), 63–100. EICHHORN, Johann Gottfried: Nachricht. Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen Litteratur 4 (1776), 393. JOST, Isaak Markus: Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage, nach den Quellen bearbeitet. Dritter Theil. Berlin: Schlesinger, 1822. — : Neue Jugend-Bibel, enthaltend die religiösen und geschichtlichen Urkunden der Hebräer, mit sorgfältiger Auswahl für die Jugend, übersetzt und erläutert. T. 1: Die fünf Bücher Moses. Berlin: Trautwein, 1823. — : Practische englische Sprachlehre für Schulen und Privatunterricht. Berlin: Carl Friedrich Amelang, 1826 (published again in 1832 and in 1843). — : Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage, nach den Quellen bearbeitet. Neunter und letzter Theil. Berlin: Schlesinger, 1828. — : Theoretisch-practisches Handbuch zum Unterrichte im deutschen Styl mit sehr vielen Übungs-Beispielen. Zunächst für höhere Bürgerschulen, mittlere Classen der Gymnasien, Erziehungs-Anstalten und Privat-Unterricht. Berlin: Carl Friedrich Amelang, 1835. — : Anweisung zum anständigen und sittsamen Verhalten für die Schuljugend, herausgegeben von einem Verein von Lehrern. Zunächst für die Schüler und Schülerinnen der Israelitischen Bürger- und Realschule zu Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt/Main, 1838. — : Vor einem halben Jahrhundert. Sippurim III. Prag 1854, 141–166. SCHWABACHER, Heimann: Das Geschichtliche der Bibel, mit moralischen Anmerkungen und Aufsätzen, ein Lesebuch für die reifere Jugend. Fürth: Volkharts seel. Witwe, 1822. VENUTI, Lawrence: The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London/New York: Routledge, 1995. WOLF, Immanuel: Ueber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums. Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums 1,1 (1923), 1–24. ZUNZ, Leopold: Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg, Inspektor der Samsonschen Freischule zu Wolfenbüttel Ein Denkmal für Angehörige und Freunde. Braunschweig: Gebr. Meyer, 1854. — : Mein erster Unterricht in Wolfenbüttel. Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur (1937), 131–140.

Michah Gottlieb

Orthodoxy and the Orient Samson Raphael Hirsch on the Location of Judaism Recent studies have explored the ambiguous place of the Orient for nineteenthcentury German Jews. Many German Jews denied the oriental character of Judaism by portraying it as an occidental religion fully in harmony with modern German social and religious mores, while others embraced Judaism’s oriental character.1 In this paper I will explore the attitude of the leading ideological exponent of German Neo-Orthodoxy Samson Raphael Hirsch to the question of whether or not Judaism is an oriental religion. I will argue that at times Hirsch seems to embrace the oriental heritage of Judaism as a way of resisting reform attempts to remake Judaism in an occidental German image. But at other times Hirsch rejects the designation of Judaism as oriental for two reasons: first because he sees orientalizing Judaism as a way of denying its rationality and hence its truth claims, and second because he sees it as a way of historicizing Judaism thereby calling into question the contemporary validity of halakhah. Instead, Hirsch describes Judaism as neither oriental nor occidental.

1 Herder’s Poetic Biblical Orient The work of Johann Gottfried Herder provides an important context for understanding Hirsch’s attitude towards Judaism and the Orient. From 1782–1783, Herder published Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (“On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry”).2 Herder’s book is a defense of the Hebrew Bible against those who dismiss || 1 The literature discussing this question is vast and growing. For a good overview of some of the important issues see ASCHHEIM, The Modern Jewish Experience and the Entangled Webs of Orientalism, 21–38; WITTLER, Orient. Ivan Kalmar and Derek Penslar’s path-breaking book Orientalism and the Jews does not focus on German Jews per se, but explores the complex valence of the Orient for Jews across time and place. Kalmar and Penslar’s introduction to that book is especially insightful. See KALMAR/PENSLAR, Orientalism and the Jews, xiii–xl. A notable recent contribution focusing on German Jewry’s relation to medieval Sephard, which was often understood as “oriental” is EFRON, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. 2 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 2 vols.

https://doi.org/9783110592672-004

54 | Michah Gottlieb

it as the work of a “savage nation.”3 The first part of the book takes the form of a dialogue between a youth Alciphron who denigrates the Hebrew Bible and his interlocutor Euthyphron who defends it.4 Herder tells us that Alciphron’s dismissive attitude is not unusual, but rather reflects “such sentiments as are uttered by the public with its hundred heads.”5 Alciphron opens the dialogue by complaining about having been forced to study Hebrew, which he calls “a poor and barbarous language” and “the torment of my childhood.”6 He specifically complains about the poverty of Hebrew’s aesthetic qualities. His criticisms include that Hebrew verb tenses are “unfixed and uncertain”; that Hebrew has scarcely any adjectives; and that the parallelism of Hebrew poetry is “monotonous” and “satisfies the ear imperfectly” due to its lacking all meter.7 Euthyphron responds that Alciphron’s complaints are too hasty reflecting a lack of proper understanding of Hebrew. He places much of the blame on Alciphron’s inadequate education: “shall we permit ourselves to hate a science, which we have had the misfortune to learn at first under a bad form?”8 This critique follows Herder’s programmatic remarks in the introduction where he criticizes those who arrogantly denigrate the Hebrew Bible without properly seeking to understand it.9 For Herder, before judging another culture one should try to understand it sympathetically by situating it within its historical context.10

|| 3 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 2; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 26. 4 The work was originally supposed to consist of three parts. The first part was published in 1782 and takes the form of a dialogue. The second part was published in 1783 and the dialogue form was dropped. Herder never completed the third part and only a few pages of it were published. See ibid 2, 309–312. 5 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, xiii; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 21. 6 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 2; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 25–26. 7 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 6; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 28. 8 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 3; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 26. 9 Herder writes “before one can say much either of the beauty or deformity of an object he must first learn to understand it.” HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, viii–ix; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 18. 10 As Euthyphron puts it, “In order to judge of a nation, we must live in their time, in their own country, must adopt their modes of thinking and feeling, must see how they lived, how they were educated, what scenes they looked upon, what were the objects of their affection and passion, the character of their atmosphere, their skies, the structure of their organs, their dances and their music. All this too we must learn to think of not as strangers or enemies, but as their brothers and compatriots,” HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 5–6; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 27–28. Herder had already offered this historicist critique of the Enlightenment nearly a decade earlier in his 1774 Yet Another Philosophy of History, 41–44.

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For Herder, history reveals that the Hebrews were a pastoral people of the Orient who lived close to nature. The Bible was the literary expression of this people and must therefore be understood within its “oriental light” (“morgenländisches Licht”).11 This oriental character of the Hebrews was expressed in their outstanding poetic capacities and Herder sets as his task explicating the “spirit” (“Geist”) of the Bible which he calls the Hebrews’ “national poetry” (“Nationalpoesie”).12 He concludes that the Bible is distinguished by being written in a vivid, action-filled language full of “imagery and sensuous feeling” (“Bild und Empfindung”) that moves the heart, suffusing it with passion.13 For Herder, like other oriental peoples the Hebrews’ poetic virtuosity was not matched in the intellectual realm.14 One would look in vain to the Hebrew Bible for sophisticated metaphysical or scientific concepts. Indeed, the Bible is replete with “proto-concepts (‘Urideen’) which they [the Hebrews] received as a legacy from the most ancient times.”15 In other words, the Bible is filled with mythological, oriental ideas that lack rational sense. As Euthyphron remarks, “for an abstract thinker the Hebrew language may not be best.”16 In 1836, Hirsch pseudonymously published his Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (“Nineteen Letters on Judaism”) in which he defends Judaism through a fictional correspondence between Benjamin, a youth alienated from Judaism and Naphtali a young rabbi who wins Benjamin back to Jewish observance. While it is commonly asserted that Hirsch modeled the Neunzehn Briefe on the works of Maimonides or on Judah Halevi’s medieval dialogue the the Kuzari, it is clear that Herder’s Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie also exerted an important influence.17

|| 11 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, v; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 14. 12 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, iv; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 14. 13 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, iv, 12–13; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 14, 32–33. 14 Herder makes a disjunction between poetry and logic writing that “Poetry is not addressed to the understanding alone but primarily and chiefly to the feelings.” HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 24; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 41. 15 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, iv; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 13. 16 HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, 9; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 30. 17 Bernard Drachman compares the Neunzehn Briefe to Maimonides’ “Guide of the Perplexed” though admitting that the two works are “very different in form and content.” See DRACHMAN, Samson Raphael Hirsch, xvii–xviii. Noah Rosenbloom argues that Hirsch composed the Neunzehn Briefe as a modern version of Maimonides’ “Epistle to Yemen.” Just as Maimonides sought to resolve the religious dilemmas of his southern brethren (in Hebrew the word for “Yemen” is “Teiman,” which means “south”) so Hirsch sought to resolve the religious dilemmas of the northern German Jews as indicated by the fact that the Hebrew title of the book can be vocalized as “Igrot Tzafon” (“Letters of the North”). See ROSENBLOOM, Tradition in an Age of Reform, 125.

56 | Michah Gottlieb

Like Alciphron, Benjamin complains about the aesthetic poverty of the “formless and tasteless writings of the Old Testament.”18 And like Euthypron, Hirsch’s mouthpiece Naphtali responds that Benjamin’s criticisms reflect his inadequate education and his failure to properly understand Judaism.19 Benjamin follows maskilim who criticize Judaism because it fails to promote the “happiness and perfection” (‘Glückseligkeit und Vollkommenheit’) of its adherents.20 His complaints include that the Torah commands social isolation which engenders suspicion and mistrust from Gentiles; that its laws “bend the spirit to submissiveness” which elicits ridicule; that it forbids cultivating the visual arts; that its dogmas of faith inhibit freedom of inquiry; and more generally

|| Abraham Geiger was the first to note the significance of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari for the Neunzehn Briefe. The Kuzari is a dialogue between a pagan Khazar and a rabbi who convinces the king to convert to Judaism. Geiger also mentions the importance of Herder for the Neunzehn Briefe, though he does not elaborate in what way or even what work of Herder’s is important. See GEIGER, Recension der Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (erster Artikel), 353. In the preface to Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie Herder speaks of Halevi’s Kuzari as an inspiration for his own work. After recalling that Plato, Shaftesbury, Diderot, and Lessing all used the dialogue form, Herder writes: “My model for most parts of the dialogue was not Plato, but the book of Corsi [that is Halevi’s Kuzari – MG].” See HERDER, Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 1, xii; IDEM, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry 1, 20. Herder explains that Halevi was more of a model than Plato because unlike Plato Halevi did not develop multiple characters nor did he have his characters come to recognize truth themselves. Rather, Halevi produced a didactic work with two main characters where one instructs the other convincing him of the truth. Herder employs this format with Euthyphron instructing Alciphron and it is also the form of Hirsch’s Neunzehn Briefe where the first letter is a complaint by Benjamin and the next eighteen letters are Naphtali’s teachings to Benjamin whom he wins back to Jewish observance. Despite the similarities between the Neunzehn Briefe, the Kuzari, and Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie, the Neunzehn Briefe differs from these two works in an important respect. While the Kuzari and Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie both employ dialogue form, the Neunzehn Briefe takes the form of a correspondence. German writers commonly used the literary device of an epistolory exchange in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the most famous examples of this was Friedrich Schiller’s 1795 Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (“On the Aesthetic Education of Man”). On Schiller’s importance for Hirsch see below p. 61. 18 HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 1, 3; IDEM, The Nineteen Letters about Judaism, Letter 1, 5. I will cite from the Elias edition but frequently emend the translation. 19 For Naphtali, Benjamin’s mistaken concept of Judaism derived from four sources: inadequate education in the home, unqualified Polish teachers, misinformed Christian writers and Jewish reformers. See HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 1, 1–2; IDEM, The Nineteen Letters, Letter 1, 34. 20 See HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 1, 2; IDEM, The Nineteen Letters, Letter 1, 4.

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that the Torah forbids all pleasure.21 Before addressing the substance of these charges, Naphtali makes a general observation that takes a page from Herder. He criticizes Benjamin for judging Judaism by whether or not it promotes “happiness and perfection.” Since these criteria are foreign to Judaism it is unfair to measure Judaism by them. For Naphtali, intellectual honesty demands that one understand Judaism by its own lights before judging it. As he puts it “leave aside the yardstick (‘Maß’) and first obtain an idea of the object we wish to measure (‘messen’): Judaism according to its destiny and teachings (‘nach Geschick und Lehre’).”22 Naphtali contends that this requires reading the Torah in the original Hebrew “according to the spirit (‘Geist’)” of this language, a phrase which clearly recalls the title of Herder’s book.23 While in the Neunzehn Briefe, Hirsch does not mention the occidental-oriental divide, two years later in his 1838 work Naphtulei Naphtali he uses scathing sarcasm to attack Reformers for idolizing occidental values and discarding anything in Judaism that smacks of the Orient. This lengthy passage from the work is worth citing in full:24 The nineteenth century! The blessed century of light and freedom! How fortunate we are to walk in your spirit! You have broken the chains of night; your rays have given light and life where for thousands of years night and tomb-like existence was housed. Your more beautiful victory has been for Judaism—and it is now! Look at Judaism. For centuries it has been trapped in the bond of rigid pharasaic forms (“pharisäischer Formenstarrheit”); for centuries it has forged a chain of simple-minded human dogma; for centuries under persecution

|| 21 See HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 1, 2–3; IDEM, The Nineteen Letters, Letter 1, 4–5. 22 HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 2, 7; IDEM, The Nineteen Letters, Letter 2, 15. For Hirsch, maskilim and reformers were not the first to err in judging Judaism by concepts external to it. Centuries earlier Maimonides had deemed intellectual perfection the goal of life and explained the purpose of the Torah’s commandments as furthering this end. Hirsch criticizes this approach writing that Maimonides’ conception of life was “Arab-Greek” and that he approached Judaism “from without” (“von außen”). See HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 18, 89; IDEM, Nineteen Letters, Letter 18, 265. A similar critique was mounted in the anonymous work Der Bibel’sche Orient whose author complained that “Maimonides with the help of Aristotelian speculation modeled all that was genuinely oriental in the Bible on contemporary [ideas] (more hanebukhim—the Guide of the Perplexed).” Der Bibel’sche Orient also called The Guide of the Perplexed “a book which contradicts the true Mosaic-religious spirit (Mosaisch-religiösen Geiste) and was publically burned by the contemporary Franco-Jewish school as a heretical book.” See Der Bibel’sche Orient 2, 53. Hirsch was very familiar with this work. See below, note 38. 23 HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 2, 8; IDEM, The Nineteen Letters, Letter 2, 16. 24 HIRSCH, Naphtulei Naphtali, 1; IDEM, The Collected Writings 9, 5. I have emended the translation in several places; the emphasis is mine.

58 | Michah Gottlieb

and misery it has resisted any connection to European civilization. And now it feels the rays of the nineteenth century. What oppression and force could not achieve, your beneficence has brought about! You succeeded in melting the thousand-year ice of rigid forms. In your spirit of the times, we free ourselves from the chains of pharasaic interpretations; we boldly step across restrictions for actions and enjoyment sustained by a medieval spirit (“mittelalterlicher Geist”): we brush off the oriental dust of Palestine (“orientalischen Staub von Palästina”). And now, with tails and tie, poetry and logic, aesthetics and dogmatic theology, politics and drama, we enjoy foods that we had never tasted and intoxicate ourselves with european-classical thoughts from Latin and Greek becoming prelates and smiths. We are no longer an old-fashioned people from Asia (“altväterische Volk aus Asien”) – we are British and Frenchmen, Belgians and Germans! Century of the constitution, Judaism will also become constitutional. Divine Moses from Egypt – so long as we were immature (“unmündig”), your laws held total sway over us. But now we have come of age, your laws are only suggestions and we can reject whatever does not conform with our understanding and conviction.

Hirsch upbraids reformers for accepting enlightened Christian views of Judaism as an ossified, pharisaic medieval religion. He thinks that Jewish reformers judge unfairly when they contrast primitive, decrepit, oriental Judaism originating in Asia with modern, vital, occidental Europe whose culture derives from classical Greece and Rome. For Hirsch, reformers’ seeking to occidentalize Judaism by discarding any elements they see reflecting oriental mores signals both an arrogant, prejudiced approach towards Judaism and a distasteful, sycophantic attitude towards modern European and classical Greco-Roman culture. By deploying Herder’s historicist critique of enlightenment against maskilim and reformers, Hirsch seemingly embraces Herder’s emphasis on Judaism’s oriental roots. But elsewhere he rejects Herder’s contention that the Bible contains primitive, fantastical ideas due to its being a poetic oriental work.25 In the introduction to his 1859 lectures on the Psalms, Hirsch writes:26 We are so accustomed to consider everything that comes from the Orient under the colorful mantel of “oriental” (“orientalische”) fantasy and to see the oriental as above all characterized by bombastic, hyperbolic, ornate, unnatural and fantastical teachings. No concept is less suitable to guide us in reading our holy divine scriptures than our viewing them as oriental (“Orientalischen”) in their temporal and geographical origin. There is scarcely another body of writings, which gives so little room and nourishment to fantasy as do the books of our Holy Scripture. They are directed to the understanding and heart (“Verstand

|| 25 Geiger observes that Hirsch differs from Herder’s “fundamental viewpoints” (Grundansichten) in important respects. See GEIGER, Recension der Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (erster Artikel), 353. 26 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 1, 325; IDEM, Collected Writings 4, 260.

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und Herz”) […] They know no flowery speech and image-rich oriental narratives, no fantastical poetical expressions hovering between dreaming and waking, no psychedelic images.

Hirsch agrees with Herder that the Bible is a powerful poetic work that moves the heart. But while Herder sees the Bible as a primitive oriental work that addresses the heart and not the mind, for Hirsch the Bible addresses both heart and mind, seeking to unite them by teaching truths about God, humanity, and the people of Israel in emotionally stirring ways.27 While many German scholars stressed the oriental character of the Bible, not all agreed with Herder that the Bible contained primitive metaphysical ideas. Less than a decade after Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie appeared, Friedrich Schiller published an important essay that stressed both the oriental character of the Bible and the rationality of its metaphysical teachings.

2 Schiller’s Egyptian Moses In 1790, Schiller published an essay called Die Sendung Moses (“The Mission of Moses”). Drawing on Karl Leonard Reinhold’s recently published Die Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste religiöse Freymaurerey (“The Hebrew Mysteries or the Oldest Form of Freemasonry”) and anticipating elements of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism by a century and a half, Schiller argued that Moses was a Hebrew raised as an Egyptian priest who was trained in the mysteries of Egyptian religion.28 The Egyptian mysteries included the idea that there existed a single supreme being and that polytheism and magic were false. As these ideas contradicted popular Egyptian religion and would never be accepted by the populace, the Egyptian priests guarded them as mysteries, which they transmitted through hieroglyphics. The priests required individuals to undergo initiation ceremonies including purification rites and circumcision before teaching them these mysteries. No one was permitted to enter the holy temple in Serapis who did not have the name of God, J-Ha-Ho inscribed on his forehead.29

|| 27 While Hirsch is committed to the Bible’s metaphysical and historical teachings being true, he does not insist that the Torah teaches scientific truth. See his commentary on Psalms 19:7 where he writes that “it is not the aim of Holy Scripture to teach astronomy, cosmogony and physics, but rather to orient human beings to the fulfillment of their life task within the framework of their station in life.” See HIRSCH, Die Psalmen, 109, s.v. tekufato; IDEM, The Psalms, 138. 28 SCHILLER, The Mission of Moses, 4–5. 29 Ibidem, 6–7.

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According to Schiller, in Moses’s time unscrupulous individuals had penetrated the ranks of the Egyptian priests. They claimed that the hieroglyphics had magical powers and gradually even the priests came to forget that the mysteries were symbols of a single divine being.30 Born a Hebrew, Moses’s birth mother had informed him of his heritage. As the Hebrews languished under slavery Moses felt increasingly bitter at their suffering. One day he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and killed the Egyptian. When Moses realized that he had been seen he fled to the desert where he encountered an “Arab Bedouin” (“arabischen Beduinen”) named Jethro whom he served.31 In the desert, Moses fully returned to his Hebrew heritage and decided to free his people. But he realized that to do so he needed to instill in them a sense of hope, confidence, heroism, and enthusiasm. The Hebrews believed in a tribal God from their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses, however, wished to teach the people the truth about God so he linked this tribal God with the Egyptian idea of a single, all-powerful deity whom he called “Jehova.” Moses taught the Hebrews that this God commanded them to serve Him through rituals. The rituals Moses taught the Hebrews were those he had learned as an Egyptian priest. In this way, Moses sought to turn the Hebrews into a “kingdom of priests.”32 Thirty one years after Schiller published Die Sendung Moses, an anonymous text titled Der Bibel’sche Orient (“The Biblical Orient”) appeared. Its author or at least co-author was Isaac Bernays.33 Elaborating Schiller’s ideas, Bernays contended that the Egyptians had a mystery religion that was hidden until the Neoplatonists revealed it in the Ptolemaic period. But Moses had received this wisdom from Egypt centuries earlier and transmitted it to the Hebrews making it the foundation of their religion.34

|| 30 Ibidem, 8. Schiller’s theory of the corruption of hieroglyphics recalls elements of Mendelssohn’s account which he presented seven years earlier in his 1783 Jerusalem. 31 Ibidem, 9. 32 Ibidem, 11. See Exodus 19:6. For a history of the image of Moses as an Egyptian see ASSMANN, Moses the Egyptian and IDEM, Religio Duplex. 33 Scholars dispute the authorship of this work. Hans Bach and Isaac Heinemann argue that Bernays was the author or at least co-author. See BACH, Der Bibel’sche Orient und sein Verfasser; HEINEMANN, The Relationship Between Samson Raphael Hirsch and his Teacher Isaac Bernays, esp. 69–77. Rivka Horwitz argues that a Christian scholar J. A. Kalb authored the work, but that Bernays assisted him. See HORWITZ, On Kabbala and Myth in 19th Century Germany, esp. 139–156. 34 See BACH, Der Bibel’sche Orient und sein Verfasser 2, 24–25; HORWITZ, On Kabbala and Myth in 19th Century Germany, 173.

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Both Schiller and Bernays were significant figures for Hirsch. Schiller was one of Hirsch’s heroes whom he lovingly honored in a speech delivered to his students on the centennial of Schiller’s birth in 1859. In that speech, Hirsch waxed poetic proclaiming:35 […] there is no other ‘sage among the nations’ for whom our sages would have rather braided a garland of homage than Schiller. Indeed, they would have welcomed Schiller as their own and have recognized his words as familiar.

Bernays was appointed rabbi of Hirsch’s synagogue in Hamburg about the time of Hirsch’s Bar-Mitzvah. He became Hirsch’s mentor and exerted a profound influence on him. In the Neunzehn Briefe, Hirsch emphasized his intellectual independence but nevertheless acknowledged his debt to Bernays writing:36 I had to find the road to the reconstruction of Judaism as a science (‘Wissenschaft’) almost entirely by myself through my own insight […] only one star (‘Stern’) shone before me to guide the way in the beginning.

Most scholars agree that the “star” that Hirsch is referring to is Bernays.37 Hirsch was likewise familiar with Der Bibel’sche Orient and in 1867 was even accused of having appropriated many of its ideas without attribution in his commentary on the Pentateuch, a charge that Hirsch denied.38 But while Hirsch had enormous respect for Schiller and Bernays, he completely rejected their contention that Moses had built Judaism out of Egyptian wisdom.39 In his 1867 essay Von den Beziehungen der allgemeinen Bildungselemente zu der speziell jüdischen Bildung (“On the Relation of Elements of General

|| 35 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 6, 311; IDEM, Collected Writings 9, 140–141. I have altered the English translation considerably; the emphasis is Hirsch’s. 36 HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 19, 106; IDEM, Nineteen Letters, Letter 19, 333. 37 See HEINEMANN, Samson Raphael Hirsch, 30–31; HORWITZ, On Kabbala and Myth in 19th Century Germany, 159. Noah Rosenbloom disagrees. See ROSENBLOOM, Tradition in an Age of Reform, 56–58. Geiger identified the “star” as the author of Der Bibelsche’ Orient. See GEIGER, Recension der Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (dritter Artikel), 77–78. 38 See KIRCHHEIM, Die neue Exegetenschule, 17. Hirsch acknowledged that he was familiar with Der Bibel’sche Orient but denied that he had appropriated its ideas. See HIRSCH, Die Distellese des Herrn Kirchheim, 133. Thirty years earlier, Geiger had claimed that Hirsch drew his speculative Hebrew etymology in the Neunzehn Briefe from Der Bibel’sche Orient though he acknowledged some differences between the two approaches. See GEIGER, Recension der Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (dritter Artikel), 82. 39 Geiger criticizes Hirsch for not following Der Bibel’sche Orient in applying a historical approach to Torah. See ibidem, 77–78.

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Education for Jewish Education”) Hirsch explicitly criticized Schiller’s essay writing:40 Consider the fables about the ‘Mission of Moses’ (der “Sendung Moses”) in which Moses is presented as a disciple of Egyptian priests and according to which the ‘mosaic legislation’ is merely an elaboration of the priestly wisdom of Egypt. Would not the pitiful untruth of this notion be grasped if one compares the infinite difference between the complete denial of individual freedom in the [Egyptian] caste system with the rule of law (“Rechtstaat”) in the Sinaitic legislation?

Hirsch argued that Schiller’s approach was ahistorical. Moses could not have imparted Egyptian wisdom to the Israelites because their legal systems were so different. While Egyptian society was built on a hierarchical caste system, Judaism was built on Sinaitic law which enshrined justice and equality. In his commentary on Genesis, Hirsch offered a second criticism of Schiller’s essay. Genesis 47 recounts that Joseph bought all the land owned by the Egyptians for Pharaoh during the seven years of famine, but did not buy the land of the Egyptian priests. Hirsch comments:41 Here we see the exact opposite of that hypothesis concerning the so-called ‘Mission of Moses’ (‘Sendung Mosis’) according to which Moses learned ‘his’ political and religious wisdom from the Egyptians.

Hirsch’s point is that since the Egyptian priests were landowners indeed the only landowners aside from Pharaoh since the time of Joseph, then had Moses learned his political wisdom from the Egyptian priests, he would surely have made the Jewish priests (kohanim) landowners. In fact, Moses did just the opposite making them landless. In mounting these criticisms, Hirsch shows his deep discomfort with Schiller’s attempt to historicize Judaism by showing its debt to oriental, Egyptian ideas, which he saw as undermining the timeless revealed nature of the Torah. Hirsch gave a classic formulation of his rejection of historicizing Judaism in his commentary to Exodus 19: 10–13, which is worth quoting in full:42

|| 40 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 2, 464; IDEM, Collected Writings 7, 97. 41 See HIRSCH, Der Pentateuch 1, 593, (Kommentar zu Genesis 47:22); IDEM, The Hirsch Chumash 1, 841, (commentary on Genesis 47:22). Also see Hirsch’s criticism of Die Sendung Moses in his “Schiller Address.” See HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 6, 317; IDEM, Collected Writings 9, 148. 42 HIRSCH, Der Pentateuch 2, 220 (Kommentar zu Exodus 19:10–13); IDEM, The Hirsch Chumash, 321 (commentary to Exodus 19:10–13). Hirsch’s emphasis.

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Jewish Law is the only system of laws that was not produced by the people whose constitution it was intended to be. Judaism is the only ‘religion’ that did not spring from the hearts of the people who find in it the spiritual basis of their lives […]. All other ‘religions’ and codes of law originate in the hearts of humanity of a given era: they express nothing else than their convictions about God, human destiny, and their relations to God and to one another held by a given society in a particular period of time. Hence all other religions and codes of law and likewise all moments of culture, science, art, and morals originating temporally from the hearts of men progress (‘fortschreiten’) over time. For by their nature and origin they are nothing but the expressions of humanity reached at a certain stage of human development. Not so the Jewish ‘religion’ and Jewish law. They do not stem from beliefs held by human beings at one period or another. They do not contain time-bound human beliefs about God and matters divine and human. Rather, they are God-given and through them men are told by God’s will what their conception should be about God and things divine, and above all about humanity and human things.

For Hirsch, setting Judaism within its oriental context is problematic even if one asserts that Judaism contains rational metaphysical truths. For in considering Judaism as emerging within a specific historical context one naturally comes to regard it as a human creation that is the product of its time, which misunderstands the eternal nature of the Torah. Hirsch was acutely aware that reformers historicized Judaism stressing its oriental context to justify changing halakhah. This clearly emerges in his dispute with Abraham Geiger over the status of women in Judaism.

3 Geiger on the Oriental Position of Women in Judaism In 1837, Geiger published his essay Die Stellung des weiblichen Geschlechtes in dem Judenthume unserer Zeit (“The Position of Women in the Judaism of our Time”). He opens the essay by lamenting the “unnatural and backward” (“Unnatürliches und Zeitwidriges”) state of women in contemporary Judaism arguing that a “speedy and sufficient change of several existing customs” is necessary.43 To illustrate the problem, Geiger surveys the status of women in the Bible, Talmud, and medieval rabbinic writings. He begins his discussion of the biblical view of women as follows:44

|| 43 GEIGER, Die Stellung des weiblichen Geschlechtes in dem Judenthume unserer Zeit, 1. 44 Ibidem, 2.

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Produced from the bosom of the Orient (‘Schoße des Orients’), biblical Judaism contains many of the generally accepted provisions about the position of women there, but improved them.

For Geiger, the Bible reflects an oriental view of women, though it sought to ameliorate it. The Bible’s oriental laws include: allowing a father to sell his unmarried daughters as slaves; allowing him to give his daughters in marriage without seeking their consent; permitting polygamy to men but not to women; and allowing men to divorce their wives at will but not allowing women to initiate divorce. But Geiger stresses that the Bible ameliorates the oriental approach to women in several ways: it prohibits forcing women into harems and rules that even a king must limit his number of wives; it includes laws against mistreating wives; it speaks positively of women who give sound advice to their husbands; and it portrays some women as occupying important leadership roles such as the judge Deborah and the prophetess Hulda.45 Geiger concludes that a battle rages within Judaism between the “oriental view” (“morgenländische Anschauung”) and the “spirit of justice and equality of all humanity” (“Geiste der Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit aller Menschen”).46 In the Bible justice and equality do not achieve full victory but progress continues in later Jewish tradition, which puts limits on biblical law. For example, the Talmud curtails the father’s authority to sell his daughter into slavery or marry off his minor daughter and allows a minor daughter to invalidate a marriage initiated by her father by protesting it (mi’un). Still the Talmud does not absolutely negate any biblical laws. As Geiger forcefully puts it:47 All provisions found in Bible [about women] remain in force as unerased remnants of the oriental worldview (‘morgenländische Betrachtungsweise’).

Geiger notes that there were further improvements in the position of women with the ordinances of Rabbenu Gershom in the tenth century which forbade polygamy and divorcing a woman against her will. But major inequities remain and women’s position has stagnated in the eight hundred years since Gershom.48 Geiger laments:49

|| 45 Ibidem, 2–3. 46 Ibidem, 3. 47 Ibidem, 4. 48 Ibidem, 5. 49 Ibidem, 8.

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Poor German women! You still languish under such bonds of the restricted oriental view (‘orientalisch beschränkter Ansicht’).

In 1864, Hirsch published an essay called Das jüdische Weib (“The Jewish Woman”) that responds to several of Geiger’s arguments. At the beginning of the essay, Hirsch makes clear that orientalizing is at the root of many who criticize of Judaism’s view of women:50 [There is a tendency] to interpret Judaism in terms of all notions that have taken root among modern Europeans as regards oriental mores and relationships (“orientalische Sitten und Verhältnisse”) […] [In fact] the Orient may have been the cradle (“Wiege”) of the Jewish nation (“jüdischen Nation”), but not of its mores and ways of life. It is these mores and ways of life emerging directly from the divine law that made the Jews a nation formerly of the Orient into a specifically differentiated nation as we see in Europe today […] Nothing has suffered more from such distortions than the present-day representations and judgments concerning the Jewish woman. Even though every page of the Jewish Bible, every word of Jewish tradition, every leaf of Jewish history, every Jewish home, past and present speaks unambiguously to the contrary. The opinions formed about the position of women in the Orient (“der Stellung des Weibes in Orient”) have been exploited to help spread the most baseless representations about the degradation and subordination of women in Israel. The modern era is glorified above all for striving to redeem Jewish women from oriental yoke of degradation. Is this not an ingenious bait designed to excite female Jewish souls to join the cause of Jewish reform?

For Hirsch, reformers play on European prejudices concerning the Orient to win Jews, especially Jewish women to their cause. But for Hirsch these criticisms rest on a fundamental misunderstanding. While the Jewish nation emerged in the geographical Orient, its “mores and way of life” cannot be deemed oriental since they were revealed by the eternal God. As such, they express an eternally valid, completely moral view of women that need not be reformed. What needs to be reformed is people’s misconceptions about the Torah’s teachings on women.51 In his essay, Hirsch seeks to rectify these misconceptions.

|| 50 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 161; IDEM, Collected Works 8, 84. 51 Hirsch already expresses this general approach in the Neunzehn Briefe where he appropriates the motto of Reform writing, “Therefore: Reform! Let us work with all our powers, with exertion of all goodness and nobility to reach this ideal. Reform!” But Hirsch made clear that Reform did not involve changing Judaism, but rather changing how Jews understood its teachings writing: “We Jews need reform, through renewed attention to Judaism, intellectually comprehended and actualized with all powers of actions. The eternal set up as a model for all times by the God of all ages does not need reform, as advocated by the children of our time who desire an easier life. The Torah seeks to elevate us to its heights: should we drag it down to us?” See HIRSCH, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Brief 17, 83–84; IDEM, Nineteen Letters, Letter 17, 241–242.

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For Hirsch, while orientals generally consider women inferior to men and as sexual objects for men to use as they see fit, the Torah grants women equal dignity. At the root of Hirsch’s apology is his interpretation of the first reference to woman in the Torah. Genesis 1:27–28 states “God formed the human being in His image, in the image of God He created him; man and woman He created both.”52 Hirsch notes that the Bible begins with the singular stating that God created “the human being”53 in His image and then moves to the plural stating that “man and woman He created both.” For Hirsch, this is highly significant for it implies that “man and woman together compose the concept of human being” and hence are “completely equal in dignity.”54 But equality for Hirsch does not mean that men and women have the same roles. For Hirsch, male and female roles are defined by their place within the family as husbands and fathers and wives and mothers. Reflecting common nineteenth century German bourgeois ideals, Hirsch explains that the husband’s role is to amass wealth, protect the family, represent it to the outside world, as well to provide its general moral and religious direction as the bearer of tradition.55 By contrast, the wife receives her vocation in life from her husband and her role is to deploy and administer the income brought home by the husband, work within the home to increase the family’s prosperity through her own labor (primarily needlework), and to morally elevate her husband and children.56 For Hirsch, the Torah’s distance from the oriental view of women is clear from the fact that the woman is no sexual plaything of her husband. And just as she is bound to be monogamous and faithful to her husband, so he has the same responsibility towards her:57

|| 52 I follow Hirsch’s translation of the verse. 53 Hirsch translates the Hebrew word “Adam” as “den Menschen.” 54 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 162; IDEM, Collected Works 8, 85. 55 Good discussions of bourgeois German constructions of gender and the family in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries include FREVERT, Women in German History, 11–72; HAUSEN, Family and role division. 56 See HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 162–167, 201–202; IDEM, Collected Works 8, 85–90, 128– 129. Also see Hirsch’s earlier discussion of men and women’s different roles in his 1837 work Horev. See IDEM, Horev: Versuche über Jissroels Pflichten in der Zerstreuung, chapter 80, section 527, 522; chapter 81, section 540, 532–533; ibidem, chapter 80, section 527, 394; chapter 81, section 540, 401. 57 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 194–195; IDEM, Collected Works 8, 122–123. Hirsch cites a variety of biblical verses in support of this including Proverbs 2:17, 18:22 19:14, 5:18–22; Malachi 2:13–16; Ecclesiastes 9:9; Psalms 128: 1–4; and Ezekiel 24:16. He does not, however, address the fact that the Torah permits polygamy for men but not for women.

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[The Torah] expects the husband to see in his wife everything that mortals can desire [including] life, fortune, joy, blessing […] and it expects him to be so fully absorbed in his love of his wife […] that he does not have eyes for anyone else. [The Torah] sharply censures a husband’s unfaithfulness.

Commenting on the poem “A Woman of Valor” (Proverbs 31:10–31), Hirsch rejects the idea that Judaism has anything to do with the “oriental” subjugation of women:58 Had Scripture preserved to us from the past of our women nothing more than this one selection, it would have opened to us a striking view into the position of woman (“Stellung des Weibes”) in the Jewish people sufficient to demolish all the fables which with inconceivable stupidity have been and are being propagated about the oriental enslavement and degradation (“orientalischer Knechtung und Herabwürdigung”) of Jewish women in antiquity.

Hirsch’s also addresses the charge that the Torah holds an “oriental” view of women in several places in his Pentateuch commentary. For example, in his commentary on Genesis 24:67, he rejects the idea that the Torah regards women as sex objects. The verse states that Isaac brought Rebecca into the tent of his mother and that Isaac’s marriage to Rebecca helped console him after his mother’s death. Hirsch comments:59 A forty year old man inconsolable over the death of his elderly mother finds consolation in his wife! This is the position of the Jewish woman! What woeful drivel to seek to impose oriental sensuality and harem conditions (‘orientalischer Sinnlichkeit und Haremwirtschaft’)” on Jewish marital life.

4 Judaism and Greece as Borderline Civilizations While in general Hirsch denies that Judaism is either occidental or oriental because of its metaphysical origin as the timeless revelation of God, in at least one

|| 58 HIRSCH, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 201; IDEM, Collected Works 8, 128. 59 HIRSCH, Der Pentateuch 1, 387–388 (Kommentar zu Genesis 24:67); IDEM, The Hirsch Chumash 1, 542 (commentary to Genesis 24:67); Hirsch’s emphasis. Hirsch similarly sees the Torah’s high regard for women reflected in the fact that Jacob worked fourteen years in order to marry Rachel. Hirsch writes: “These [fourteen years] show how the Jewish husband regards his wife, and silence all the fantasies about the oriental degradation of the Jewish woman [Hirsch’s emphasis].” See HIRSCH, Der Pentateuch 1, 447 (Kommentar zu Genesis 30:26); IDEM, The Hirsch Chumash 1, 627 (commentary on Genesis 30:26).

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place he emphasizes Judaism’s role in connecting orient and occident because of its geographic location at the border of the two. Genesis 25:1–5 recounts that Abraham had a concubine named Keturah with whom he had several children. The next verse states that Abraham gave Keturah’s children gifts and “sent them away from his son Isaac eastward to the land of the east.” Hirsch comments that the land promised to Abraham’s descendants, namely Palestine, lies at the “western extreme of the oriental lands (‘Morgenlandes’) on the borderline between the Orient and Occident (‘Gränzscheide des Orients und Occidents’).”60 He then notes that immediately to the west of Palestine on the eastern extreme of the occident lies the “European lands,” preeminently Greece. Hirsch identifies Jews with the descendants of biblical Shem while he identifies the Greeks with the descendants of biblical Japhet. He asserts that “all of man’s spiritual and moral attainments everything enlightening and ennobling (‘erleuchtend und veredelnd’) come from this border line” between Orient and Occident, that is from “Shem and Japhet, Judea and Greece the two lands from which culture and religion went out to the world [and which] lie near one another here at ‘the navel of the world.’”61 Elsewhere, Hirsch explains that Japhet/Greece represents “Gemüt” (mind) which includes philosophy, science, and art i.e. the highest products of human culture, while Shem/Judea represents “Geist” (spirit) that is morality and religion. The education of humanity comes from the coordinated effort of Japhet and Shem, Greece and Judea with Japhet cultivating the occidental emphasis on “Gemüt” and Shem elevating it by putting it in service of the oriental emphasis on “Geist.”62 Hirsch’s notion of Greece and Judea as originating on the border of occident and orient and as working together to educate humanity by combining the most refined expressions of occidental and oriental teachings forms a marked contrast with the Reform position that Hirsch mentioned in Naphtulei Naphtali, which opposed progressive occidental Greece to retrograde oriental Judaism. By seeing both Greece and Judea as originating near one another and working in tandem to promote religion and culture, Hirsch provides a theoretical basis for Jewish participation in the world without recasting oriental Judaism in an occidental image. || 60 HIRSCH, Der Pentateuch 1, 390 (Kommentar zu Genesis 25:6); IDEM, The Hirsch Chumash 1, 545 (commentary to Genesis 25:6). The English translation omits parts of the original German and is quite misleading. 61 Ibidem. 62 See HIRSCH, Der Pentateuch 1, 179–182, (Kommentar zu Genesis 9:27); IDEM, The Hirsch Chumash 1, 245–249 (commentary to Genesis 9:27); IDEM, Gesammelte Schriften 2, 26–36. IDEM, Collected Writings 2, 200–207. For a more detailed discussion of how Hirsch sees Shem and Japhet cooperating see GOTTLIEB, Faith, Reason, Politics, 165–170.

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5 Conclusion Hirsch has a complex position on the question whether or not Judaism is oriental. On the one hand, he follows Herder’s historicism rejecting maskilim and reformers who denigrate the Bible as a primitive oriental work by judging it on the extent to which it conforms with occidental cultural standards. But while Herder’s historicism leads him to claim that the Bible is best understood within its oriental context as a poetic work which contains many irrational ideas and mythical historical teachings, Hirsch rejects this because he looks to the Torah as a repository of metaphysical and historical truth. Hirsch also cannot endorse Schiller’s historicism which defends biblical rationality by pointing to its oriental roots in Moses having learned metaphysical truths from the Egyptian priests, which he transmitted to the Hebrews. Hirsch sees any attempt to read the Bible within its oriental context as resting on the assumption that the Torah is a human cultural creation thereby undermining its eternal validity. This concern becomes clear in Hirsch’s response to Geiger’s view that halakhah reflects immoral oriental views of women and must therefore be reformed. Hirsch responds that since the Torah is a timeless, eternally valid revelation of God, it is neither oriental nor occidental and cannot contain immoral laws. Rather than seeking to reform the Torah by altering its laws, Jews should seek to reform their understanding of the Torah by explaining how its laws reflect the highest moral truths. Finally, we saw that Hirsch challenges reformers’ attempts to contrast primitive oriental Judaism with advanced occidental European culture grounded in Greek culture by contending that Judea and Greece which both originate at the borderline between orient and occident collaborate to educate humanity by melding the highest expression of the oriental emphasis on spirit with the highest expression of the occidental emphasis on mind.

Bibliography ASCHHEIM, Steven: The Modern Jewish Experience and the Entangled Webs of Orientalism. In: At the Edges of Liberalism: Junctions of European, German and Jewish History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 21–38. ASSMANN, Jan: Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. — : Religio Duplex: How the Enlightenment Reinvented Egypt. New York: Wiley, 2014.

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BACH, Hans: Der Bibel’sche Orient und sein Verfasser. Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 7 (1937), 14–45. — : Der Bibel’sche Orient, 2 vols. Munich: Fleischmann, 1821. DRACHMAN, Bernard: Samson Raphael Hirsch: A Biographical Sketch. In: The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel/Samson Raphael Hirsch, trans. by Bernard Drachman. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1899, ix–xxxv. EFRON, John: German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. FREVERT, Ute: Women in German History: from Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation. New York: Berg, 1989. GEIGER, Abraham: Recension der Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum. In Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 2 (1836) vol. 2, 351–359 (erster Artikel); 3 (1837) vol. 1, 74– 91 (dritter Artikel). — : Die Stellung des weiblichen Geschlechtes in dem Judenthume unserer Zeit. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 3 (1837), 1–14. GOTTLIEB, Michah: Faith, Reason, Politics: Essays on the History of Jewish Thought. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013. HAUSEN, Karin: Family and role division. In: The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth and Twentieth century Germany, ed. by Richard Evans and W. R. Lee. Totawa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 51–83. HEINEMANN, Isaac: The Relationship Between Samson Raphael Hirsch and his Teacher Isaac Bernays (Hebrew). Zion 16 (1951), 44–90. — : Samson Raphael Hirsch: The Formative Years of the Leader of Modern Orthodoxy. Historia Judaica 12 (1951), 29–54. HERDER, Johann Gottfried: Yet Another Philosophy of History. In: Johann Gottfried Herder: Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language and History, ed. and trans. by Marcia Bunge. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, 38–47. — : Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie, 2 vols. Dessau: n.p., 1782–1783. — : On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 2 vols., trans. by James Marsh. Burlington: Edward Smith, 1833. HIRSCH, Samson Raphael: Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum: Als Voranfrage wegen Herausgabe von „Versuchen“ desselben Verfassers „über Israel und seine Pflichten“. Altona: J. F. Hammerich, 1836. — : The Nineteen Letters about Judaism, trans. by Karin Paritsky, ed. by Joseph Elias. New York: Feldheim, 1996. — : Horev: Versuche über Jissroels Pflichten in der Zerstreuung. Altona: J. F. Hammerich, 1837. — : Horeb: a Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances, trans. by I. Grunfeld. London: Soncino Press, 1962. — : Naphtulei Naphtali: Erste Mitteilungen aus Naphtali’s Briefwechsel. Altona: J. F. Hammerich, 1838. — : Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Naphtali Hirsch. Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1902. — : The Collected Writings, 9 vols., ed. by Marc Breuer et. al. New York: Feldheim, 1984–2012. — : Die Psalmen, übersetzt und erläutert. Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1882. — : The Psalms, trans. by Gertrude Hirschler. New York: Feldheim, 1978. — : Die Distellese des Herrn Kirchheim. Jeschurun 14 (1868), 114–133. — : Der Pentateuch, übersetzt und erläutert. Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1867–1878. — : The Hirsch Chumash, trans. and ed. by Daniel Haberman. New York: Feldheim, 2005.

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HORWITZ, Rivka: On Kabbala and Myth in 19th Century Germany: Isaac Bernays. In: Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 59 (1993), 137–183. KALMAR, Ivan/PENSLAR, Derek (eds.): Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2005. KIRCHHEIM, Raphael: Die neue Exegetenschule: eine Kritische Dornenlese aus Dr. S. Hirsch's Uebersetzung und Erklärung der Genesis. Breslau: Schletter’sche Buchhandlung, 1867. ROSENBLOOM, Noah: Tradition in an Age of Reform: The Religious Philosophy of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976. SCHILLER, Friedrich: The Mission of Moses, trans. by George Gregory, URL: https://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/Mission_Moses.html. WITTLER, Kathrin: Orient. In: Enzyklopädie jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, ed. by Dan Diner, vol. 4. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2013, 430–437.

| Part 2: Apocrypha and New Testament

Chanan Gafni

“They are ours!” Reclaiming the Apocrypha as Jewish Texts

Introduction The story of the Jewish discovery of the Apocrypha in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has all the makings of a fascinating tale. It reflects the conflict on the part of early modern Jewish scholars between commitment to tradition on the one hand, and intellectual curiosity, on the other. It is a story of scholars who wanted to become part of what was an essentially Christian academic culture, but also insisted on the Jewish contribution to this culture. It not only reveals the aspiration of enlightened Jews to depict a more diverse, pluralistic Jewish literature, but also to elevate the status of the Hebrew language rather than Yiddish among their fellow Jews. This story involves the financial difficulties faced by Jewish scholars in attempting to publish and circulate their work in a hostile traditional environment and demonstrates the complexities of forming a new scholarly network. The story comprehends dramatic discoveries and even has a tragi-comic end. A comprehensive description of this fascinating tale is, however, beyond the scope of this article, which attempts only to sketch the outline of the remarkable tale of the discovery of the Apocrypha by Jews in modernity.1 The Apocrypha (or in Hebrew ‫הספרים החיצונים‬, literally: the external books) are a small group of Jewish texts, written during and shortly after the Second Temple period in Palestine or neighboring countries, such as Egypt or Italy. Largely composed in Hebrew, a minority of these works were originally written in Greek or Aramaic. In antiquity some Jewish communities considered these compositions sacred texts and even incorporated them in their respective biblical canons. Nevertheless, they were not included in what became the prevailing Jewish biblical

|| 1 The discovery of the apocryphal writings by Jewish scholars in modernity was addressed briefly in introductions to various editions of these books (See, especially, KAHANA, Ha-Sefarim Ha-Ḥitzonim 1, V–XVII) or as part of general treatments of the Apocrypha in scholarly essays or encyclopedic entries (See LICHT, Sefarim Ḥitzonim ve-Genuzim; DAN, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha). It appears to me that the full story of the Apocrypha and its recognition by Jewish scholars in the nineteenth century has yet to be told (for a detailed description of the reception of Apocrypha in Christian literature, see TORREY, Apocryphal Literature, 16–40).

https://doi.org/9783110592672-005

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canon, namely the Masoretic Canon. At the same time, they did become part of the Septuagint and thus entered the canons of different Eastern and Western churches.2

1 The Apocrypha in Classic Rabbinic and Medieval Literature It appears that, from the start, the apocryphal writings did not achieve abundant recognition in mainstream rabbinic literature. Reflecting on the words of Ecclesiastes: ‫“( ויתר מהמה בני הזהר עשות ספרים הרבה אין קץ‬And further by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end”),3 the rabbis stated:4 ‫“( כל המכניס בתוך ביתו יותר מכ"ד ספרים מהומה הוא מכניס בביתו‬Anyone who brings into their home more than the 24 books [the Bible], brings a riot into their home.”)

Some even warned:5 ‫ אף הקורא בספרים החיצונים‬:‫“( ואלו שאין להם חלק לעולם הבא ]…[ רבי עקיבא אומר‬And these are they who have no share in the world to come […] Rabbi Akiva says: Also one who reads the external books.”)

Although it is not clear to which books Rabbi Akiva was actually alluding, it seems that the Talmud associated this prohibition with texts such as Ben Sira

|| 2 This group includes primarily the following books: Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also known as Ben Sira), Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, and 1–2 Maccabees, which were confirmed as part of the Roman Catholic collection of Old Testament writings by the Council of Trent (1545–63). Having become a matter of contention between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic Church since the sixteenth century, these books remained a topic within the scholarly discourse on the Hebrew Bible. This paper does not address additional Jewish compositions that were perceived as biblical texts by certain Jewish communities in antiquity, but which were not included in the Septuagint and thus did not enter the standard Catholic version of the Hebrew Bible. 3 Eccl 12:12. 4 Ecclesiastes Rabbah on Eccl 12:12. This midrash is based on a play of words, between the biblical expression ‫( ֵמ ֵה ָּמה‬of those) and the noun ‫( מהוּ ָמה‬riot). 5 m. Sanh. 10:1. This mishnah is also based on a play of words, interpreting ‫ ֵאין ֵקץ‬in the biblical verse as “having no share in the world-to-come.”

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(also known as Ecclesiasticus),6 and presumably additional apocryphal writings. Their inclusion in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, which later formed the Roman Catholic biblical canon, definitely did not boost the status of the Apocrypha in Jewish circles.7 Nor was the reputation of the Apocrypha enhanced in Jewish circles in the medieval period. In several instances leading authorities expressed their thoughts, usually negative, on these texts. Thus, in his long commentary to Exodus, Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) states:8 I will give you a general rule: we should not rely on any book not written by the prophets or by the sages who transcribed tradition as transmitted to them.

A similar statement appears in Samuel ben Meir’s (= Rashbam, 1080–1160) commentary to Exodus: “and no attention should be paid to apocryphal works.”9 Furthermore, it seems that many medieval scholars were not at all familiar with these books. The original Hebrew of most of these compositions was by then no longer known, and the rabbis were certainly not fluent in Greek or Latin. Thus, for example, when Rashi encountered an unfamiliar verse quoted in the Babylonian Talmud (b. ʿErub. 65a): ‫“( בצר אל יורה‬He who is in distress shall give no decisions”), Rashi added: ‫ ושמא בספר בן סירא הוא‬,‫ ואינו בכל הכתובים‬,‫“( בדקתי אחר המקרא זה‬I have explored and did not find this verse anywhere in the Bible; perhaps it is found in the book of Ben Sira.”)

leaving the impression that he had not perused the book itself.10 Only rarely did leading scholars quote or discuss the contents of these texts.11

|| 6 See b. Sanh. 100b: ‫ בספר בן סירא נמי אסור למיקרי‬:‫“( רב יוסף אמר‬Rav Joseph said: One must not read even in the book of Ben Sira”), y. Sanh. 10:1, 28a: ‫ אף הקורא בספרים החיצונים כגון‬:‫רבי עקיבה אומר‬ ‫“( סיפרי בן סירא וסיפרי בן לענה‬Rabbi Akiva says: also he who reads the external books, for example, the books of Ben Sira and Ben Laʿana”). Ben Sira is the only apocryphal text mentioned by name in rabbinic literature. While in these talmudic texts Ben Sira is presented as a forbidden text, we must acknowledge the fact that this text is quoted elsewhere in rabbinic literature. 7 See, for example: Midr. Tanḥ. Vayera 5; Midr. Tanḥ. Ki-Tisa 34; y. Ḥag. 1:8, 76d. 8 See Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentary on Exod 2:22: ‫ כל ספר שלא כתבוהו נביאים או‬:‫וכלל אומר לך‬ ‫חכמים מפי הקבלה אין לסמוך עליו‬. 9 See R. Samuel ben Meir’s commentary on Exod 4:11: ‫ואין לחוש לספרים החיצונים‬. 10 See also Tosafot’s comment on b. ʿErub. 65a, which also exhibits a complete lack of familiarity with this text. Saadya Gaon was probably the last medieval Jewish scholar to refer to the book in its original Hebrew form; see SEGAL, Sefer Ben Sira Ha-Shalem, 47. 11 See, for instance, Nachmanides’ introduction to his commentary where he mentions the Wisdom of Solomon: ‫“( וראיתי הספר המתורגם הנקרא חוכמתא רבתא דשלמה‬Now I have seen the Aramaic

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To be sure, a small number of medieval manuscripts of some apocryphal texts were discovered over the years and clearly indicate that some Jews were exposed to this literature. In addition, various medieval midrashim and piyyutim reflect the indirect impact of stories or motifs found in the Apocrypha. At the same time, these texts were certainly not familiar to mainstream thinkers and leading authorities in the Middle Ages and played a marginal role in medieval Jewish literature. It was only in the sixteenth century, after many “silent” centuries, that we encounter several references to the Apocrypha, mainly in the contemporary Jewish historiography. Although Jewish authors were eager to inform their readers of this discovery, they certainly did not wish to reclaim such compositions as standard Jewish texts. For example, in his Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah the Italian scholar Gedaliah ben Yahyah (1515–1587) briefly noted:12 It is proper for you to know that the Gentiles added other works to the collection of the Holy Scriptures, which are currently not in our possession, and I wish to present them so you become familiar with them.

In his Sefer Ṣemaḥ David (1592), David Gans (Prague, 1541–1613) was even more explicit. After listing some of the apocryphal writings he stressed the following point: “All the compositions mentioned, although of Jewish origin, nevertheless have been accepted by them and not by us.”13 Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries apocryphal compositions were only rarely printed by Jewish publishers. Usually limited to a small number of the apocryphal texts (not the full corpus), they were based on Greek and Latin texts and, somewhat ironically, often appeared in Yiddish.14 In any

|| translation of the book called the Great Wisdom of Solomon”), or in his commentary on Deut 21:14, where he quotes from Susanna: ‫“( כמו שכתוב במגלת שושן‬as is written in the Scroll of Susanna”). This quote is actually from Jdt 1:8. 12 See Gedaliah IBN YAHYA, Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah, 160: ‫ראוי שתדע כי אומות העולם הרבו לכתוב‬ ‫ספרים אחרים בקובץ ספרי הקודש אשר אינם בידינו ]…[ וראיתי להציגם לפניך למען תדעם‬. For additional references to apocryphal texts, see ZACUTO, Sefer Yuḥasin, 238 (Susanna), 239 (Judith), 241 (Ben Sira). 13 See GANS, Sefer Ṣemaḥ David, 183–184, in the original: ‫אך כל הספרים הנזכרים אף שהנה היו לבני‬ ‫ישראל מכל מקום מקובלים להם ולא לנו‬. 14 I cite several examples from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries: The book of Tobit was published in Yiddish in Amsterdam (1680), and in Brno (1760). The book of Ben Sira was published in Yiddish in Krakow (1587), Prague (1650), and Amsterdam (1712). Susanna and Judith appeared in Yiddish in Krakow (1571). A Yiddish translation of the Letter of Aristeas was completed in Vienna (1724). Finally, an entire Yiddish translation of the Bible was published in Hanau, Germany (1625), and included Tobit, Judith, 1–2 Maccabees, and Baruch.

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event, Jewish editions of the apocryphal texts, whether in Yiddish or Hebrew, neither received much attention nor left much impression. A rather exceptional approach to the Apocrypha was manifested by Azariah de Rossi (Italy, 1513–1578). In his revolutionary composition Meʾor Enayim, Azariah de Rossi was willing to grant greater significance to this literature, declaring:15 From the Apocrypha (‫)הספרים החיצונים‬, which include many nonsensical things, it is nevertheless possible to derive something of value, whether it be correct conduct or intellectual knowledge.

Furthermore, de Rossi even translated one of the apocryphal works into Hebrew, namely, the Letter of Aristeas. But, as in other cases, here too de Rossi was ahead of his time.16 In was only towards the late eighteenth century that we find a clearly discernible shift.

2 Reclaiming the Apocrypha in the 18th and 19th Centuries In addition to his other achievements as a proponent of the Haskalah (i.e. the Jewish Enlightenment), it is Naphtali Herz Wessely (1725–1804)17 who should be credited with the revival of the Apocrypha in modern Jewish scholarship, for both translating into Hebrew, and interpreting, the Wisdom of Solomon (Berlin 1780; see image 1).18 In the introduction to this work Wessely recalled how he encountered the Apocrypha for the first time, as well as a conversation with his uncle (in 1755), who encouraged Wessely to undertake this urgent mission: “it is disgraceful because they are ours!”19 Wessely’s introduction included a long discussion of the status of the book, as well as a poetic piece, in which he emphatically reiter|| 15 See Azariah DE’ ROSSI, Meʾor Einayim, 82–83: ‫ אפשר‬,‫כי אף מן הספרים החיצונים המלאים דברי הבאי‬ ‫לנו להוציא דבר יקר לאיזו מידה טובה או לימוד שכלי‬. For an alternative translation of this quote, see WEINBERG, The Light of the Eyes, 88–89. 16 It is interesting to note that this translation was copied in 1758 by an unknown Italian Jew: ‫זאת הספרים כתבתי אני אברהם דוד בכממ"ר שמואל אברהם יצ"ו בחדש תמוז בשנת התקי"ח ]…[ בעיר אנקונא‬. The manuscript is found in: The Montefiore Library, London (England), Ms. 486, p. 104b. 17 On Wessely see also the article by Dorothea M. Salzer in this volume. 18 Contemporary scholars suggest that this book was originally written in Greek (around 100 BCE), although Wessely himself was convinced that the book was initially composed in Hebrew. 19 See WESSELY, Ḥokhmat Shelomo, in the unpaged introduction, based on Genesis 34:14.

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Image 1: Title page of Wessely’s Sefer Ḥokhmat Shelomo. Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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ated: !‫“( מילדי העברים זה‬this is a child of one of the Hebrews!”).20 However, by translating the Wisdom of Solomon back into Hebrew, Wessely not only revealed Jewish patriotism, in trying to reclaim the Apocrypha from Christian hands, but also a deep passion for the Hebrew language and particularly its ancient (i.e. biblical) stratum. By translating this composition from the Greek and Latin into Biblical Hebrew, Wessely managed to fulfill both goals at the same time. Another step was taken by Judah Leib Ben-Zeʾev (1764–1811), who added his Hebrew translations of the book of Ben Sira (1798; see image 2),21 and of the book of Judith (1799), to the translated corpus of apocryphal works.22 In his introduction to Ben Sira, Ben-Zeʾev addressed the unique status of this book, as an apocryphal text, in Jewish traditional society: ‫ אשר מאחד העם מקרב אבותינו‬,‫[ עם זה נסתרה דרכו עתה מעם ה' אלה‬...] ‫ואם היות הספר הזה גלוי לכל העמים‬ ‫“( יצא‬Although this book is known to all the nations […] its path was hidden from God’s nations, where it actually originated.”)

It is unlikely that Ben-Zeʾev’s choice of these two compositions was accidental. As noted earlier, Ben Sira is mentioned in numerous places in rabbinic literature; therefore, its publication was not as controversial. Similarly, the book of Judith was known in Jewish circles and was even recited on Hanukkah in some communities.23 However, in the introduction to this book Ben-Zeʾev voiced his desire to translate additional less-known apocryphal compositions in the future. But despite their efforts, neither Wessely nor Ben-Zeʾev produced a complete Hebrew edition of all the Apocrypha in their lifetimes. At the same time, however, they certainly encouraged others to fulfill their dream and to reclaim all of the apocryphal writings from Christian hands by translating them back into Biblical

|| 20 Wessely was alluding to Exodus 2:6. Numerous early nineteenth-century manuscripts include copies of Wessely’s translation of Wisdom of Solomon. Furthermore, throughout the nineteenth century, Wessely’s translation was reprinted in various locations in Europe (1822, 1853, 1855, 1858, 1870, 1885, and 1893). Some editions printed only Wessely’s translation, without his commentary. 21 The first edition of this translation appeared in Breslau, 1798. As basis for his translation Ben-Zeʾev was mainly using an Aramaic translation of the book, which he (probably) found in: WALTON, Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, London 1655–1657. This work of Ben-Zeʾev was reprinted numerous times in the nineteenth century: 1807 (Vienna, see image 3), 1814 (Vienna), 1818 (Vienna), 1828 (Vienna), 1869 (Vilna), 1889 (Warsaw), a clear indication of its popularity. 22 The first edition of this translation appeared in Vienna. The book of Judith was actually translated into Hebrew by many Jewish scholars before Ben-Zeʾev, such as in Istanbul (1552), Venice (1650), Mantua (1725), Berlin (1766), and Fürth (1784). See GRINZ, Yehudit. 23 See also Rabbi Moses Isserles’ (1520–1572) comment in Shulḥan Arukh, Oraḥ Ḥayim, 670:2.

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Image 2: Title page of Ben-Zeʾev’s Ben Sira (1798). Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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Image 3: Title page of Ben-Zeʾev’s Ben Sira (1807). Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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Image 4: Title page of Hezil’s Ben Sira. Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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Hebrew (rather than into Yiddish). In the course of the 1830s three scholars approached this task independently, each initially unaware of the others’ work. The first attempt to translate the entire corpus of apocryphal works was carried out by Seckel Isaac Fraenkel of Hamburg (1765–1835),24 who titled his edition: ‫“( כתובים אחרונים הנודעים בשם אפוקריפא‬Later Writings known as Apocrypha,” Hamburg 1830; see image 5).25 Fraenkel dedicated his edition to the famous theologian and biblical scholar, Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842), professor of Hebrew Bible and Hebrew language at the University of Halle, to his father-in-law, Rabbi Eduard Kley (1789–1867), and to Meyer Israel Bresselau (1785–1839), the chairman of the Hamburg Temple (see image 6). Instead of providing a detailed Hebrew introduction, Fraenkel added a page-long poetic parable which he attributed to the book itself: ‫“( וישא הספר הזה את משלו ויאמר‬the book took up its parable and said,” see image 7). In the first part of this text Fraenkel described the tragic history of the Apocrypha: I was a desired son to my parents and they loved me, Woe, the grave consumed them, I am now all alone. My acquaintances distanced themselves and abandoned me, Every brother and companion left me, I remained on my own. All by myself I wandered in cities and towns, I grew gray and old from my travels, Had it not been that alien children gathered me I would have been dead by now. To them I narrated the deeds of my forefathers, And what god worked through them. They believed the truth of my witnesses, And recorded them in books so they survived, There they stayed long days and years, Because they favored my teachings even more than wine. Embarrassingly I was waiting for my own people, But they despised me with an arrogant eye.

|| 24 Seckel Isaac Fraenkel was born in Parchim, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, in 1765. After his marriage he moved to Hamburg (1798), where he became a dominant figure in the liberal Jewish community, and was involved in reforming Jewish practices. On Fraenkel, see KRESSEL, Lexicon 2, 638–639. 25 This edition of the Apocrypha was reprinted in Warsaw (1863, 1887, 1902, 1922, 1923), Berlin (1927, 1931), Vilna (1890), and Jerusalem (1960, 1966). A few editions of Ben Sira were also based on Fraenkel’s translation.

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Image 5: Title page of Fraenkel’s Apocrypha. Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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Image 6: Dedication in Fraenkel’s Apocrypha. Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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Image 7: Opening parable in Fraenkel’s Apocrypha. Photograph taken by the author, with permission of The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

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In the second part of his introductory poem Fraenkel tried to change this unfortunate situation or, perhaps, to promote the sales of his book and encourage his fellow Jews to purchase a copy of this new edition of the Apocrypha: My brothers! Why should I be buried in foreign soil? Are there lies in my mouth or falsehoods on my tongue? Why do you hate me like an intoxicated man? Let me know what is my guilt and what is my sin, Do you not fear sinning with your own blood? Alienating the testimony of your forefathers, Ascribing fault to your mother's son, Dismissing faithful words as lies. Do see! I just escaped like a deer from a trap, Because my feelings have been stirred up concerning my people, I have crept further but feared to approach Lest you turn your back to me And I will be lost… Return my companions; honor the memory of your forefathers, For only the mercy and praise of God is on my lips!

Just three years later, Solomon Plessner (1797–1883),26 completely unaware of Fraenkel’s precedent, added his own contribution and published his ‫נוזלים מן לבנון‬ (“Streams from Lebanon,” Berlin 1833), another Hebrew translation of many apocryphal texts (not including Ben Sira, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, and 1–2 Maccabees).27 As Plessner was gathering subscribers for his book, the terrible news hit him: a fellow German Jew had already produced a similar edition of the Apocrypha! However, after a thorough examination of Fraenkel’s translation, in

|| 26 Solomon Plessner was born in Breslau, and was affiliated with the Orthodox elements of his local community. In 1830 Plessner moved to Berlin, where he earned his living as a preacher and teacher. In 1843 Plessner moved to Posen, where he devoted most of his time to his literary pursuits. On Plessner, see HERSHKOWITZ, Hetzitzu ve-lo Nifgeʿu. 27 Plessner was exposed to the writing of Wessely and Ben-Zeʾev when he was seventeen years old, and was, like them, fascinated by the very existence of biblical texts that were completely unknown in traditional Jewish circles. In 1817, when he reached the age of twenty, Plessner decided to gather subscribers for a complete edition of the Apocrypha translated into Hebrew and German, which he had already prepared (See PLESSNER, Hodaʿa). A brief letter was published by Plessner for this purpose in Breslau, but not too many Jews subscribed to this project. Nevertheless, in 1819 Plessner produced a Hebrew and German translation of the Additions to Esther (see PLESSNER, Das apokryphische Buch Esther), and promised to complete his dream. It was only in 1833 that Plessner managed to fund his edition (see PLESSNER, Nozelim min Levanon), but then discovered that he was too late. Another partial edition of this translation appeared in Thorn, 1865.

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which he sought and found various defects, Plessner decided that his efforts were not in vain after all, and went on to publish his work. In his poetic introduction Plessner followed in the wake of Wessely, Ben-Zeʾev, and Fraenkel, declaring: Many nations have translated these texts; Examined and studied them thoroughly, but from the Jewish heritage they have been forgotten. I have resettled them in the place from which they were expelled, and restored to them the divine garb they used to wear, so the house of Jacob can rejoice in them as before.

,‫רבים עמים כתובים אלו העתיקו‬ ‫התבוננו בם בינה לחקור העמיקו‬ ‫אך מנחלתם ישראל נשכחו‬ ‫הושבתים עם כנם מנו גורשו‬ ‫העטיתים לבוש קודש לפנים לבשו‬ ‫ובית יעקב בחלקם כקדם ישמחו‬

Only another six years went by, and the drama was repeated. Isaac Zibenberger (1797–1879),28 a maskil (an enlightened Jew) from Warsaw, was determined to devote his linguistic skills to the translation of the majority of the Apocrypha into Hebrew, claiming: ‫“( הלוא אחינו ובשרנו הוא ומדוע יתנכרו‬It is our flesh and blood, why treat it as foreign”)? On approaching a local merchant, a possible sponsor for the publication of his book, he received a shock: !‫“( הספרים האלה באו בקהל‬These books have been introduced to the public!”). But he too swiftly recovered from his shock and naturally declared that there was still room for improvement. In the following three years his three volumes of the Apocrypha came out as well.29 And thus, within a decade, three Hebrew editions of the Apocrypha were published. Meanwhile, throughout Europe, individual apocryphal compositions were constantly being translated by other Jewish scholars.30

|| 28 Zibenberger was a conservative maskil in Warsaw, who was famous for his interest in Hebrew grammar, and was therefore known locally as ‫דקדוק‬-‫( איציק דער בעל‬Itzik the grammarian). On Isaac Zibenberger, see S HATZKI, Geschichte 2, 148–149. 29 Zibenberger published his apocryphal translations in three separate volumes, all in Warsaw, in 1839 (Tobit, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon), 1840 (Judith, Additions to Esther), 1841 (Baruch, Prayer of Manasseh, Song of the Three Young Men). His translation has not been reprinted since then. 30 See, for example, HEZIL, Ben Sira (Vilna 1803, see image 4; 1817; Warsaw 1842); a Hebrew translation of the Prayer of Manasseh (Vienna, 1824); Sefer Otzar Ha-Kodesh (Lemberg 1851, 1863), which includes Hebrew translations of Tobit and Judith.

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3 Defending the Apocrypha Needless to say, traditional elements in Jewish society did not overlook the appearance of translations of the Apocrypha and regarded such projects with suspicion and hostility. As Ben-Zeʾev stated: ,‫העלם יעלימו עם הארץ את עיניהם מן הספר הזה‬ ‫“( וייראו מגשת אליו מהביט אל פניו‬the masses public keep away from this book; they fear to approach it”).31 It seems that two main issues were being addressed in this context: (1) If these books possessed any importance, why were they excluded from the Masoretic biblical canon? (2) Why did leading sages in rabbinic literature ignore or even forbid reading them? A detailed survey of the various responses to each of these questions is beyond the scope of this survey, but I nevertheless address the leading trends in eighteenth/nineteenth-century scholarship. With respect to the exclusion of the apocryphal compositions from the Masoretic Bible, one can distinguish between two dominant tendencies. It seems that more traditional writers aimed to trace differences in the content,32 or style,33 of the apocryphal writings as compared to the canonical texts, and thus to explain their elimination. These differences were occasionally attributed to their lack of divine inspiration and to the fact that they merely exhibited human wisdom or literary skills. For their part, liberal scholars denied substantial differences between the canonical and apocryphal texts, and explained the rejection of the latter compositions on historical grounds. From their perspective, it was a matter of timing rather than content that led to their exclusion from the Masoretic Bible. Some of these liberal scholars addressed historical social-political conditions as well,

|| 31 See Ben-Zeʾev’s introduction to the second edition of his translation of Ben Sira (Vienna, 1804). 32 Some scholars referred to the universal rather than national nature of these texts (especially with regards to Ben Sira or Wisdom of Solomon). See, for example, SACHS, Divrei Ha-Berit, 142: ‫וגם זה אחד מטעמי הגניזה לקצת הספרים המכונים "חיצוניים" ]…[ כי לא ידברו עוד רק דברים הנוגעים לכלל ישראל‬ ‫ כי אם ידברו בפרטיות דברים הנוגעים לכלל האנושי ת‬,‫“( בפרט‬this is one of the reasons for the exclusion of some of the so-called ‘Sefarim Hitzonim’ […] since they do not discuss issues that involved the Jewish nation in particular but rather issues relevant to humanity as a whole”). As a matter of fact, some scholars assumed that these compositions were mainly targeted for a non-Jewish audience, and therefore did not survive in their original Hebrew, but only in foreign languages. See, for example, Wessely’s introduction to his edition of Wisdom of Solomon. 33 See Wessely’s introduction to Ḥokhmat Shelomo, where he contrasts divinely inspired compositions, which are written in a divine meter (‫ )כתובות במשקל אלוהי‬and contain hidden wisdom (‫)סתומות ומלאות דעת‬, with ordinary human texts, which merely aim to produce a fluent, coherent message (‫)למען ירוץ בן הקורא‬.

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arguing that once the Jewish people was split between competing sects and rival parties it was no longer possible to include new compositions in the existing, accepted biblical canon.34 Opposing trends were also noticeable when discussing the complete ignoring of the apocryphal writings in rabbinic literature. As mentioned above, with the exception of Ben Sira, the apocryphal texts are rarely quoted or referred to in rabbinic literature. Traditional scholars, who were not vested in the Jewish revival of the Apocrypha, did not elaborate much on this matter. From their perspective, the lack of divine inspiration or rabbinic authority justified their absence from the classical Jewish corpus. Historical gaps or legal differences between the Bible or the Talmud and the Apocrypha only reinforced their conviction that these books should be eliminated from the Jewish curriculum. Some moderate scholars, however, were devoted to the restoration, rather than the alienation, of these ancient texts to the Jewish cultural heritage. To meet this goal, these scholars tried to identify parallels between the Apocrypha and rabbinic literature and to trace conceptual similarities, thereby legitimating their place at the heart of Second Temple or classical rabbinic literature.35 Even if it was not possible to identify direct quotes or clear references to the Apocrypha in traditional texts, it was possible to identify common themes and mutual interests in both literary corpora. Finally, liberal scholars preferred to treat the Apocrypha as a competing corpus and, in sketching an alternative Jewish tradition to the one portrayed in rabbinic literature, emphasized their crucial role. Through the Apocrypha it was possible to portray a diverse, pluralistic Judaism in antiquity.36 Ironically, like their

|| 34 See GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen, 200–201: “the split between the various parties was so great, it was no longer possible for new literature to emerge and reflect the general spirit of the nation” (my translation). Indeed, it was only in the Diaspora, removed from the religiouscultural battles in Palestine, that these compositions circulated in Greek translations and eventually entered the biblical canon represented by the Septuagint. For a fairly similar approach, see SCHOR, Critique, 71. 35 For a typical example of such tendencies, see the brief discussion of Prayer of Manasseh (Vienna, 1824), 12–14, where the anonymous author tries to trace parallels in the Talmud for Manasseh’s repentance. A quite extreme representative of this approach was Solomon PLESSNER, Nozelim min Levanon, 23–52, who aims to provide parallels or allusions to all of the apocryphal texts in classical rabbinic literature (see especially the long footnote on page 18). In the same manner, Plessner tries to resolve any possible contradictions between the Apocrypha and talmudic law. 36 See GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel, who systematically detected alternative legal traditions in the Apocrypha. Typical examples can be found in his treatment of Tobit (p. 176), or Susanna (p. 195).

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rivals from the traditional camp, they too sought to trace differences rather than to demonstrate links. The underlying ideology was obviously different: whereas conservative scholars were trying to strengthen the prevailing tradition, liberal scholars were attempting to shake its foundations.

4 Epilogue By the late nineteenth century, the revival of Jewish interest in the Apocrypha was a given. At this time many Jewish versions of the Apocrypha in Hebrew (but also in German, Yiddish, and even Spanish) circulated among Jewish scholars. The resources and efforts invested by scholars in reclaiming the Apocrypha as Jewish texts, by translating them back into Hebrew, seemed to have been successful after all. Especially widespread were copies of Ben Sira, a book that was hardly known to the Jewish public just a hundred years earlier. Numerous Jewish editions of this book appeared throughout Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, providing the readers with a wide range of Hebrew translations, but also leaving them puzzled and uncertain as to what the original Hebrew text actually sounded like. Let me exemplify the variety of proposed translations by citing several verses from Ben Sira (11:2–3). First, I provide a common English translation of these verses, followed by several competing Hebrew translations:

English 37

Do not praise a man for his good looks; nor loathe a man because of his appearance. The bee is small among flying creatures but her product is the best of sweet things.

1. Judah Leib Ben Zeʾev (1798) 38

,‫כי מה שאט בעוף הדבורה‬. ‫אל תהלל איש בתואר פניו ולא תבוז אדם כי משחת מראהו‬ .‫ומה מתוק פריה‬

2. Seckel Isaac Fraenkel (1830) 39 3. Samuel Hezil (1825)40

‫הן עוף מצער הדבורה ופריה מלא‬. ‫אל תהלל איש על יופיו ואל תבוז איש על מראהו‬ .‫ממתקים‬ ,‫ ואל תבזה לשפל התואר‬,‫אל תהלל את האדם בגודל מראהו ובגדי החמודות אשר עליו‬ ‫ ופרים מתוק ממגד‬,‫כי הדבורים המה שפלים ועופות הקלים‬. ‫ובגדים קרועים המלובש‬ .‫השמים‬

|| 37 This English translation of Ben Sira 11:2–3 is based on the Revised Standard Version (RVS). 38 See BEN-ZEʾEV, Ben Sira, 11: 2–3. 39 See FRAENKEL, Ketuvim Aḥronim, 205. 40 See HEZIL, Ben Sira, chapter 10.

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This variety of translations obviously reflects different stylistic preferences, but also the diverse texts that each translator used as the basis for his Hebrew edition. In any event, each of these translators argued for having achieved the ultimate result in reconstructing what might have been the original Hebrew of the verses. But in the case of Ben Sira, these scholars did not have much time to celebrate their impressive translations. In the course of 1896, Professor Solomon Schechter (1850–1915), assisted by the Lewis and Gibson sisters, discovered the Cairo Genizah, and above all an original Hebrew version of Ben Sira.41 In his famous letter to Agnes Lewis from May 13, 1896, Schechter wrote:42 Dear Mrs. Lewis, I think we have reason to congratulate ourselves. For the fragment I brought with me represents a piece of the original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus. It is the first time such a thing has been discovered. Please do not speak yet about the matter […] In haste and great excitement, Yours sincerely, S. Schechter

Schechter’s discovery did not remain hidden for long. In the following years, fragments from additional manuscripts of Ben Sira were traced, and new editions were constantly being produced. In the early twentieth century several Hebrew editions of Ben Sira were published,43 which obviously made all the revised Hebrew translations of Ben Sira from the previous century worthless. In the passage discussed above, the fragment from the Cairo Genizah reads:44 ‫אל תהלל אדם בתארו ואל תתעב אדם מכוער במראהו‬ ‫אליל בעוף דבורה וראש תנובות פריה‬

Although many scholars were enthusiastic about this new development, some found it difficult to accept. Having become so familiar with the existing Hebrew translations of the Apocrypha, it was not easy to abandon them and rely on an ancient fragment instead. One such scholar was Menachem Mendel Bronstein (1858–1944), also known as Mabashan. In an article devoted to Seckel Isaac || 41 On Solomon Schechter and the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, see GLICKMAN, Sacred Treasure. 42 For the full letter, see GLICKMAN, Sacred Treasure, 57–58. On Schechter’s particular interest in Ben Sira, see ibidem, 94–100. For a picture of the letter see REIF, A Jewish Archive, 75. 43 For a list of published fragments and full editions produced following the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, see SEGAL, Ben Sira, 71. 44 For a facsimile of this particular passage in Ben Sira as found in the Genizah, see SEGAL, Ben Sira, the page inserted between pages 48–49. For the text itself, see pages 64–65.

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Fraenkel and his groundbreaking apocryphal edition, ‫כתובים אחרונים‬, Bronstein added:45 It is hard to believe that the worn fragments found by Prof. Schechter in the Genizah in Cairo are indeed the original Hebrew source of Ben Sira, for several reasons: It is inconceivable that the greatest scholar of his day, Joshua the son of Sira, was such a poor Hebrew rhetorician and could not express his wisdom in pure, fluent Hebrew, but rather in a corrupt style, employing uncommon words […] they appear to be literal translations from the Greek by some inexperienced translator and at variance with the original Hebrew source.

Indeed, some things never change in the academic world, including the ability to admit a mistake or confront reality.

Conclusion The term Wissenschaft des Judentums is often associated with liberal trends in modern Jewish society. Indeed, the very attempt to portray a dynamic, diverse tradition, which was a central theme in nineteenth-century Jewish critical scholarship, could only support liberal ideologies that called for further changes to Jewish tradition and for the creation of a pluralistic Jewish society. In addition, the very willingness to examine Jewish tradition critically and objectively was perceived as a form of cultural assimilation, in which Jewish scholars inspected their own heritage as outsiders. However, this perception of Wissenschaft des Judentums by no means conveys the full picture and perhaps blurs other aspects of the same phenomenon. For many moderate scholars, critical observations and insights provided an opportunity to exhibit their Jewish patriotism, and a new way to express their loyalty to an ancient tradition. It seems that story of the modern Jewish treatment of the Apocrypha provides us with a striking example of such moderate tendencies. The exposure to the Apocrypha in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provoked a Jewish nationalistic impulse and created an urge to reclaim these originally Jewish texts from Christian control, to exchange their current Greek or Latin forms for an authentic Hebrew one. This episode demonstrates the complexity of the Wissenschaft des Judentums and points to the diverse, even conflicting roles it played for nineteenth-century Jewish intellectuals.

|| 45 See BRONSTEIN, Kitve Mabashan, 157.

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Bibliography Sources BEN-ZE ʾEV, Judah Leib: Sefer Ben Sira (“Ecclesiasticus,” Hebrew). Breslau 1798. — : Sefer Yehudit (“Judith,” Hebrew). Vienna 1799. DE’ ROSSI, Azariah: Sefer Meʾor Einayim (“The Light of the Eyes,” Hebrew). Vilna 1866. FRAENKEL, Seckel Isaac: Ketuvim Aḥronim ha-Nodaʿim be-Shem Apocrypha (“Later Writings know as Apocrypha,” Hebrew). Leipzig 1830. GANS, David: Sefer Ṣemaḥ David (“Offspring of David,” Hebrew). Jerusalem 1983. GEIGER, Abraham: Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel (“Text and Translations of the Bible,” German). Breslau 1857. HEZIL, Joshua Ben Samuel: Sefer Ben-Sira (“Ecclesiasticus,” Hebrew). Vilna 1824, 1842. IBN YAHYA, Gedaliah: Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah (“Chain of Tradition,” Hebrew). Jerusalem 1962. PLESSNER, Solomon: Hodaʿa (“Notice,” Hebrew). Breslau 1817. — : Das apokryphische Buch Esther in’s Hebraeische uebersetzt und mit einer litterarhistorischen Einleitung versehen (“A Hebrew Translation and German Introduction to the Additions to the Book of Esther,” German and Hebrew). Breslau 1819. — : Tefilat Menashe (“The Prayer of Manasseh,” Hebrew). Bikkurei Ha-Itim 5 (1824), 12–14. — : Nozelim min Levanon (“Streams from Lebanon,” Hebrew). Berlin 1833. SACHS, Shneur: Divrei Ha-Berit (“Words of the Covenant,” Hebrew). Ha-Maggid 2 (1858), 142. SCHOR, Joshua Heschel (Critique): Abraham Geiger, Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel (Hebrew). Ha-Halutz 4 (1859), 71. — : Sefer Otzar Ha-Kodesh: Lemberg 1851, 1863. WALTON, Brian: Biblia Sacra Polyglotta. London 1655–1657. WESSELY, Naphtali Herz: Ḥokhmat Shelomo (“Wisdom of Solomon,” Hebrew). Berlin 1780. ZACUTO, Abraham: Sefer Yuḥasin (“The Book of Genealogy,” Hebrew). Frankfurt a. M. 1924. ZIBENBERGER, Isaac: Sefer Baruch, Sefer Tuvia, Sefer Yehudit (“Baruch,” “Tobit,” “Judith,” Hebrew). Warsaw 1839–1841.

Secondary Literature BRONSTEIN, Menachem Mendel: Kitve Mabashan. Tel Aviv 1937. DAN, Yosef: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Encyclopedia Judaica. Jerualem 1971. Vol. 3, 181– 187. GLICKMAN, Mark: Sacred Treasure: The Cairo Genizah. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010. GRINZ, Yehoshua Meir: Yehudit, Sefer Yehudit (“Judith, The Book of Judith,” Hebrew). In: Encyclopedia Mikraʾit. Vol. 3. Jerusalem 1950, 510–517. HERSHKOWITZ, Meir: Hetzitzu ve-lo Nifgeʿu. Ha-Darom 8–9 (New York, 1959), 140–173. KAHANA, Abraham: Ha-Sefarim Ha-Ḥitzonim (“The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” Hebrew). Vol. 1–2, Tel Aviv 1937. KRESSEL, Gezel: Lexicon Ha-Sifrut Ha-Ivrit (Lexicon of Hebrew Literature). Sifriyat Po'alim, 1965– 1967.

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LICHT, Yaʿakov Shalom: Sefarim Ḥitzonim ve-Genuzim (“The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” Hebrew). Encyclopedia Mikraʾit. Vol 5. Jerusalem 1950, 1103–1121. REIF, Stefan C.: A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo. The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. SHATZKI, Yaʿakov: Geschichte fun Yidn in Varshe (“The History of the Jews in Warsaw,” Yiddish). New-York: Yivo, 1948. SEGAL, Moshe Zevi: Sefer Ben Sira Ha-Shalem (“Ecclesiasticus,” Hebrew), Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik 1972. TORREY, Charles Cutler: The Apocryphal Literature: a Brief Introduction. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1945.

Stefan Schorch

Isaac Mayer Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity” (1868) in the Context of 19th Century Research on the New Testament Isaac Mayer Wise (Weiss) was born in 1819 in Bohemia, which was at that time part of the Austrian Empire. He studied at the most famous yeshivot of Western Austria and Bohemia, especially in Prague, Jenikau (with the celebrated Talmudist Aaron Kornfeld,1 1795–1885), and even shortly in Pressburg in the yeshiva of Hatam Sofer (1762–1839).2 Along with this pursuit of studies in the Orthodox tradition, he successfully completed studies at an Austrian gymnasium, and attended the universities of Prague and Vienna for three years, which just around that time had become a compulsory requirement for obtaining official positions within the Jewish community, like teacher or rabbi, that were under the auspices of the state.3 Wise thus acquired a strong background in both traditional Jewish learning as well as in contemporary academic studies. The familiarity with the ancient languages, part of pre-university education, was certainly an excellent preparation for his pursuit of studies of Christian traditions, after his arrival in the United States. During this period of Wise’s live, his most prominent teacher and supporter was probably Solomon Judah Rappaport (1786–1867), chief rabbi of Prague and one of the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums. When Wise became rabbinical officiant (“Religionsweiser”4) in the Jewish congregation of Radnitz, Bohemia, this was due to Rappaport, who had recommended him to the congregation. After three years as rabbi in Radnitz, however, Wise left for the United States in 1846, together with his wife and child, where he took his first position as a rabbi in

|| 1 A short account of Kornfeld’s importance as head of the yeshiva in Jenikau can be found in FRIEDLÄNDER, Das Leben und Wirken der hervorragendsten rabbinischen Autoritäten Prags, 53–58. According to Meir Lamed, Kornfeld “was strictly Orthodox in his teaching, yet he conceded the necessity for secular studies” (LAMED, Kornfeld, 312). 2 Accounts of Wise’s years in Europe are provided in PHILIPSON/GROSSMANN, Selected writings of Isaac M. Wise, 1–16, MAY, Isaac Mayer Wise, 1–44, and HELLER, Isaac M. Wise, 49–90. 3 See WILKE, Die Rabbiner der Emanzipationszeit 1, 96–100. The law was effectual from 1837, see FREUND, Zur Judenfrage in Deutschland, 279. 4 See WILKE, Die Rabbiner der Emanzipationszeit 2, 889. For the title of “Religionsweiser” and its background, see IDEM, Den Talmud und den Kant, 609.

https://doi.org/9783110592672-006

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Albany, New York, and then, in 1854, in the congregation B’nai Yeshurun in Cincinatti, Ohio. Wise soon became a most important and active leader in building and developing the American Jewish reform movement and its institutions, among them the Hebrew Union College (1875). Among many other things, Wise was a prolific author. Within his literary oeuvre, Christianity is a quite important topic.5 Above all, Wise published no less than four books explicitly devoted to this subject, namely: – – – –

“The Origin of Christianity, and a Commentary to the Acts of the Apostles” (1868) “Three Lectures on the Origins of Christianity” (1873) “The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth, a historic-critical treatise of the last chapters of the Gospel” (1874) “Judaism and Christianity, Their Agreements and Disagreements: A Series of Friday evening lectures, at the Plum St. Temple, Cincinnati” (1883)

Moreover, in further books, Wise deals with Christianity in a broader context, as in “History of the Hebrews’ Second Commonwealth with Special Reference to its Literature, Culture, and the Origin of Rabbinism and Christianity” (1880), and in “A Defense of Judaism versus Proselytizing Christianity” (1889). Among all these writings, Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity, and a Commentary to the Acts of the Apostles,” the first of his books on Christianity, certainly deserves special attention, not only because it is by far the most voluminous of them, covering more than 500 pages, but also since Wise provides here in great detail the fundaments for his views on Christianity, which he often relies on in his later writings.

1 I.M. Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity” – Structure and Content In spite of the title, Wise’s mentioned book does not present a commentary on the Acts of the Apostles from the New Testament, neither in terms of the literary style of a commentary, nor with regard to a continuous coverage of the source text, at

|| 5 A general account of Wise’s views on Christianity can be found in HELLER, Isaac M. Wise, 623– 657, and KEY, The theology of Isaac Mayer Wise, 53–57.

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least if we take the common concept of the literary genre “commentary” as established in both classical Judaism and in modern textual scholarship as point of comparison. Rather, Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity” contains in fact his reconstruction of the origins and the early intellectual history of Christianity. The reference to the Book of Acts appearing in the title of this work is nevertheless meaningful, since Wise’s reconstruction of early Christianity proceeds mostly, although not exclusively, from a source-critical analysis of this book and its comparison with other literary compositions and textual traditions. Thus, the exposition of Wise’s study generally relies on Acts, but his references to individual passages from the book are fairly selective, following the demands of his topical approach to the subject rather than the narrative framework of Acts, although the latter did provide the general basis for the arrangement of the topics, as can be gathered from the table of contents, which largely follows the sequence presented in Acts. The list below presents the original table of contents,6 followed by the passage from Acts which might provide a counterpart for the respective topic within the text of that Biblical book, even if Wise does not in each case really refer to it (in square brackets): Chapter I. The Nascent Church at Jerusalem [cf. Acts 1] Chapter II. The Holy Ghost [cf. Acts 2:1–40] Chapter III. The Glossology [cf. Acts 2:3–11] Chapter IV. The Government of the Nascent Congregation [cf. Acts 2:41–47] Chapter V. On the Miracles [cf. Acts 2:43] Chapter VI. The Persecution of the Apostles [cf. Acts 5:17–33] Chapter VII. The Apostles’ Creed [cf. Acts 5:30–32] Chapter VIII. The Martyrdom of Stephen [cf. Acts 7:57–60] Chapter IX. Paul – Acher [cf. Acts 8:1–3] Chapter X. The Creed of Paul [cf. Acts 9:20] Chapter XI. The Conversion of the Gentiles [cf. Acts 10 = Cornelius’ conversion] Chapter XII.The Voyages of Paul [cf. Acts 13–21:26] Chapter XIII. Capture, Trial, and Deportation of Paul [cf. Acts 21:27–28:33] Chapter XIV. The Last Days of Paul [cf. First Epistle of Clement and Acts of Paul] In most instances, the connection between the topic and the passage from Acts is more or less obvious already from the title, but this is not always the case:

|| 6 See WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 8.

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“The Apostles’ Creed” (= Chapter VII): Covering 123 pages, this is by far the most voluminous of all chapters of Wise’s book under consideration. Neither the title nor the subject of this chapter, however, has an obvious counterpart in Acts, the text of which does contains neither the “Apostles’ Creed” as such, in spite of the latter’s suggestive title,7 nor any other formalized “creed” in the proper sense of the word. Referring to the book Institutionum historiae ecclesiasticae antiquae et recentioris, which Wise quotes in an English translation from 1823, written by the Lutheran church historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693–1755), a professor at the universities of Helmstedt and Göttingen and one of the most important theologians of the age of enlightenment, and the book Le Symbole de Apotres; essai historique (1867) by Michel Nicolas (1810–1886), a philosopher and theologian, who was a professor at the Faculté de théologie protestante de Montauban, Wise proposes the following view: According to him, the formula “Credo in Patrem, Filium, Spiritum Sanctum, et in Sanctum Ecclesiam” recorded by Tertullian around 200 CE. is8 undoubtedly the original from which the Apostles’ Creed was gradually developed, and which was in the second or in the beginning of the third century added to Matthew’s Gospel: ‘Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’

Thus, according to Wise (and obviously from a modern perspective), the “Apostles’ Creed” was not at all the work of the apostles, in spite of its suggestive name, since it emerged only during the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. Moreover, an earlier form of that creed found in the Greek text of Matthew 28:19 did not originate in the earlier textual layers of that composition, but was only secondarily added to the text. While the first claim can be traced back to Mosheim and Nicolas, Wise’s second claim, namely that Matthew 28:19 is late in terms of textual history, seems to be his own conclusion. On the other hand, according to Wise, already the Apostles must have followed beliefs that set them apart from mainstream Judaism. He therefore aims to reconstruct “what did the Apostles teach their fellow Israelites in Jerusalem, distinguishing their system of religion from others.”9 These distinctive features are apparent in Acts, specifically in Peter’s speeches, although Wise does not regard

|| 7 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 170–171. 8 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 171. 9 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 173.

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the latter as historical sources for the time of the Apostles, but realizes that they are composed in accordance with the theological and literary concerns of the author of Acts, i.e. Luke. “Paul – Acher” (= Chapter IX): The title of chapter IX is likely to appear somewhat enigmatic, and there is certainly no obvious counterpart to it in Acts. However, the short fomula expresses the gist of this part of the book, namely Wise’s effort to demonstrate that Paul and the Tannaitic rabbi Elisha ben Abuya, otherwise known under the name “Other” (‫)אחר‬, are in fact one and the same person, leading him to the conclusion:10 In the face […] of all the accidental and substantial points of similarity which we have cited, the identities of Paul and Acher is established, and the minor points will find solutions hereafter, as we proceed with the history of Paul.

According to Talmudic sources, Acher was regarded a heretic with close ties to mystical traditions, although the exact nature of his heresy remains unclear.11 Wise, however, takes it for granted that Acher converted to Christianity, like Paul.12 He does not quote any bibliographical references in support of his conclusion, but the view was not uncommon at his time.13 On the other hand, Wise was aware of Heinrich Graetz’s opinion that Acher was a Gnostic,14 although he regards Graetz’s “Gnostics” as “Paul-Christians.”15 From the perspective of Wise’s focus on Paul’s thinking, the equation of Paul and Acher is a quite influential achievement, since it allows Wise to use the Talmudic description of Acher for the reconstruction of Paul’s Jewish background. Thus, in accordance with his view of Acher, Wise conceives Paul’s mindset in terms of Christian mysticism, which bears a fundamental impact on Wise’s understanding of the early development of Christology, as Wise expounds in the following chapter:

|| 10 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 350. 11 WALD, Elisha ben Avuyah, 353. 12 See WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 317 and 328. 13 See GINZBERG, Elisha Ben Abuyah, 138. The legends about Acher were quite influential among Jewish writers since the Haskalah, see WALD, Elisha ben Avuyah, 353. 14 See GRAETZ, Gnosticismus und Judenthum, 62–70. 15 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 345.

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“The Creed of Paul” (= Chapter X): Acts 9 tells the story of Paul’s conversion, and verse 20 of this chapter describes the consequence of that event: “And immediately he preached in the synagogues, that Jesus is the Son of God.” Acts 9:20 thus implies that Paul conveyed a certain message, and even, to some extent, specifies its content. Wise, however, stresses that the Book of Acts cannot be regarded as a reliable witness for Paul’s teaching. Instead, the latter should be reconstructed primarily from Paul’s own writings, which often contradict Acts. This divergence between Acts and Paul appears also in the conversion story, which speaks of a heavenly vision and audition (Acts 9:3–4), while Paul himself states, in Gal 1:15, that his beliefs and his mission do not rely on an external vision, but rather on internal revelations:16 Paul, in imitation of the prophet Jeremiah (Jerem. i, 5), says: ‘But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace to reveal His son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen (Gal. i, 15). Thus we know that Paul had no vision; all the visions he had were IN HIM, inwardly and not outwardly.

As to the nature of these revelations, Wise refers to what he reconstructs as Paul’s mystical experience:17 The precise nature of this revelation or vision IN HIM has been explained above, it was when he was in PARADISE and saw METATHRON.

Since Paul is for Wise no other person than the Talmudic Acher (see above), Paul must have been in paradise,18 where he has met Metathron, an angelic figure who gained its profile mainly in Jewish Esoteric traditions.19 Under this influence, Paul interpreted Christ in terms of Metathron, whom Wise sees mainly in light of Enochic20 traditions:21

|| 16 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 354. 17 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 354. 18 See WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 328–329. 19 See WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 341–342. For an overview on Metatron-traditions, see SCHOLEM, Metatron. 20 According to Scholem, “two different traditions have been combined in the figure of Metatron. One relates to a heavenly angel […] and makes him responsible for performing the most exalted tasks in the heavenly kingdom. […] A different tradition relates Metatron with Enoch, who […] was changed from a human being into an angel […]” (SCHOLEM , Metatron, 133). 21 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 340–341.

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Paul’s Son of God is simply the adoption of the rabbinical Metathron to Peter’s crucified Messiah. He set Jesus in place of Enoch and united it with the redemption theory of Peter by the death of the Messiah.

Chapter X, therefore, is devoted to the reconstruction of Paul’s theology, mainly from his letters and the Talmudic sources about Acher. Moreover, since Wise regards these sources as historically trustworthy, he uses them as criteria for distinguishing the later Christian re-interpretations of Paul found in Acts from the original views of the original protagonist:22 Knowing as we do now this great man with his great faults, we are fully prepared to follow up and control the statements of ‘The Acts’ concerning him.

Wise sees in Paul an “orthodox Pharisean,” who was convinced that there is “one God, one moral law and one destiny to the whole human family,” and who proclaimed the immediate approach of the last day.23 As regards Paul’s “great faults,” Wise points mainly to two issues: First, “Paul was no particular friend of woman,” insofar he “considered her the subject of man who communicates with Christ only through her husband.”24 Second, Paul “expressed himself fully and intelligibly in favor of all governments, however despotic, in condemnation of all revolutions, however just, and in favor of every personal servitude, however outrageous.”25 Wise’s extremely dismissive assessment of this part of Paul’s thinking betrays of course Wise’s own convictions that women are equal to men and should actively participate in social and religious life,26 and that human society should consist of equal citizens, free from any unjust rule.27 “The Last Days of Paul” (= Chapter XIV): Neither Acts nor any other book of the New Testament contain information regarding the circumstances of Paul’s death, but Christian apocrypha do, especially the First Epistle of Clement, which “includes the earliest specific mention

|| 22 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 425. 23 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 415. 24 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 416. 25 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 421–422. 26 See for instance Wise’s “Women as members of congregations” (PHILIPSON/GROSSMANN, Selected writings of Isaac M. Wise, 397–399). 27 See MARCUS, The Americanization of Isaac Mayer Wise, 6–7.

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of Paul’s martyrdom,”28 and the Acts of Paul.29 Wise considers the value of these texts as historical witnesses for a supposed martyrdom of Paul as “perfectly worthless,” due to a different situation painted by the oldest sources:30 Paul, in his epistles written from Rome, expresses not the remotest omen that his life was in danger. The closing lines of ‘The Acts’ suggest that he was entirely unmolested in Rome. Hence those who added the names of the writers and the place to the epistles, and the author of ‘The Acts,’ could not have believed in the martyrdom of Paul.

Proceeding from this perspective, and from further detailed observations in Paul’s letter’s, Wise proposes a reconstruction of the biography of Paul, the literary chronology of his letters as well as the development of his views, that completely deviates from the general perception:31 Paul was not long in Rome, it appears. He traveled through Italy to Illyricum (Romans xv, 19) which he could have visited only after he had been dismissed in Rome, went back to Syria, most likely to Antioch […]. But on returning he found his converts falling off from him by the influence of his colleagues in Jerusalem who taught them the law and circumcision, […] and he was supposed to stay at home and secure his bishoprick. […] This is the time when Paul wrote most of his epistles against the law, the circumcision, the nationality, and covenant of Israel.

Thus, according to Wise, and in contradiction to traditions which had emerged in the church already towards the end of the 1st century CE (i.e., at the time when 1 Clement was written), Paul did not suffer martyrdom in Rome, but returned to Antioch, and it was there that he wrote most of his letters. Moreover, Wise concludes, based on the stories about Acher from the Talmudim that the Rabbis continued to hold Paul in high esteem after his return, and that the Rabbis even knew the location of Paul’s grave.32 In this as in many further cases, thus, the rabbinic sources provide much more reliable and detailed insights into Paul’s life and thinking than the traditional Christian texts, according to Wise.

|| 28 EASTMAN, Paul the martyr, 18. 29 EASTMAN, Paul the martyr, 20. 30 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 515. 31 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 517–518. 32 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 530–531.

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2 Wise and Wissenschaft des Judentums on the Origin of Christianity – a Comparison Wise’s opus magnum on Christianity appeared in 1868. At that time, in the second half of the 19th century, the impact of the religious confession of a given scholar on the way he carried out his research on Christianity and the New Testament may have undergone a certain decrease, in comparison with the preceding centuries, but it was still very prominent. Therefore, scholarly contributions were in most cases clearly identified as e.g. “Catholic” versus “Protestant.” However, especially with the emerging participation of Jewish scholars at the current research on Christianity and the New Testament, a further factor became increasingly important, which helped to maintain these often all too visible confessional edges, namely the different educational backgrounds of scholars. Most obviously, Jewish scholars were much more familiar with the “Jewish” languages and literary sources potentially pertaining to the New Testament than most Christian scholars, and that awareness had an important impact on their work. It seems therefore in no way inappropriate to speak of a distinctively “Jewish” research on the New Testament and Christianity, which emerged during the 19th century mostly in Austria and Germany, without even entering more complicated questions like potential – and often all too obvious – differences in terms of hermeneutics or epistemology. Most notably, this distinction between Christian and Jewish scholarship appears not only in hindsight, but they seem to have shaped the self-conception of Jewish scholars to a considerable extent, as demonstrated by the following claim of Abraham Geiger, in a review of David Friedrich Strauß’ views on the historical Jesus:33 Here we have arrived at the point, which is the point of departure for us, while the Christian scholarship did not yet acquire the required understanding in this regard until now. It is not only lacking the knowledge, but also […] the unbegrudging recognition of foreign property.

Thus, as Geiger recognizes, the different perspectives of Christian and Jewish scholars were not only due to different specific knowledge, but were also enhanced or even produced by prejudices about Judaism. Such an anti-Jewish bias

|| 33 “Hier aber sind wir an dem Punkte angelangt, der uns zunächst der Ausgangspunkt ist, in welchem aber die christliche Wissenschaft es bis zur Stunde noch nicht zur nöthigen Einsicht gebracht hat. Es fehlt ihr dazu nicht blos das Wissen, sondern auch, und so schwer dieser Vorwurf ist, so drängen doch alle Erfahrungen dahin, ihn als begründet zu betrachten, die neidlose Anerkennung fremden Gutes.” – GEIGER, Das Judentum und seine Geschichte, 176.

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was current even among those Christian Hebraists, who were able and willing to make use of rabbinic sources in order to better understand the New Testament, as can be well observed in the most prominent literary genre created by these scholars, i.e. commentary-like collections of passages from rabbinic literature, especially from the Mishna, Talmud, and Midrash. The first important collection of this type was published from 1658 to 1678 by the Presbyterian John Lightfoot (1602–1675) under the title Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae In Qvatuor Evangelistas. The most comprehensive is probably the four volume Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch by the Prussian pastor Paul Billerbeck (1853–1932), published 1922–1928 with the help of the leading Christian Hebraist Hermann Leberecht Strack (1848–1922), and a further important commentary of this type, and the first covering the New Testament as a whole, was published by the Saxon scholar Johann Christian Schoettgen (1687–1751) under the title Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in universum Novum Testamentum (1733–1742). For all these collections, in spite of the fact that their authors were well versed in rabbinic literature, the impact of Christian anti-Jewish perspectives has been demonstrated.34 In light of these observations, and due to his academic and personal links with protagonists of the early Wissenschaft des Judentums, especially with Solomon Judah Rappaport,35 the meanwhile “Americanized”36 Isaac Mayer Wise, when publishing his “The Origin of Christianity” in 1868, seems to have been part of just the same stream of Jewish New Testament studies, which emerged and developed since the first half of the 19th century in Austria and Germany. In other respects, however, he certainly did not belong to these circles, especially not in terms of institutionalized academic research and teaching, and in terms of scholarly networks. Wise seems to have been only remotely connected to the institutions and networks of Wissenschaft des Judentums, and specifically to the scholars carrying out research on Christianity and the New Testament in the immediate context of Wissenschaft des Judentums, more or less simultaneously to his own research. Moreover, of all those contemporary Jewish scholars, whose publications on the subject he might have known when he wrote his book, Wise mentions

|| 34 See e.g. the following studies on this topic: For Lightfoot’s Hebraicae et Talmudicae, see BROADHURST, What Is the Literal Sense?, 198–199; with regard to Schoettgen’s Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae, see L OADER, James Alfred: Strack-Billerbeck, Orthodoxy and a Jewish New Testament; on (Strack-)Billerbeck’s Kommentar, see SCHALLER, Paul Billerbecks „Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch“. 35 See above. 36 Compare MARCUS, The Americanization of Isaac Mayer Wise.

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only Graetz’s “Messianic expectations and the origin of Christianity” from the latter’s Geschichte der Juden.37 Any reference to other famous contemporary Jewish scholars engaging in the academic study of Christianity, especially Samuel Hirsch, Isaak Markus Jost, and Abraham Geiger, is missing. Since Wise does not generally abstain from mentioning the literature he uses or discusses, including articles from academic journals like the “Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums,” this seems hardly incidental, but appears to prove instead that he had no access to these books, or otherwise was not aware of them. Thus, Wise seems to have worked largely independently from the Jewish research on the New Testament and on Christianity as carried out in the Wissenschaft des Judentums and among contemporary reform-oriented Jewish scholars. Nevertheless, his scholarly endeavor does still find its closest match in that scholarly context and can hardly be fully understood without referring to Wissenschaft des Judentums as the expression of a change of attitude towards the critical study of Jewish traditions, both among Jewish and Christian scholars, in their respective contexts, including Christianity and its traditions. Therefore, a comparison between Wise’s book and other scholarly publications on Christianity and the New Testament authored by Jewish scholars may help to elucidate its importance. To be sure, the origin of Christianity was at that time a rather prominent topic of Jewish research, and all his predecessors agreed with Wise about the eminent Jewish nature of this origin: –

Samuel Hirsch (1815–1889), rabbi in Dessau, Luxemburg, and beginning in 1866 rabbi of the congregation Knesseth Israel in Philadelphia, was one of the pioneers of the Jewish reform movement. Already in 1842, Hirsch had published a book with the title Das System der religiösen Anschauung der Juden und sein Verhältnis zum Heidentum, Christentum und zur absoluten Philosophie, which contains chapters about Jesus and Paul. According to Hirsch, the historical Jesus, whose traces he found mainly in the gospel of Matthew, in accordance with the general view before the 1860s,38 was a pious Jew, who did not bring anything new into Judaism. The parting of the way between Judaism and Christianity happened only after Jesus’ death, propagated by Paul’s polemics against a type of legalistic Judaism, which according to

|| 37 GRAETZ, Geschichte der Juden 3, 216–252 (= Chapter 11 “Messianische Erwartungen und Ursprung des Christentums”). 38 This consensus was only ended by Heinrich Julius Holtzmann’s book “Die synoptischen Evangelien, ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter” (1863), which attributed primacy to the gospel of Mark, see below in the passage devoted to Abraham Geiger’s research in the field of New Testament studies.

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–

–

–

Hirsch existed only in the latter’s own poor concept of Judaism. This distorted version of Judaism, created by the Jew Paul, became prevalent and finally laid into the separation of the two groups, according to Hirsch. The historian Isaak Markus Jost (1793–1860) devoted a whole chapter of his Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten (1857) to the topic “Origin of Christianity.” As Hirsch, Jost focuses above all on the historical Jesus and leaves no doubt about the latter’s Jewish identity. For Jost, too, it is Paul who was responsible for the separation between Jews and Christianity, although due to a reason different from Hirsch’s suggestion: Jost thinks that Paul propagated a spiritualized and antinomistic religion, which he describes as irreconcilable with the Judaism of Paul’s contemporaries. Jost’s Paul was certainly not lacking wits, as Hirsch’s, but was a rather ingenious (“geistreich”) Jewish thinker with a clear political agenda. However, Paul’s promotion of a sublime universal religion, free from observance of any particularistic laws, is regarded by Jost as an essentially un-Jewish teaching, which creates the ultimate break between Judaism and Christianity. Heinrich Graetz’s (1817–1891) reconstruction of the origins of Christianity can be found mainly in the third volume of his Geschichte der Juden, since its second expanded edition from 1863. Graetz’s view is similar to Jost’s with regard to the emergence of Christianity: The latter is the work of Paul. In opposition to Jost, however, for whom Paul deviated considerably from Jesus’ teachings, Graetz was conviced that Paul built on some tendencies that were already prevalent among the followers of the historical Jesus, namely a considerable lack of knowledge, combined with a serious focus on morality and an emphasis on the emotional aspects of religion (“Gemüt”). Abraham Geiger’s (1810–1874) views on the origins of Christianity, which appeared in quite an extensive part of his Das Judentum und seine Geschichte: In zwölf Vorlesungen (1864) and elsewhere,39 have much in common with Hirsch’s and Graetz’s, although they are elaborated in a much more comprehensive and thorough manner, to the extent that Geiger can be regarded as the founder of a new epoch in the academic study of the New Testament:40

|| 39 See the list provided in LINDESKOG, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum, 102. 40 “Geiger ist eigentlich der erste, der einsah, dass die unumgängliche Voraussetzung einer richtigen Auffassung und Würdigung des Neuen Testaments in einer sorgfältigen Erforschung des damaligen Judentums zu suchen ist.” – LINDESKOG, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum, 102.

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Geiger is actually the first who understood that the correct perception and appreciation of the New Testament inevitable requires a meticulous investigation of the contemporary Judaism.

As Hirsch and Graetz, Geiger too understood the teachings of the historical Jewish Jesus as the point of departure for the rift that evolved between Christianity and Judaism, although Jesus’ own teachings were in full accordance with the Judaism of his time.41 Unlike Hirsch, however, Geiger identified the relevant sources for the historical Jesus not in the Gospel of Matthew, but in Mark, in concordance with the so-called “Two-source Hypothesis” regarding the literary history of the synoptic gospels. This view about the historical priority of Mark is not original to Geiger, but followed the contemporary state of the art in New Testament studies, as established above all by Heinrich Julius Holtzmann’s work Die synoptischen Evangelien, ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter, which had appeared 1863, only one year before Geiger’s own book. While Geiger certainly agreed with Graetz in regard to the pivotal role of the historical Jesus for the later separation between church and synagogue, for him it was not Jesus’ personality which planted this seed, as for Graetz, but the belief that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic expectations created and followed by the Pharisees. Subsequently, Paul turned that conviction into a universal religion, through separating the arrival of the new world from Jewish particularism and accentuating the antagonism between Christianity and the Jewish law. As regards the latter view, Geiger was close to Jost. All these accounts have in common that they conceive the teachings of Jesus as the point of departure for Christianity, relying therefore almost exclusively on the gospels, although with different emphases: While Hirsch proceeded from the Gospel of Matthew as the main source for his reconstruction, Geiger relied mainly on the Gospel of Mark. Although all these scholars agreed that it was Paul’s impact that re-shaped the teachings of the historical Jesus into what later became acknowledged as Christianity, they conceived Paul’s role only in relation to the teachings of Jesus, from which he supposedly proceeded.

|| 41 See HESCHEL, Der jüdische Jesus, 214–215 for a general contextualization of Geiger’s view. An excellent description of Geiger’s Jewish Jesus is provided by STEGEMANN, Jesus und seine Zeit, 166–168. Geiger was well aware of the challenge posed to his perspective by the works of David Friedrich Strauß, but he dismissed them, see GEIGER, Das Judentum und seine Geschichte, 159– 181 (“Anhang: Ein Blick auf die neuesten Bearbeitungen des Lebens Jesu”).

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For Wise, however, this latter reference frame does not exist, since independent sources, which would allow for the reconstruction of the life and the teachings of the historical Jesus, are not available:42 A careful investigation into the Gospels proves that not only no part of the narrative can be fully relied upon as being historically certain, but also no speech, parable or sentence supposed to have been uttered by Jesus himself will stand the test of historical criticism. What Jesus himself did, suffered, opposed or taught, hence what influence he exercised upon the origin of Christianity, or what religious principles be laid down for his disciples, is next to an impossibility to ascertain. Every biography of Jesus, every life of Christ must necessarily be considered an individual conception footing uncertainties; and the expression the religion of Christ is simply a misnomer.

This perspective is certainly remarkable, in comparison not only with Hirsch, Jost, Graetz, Geiger, and further scholars from Wissenschaft des Judentums: Wise was one of the first scholars of the New Testament and Ancient Christianity, and certainly the first Jewish scholar, who declared the quest for the historical Jesus a mission impossible, due to the nature of the available sources. The radicalism of his deconstruction of the Leben-Jesu-Forschung seems only comparable to the Hegelian Rationalist Bruno Bauer (1809–1882), who in his Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (1841–1842) demonstrated that the gospels cannot be taken as sources for the historical Jesus, and who in his “Kritik der Evangelien” (1850–1851) came to the final conclusion that a historical Jesus never existed. Naturally, Bauer’s arguments in that last point follow mainly his general rationalistic concept of religion, and not a literary analysis if the available sources. Even if Wise would have known Bauer’s publications – and there is no hint that he did – his attentive reading of the sources would have made it quite difficult for him to accept Bauer’s conclusion as a proof for Jesus’ non-existence. Within the context of contemporary Jewish studies of the New Testament, Wise’s position is unique. In their effort to conceive the Jewish Leben Jesu, Geiger and other scholars close to or associated with Wissenschaft des Judentums were not too far from the liberal mainstream of New Testament exegesis in the German Protestant tradition. Even the consequental quest to understand Jesus in his Jewish environment has obvious parallels in that academic tradition, mainly in the path-breaking Fragmente eines Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten, published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, but authored by Herrmann Samuel Reimarus (1694– 1768),43 and David Friedrich Strauß (1808–1874) in his Das Leben Jesu kritisch

|| 42 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, v. 43 See STEGEMANN, Jesus und seine Zeit, 158–160.

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bearbeitet (1835–1836).44 And Wise’s insight that “every life of Christ must necessarily be considered an individual conception” seems only comparable to Albert Schweitzer’s famous harsh verdict of the Leben-Jesu-Forschung, published first in 1906, and putting that academic endeavor to its final rest:45 Those who are fond of talking about Negative Theology, find themselves in an easy situation with regard to the yield of Life-of-Jesus-research: This yield is negative. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.

Schweitzer does not mention Geiger, nor Hirsch, Jost, or Graetz. Without any doubt, however, his judgement pertains to their research as to those of their Christian contemporaries. Wise generally dismisses the gospels as a reliable source for the life of Jesus, but he does not deny the historical value of these texts altogether: The four Gospels, the origin of which is discussed in this volume, can not be taken as the main sources for the origin of Christianity. They represent it in the second and third stages of its development. The authors were Christians before they wrote their books; hence Christianity preceded them.

Therefore, while the gospels have not much to say about the origins of Christianity, according to Wise, their texts bear important witness for the theologians of the early church, although in different literary layers, to be carefully separated one from the other. Wise’s contextualization of the gospels within the environment of later Christian thinking provides him thus with the opportunity to reconstruct the religious agenda of the early church, through establishing a connection between literary criticism and intellectual history: Subsequent generations of Christian theologians corrected, changed and developed the text in accordance

|| 44 See MYLLYKOSKI, Jesus, der Jude, in der Tübinger Schule, 361–378. 45 “Diejenigen, welche gerne von Negativer Theologie reden, haben es im Hinblick auf den Ertrag der Leben-Jesu-Forschung nicht schwer. Er ist negativ. Der Jesus von Nazareth, der als Messias auftrat, die Sittlichkeit des Gottesreiches verkündete, das Himmelreich auf Erden gründete und starb, um seinem Werke die Weihe zu geben, hat nie existiert. Es ist eine Gestalt, die vom Rationalismus entworfen, vom Liberalismus belebt und von der modernen Theologie in ein geschichtliches Gewand gekleidet wurde.” – SCHWEITZER, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 631. The English rendering is a slightly adopted version of William Montgomery’s translation from 1910 – SCHWEITZER, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 396.

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with their own perceptions of the Christian message, enabling the scholar to reconstruct these views and their mutual relation. This approach seems rather original and even pioneering for the time. Its closest parallel is probably Abraham Geiger’s scholarly endeavor of a cultural history of the text of the Hebrew Bible, as presented in his Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der inneren Entwickelung des Judentums (1857). Geiger was convinced that each of the several textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible, including the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient translations, reflects textual changes and adaptions, carried out in accordance with current views and needs of the respective epochs and intellectual streams. For him, the text of the Hebrew Bible was thus re-shaped repeatedly in the course of its transmission, and it is the task of the scholar to uncover these transformations in light of the history of Judaism and its different sects:46 The Bible […] has never been a book merely for learnt study, but it has been always a book for life. Its demands aimed to enter straight into the whole of thoughts, in order to substantiate truth, to create ethos, and it was the task especially of those, who edited the text, to prevent misconception. Therefore, the Bible had to undergo several minor rearrangements, due to reverence for it, and in order to increase its impact.

To be sure, Wise does not refer to Geiger, and it seems that he developed his approach independently from Geiger.47 Nevertheless, Wise applies methods and models of interpretation that are quite similar to Geiger’s. For both was the current version of the text the result of later conceptions and a later formulation of the original message, and both constructed textual history within the context of intellectual history. Nevertheless, one fundamental difference between Wise and Geiger is obvious: While the latter applied the methods of literary and textual criticism to the Hebrew Bible, Wise’s study deals with the New Testament, and his 1891 book

|| 46 “Die Bibel […] ist nicht blos ein Buch des gelehrten Studiums gewesen, sie war zu allen Zeiten ein Buch für’s Leben, ihre Ansprüche sollten unmittelbar in den ganzen Gedankenkreis eingehen, Wahrheiten bekräftigen, Gesinnungen erzeugen, und es war die Aufgabe namentlich derer, die sie für den minder Kundigen bearbeiteten, sie so einzurichten, dass sie ihn nicht zu einem Missverständnisse führen konnte. So mußte die Bibel einzelne kleine Umgestaltungen erfahren, die man gerade aus Ehrfurcht vor ihr und um ihren Einfluß zu verstärken, mit ihr vornehmen musste.” – GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen, 18–19. 47 As Walter Jacob has shown, Geiger and Wise were indeed in close contact, see JACOB, Abraham Geiger and America, 194–196 and 199–200. Jacob comes even to the conclusion: “Of all personal contacts [i.e. of Geiger in America], that with Isaac Mayer Wise was most important.” – JACOB, Abraham Geiger and America, 200.

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“Pronaos to Holy Writ” witnesses that Wise was not prepared to apply the same measure of textual and literary criticism to the Hebrew Bible, in clear opposition to Geiger.48 There is therefore an undeniable discrepancy in Wise’s attitude towards quite similar literary corpora of religious texts, which was already noted by Sandmel in a generally quite appreciative study of Wise’s “Pronaos to Holy Writ:”49 The book is […] an assault on the Higher Criticism, as exemplified in the German scholarship of the nineteenth century, yet outside the Pentateuch Wise accepts a generous measure of that scholarship.

The motif for this considerable difference in Wise’s attitude towards the two literary corpora, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, is revealed by Wise himself in the preface to his “Pronaos:”50 The authenticity of the Mosaic records is the foundation of all Bible truth. The whole system of righteousness, justice and equity for public government and the conduct of the individual, virtue and holiness as a form of divine worship, monotheism itself with all the doctrine derived from this principle, the entire canon of divinity and humanity depends for evidence on the authenticity and veracity of the Pentateuchal records; every other evidence has been at different times refuted and is subject to skepticism now, perhaps, more than ever. If these records are fraudulent, […] there is no Bible truth. This explains the author's attempt to save the records which establish Bible truth.

Therefore, Wise’s distinction between the Pentateuch and the New Testament in terms of critical scholarship is not based on historical considerations, but it is rather theological and ethical in nature: For Wise, the Pentateuch is divine law, to which every other law, secular or religious, ultimately refers. The Hebrew Torah is the canon of all canons, and it therefore cannot be subjected to criticism. If the Pentateuch were not authentic, there would be no truth at all. Geiger too looks for ultimate truth in the Pentateuch and beyond in the Hebrew Bible in general. According to him, however, this truth is not simply found in any single textual witness, or in a given literary corpus, as for Wise. Instead, it

|| 48 In light of this fundamental disagreement, Jacob’s statement with regard to Wise’s approval of Geiger’s Urschrift und Übersetzungen seems rather misleading: “The conclusions of Geiger’s scholarly work were completely accepted by Isaac Mayer Wise […].” – JACOB, Abraham Geiger and America, 196. 49 SANDMEL, Isaac Mayer Wise’s Pronaos, 517. 50 WISE, Pronaos, 5–6.

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is found in the Urtext of the Hebrew Bible,51 hidden behind the later formulations and layers of the available textual witnesses, and to be uncovered by the student of the Biblical text. Therefore, in contradiction to Wise’s concept of the everlasting “canonical truth” of the Pentateuch, Geiger conceives truth as a historical category, as geschichtliche Wahrheit 52 (“historical truth”), unfolded and to be unfolded in correspondence with changing historical circumstances. Thus, for him it is the task of the scholar to disseminate and foster this historical truth in the new context of modernity:53 Scholarship must disseminate as a new seed for the further development of Judaism what it receives as historical truth of the past. […] The historical sprout must revive again, and the sap of life must continue to flow in the trunk, in order to produce in new freshness spiritual fruit.

This historical truth of the Biblical tradition, however, may be found in Christian sources as well, as Geiger stresses for instance with regard to the Christian reception of the Septuagint,54 and he therefore analyses them with the same methods as the Hebrew Bible. Wise, however, makes a sharp distinction. For him, the New Testament and Christianity in general were shaped by historical circumstances, which are similar to the creation of Rabbinic Judaism:55 Christianity originated in its age, and bears the impress of the same. The angels and the demons, the messianic speculations, the belief in miracles, wondrous cures, supernatural diseases, necromancy and sorcery, the frequent appearance of angels and the speaking of the Holy Ghost or Bath kol, are all the products of that morbid and overloaded age. Its solid basis is an abstract from Moses and the Prophets, strongly intermixed with rabbinical views.

|| 51 Geiger uses the phrase “the Biblical text in its strong originality” (“Bibeltext in seiner kräftigen Ursprünglichkeit”) – GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen, 423. 52 GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen, iv. 53 “Was die Wissenschaft als eine geschichtliche Wahrheit für die Vergangenheit aufnimmt, das muss sie dann auch als einen neuen Fruchtkeim ausstreuen für die Fortentwickelung des Judenthums. Wenn der Boden der Geschichte aufgelockert wird und die Mächte aufgewiesen werden, die unablässig an ihm gearbeitet haben: so muss auch weiter der geschichtliche Trieb wieder lebendig werden und der Lebenssaft weiter den Stamm durchströmen, um in neuer Frische geistige Früchte zu erzeugen. Die Erstarrung, der Tod eines jeden wahren religiösen Lebens, sich stützend auf die angebliche Abgeschlossenheit, welche einmüthig bezeugt werde, muss der Erkenntniss der geschichtlichen Bewegung weichen.” – GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen, iv. 54 GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen, 162. 55 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 533.

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In contradiction to this, he regards the “scriptural” Judaism of the Hebrew Bible as eternal and universal, a view most pointedly advanced in his small book “Judaism: Its Doctrines and Duties,” a catechism-like textbook first published in 1872:56 1. There is a religion without mysteries or miracles, rational and self-evident. 2. This rational religion is taught in the Bible, called, in the Gentile phraseology, the Old Testament. 3. This scriptural and rational religion is Judaism. 4. Judaism, in its doctrines and duties, is eminently humane, universal, liberal, and progressive; in perfect harmony with modern science, criticism, and philosophy, and in full sympathy with universal liberty, equality, justice, and charity. 5. Therefore Judaism is the religion of the future generations, as it was the teacher of the past ones.

Thus, for Wise the Hebrew Bible is “Holy writ,” and as such not suitable to critical research. The New Testament and Christianity in general, on the other hand, are part of the same post-Biblical Judaism, which led to the suppression of the Biblical truth and must be removed:57 Both must fall. Rabbinical Judaism and dogmatic Christianity, being extensive codes concerning the means of religion, must finally yield to the progress and triumph of the religious idea itself; then God will be again all in all, to speak with Paul, or then God will be one and his name one as the prophet has it. Intelligent men in our days need neither rabbinism nor christology […]

3 Paul’s Judaism, the Book of Acts, and Early Christian History The last quote leads to a further important feature of Wise’s “The Origin of Christianity:” Wise conceives Paul not merely as the founder of Christianity, but as a seminal Jewish thinker of universal importance,58 who was fully in accordance

|| 56 WISE, Judaism, 3–4. 57 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 522. 58 In the third of his “Three Lectures on the Origin of Christianity” from 1883, bearing the title “Paul and the mystics,” Wise provides a popularized version of this evaluation: “The world is a machine-shop. Each artificer makes the part of a machine. One master mind combines the parts, and he is known as the master machinist. Paul was one of those master machinists, one of those

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with the Biblical tradition and even comparable to Israel’s Biblical prophets, as indicated by Wise’s allusion to Zecharia 14:9.59 Moreover, Paul is the author of the first texts of Christian literature, which became the point of departure for the other books of the New Testament. From Wise’s perspective, however, this later literature shows that, and how Christianity moved away from Paul’s views:60 The epistles are the oldest Christian literature and the most unquestionable sources for the origin of Christianity. They were known to the Gospel writers, and were used by them. We learn from the epistles what the apostles taught. It is from the teachings of the apostles that one might sometimes ascertain doctrines of Jesus. Therefore, the epistles are the main sources used by the author of this work. In the epistles themselves there are two entirely distinct systems of Christianity, one of which is represented by Peter, James and John, and the other by Paul and his followers. The history of the development of these two systems is in ‘The Acts of the Apostles.’ Therefore this latter book serves as the basis to this work.

One rather central example for the manner, in which Wise proceeds with his reconstruction of early Christianity, is the use of the titles “Son of God,” “Messiah,” and “Logos.” Each of these titles is found in the gospels, but Wise attributes them to three different historical stages of Christian thinking:61 Paul’s ‘Son of God’ is entirely different from John’s ‘Logos,’ as much so as it is from Peter's ‘Messiah.’ These three words, Messiah, Son of God, Logos, mark three successive epochs in the history of Christianity, preceding the adoption of the Trinitarian doctrine, of which neither Peter, nor Paul, nor even John had any knowledge.

Wise’s use of the framework of Acts and of the different sources embedded in the book as the basis for his work on the origin of Christianity is therefore very much to the point, expressing his Tendenzkritik with regard to the four gospels, Acts, and Paul’s epistles. In relying on this corpus, he sets himself a further time clearly

|| brilliant stars in the horizon of history.” (WISE, Three lectures, 53). Key, in his account of Wise’s theological thinking from 1962, seems still astonished about this perspective: “Oddly enough, Wise considered Paul to be one of the greatest religious figures of all time.” (KEY, The theology of Isaac Mayer Wise, 55). Langton has demonstrated, however, that it was not entirely unknown among Jewish scholarls, but has been advocated by other prominent thinkers as well, e.g. by Joseph Krauskopf (1858–1923), see LANGTON, The Apostle Paul, 79–81. Nevertheless, Wise at his time was certainly pioneering. 59 “And the LORD shall be king over all the earth; in that day there shall be one LORD with one name.” (Zech 14:9; quoted from JPS Tanakh, 1985). 60 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, vi. 61 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 330.

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apart from most of the scholars of his time, and particularly from the studies of Christianity written by scholars associated with Wissenschaft des Judentums. Besides the methods of Tendenzkritik, Wise applies literary source-criticism. Under that perspective, Wise identifies in Acts different literary layers on account of the different grammatical voices: According to him, the passages written in the first person plural were written by a companion or disciple of Paul, while the remainder of the text was written by the author of the gospel of Luke.62 Notably, in that specific case he applies a perspective introduced by Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834) in his Einleitung in das Neue Testament (1845), which he seems to have received through Ernest Renan’s book “The Apostles” (1866; published the same year in an English translation, in New York), which is one of the few books that he quotes. As seen before, Wise’s predecessors from Wissenschaft des Judentums concurred not only with regard to their efforts to reconstruct the authentic teachings of the historical Jesus, but also with respect to their view of Paul as the founder of Christianity. Moreover, they generally agreed that Paul’s relationship with Judaism was rather distant – for most of them he was either a Jewish heretic, or a Jewish ignorant. Wise holds again a completely different view. For him, Paul is not only fully Jewish, but he remains fully Jewish, too:63 Paul is an orthodox Pharisee not merely in his doctrines of God, resurrection and judgment, but also in his construction of the principle of love in regard to law. Love is with him not what it was with Jesus and his disciples, the main principle of Deity and humanity, the essence of Godhead and manhood, in opposition to the GNOSIS of the Gnostics; with him faith takes this high rank, salvation comes by faith, and not by love only. Love replaces the law and is itself the law of all laws. Whatever love dictates that is law.

In the context of both Jewish and Christian research on Paul, which generally stressed the difference between Paul and his Jewish environment,64 this view of Paul was rather unusual, although it seems generally accepted today. Paul’s use of the title “Son of God” provides Wise a hint for a more precise reconstruction of his Jewish background:65

|| 62 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 12. 63 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 370. 64 See SCHWEITZER, Geschichte der Paulinischen Forschung, 36–40, and L INDESKOG, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum, 310–311. 65 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 340–341.

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Paul’s Son of God is simply the adoption of the rabbinical Metathron to Peter’s crucified Messiah. He set Jesus in place of Enoch and united it with the redemption theory of Peter by the death of the Messiah.

Wise, therefore, saw Paul as a Jewish mystic, who conceived Christology in light of traditions on Enoch and Metathron. The understanding of Paul in the context of mysticism became popular in German Protestant research in the late 19th century, mainly through Heinrich Julius Holtzmann’s Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie (1896/97). But these scholars saw the mystic element against the background of hellenistic religion, and in sharp contrast to Judaism.66 Wise seems to have been the first to propose Jewish mysticism as the context of Paul’s theology. And while today the analysis of Paul’s links to Jewish mysticism is regarded an important topic of research, it was only Albert Schweitzer in his book Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (1930), who established this subject on the academic map, followed by Gershom Scholem in his “Jewish Gnosticism” (1960), while Wise’s contribution has been generally overlooked. A further significant feature of Paul’s theology is the abolition of the Torah, interpreted by most of the scholars from the German Wissenschaft des Judentums as apostasy from Judaism. Wise, however, explains it as a means of turning his beliefs into a universally acceptable religion, and a pragmatic means for carrying out Paul’s universal vision,67 in full accordance with the historical circumstances of his times:68 The determination to bring the knowledge of the One God and the pure moral law to debased and corrupted heathens, is holy and admirable. […] Like all brilliant and successful men in history, he understood his age, stood upon its summit, adopted the most available means to carry out his plans, felt an interest in, and an attachment to the whole human family, worked out his own convictions and his own destiny without regard to sect, creed, country or people. However numerous his imperfections may be, be was a great, energetic and independent man, in comparison to whom Peter and James were monks, visionary Essenes, stubborn and narrow sectarians.

Thus, according to Wise, Paul had to sacrifice Jewish particularism in order to gain Jewish universalism. At this point Wise’s view of Paul seems to becomes transparent for his own concept of Judaism: As the Paul fleshed out in his book, Wise aimed for Jewish universalism.69

|| 66 See SCHWEITZER, Geschichte der Paulinischen Forschung, 78. 67 See MEISSNER, Die Heimholung des Ketzers, 32–33. 68 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 414–415. 69 Compare WILANSKY, Sinai to Cincinnati, 221.

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An important question emerges with regard to Wise’s account: If Paul’s universalistic mission was in full accordance with Judaism, how can we explain the stark opposition between Judaism and Christianity, which developed subsequently? According to Wise, only two Jewish sects survived the catastrophe of 70 CE. ‒ the Pharisees and the Christians. He writes:70 Both of them succeeded. As the Pharisean rabbis succeeded in the preservation of Israel and his treasures, so Paul and his co-laborers succeeded in the demolition of paganism and the promulgation of religious and moral truth. The errors came after them. As the Jews tenaciously clinging to the idea of restoration, adhered faithfully to the rabbinism based upon it, and spun it out into six hundred and thirteen principal laws with several thousand auxiliary ones; although the idea of restoration was itself auxiliary only: so did the Christians in after times cling to the auxiliary ideas of Paul and spun out codes of dogmas, on the trinity, the incarnation, the immaculate conception, the inspiration of Scriptures, the theory of salvation, angels, demons, satan, heaven, hell, purgatory, and all the other productions of scholasticism. Both clung more to the means than to the substance. The Talmuds of Jerusalem, Babylonia, Mecca, Rome, St. Petersburg, Berlin and London, with all the commentaries and sub-commentaries are substantially the same, many words about the means and few on the substance.

Thus, the alienation of Rabbinic Judaism from the original Phariseism, as well as the alienation of the church from the original Pauline Christianity led into antagonism of the two, and in general in an age of darkness. However, both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity will finally disappear and make room for a true and universal religion, according to Wise:71 Intelligent men in our days need neither rabbinism nor christology; the pure doctrines of God, immortality and morals, as the wise Creator has impressed them on the human conscience and consciousness, are sufficient for the happiness of every individual, the peace and the prosperity of society.

Wise’s research on the New Testament and Early Christianity was rated as almost completely unoriginal: “Isaac MayerWise added little new to the study of Jesus and Paul; all his statements can be found in Christian writings of the time.”72 A detailed analysis of his book “The Origin of Christianity” from 1868 shows that this conclusion is completely wrong. Wise offered there several perspectives on the New Testament and on the origin of Christianity, which at his time were new

|| 70 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 520–521. 71 WISE, The Origin of Christianity, 522. 72 JACOB, Mayer Wise’s Views on Christianity, 449.

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and indeed could have been path-breaking, had they not been ignored and overlooked by both Christian and Jewish scholars as the work of an academic outsider. In this regard, especially the following topics deserve to be mentioned: –

–

–

Wise’s consequent denial that the available sources, especially the accounts of the gospels, provide a basis for the reconstruction of the historical Jesus is not only unparalleled in the broad and generally quite important contemporary Jewish research on the New Testament, especially with Wissenschaft des Judentums, but it appears also highly innovative in comparison with the contributions of leading Christian scholars. While the radicalism of Wise’s conclusion is preceded only by the work of the Hegelian Rationalist Bruno Bauer, Wise’s work seems more attentive to the sources than Bauer’s. From that perspective, Wise’s conclusion is an early anticipation of Albert Schweitzer’s research from 1906, which brought the quest for the historical Jesus to its end. Wise was the first scholar, who understood the teachings of Paul not as an aberration from, but as an interpretation of the Judaism of his time, which was completely in line with learnt tendencies current in Second Temple Judaism. This interpretation is remarkable especially in comparison with the negative image of Paul, which influenced the Jewish New Testament scholarship of his time, but it was in this consistency also new to the research on Paul in general. Wise was the first New Testament scholar, who saw Paul’s links to Jewish mysticism.

Bibliography BAUER, Bruno: Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker. Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1841– 1842 (3 vols.). — : Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs. Berlin: Gustav Hempel, 1850–1852 (4 vols.). BILLERBECK, Paul (with STRACK, Hermann Leberecht): Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. München: C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1922–1928. BROADHURST, Jace R.: What Is the Literal Sense? Considering the Hermeneutic of John Lightfoot. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2012. EASTMAN, David L.: Paul the martyr. The cult of the apostle in the latin west. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011 (Society of Biblical Literature. Writings from the Greco-Roman world supplement series; 4). FREUND, Wilhelm: Zur Judenfrage in Deutschland: Vom Standpunkte des Rechts und der Gewissensfreiheit. Berlin: Veit und Comp., 1843. FRIEDLÄNDER, Mardochai Hirsch: Das Leben und Wirken der hervorragendsten rabbinischen Autoritäten Prags: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen. Wien: Waizner, 1902.

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GEIGER, Abraham: Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der inneren Entwickelung des Judenthums. Breslau: Julius Hainauer, 1857. — : Das Judentum und seine Geschichte: In zwölf Vorlesungen. Nebst einem Anhange: Ein Blick auf die neuesten Bearbeitungen des Lebens Jesu. Breslau: Verlag der Schletter’schen Buchhandlung (H. Skutsch), 1864. GINZBERG, Louis: Elisha Ben Abuyah (called also by the Rabbis Aḥer, “the other”), in: Jewish Encyclopedia, eds. Singer, Isidore et al. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906. Vol. 5, 138–139. (GRAETZ, Heinrich =) GRAETZ, Hirsch: Gnosticismus und Judenthum. Krotoschin: Monasch und Sohn, 1846. — : Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, Band 3: Geschichte der Judäer von dem Tode Juda Makkabi’s bis zum Untergange des judäischen Staates. Zweite stark vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage. Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1863. HELLER, James G.: Isaac M. Wise: His Life, Work and Thought. New York: The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1965. HESCHEL, Susannah: Der jüdische Jesus und das Christentum: Abraham Geigers Herausforderung an die christliche Theologie. Berlin: Jüdische Verlagsanstalt, 2001 (Sifria; 2). HIRSCH, Samuel: Das System der religiösen Anschauung der Juden und sein Verhältnis zum Heidentum, Christentum und zur absoluten Philosophie. Leipzig: H. Hunger, 1842. HOLTZMANN, Heinrich Julius: Die synoptischen Evangelien: Ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1863. — : Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie. Freiburg i. B./Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. C. B. Mohr, 1896–1897 (2 vols.). JACOB, Walter: Isaac Mayer Wise’s Views on Christianity. Judaism 15 (1966), 449. — : Abraham Geiger and America: His influence on Jewish Life and Thought. In: Wiese, Christian/Homolka, Walter/Brechenmacher, Thomas (eds.): Jüdische Existenz in der Moderne: Abraham Geiger und die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Abraham Geiger und die Wissenschaft des Judentums: de Gruyter, 2013 (Studia Judaica; 57), 193–204. JOST, Isaak Markus: Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten. Erste Abtheilung, Erstes bis Drittes Buch. Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke, 1857. KEY, Andrew F. : The theology of Isaac Mayer Wise. Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1962 (Monographs of the American Jewish Archives; V). LAMED, Meir: Kornfeld, Aaron ben Mordecai Baer. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, ed. Fred Skolnik, and Michael Berenbaum. Detroit et al.: Macmillan Reference/Jerusalem: Keter, 2007. Vol. 12, 312. LANGTON, Daniel R. : Apostle Paul in the Jewish imagination. A study in modern Jewish-Christian relations. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010. LINDESKOG, Gösta: Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Uppsala : Almqvist & Wiksell/Leipzig: Lorentz [et al.], 1938 (Arbeiten und Mitteilungen aus dem Neutestamentlichen Seminar zu Uppsala; 8). LIGHTFOOT, John: Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae In Qvatuor Evangelistas: Cum Tractatibus Chorographicis, Singulis Suo Evangelistae Praemissis. Leipzig: Lanckisch, 1658–1678. LOADER, James Alfred: Strack-Billerbeck, Orthodoxy and a Jewish New Testament. HTS 55 (1999), 601–610. MARCUS, Jacob Rader: The Americanization of Isaac Mayer Wise. Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1969.

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MAY, Max B.: Isaac Mayer Wise, the Founder of American Judaism: A Biography. New York: G.P. Putnam/London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1916. MEISSNER, Stefan: Die Heimholung des Ketzers: Studien zur jüdischen Auseinandersetzung mit Paulus. Tübingen: Mohr, 1996 (WUNT, Reihe 2; 87). MYLLYKOSKI, Matti: Jesus, der Jude, in der Tübinger Schule: Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des liberalen Jesus-Bildes. In: Gemünden, Petra von et al. (eds.): Jesus Gestalt und Gestaltungen: Rezeptionen des Galiläers in Wissenschaft, Kirche und Gesellschaft: Festschrift für Gerd Theissen zum 70. Geburtstag. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013 (Novum Testamentum et orbis antiquus, Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments; 100), 361– 378. MOSHEIM, Johann Lawrence: An ecclesiastical history, ancient and modern, from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the eighteenth century, in which the rise, progress, and variations of church power are considered in their connexion with the state of learning and philosophy and the political history of Europe during that period, translated from the original Latin, and illustrated with notes, chronological tables, by Archibald Maclaine. London: W. Baynes and Son, 1823. NICOLAS, Michel: Le Symbole des Apôtres, essai historique. Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1867. PHILIPSON, David/GROSSMANN, Louis: Selected Writings of Isaac M. Wise: With a Biography. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company, 1900. RENAN, Ernest: The Apostles. New York: Carleton Publisher, 1866. SANDMEL, Samuel: Isaac Mayer Wise’s Pronaos to Holy Writ. In: Korn, Bertram Wallac (ed.): A Bicentennial Festschrift for Jacob Rader Marcus. Waltham: American Jewish Historical Society/New York: KTAV, 1976, 515–527. SCHALLER, Bernd: Paul Billerbecks „Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch“: Wege und Abwege, Leistung und Fehlleistung christlicher Judaistik. In: Böttrich, Christfried/Thomanek, Judith/Willi, Thomas (eds.): Zwischen Zensur und Selbstbesinnung. Christliche Rezeptionen des Judentums; Beiträge des von der Alfried-Krupp-vonBohlen-und-Halbach-Stiftung geförderten interdisziplinären Symposiums am 15.–16. Februar 2007 im Alfried-Krupp-Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald. Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang (Greifswalder theologische Forschungen; 17), 149–174. SCHLEIERMACHER, Friedrich Daniel Ernst: Einleitung in das neue Testament. Aus Schleiermacher’s handschriftlichem Nachlasse und nachgeschriebenen Vorlesungen herausgegeben. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1845. SCHOETTGEN, Johann Christian: Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in universum Novum Testamentum. Dresden/Leipzig: Christoph Hekel, 1733–1742. SCHOLEM, Gershom: Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah mysticism and talmudic tradition. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960. — : Metatron. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, ed. Skolnik, Fred/Berenbaum, Michael. Detroit et al.: Macmillan Reference/Jerusalem: Keter, 2007. Vol. 14, 132–134. SCHWEITZER, Albert: The quest of the historical Jesus: a critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Translated by W. Montgomery. London: Black, 1910. — : Geschichte der Paulinischen Forschung von der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1911. — : Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 21913. — : Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck); 1930. STEGEMANN, Wolfgang: Jesus und seine Zeit. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2010 (Biblische Enzyklopädie; 10).

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STRAUß, David Friedrich: Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet. Tübingen: Verlag von C. F. Osiander, 1835–1836 (2 vols.). WALD, Stephen G.: Elisha ben Avuyah. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, ed. Skolnik, Fred/Berenbaum, Michael. Detroit et al.: Macmillan Reference/Jerusalem: Keter, 2007. Vol. 6, 352–354. WILANSKY, Dena: Sinai to Cincinnati: Lay views on the Writings of Isaac M. Wise, Founder of Reform Judaism in America. New York: Renaissance Book Co., 1937. WILKE, Carsten: “Den Talmud und den Kant”: Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag-Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2003. — : Die Rabbiner der Emanzipationszeit in den deutschen, böhmischen und großpolnischen Ländern 1781–1871 (Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner, herausgegeben von Michael Brocke und Julius Carlebach, Teil 1). München: K. G. Saur, 2004. WISE, Isaac Mayer: The Origin of Christianity and a Commentary to the Acts of the Apostles. Cincinnati: Bloch & Co Publishers, 1868. — : Judaism: Its doctrines and duties. Cincinnati/Chicago: The Bloch Publishing and Printing Company, 1872. — : The martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth: a historic-critical treatise on the last chapters of the gospel. Cincinnati: Office of the American Israelite, 1874. — : History of the Hebrews’ second commonwealth with special reference to its literature, culture, and the origin of rabbinism and Christianity. Cincinnati: Bloch and Co., 1880. — : Judaism and Christianity: Their Agreements and Disagreements. Cincinnati: Bloch & Co., 1883. — : Three Lectures on the Origin of Christianity. Cincinnati: Bloch and Co., 1883. — : A defense of Judaism versus proselytizing Christianity. Cincinnati: American Israelite, 1889. — : Pronaos to Holy Writ. Establishing, on documentary evidence, the authorship, date, form, and contents of each of its books. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1891.

| Part 3: The Qurʾān

Katalin Franciska Rac

The Qurʾān and Arabic Literary History in Ignaz Goldziher’s Scholarship This short study discusses the Hungarian Jewish scholar Ignaz Goldziher’s (1850– 1921) approach to the Qurʾān, and contends that his lifelong interest in the study of the development of Muslim institutions and of Arabic literary culture defined his view of the sacred text of Islam.1 The examination of a selection of Goldziher’s works in the field of Islamic legal and religious history on the one hand, and literary history on the other, demonstrates that Goldziher situated the Qurʾān in the longer history of Arabia and Islam. He highlighted the influence of pagan Arabic culture on the emergence of the Qurʾān, its sacred status, and that it has become an insufficient intellectual foundation for the legal and social life of generations of Muslim believers born after Muhammad’s appearance. Accordingly, Goldziher examined the Qurʾān not as scripture, but rather as a historical source, which reflected contemporary literary expression and the social and cultural conditions of pagan Arabia and continued to influence Muslim societies’ legal, religious, scientific, and literary creativity for centuries to come. Goldziher’s disinterest in the scholarly discussion of the Qurʾānic text as scripture, however, does not mean that he neglected its study or disapproved of scriptural research. The opposite was true: he was an avid reader of sacred texts and of both western and non-western scriptural studies. As he began to write in his Tagebuch (diary) in 1890, on his fortieth birthday, Goldziher noted that seventeen years earlier, boarding the steamer to Istanbul, from where he continued traveling in the Middle East for several months, he was determined that by the time he arrived in Damascus, “the caliphs’ city,” he would know the Qurʾān, “the holy book,” by heart.2 Goldziher also wrote that his passionate || 1 I am using scripture and sacred text as interchangeable terms mostly because it reflects the general scholarly understanding of the late nineteenth century, namely that the fundamental texts of religions other that Christianity and Judaism, regardless if transmitted orally or in writing, were considered scriptures and often judged based on the biblical model. In her introduction to the Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾan, Jane Dammen McAuliffe points out that Max Müller’s 50-volume work Sacred Books of the East, which included the Qurʾān as well, is an illustration of this approach (MCAULIFFE, Introduction to the Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾan, 1). Later in this essay, the discussion of Nöldeke’s History of the Qurʾan also illustrates this thesis. 2 The reference is to Goldziher’s following entry: “Ich erregte durch meine fortwährende Koranlectüre – denn das heilige Buch wollte ich auswendig wissen, ehe ich in die Chalifenstadt ein-

https://doi.org/9783110592672-007

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engagement with Muslim scripture was reflected in his handwritten notes on the margins of his Qurʾān.3 The two quotes that he chose as mottos to his Tagebuch, one from the Qurʾān (12:18) and one from the Hebrew Bible (Michah 6:8), likewise illustrate his personal attachment to scripture. The catalog of his private library further confirms his scholarly engagement with Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scriptures; two Qurʾān editions are noted in the catalog. The fourth section of the catalog is titled “Bibel” and lists biblical studies, criticisms, and exegeses on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.4 His scholarly interest in sacred texts is also reflected in several of his works. He openly advocated the introduction of biblical criticism to Hungarian Neolog Jewish theological practice in his 1884 Hungarian article A bibliai tudomány és a modern vallásos élet (“Biblical scholarship and modern religious life”), but his

|| ziehe – und meinen Tschibuk die aufmerksamkeit des türkischen Generalstabes.” GOLDZIHER, Tagebuch, 57 (all the English translations are mine unless otherwise indicated). Interestingly, in his Introduction to the Aldine Transaction Edition of Muslim Studies, Hamid Dabashi observes that Goldziher’s immersion in Islamic studies can be gauged by his very deep and intimate knowledge of the Qurʾān. “There is a saying that what Muslims do is not just memorize the Qurʾan but Qurʾanify their memory,” Dabashi notes, adding that, although in a chronologically reverse order, the structure of Goldziher’s Tagebuch mirrors that of the Qurʾān: whereas earlier Goldziher recorded shorter entries, with time, his entries grew in length (DABASHI, Introduction to Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, xlvii). Goldziher’s Oriental Diary, which he kept during his travel, records his fellow Muslim travelers’ various reactions to his knowledge of the Qurʾanic text. It both earned the admiration of his fellow travelers and raised the suspicion of many of them. Goldziher noted that “The Turks […] admire me as a great but regrettably incorrigible, kafir [unbeliever] scientist. If I quote a passage from the Koran, or if I show that I know something about the patriarchs and the prophets, they murmur their elbetten choq okumush [he has certainly read a lot] into their beards.” (GOLDZIHER/PATAI, Ignaz Goldziher and his Oriental Diary, 90). One of these travelers went so far as to tell Goldziher that he would never talk with him about religious matters because Goldziher was a non-believer and “talk with an unbeliever in religious matters is not allowed, and talk about nonreligious matters is useless.” (GOLDZIHER/PATAI, Ignaz Goldziher and his Oriental Diary, 92). After his arrival to Lebanon and Syria he experienced rather the opposite. His erudition in Islamic law even enabled him to study at Cairo’s famous Islamic university Al-Azhar, hitherto closed to non-Muslims. The knowledge of the Qurʾānic text was an indispensable tool for him both as a European traveler in the Middle East and scholar of the history of Islam. 3 He also noted in the diary that he developed a very intimate relationship with Islam, and his notes in his Qurʾān testify to that (GOLDZIHER/PATAI, Ignaz Goldziher and his Oriental Diary, 27). See also: DABASHI, Introduction to Muslim Studies, xlviii. 4 The catalog "Bibliothek Ignaz Goldziher" is available from the website of the National Library of Israel http://rosetta.nli.org.il/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE29385857; accessed December 26, 2016.

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attraction to biblical studies is most apparent in his very first monograph Der Mythos bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Entwickelung: Untersuchungen zur Mythologie und Religionswissenschaft (“Mythology among the Hebrews and its Historical Development”). He started writing it during his Middle Eastern journey, most probably in Hungarian. He published the monograph in German, however, in 1876 in Leipzig, and the next year it appeared in Max Müller’s English translation as well.5 Attesting to Goldziher’s proficiency in biblical criticism, comparative mythology, and interest in the history of Judaism, Mythos examines the text of the Hebrew Bible to demonstrate the mythological roots of the biblical figures and their stories and, consequently, that the history of the Hebrew Bible reaches back to an era before the evolution of the institution of religion. In other Hungarian works, Goldziher outlined his interpretation of the post-biblical development of Jewish religiosity, which, beyond reflecting his scholarly ambitions in the field of modern Jewish studies (Wissenschaft des Judentums), advanced his agenda for religious reform. After all, he was not only a scholar, but, as secretary, he had also been serving the Pest Israelite Congregation for thirty years. As such, he was involved in communal affairs.6 These works synthesize the legacy of scripture, rabbinical literature, and other Jewish sources and reveal Goldziher’s understanding of the continuous and organic evolution of Jewish monotheism. His historical approach to Judaism shaped his religiosity as well.7 Similarly, his research on Islamic history centered on the development of the different religious, legal, social, and cultural Muslim institutions at the basis of which stood the Qurʾān.8 His scholarly publications demonstrated the circumstances and mechanisms of the evolution of the Muslim legal system. At the same time, his writings constantly remind the reader of the significance of the Qurʾān, and that without it the consequent development of Islam cannot be fully understood. He repeatedly emphasized that despite its historical character, the Qurʾān has always been considered a timeless scripture. These two contrasting qualities defined the attitudes of generations of Muslims toward it as a foundational text and gave impetus to the production of subsequent religious, legal, and literary works. The first part of this study surveys || 5 About the reasons why Mythos was finally published in German, and not Hungarian, see TURÁN, Academic religion, 240, fn. 65. 6 This involvement is well discernible in several of his studies; see especially GOLDZIHER, A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése; A haladásról; A jesibák. 7 GOLDZIHER, A zsidóság, 33. See FRAISSE, Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft, 11–12. 8 Róbert Simon points out a letter from Goldziher to the Russian scholar V. R. Rosen that illustrates that the Austrian scholar-diplomat Alfred von Kremer’s cultural-historical approach to the study of Muslim societies inspired Goldziher. See SIMON, Goldziher Ignác, 42–43.

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Goldziher’s selected works, mostly from the 1880s, on Muslim law and the indirect discussion of the Qurʾān as Islam’s foundational document that they offer. Goldziher’s views on Arabic literary history are the focus of the second part of this essay. He dedicated a number of his works to the study of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and published several examinations of different religious and scientific texts produced after the wake of Islam. These studies, similarly to his legal studies, earned the respect of fellow scholars, to which also Carl Brockelmann’s (1868– 1956) monumental Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (“The History of Arabic Literature”) attests.9 In these works Goldziher was interested in examining the cultural changes that inspired various Arabic written expressions.10 But, rather uncharacteristically in comparison to his other literary studies and religious scholarship, Goldziher also offered a brief examination of the Qurʾānic text in Arabok (“Arabs”), a long encyclopedia article in the first volume of Egyetemes irodalomtörténet (“Universal Literary History”) from 1903, edited by the Hungarian literary historian Gusztáv Heinrich (1845–1922). Among other aspects of Arabic literary history, “Arabs” demonstrates how the absorption of earlier literary traditions in the Qurʾān advanced the social and political aspects of Muhammad’s mission. In so arguing, Goldziher offered an example of how Islam incorporated pagan Arabic cultural institutions from its earliest history. Through a brief examination of “Arabs,” its treatment of the Qurʾānic text, and its place in the broader Goldziherian oeuvre, this study highlights Goldziher’s historical and cultural-anthropological approach to religion, scripture, and in particular to the Qurʾān.

1 Religious and Legal Scholarship In his 1881 Hungarian monograph Az iszlám. Tanulmányok a muhammedán vallás története köréből (“Islam: Studies from the History of the Muslim Religion”11)

|| 9 Brockelmann as well as Bernát Heller, Goldziher’s prominent student, noted that Goldziher’s research on pre-Islamic literature was considered foundational by the most influential authors of his times. See B ROCKELMANN, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur I, 12; and HELLER, Goldziher Ignác, 16. 10 The title of the forthcoming English translation of Brockelmann’s aforementioned book by Joep Lameer, History of the Arabic Written Tradition, refers to the customary use of the term literature at the turn of the century, described later in this study: it referred to all the written sources of a given collective. 11 Islam can be considered as the precursor to the below discussed two-volume German monograph Muhammedanische Studien (Muslim Studies), published in 1888 and 1890.

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Goldziher summarizes his view of the Qurʾān as a symbol and foundation of Islam with the following words:12 It is a big mistake to judge the essence, real character, the contents and tendency of the teachings of Islam by its holy book, the Qurʾān. The Qurʾān is the symbol and the flag of Islam, but does not contain it. It demonstrates only a part of Islam’s theoretical and practical content, it does not wholly entail it […] How little is the cornerstone on which [Islam’s] enormous dimensions were constructed!

He offers more specific, although not exhaustive arguments when describing the “deficiency of the Qurʾān” as a legal code for the Muslim community.13 While the Qurʾān introduced significant changes, especially in the fields of marital and inheritance law, it remained an insufficient guide, because “Muhammad addressed his holy book to Bedouins and urban Arabs who stood at the lowest level of culture” and he could not foresee the dramatic changes that occurred in Muslim lives following the victorious Muslim wars and conquests in the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.14 Judging Islam by the Qurʾān, Goldziher reminds his readers, produces unjustified bias against Islam as an intellectually and emotionally poor religion. Eight years later, in “Muslim Studies,” published in German for the international orientalist community, Goldziher emphasizes the importance of hadīth as evidence of the evolution of Islam.15 Regardless of their authenticity, the collections of Muhammad’s sayings and deeds became the basis of theological and legal stipulations among subsequent generations of Muslims; hadīth provided guidance on questions that the Qurʾān did not sufficiently address or left completely unanswered. The Qurʾān and hadīth formed the Muslim ius scriptum, Goldziher stresses. Additionally, the significance of hadīth is also reflected in the fact that the recordings of the Prophet’s teachings established a narrative form, which throughout the ages was adapted to record almost every aspect of Muslim life. The connection between scripture and jurisprudence (fiqh) was similar: the latter filled in the gaps left by the former. In 1884 Goldziher published the Hungarian article A muhammedán jogtudomány eredetéről (“About the Origins of Muslim Jurisprudence”) and the German monograph Die Zāhiriten: ihr Lehrsystem und ihre Geschichte: Beitrag zur Geschichte der muhammedanischen Theologie

|| 12 GOLDZIHER, Az iszlám, 102–103. 13 GOLDZIHER, Az iszlám, 107–108. 14 GOLDZIHER, Az iszlám, 106. 15 GOLDZIHER, Muslim Studies II, 19.

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(“The Zāhirīs: Their Doctrine and Their History: a contribution to the history of Islamic theology”); both texts focus on the history of fiqh. In the preface of The Zāhirīs, Goldziher explicitly expresses why the later development, as opposed to Islam’s foundation, the Qurʾān, interests him as a scholar of Islam. He argues that16 In order to fully appreciate the spirit of Islam, we must evaluate the relation of its development to its sources so as to recognize to what extent this development is governed by freedom or the slavish mind, a tendency toward progress or adherence to the obsolete, an active, intellectual preoccupation or indolent thoughtless behavior.

Goldziher considered the believers’ different attitudes to scripture crucial to religious development; his interest in different intellectual attitudes toward the Qurʾān guided his inquiries into the history of fiqh throughout the growth and multiplication of Muslim polities. In “About the Origins of Muslim Jurisprudence,” as in “The Zāhirīs,” Goldziher suggests that the history of fiqh also holds a mirror to competing intellectual attitudes and conceptualizations about the social role of law. Law could be both a motor of innovation and guardian of traditionalism depending on changing attitudes toward individual interpretation and consensual standardization of legal norms in the course of the jurisdictional practice. In contrast to legal theorists, practicing qadis (judges) needed additional sources and legal devices, other than those derived from the Qurʾān in order to ensure that their judgements harmonized with the spirit of Islam as reflected in the Qurʾān. Each of the four major Sunni schools of jurisprudence reacted to these needs differently. In addition to interpreting “written law,” to different extents they allowed the employment of, as Goldziher calls them, speculative means, such as drawing analogies or making inferences. In “The Zāhirīs,” Goldziher further points out how both exponents and opponents of the aforementioned speculative methods of Islamic jurisdiction used the words of the Qurʾān to justify their position. Here Goldziher places less emphasis on the “deficiency of the Qurʾān.” Instead, he demonstrates the same point he made earlier in “Islam,” namely that the Qurʾān (and its failure to provide guidance to Muslims amidst changing circumstances) served as a basis for the development of Islam in general and fiqh in particular. Goldziher notes that regardless of the voluminous exegetic effort invested in justifying either of the positions with the words of the Qurʾān, “impartial exegesis resisted all attempts to read into the Koran statements on methods of investigation, which developed

|| 16 GOLDZIHER, The Zāhirīs, xiii.

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later, and which still lay entirely outside the scope of Islamic revelation.”17 It is tradition and not scripture that could serve all parties with a legal basis — a claim that reinforces his arguments in his studies on hadīth and stresses that hadīth and fiqh complement each other. Their histories testify to Islam’s extraordinary capacity to intellectually and culturally adapt to new political and social circumstances and regenerate under changing cultural influences.18 The acknowledgement of the centrality of the Qurʾānic text and the recognition of its deficiency as intellectual and practical guidance for generations of Muslims are the two main themes in Goldziher’s investigations about the development of hadīth and fiqh during the 1880s and 1890s. He repeatedly depicted to his readers how, from very meagre intellectual foundations, Islam grew into a complex cultural and legal system. The 1910 Vorlesungen über den Islam (“Lectures on Islam”), one of his most respected comprehensive historical works, for example, illustrates that also in the later stages of his career, his approach to the Qurʾān did not significantly change. The German manuscript was published in English twice: in 1917 as “Muhammad and Islam” (titled after the title of the first chapter) and in 1981 as “Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law.” Similar to his argumentation in “Islam” thirty years earlier and without examining the content of the Qurʾān in detail, in “Lectures on Islam” Goldziher reiterates that “The Qurʾān is the foundation of the religion of Islam, its scripture, its revealed document.”19 In his preface to the first English translation, the editor Morris Jastrow emphasizes that20 The general aim of the work may be set down as an endeavor to set forth in detail the factors involved in the development of the rather simple and relatively few ideas launched by Mohammed into an elaborate and complicated system of theology at once legal and speculative and at the same time practical.

By stressing the contrast between Islam’s illustrious development and its very modest beginnings, Jastrow captures the spirit of Goldziher’s scholarship, and reiterates its fundamental claims, present in Goldziher’s last, 1920 monograph

|| 17 GOLDZIHER, The Zāhirīs, 85. 18 GOLDZIHER, The Zāhirīs, 97. 19 GOLDZIHER, Mohammed and Islam, 12. The original text: “Der Koran ist also die erste Grundlage der Religion des Islams, seine heilige Schrift, seine geoffenbarte Urkunde.” – GOLDZIHER, Vorlesungen, 11. In Andras’s and Ruth Hamori’s translation: “The Qurʾan is thus the foundation of the religion of Islam, its scripture, its revealed document.” – GOLDZIHER, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, 12. 20 JASTROW, Preface to Mohammed and Islam, x.

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Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (“Schools of Koranic Commentators”) as well. This study examines how tafsīr (Qurʾānic exegesis), changed over time and among different Muslim communities and sects.21 However, it goes further in depicting the relationship between the scriptural foundation and the ensuing development of Muslim religious and legal thought. Goldziher emphasizes the “liberalism” in the early treatment of the Qurʾānic text and notes that the Qurʾānic exegesis began through a quest to establish a uniform text and consensual arrangement of the suras.22 He underlines that the “Orthodox” admission of the multiple readings of the Qurʾānic text, on the one hand, and its challenge by different groups and changing liturgical practices on the other, initiated a dynamic exegetical practice in the late seventh and eighth century. Thus, the flexibility of scripture itself gave birth to dynamic scholarly exchange and religious debates. Although today scholars critically read Goldziher’s last monograph, it is still considered an important historical discussion of the different trends of Muslim commentary that enriched broader intellectual movements.23 The approach of Goldziher’s aforementioned legal and religious studies to the Qurʾān as a foundation of subsequent intellectual production also influenced Goldziher’s literary investigations starting in the early 1890s, to which the next part of this study turns.

2 Literary History In line with the period’s dominant literary historical approach, Goldziher defined literature as the total of written sources of a[n] (ethnic, religious, linguistic, or political) collective.24 While clearly distinguishing between artistic, mundane, and scholarly writing and texts, he treated them in a similar vein and read them as reflections on different socio-cultural realities. Already in “Islam” Goldziher argues that “literature is the mirror of the intellectual lives of nations,” demonstrating the saliency of literary history to the reconstruction of the development

|| 21 Wolfgang Behn’s 2006 English translation was published under this title. The word-by-word translation of the original German is “The directions of Islamic Qurʾān interpretations.” 22 GOLDZIHER, Schools of Koranic Commentators, 22. 23 SALEH, The Formation of Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qur’ān Commentary of Al-Tha’labī, 17. 24 For this approach in Arabic literary history see BROCKELMANN, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur I, 1. and AL-BAGDADI, Registers of Arabic Literary History, 439–440.

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of Muslim cultures, the subject of his broader research program.25 As to be discussed later, the interpretation of literature quoted above also meant that the Qurʾān formed part of the Arabic literary heritage. Two shorter Hungarian studies from 1891 and 1892 illustrate that Goldziher’s study of literary forms, especially poetry, was in fact an expansion of his previous historical research on the development of Islam and the influence of the Qurʾānic foundations on its history. Goldziher presented the paper A pogány arabok költészetének hagyománya (“The Tradition of Pagan Arabs’ Poetry”) at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences when he was accepted as a regular Academy member in 1892. The inaugural talk can be considered a direct continuation — with many overlaps — of his study A költő a régi arabok fölfogásában (“The Poet in the Minds of the Ancient Arabs”) in the Hunfalvy-Album, published in the previous year.26 Pál Hunfalvy (1810—1891), whom Goldziher personally knew and respected, was a leading authority in Hungarian linguistic and ethnographic circles. Laudations and short studies by several scholars featured in the Album, Goldziher’s among them, honored the 50th anniversary of Hunfalvy’s membership in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences — sadly, only a few days prior of his death on November 30, 1891. In these two papers, Goldziher contextualizes his historical investigation of Arabic poetry within his broader research and raised questions related to Arabic philology, ethnography, and religious studies. Goldziher’s biographer Róbert Simon points out that according to Goldziher’s original plan, his literary research on pagan poetry would have continued the investigation presented in Muslim Studies. However, because of its different (literary) focus and methodology, Goldziher decided to initiate new research and publish his findings separately. Simon explains that Goldziher founded his methodological approach to the study of the development of hadīth literature on the idea that Muslim tradition, like any other human intellectual product, was prone to historical changes. As Goldziher states in his “Muslim Studies,” “the hadīth will not serve as a document of the history of the infancy of Islam, but rather as a reflection of the tendencies which appeared in the community during the mature states of its development.”27 Hadīth reflected how different generations of authors

|| 25 Original Hungarian: “Az irodalom a népek szellemi életének tükre.” (GOLDZIHER, Az iszlám, 46). 26 Róbert Simon notes, the essay from 1891 remained important groundwork for the 1896 German study, “Über die Vorgeschichte der Hiǵâʿ-Poesie” in Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie I as well. In the introduction Goldziher noted that in the 1891 essay he had outlined the main arguments of his research in literary history, see SIMON, Goldziher Ignác, 120. 27 GOLDZIHER, Muslim Studies I, 19.

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viewed their own times and the past. In the case of Arabic poetry, however, Muslim endeavors to both venerate and deemphasize the significance of the pre-Islamic Arabic linguistic and literary heritage in Muslim Arabic culture inspired Goldziher. He traced the evolution of poetry from pre-Islamic times in the Arabian Peninsula by examining pre-Islamic Arabic diwans (poetry collections) and their philological discussions produced during the Umayyad era (7th and 8th century) and even later. In other words, Goldziher recognized that the seemingly past-oriented hadīth literature is indicative of progression in time, while the veneration of poetry at later ages preserved the genre’s pre-Islamic past.28 Despite the methodological difference, the treatment of the Qurʾān and Muhammad’s prophethood both in the inaugural talk and the essay in the “Album” fitted Goldziher’s broader research program. In the introduction of his 1892 inaugural address, Goldziher describes his broader research interest as inclusive of Islam’s literature, history, institutions, and the “influences which were generated by the peaceful and hostile encounters of Islam’s dominant principles with other ideas.”29 By Islam’s evolution he meant the combination and interaction between the influence of external forces and internally developed phenomena — an idea closely connected to the question of the “originality” of Islam, which, along with other orientalists, occupied Goldziher as well (as the subsequent discussion of this question will demonstrate). In this talk, however, he does not address this question. Instead, he emphasizes that pagan poetry was the first major force that shaped Islam: it influenced the Qurʾānic text similarly as pagan poets shaped the public reception of Muhammad’s work.30 Goldziher argues that according to the earliest known sources, poetry among pagan Arabs was closely connected with magic. The inhabitants of Arabia ascribed similar magical power to the soothsayer (‘arrâf), and to the seer or priest (kâhin), as to the poet (sâ’ir). It was believed that they possessed knowledge of things unlearnable and unforeseeable for the rest of the community, hence all three enjoyed their tribes’ respect and appreciation. Their powers derived from the djinn (spirit), under the influence of which the priest or poet spoke. The examination of the terminology of lyrical forms further supports the belief in the magical power of the poet’s words. Kâfijat, for instance, originally meant spell or curse and later came to denote poem and even later rhyme.31 The hidsá-poems, lampoons, the subject of Goldziher’s aforementioned 1896 essay, had an impor-

|| 28 SIMON, Goldziher Ignác, 122. 29 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 4. 30 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 11. 31 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 13.

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tant role in war. As they could articulate animosity between tribes and were used to target enemies, these poems allowed poets to bring their magical powers to the battle field and participate in open warfare too.32 Additionally, Goldziher’s discussion of the persona of the poet suggests a parallel between poet and prophet and indirectly indicates cultural continuity between the pagan poet and Muhammad’s prophethood.33 Goldziher explicitly argues so in his 1891 study in the Hunfalvy-Album:34 At the earlier stages of civilization, the talent and intellectual expression of the poet are not gauged by the criteria of artistic creation. The poet is viewed as a tool of higher powers – gods – and does not articulate what his own spirit created, but what higher beings placed on his lips, which he expresses involuntarily, often unintentionally. What the poet’s genius presents is not considered an individual creation.

Both poet and prophet connected with the divine and superhuman powers and facilitated communication between man and god. Goldziher infers that this is why, when discussing the prophet, the Qurʾān relied on familiar terminology used to describe the persona of the poet: “the prophet […] makes his opponents say that he is sa’ir madsnûn or mu’allam madsnûn , in other words, poet.”35 In a similar vein, Muhammad’s opponents denied his prophethood by stressing that he was a poet.36 Most importantly, Goldziher discusses saj’, prosaic rhyme, a foundational form of Arabic poetry. He also notes that the related word saj’a meant dove cooing and probably reflected the mode of the kâhin’s performance of the text, which further reinforces the argument about the close affinity between poetry and magic.37 Saj’ shaped the text of earlier suras which, as Goldziher notes in his 1892 inaugural address, demonstrated the cultural conditions in which Muhammad had articulated the message of Islam. Muhammad chose to speak to his fellow

|| 32 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 15. 33 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 10. 34 “A művelődés kezdetleges fokán a költő tehetségét és szellemi megnyilatkozását nem a művészeti alkotás szempontja alatt fogják fel. A költőt magasabb hatalmak – istenek – eszközéül tekintik, ki voltaképen nem azt tolmácsolja, a mit az ő szelleme hozott létre, hanem a minek ő önkéntelen, sokszor akaratlan kifejezője, a mit magasabb lényle helyeztek ajkaira. Nem egyéni alkotásnak nézik azt, a mit a költő géniusa előhozott.” GOLDZIHER, A költő, 175. 35 GOLDZIHER, A költő, 181. See suras 37:36, and 44:14. 36 GRAHAM/KORMANI, Recitation and aesthetic reception, 115–141. 37 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 20.

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(pagan) Arabs and convince them of his prophecy in a form — saj’ — which was widely known to them.38 This was the customary form of the expression of inspiration among the pagan Arabs: soothsayers and prophets equally used it. Both the so-called false Qurʾāns that prophets competing with Muhammad presented to the people and those artistic compositions of subsequent centuries, in which some free spirits attempted to downgrade the rhetoric of the Qurʾān that they deemed imitable, used the form of saj’.

Saj’ thus characterized what today would likely be labeled as public discourse of pagan Arabia. In his 1910 “Lectures on Islam” Goldziher similarly argues that the literary choice to use the saj’ form served the goal to make Muhammad’s prophecy comprehensible: “No Arab would have acknowledged them as coming from a divine source if they had been cast in any other form.”39 A decade following his inaugural talk, in his 1903 lexicon entry “Arabs,” by subjecting the Qurʾānic text to literary examination Goldziher further illustrates how it reflected the transformation initiated by Muhammad’s teachings. He argues that in the central part of the Arabic Peninsula where Muhammad lived, religion played little to no role in the lives of the Arabic tribes. The poems of the period testify to their religious laxity. Already in 1888, in the opening chapter of the first volume of “Muslim Studies,” “Muruwwa and Dīn” Goldziher contends that before the wake of Islam the manly virtue (muruwwa) and the respect of the ancestors (sunna) set positive values for pagan Arabs.40 Muhammad’s law (dīn) replaced the pagan muruwwa, presented a new system of ethics, and regulated social relations between men and women, among belligerent tribes, and later between Arabs and non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims. In “Arabs” Goldziher illustrates the contrast between the morals of the pagan Arabs and Muhammad’s Islam by pointing out that while all Arabs as well as other Semitic groups used the name Allah as a generic term for divinity, it did not denote the judge of the universe. Conversely, Muhammad described Allah as the One God, the “lord of judgement day” who would punish sinners and forgive and save the believers || 38 GOLDZIHER, A pogány arabok, 20: “Ez volt az inspiratió megnyilatkozásának szokott formája a pogány araboknál; a kuruzslók és próféták egyaránt használják. Mind azon úgynevezett hamis Koránok, melyeket a Muhameddel versengő arab próféták a nép elé adtak, valamint azon művészi alkotások, melyekben későbbi századokban egyes szabad szellemek a Korán utolérhetőnek vélt ékesszólását lealacsonyítani törekedtek, a szads’ alakját használják.” In Muslim Studies, Goldziher dedicated an excursion – an extended footnote to the subject of Qurʾān imitation: GOLDZIHER, Imitations of the Koran, in Muslim Studies II, 363—365. 39 GOLDZIHER, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, 12. 40 GOLDZIHER, Muruwwa and Dīn, in Muslim Studies I, 11–44.

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and the true souls from the complete annihilation of the world. Muhammad also talked about heaven and hell, wrong and right in the eyes of Allah, told old legends and stories known from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, threatened his enemies, encouraged his followers, and gave law. Goldziher emphasizes the novelty and foreignness of Muhammad’s teachings to his fellow tribesmen, as he previously did in the second chapter of “Muslim Studies I,” “The Arabic Tribes and Islam.” However, while in “The Arabic Tribes and Islam” he quotes the Qurʾān three times and bases most of his claims on different historical sources, mostly hadith, in “Arabs” Goldziher directly relies on the Qurʾānic text, referring to it as a historical source. 41 He defines the Qurʾān accordingly:42 Muhammed’s announcements of his religious and social reforms are summarized in a literary form in the book which, in addition to its great significance in the history of religions, is notable in Arabic literary history also because in this literature this is the first complete work, in other words, the first book.

Defining the Qurʾān as a collection of announcements most probably resonated with Christian readers, but at the same time was rather unconventional: recitation was — and still is — the more widespread interpretation of the word Qurʾān. Recitation appears in his German works too.43 Announcement, however, better fit Goldziher’s approach to the persona of Muhammad as a religious reformer and a social revolutionary. Goldziher’s word choice underscores his socio-cultural approach to the role of the Qurʾān as well: his subsequent analysis on the saj’ form and the conscious choice to use it in order to promote the novel message of the Qurʾān further sharpens the focus on the social transformations that took place in seventh-century Arabia following Muhammad’s appearance. Goldziher stresses that the saj’ form shaped the structure and the content of the suras. Following the compulsory introductory formula “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,” at the beginning of almost every sura, the saj’ form can be detected in between and across the lines. For example, Goldziher describes the last sura “Nās” (Mankind) as “magic formula, or incantation,

|| 41 GOLDZIHER, The Arabic Tribes and Islam, in Muslim Studies I, 55, 56, 74. The three references are to suras 49:13; 26:225; 30:21. 42 GOLDZIHER, Arabok, 257: “Muhammednek a vallás és a társadalom reformját magukban foglaló hirdetései irodalmi alakban abban a könyvben vannak összefoglalva, mely vallástörténeti nagy jelentőségén kívül, az arab irodalomtörténetben azért is nevezetes, hogy ebben az irodalomban a legelső lezárt egészet alkotó mű, szóval a legelső könyv.” 43 For example, see GOLDZIHER, Vorlesungen, 6.

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similar to those included in Muhammad’s announcements,” and he divided it into seven saj’ “units.” In Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation:44 1. Say: I seek refuge/ With the Lord 2. The King (or Ruler)/ of Mankind, 3. The God (or judge)/Of Mankind, – 4. From the mischief Of the Whisperer/ (Of Evil), 5. Who withdraws 6. (The same) who whispers/Into the hearts of Mankind, – 7. Among Jinns/ And among Men.

Goldziher’s insistence on the importance of saj’ corresponds with the German orientalist Theodor Nöldeke’s (1836–1930) findings in his 1858 Geschichte des Qorāns (“History of the Qurʾān”). Similar to Nöldeke, Goldziher notes that the aesthetic examination of the Qurʾānic text demonstrates the “vanishing prophetic force” which distinguished the Meccan from the Medinan suras and thus made it possible to establish the chronological order in which they were revealed. At this point Nöldeke’s and Goldziher’s shared interest in the question of Muhammad’s originality, a central issue to western Orientalism, also becomes apparent. Both Nöldeke and Goldziher, though from different points of view, argued against widespread western bias that included belittling descriptions of Muhammad’s persona and intellectual powers and grand generalizations about the “deficiency” of the Semitic and particularly the Arabic mind and psyche. By examining the Qurʾānic text, Nöldeke judges Muhammad, noting that he was an “average stylist.” In contrast, Goldziher refrains from the evaluation of the Qurʾānic expression. Nöldeke also adds that Muhammad’s “literary importance […] is based on his originality to create new Bible-like style for the documents of his new religion.”45 For Goldziher, the question of originality touched on a much broader issue, also related to the western understanding of Islam, and central to his understanding of the development of Islam. In “Muslim Studies” and later in “Lectures on Islam” Goldziher raises the question of Muhammad’s originality in conjunction to the debate about the Semites’ alleged monotheistic instinct and lack of intellectual or artistic creativity as opposed to Aryans. In his writings, he often cited the arguments of one of the best-known advocates of this bias, Ernest Renan, only to refute them. Based on the assessment that Muhammad’s work was a sweeping social reform and by identifying his “borrowings” from Jewish and Christian teachings and texts,

|| 44 The English text follows the division and numbering of the Arabic text: 1. Say: I seek refuge/ With the Lord/ And Cherisher of Mankind,/ 2. The King (or Ruler)/ Of Mankind/ 3. The God (or Judge)/ Of Mankind, – / 4. From the mischief/ Of the Whisperer/ (Of Evil), who withdraws/ (After his whisper), –/ 5. (The same) who whispers/ Into the hearts of Mankind, –/ 6. Among Jinns/ And among Men. 45 NÖLDEKE, The History of the Qurʾān, i/143 fn. 1.

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Goldziher draws the conclusion that Islam was not a homegrown religious idea of the Semitic Arabs, but instead something implanted from the outside. Goldziher’s argumentation also corresponds with Abraham Geiger’s (1810–1874) awardwinning study from 1830, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (“What Muhammad took from Judaism”), a pioneering, modern investigation of Judaism’s impact on Islam, which complemented Geiger’s and other Jewish scholars’ demonstration of Judaism’s continuous development and contribution to human civilization. Geiger’s work aimed to refute claims, articulated by Renan as well, that after the advent of monotheism Judaism ceased to be an actor on the stage of world history. Goldziher formulated a broader cultural historical argument.46 In his scholarship, Goldziher addressed generalizations against Semites, Arabs and Jews equally. Occasionally, he also emphasized the dynamics of cross-cultural fertilization in the Middle East and studied Muslim influences on Jewish writings.47 As he notes in his inaugural address, in several of his works he examined the Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist influences on Islam (and not only the Qurʾānic text) and stressed the influence of non-Arabs on the development of Islamic letters, arts, and sciences. In light of these findings, as well as his literary analysis of the correspondence between the Qurʾān and preIslamic Arabic poetry, he recognized Muhammad’s genius in the way he introduced Jewish and Christian teachings into Arabia — a completely different cultural milieu. Muhammad’s originality and, consequently, the creativity of Islam manifested themselves in the capacity to almost seamlessly incorporate foreign elements into the Islamic cultural and religious system.48 In “Lectures on the Islam” Goldziher clearly states this: “the first historically effective reformer among the Arabs was Muhammad. Therein lies his originality, no matter how eclectic much of his prophecy may be.”49 Whereas Nöldeke’s research on the Qurʾānic text offered a horizontal approach and led to the contextualization of the aesthetic qualities of the Qurʾān within the circle of other scriptures, Goldziher outlined a vertical approach. He inserted the Qurʾān into the history of the Arabian Peninsula’s cultural, social, and political history and measured Muhammad’s originality based on its impact on the transformation of Arabia. In Goldziher’s view the

|| 46 FRAISSE, From Geiger to Goldziher, 203. 47 Goldziher had already articulated his interest in the mutual influences between Christianity and Islam and Judaism in his Muslim Studies, in the short chapter Hadith and New Testament. Later he further researched the dialogue between Muslim and Jewish learning in many of his articles, such as the French series Melanges judéo-arabes, 1904–6, 1908, 1910. 48 GOLDZIHER, Muslim Studies I, 22. 49 GOLDZIHER, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, 6.

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traditional form (saj’) and the novel message that Muhammad spread among his fellow Arabs were closely connected, they were almost strategically paired. The configuration of ancient form and novel content in fact prefigured the course of Islam’s consequent development, which was similarly based on the integration of foreign elements into an ever-developing cultural system. The examination of the Qurʾānic text, however, occupies only a small portion of “Arabs:” Goldziher’s review of the subsequent development of Arabic literature does not dwell on the influence the Qurʾānic text exerted over the following centuries’ literary products, despite the fact that Goldziher defined the Qurʾān as the first Muslim book. Rather, he implicitly reminds the reader of the Qurʾān’s enduring status as scripture in the eyes of the Muslim believers and, consequently, he describes the process of canonization of the Qurʾānic text under the Umayyads, who also patronized the aforementioned compilation of diwans. Religion and religious learning gained impetus during the next dynasty of the Persian Abbasids who also supported the cultivation of both the natural sciences and humanities. Under their rule many other different ethnic groups contributed to the enrichment and diversification of Arabic literature. The last part of “Arabs” focuses on medieval Muslim Spain and the literary and scholarly writings of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa under Muslim rule — an additional illustration of Goldziher’s fascination with the spatial spread of Islam and the multicultural diversity it embraced.

Conclusion This essay studies how “Arabs,” Goldziher’s encyclopedia entry on Arabic literary history that included his short examination of the Qurʾānic text, corresponded with his treatment of the Qurʾān in his other legal, religious, and literary studies. In his better-known books and articles Goldziher refers to the Qurʾān as a historical source of the social and literary life of pagan and early Islamic Arabia. Examining the Qurʾānic text in “Arabs,” Goldziher focuses on how saj’, traditional prosaic rhyme, shaped the suras and how the social function of the poet in pre-Islamic Arabia influenced Muhammad’s “announcements.” Goldziher argues that Muhammad’s message contradicted the ethical norms of pagan Arabia and that the Prophet employed the language and the form used by the era’s most influential public figures, the poets, to successfully communicate his message. In so arguing Goldziher demonstrates that pre-Islamic literary expression shaped Muslim scripture and that the traditional poetic form continued to influence Arabic literary expression in later periods as well. Although “Arabs” does not discuss

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the impact of the Qurʾānic text on subsequent Arabic works as Goldziher’s legal and religious studies and other literary investigations did, it highlights another aspect of Islam’s creative synthesis of foreign (non-Islamic) elements into its cultural paradigm. Goldziher’s emphasis on Muhammad’s creativity coincides with his view on Islam’s integrative quality. By acknowledging that the Prophet relied on Christian and Jewish sources, Goldziher recognizes Muhammad’s originality in his synthesis of foreign elements with Arabic traditions, as well as his creation of the basis of a new monotheistic religion that would further and adapt to diverse cultural settings. “Arabs” describes Muhammad’s appearance as a conflict with the pagan poets who exercised significant influence on public opinion; this must have resonated well with Hungarian readers. In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Hungary, poets and literary authors were similarly public figures. They participated in the activities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, worked as journalists, and got elected to parliament. Neither literature (in its restricted sense as belles lettres), nor the humanities were politically neutral fields that retreated from the public to ivory towers. Poetry permeated not only public discourse, but scholarship as well. Goldziher’s scholarly writings amply exemplify his attraction to poetry too: literary works from Hungary and beyond served as illustrations to his arguments. His Oriental Diary contains poems that he wrote himself.50 Although in his work he relied on a broad definition of literature, Goldziher’s focus on the social role of the poet and the influence of poetry on public affairs reflects the social reality in which he worked. “Arabs,” published in Hungarian for Hungarian readers, reflects not only Goldziher’s approach to the Qurʾān, its influence on the history of Islam, and the study of religion, but also his view on the relevance of Arabic literary history — and, subsequently his own scholarly work — to the broader Hungarian society of his time.

|| 50 GOLDZIHER/PATAI, Oriental diary, 147–149.

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Bibliography AL-BAGDADI, Nadia: Registers of Arabic Literary History. New Literary History 39 (Summer 2008), 437–461. ALI, Abdullah Yusuf (translator): Qurʾan. New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qurʾan, 2002. BROCKELMANN, Carl: Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur I. Weimar: Emil Felber, 1898. DABASHI, Hamid: Introduction to Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies I. New Brunswick and London: Aldine Transaction, 2006. ix–xciii. FRAISSE, Ottfried: Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft. Zur Historisierung des Islam Band 12. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. — : From Geiger to Goldziher: Historical Method and its Impact on the Conception of Islam. In: Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary. The ‘Science of Judaism’ between East and West / ed. C. Wilke and T. Turán. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. 203–222. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz: A bibliai tudomány és a modern vallásos élet (Biblical scholarship and modern religious life, Hungarian). Magyar Zsidó Szemle 1 (1884), 89–97, 168–176. — : A haladásról (About progress, Hungarian). In: A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése (The essence and development of Judaism, Hungarian). Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2000. 617–622. — : A jesibák (The yeshivas, Hungarian). In: A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése (The essence and development of Judaism, Hungarian). Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2000. 615–617. — : “A költő a régi arabok fölfogásában” (The Poet in the Minds of the Ancient Arabs, Hungarian). In: Hunfalvy-Album/ ed. Antal Hermann; Zsigmond Simonyi. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor, 1891. — : A muhammedán jogtudomány eredetéről (About the Origins of Muslim Jurisprudence, Hungarian). Budapest, M.T. Akadémia könyvkiado-hivatala, 1884. — : A pogány arabok költészetének hagyománya (The Tradition of Pagan Arabs’ Poetry, Hungarian). Budapest: [Magyar Tudományos Akadémia], 1893. — : Arabok (Arabs, Hungarian). In: Egyetemes irodalomtörténet (Universal Literary History, Hungarian) / ed. Gusztáv Heinrich. Budapest: Franklin- Társulat, 1903. 245–328. — : A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése (The essence and development of Judaism, Hungarian). In: A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése. Budapest: Múlt es Jövő Kiadó, 2000. 29–128. — : Az iszlám. Tanulmányok a muhammedán vallás története köréből (Islam: Studies from the History of the Muslim Religion, Hungarian). Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1880. — : Muhammedanische Studien. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1888–90. — : Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung. Leiden: Brill, 1920. — : Schools of Koranic Commentators/ ed. Wolfgang Behn. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006. — : Tagebuch. Leiden: Brill, 1978. — : Über die Vorgeschichte der Hiǵâʿ-Poesie. In Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie I. Leiden: Brill, 1896. 1–105. — : Vorlesungen über den Islam. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1910. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz/BARBER, C. R./STERN, S. M. (transl.): Muslim Studies I. New Brunswick / London: Aldine Transaction, 2006. — : Muslim Studies II. London, Allen & Unwin, 1967–1971. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz/BEHN, Wolfgang (transl.): The Zāhirīs: Their Doctrine and Their History. Leiden: Brill, 1971.

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GOLDZIHER, Ignaz/HAMORI, Andras/HAMORI, Ruth (transl.): Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz/PATAI, Raphael: Ignaz Goldziher and his Oriental Diary: a translation and psychological portrait. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987. GOLDZIHER, Ignaz/SEELYE, Kate Chambers (translator): Mohammed and Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917. GRAHAM, William A./KORMANI, Navid: Recitation and Aesthetic Reception. In: The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾan/ Jane Damme McAuliffe (ed.). Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. HELLER, Bernát: Goldziher Ignác. In: A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése (The essence and development of Judaism, Hungarian). Budapest: Múlt es Jövő Kiadó, 2000. LAMEER, Joep: History of the Arabic Written Tradition. Boston: Brill, 2017. MCAULIFFE, Jane Dammen: Introduction to the Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾan. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 1–20. NÖLDEKE, Theodor: The History of the Qurʾan/ Wolfgang Behn (ed. and transl.). Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013. SALEH, Walid A.: The Formation of Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʼān Commentary of AlTha’labī (d. 427/1035). Boston: Brill, 2003. SIMON, Róbert: Goldziher Ignác. Budapest: Osiris, 2000. TURÁN, Tamás: Academic Religion: Goldziher as a Scholar and a Jew. In: Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary. The ‘Science of Judaism’ between East and West/C. Wilke and T. Turán (eds.). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016, 223–270.

Hanan Harif

Between Sacred and Profane Three Modern Hebrew Translators of the Qurʾān Over the course of this paper I will discuss three Modern Hebrew translations of the Qurʾān: The first one is from the mid-19th century and the two others are from the 20th century. Each of the translators, I will claim, had intensions beyond the mere straightforward goal of bringing the Qurʾānic text to the Hebrew reader. Thus, in what follows I will concentrate both on the circumstances under which the translations appeared and on the motivations and the goals of their translators. To be sure, the Qurʾān was translated into Hebrew already in the 17th century, and once more in the mid-18th century.1 I chose to focus on these three exclusively since they are the sole Hebrew translations that appeared in print until recent years. The focus of this paper is historical rather than philological; therefore the two additional translations that exist, both published during the 21st century and hence less suitable for historical analysis, will not be discussed in it.2 A comparative analysis of these texts would no doubt be very fruitful; however, since the present writer is not a scholar of Arabic, there will be neither references to the actual content of these translations, nor comparisons to the original text. Still, the social and cultural context of these works and the political implications of their production is a part of the history of Modern Hebrew Letters and of JewishMuslim encounters during the Modern Era. As such, they are worth studying. It should be added that the Hebrew translations were by no means the only translations of the holy scripture of Islam which were made by Jews. These three translations, however, are the only Hebrew versions of the Qurʾān which were published before the present Millennium, and therefore they will be the focus of this paper.

|| 1 On two earlier unpublished translations see BASAL, The Jews and the Qurʾān. 2 The two are: RUBIN, The Qurʾān (2005; second edition: 2016); ADAWI, The Qurʾān in Another Language (2015).

https://doi.org/9783110592672-008

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1 Herrmann (Zevi Hayyim) Reckendorf: Between Enlightenment and Polemics The first Modern Hebrew translation of the Qurʾān, and the first one ever published, was authored by Herrmann (Zevi Hayyim) Reckendorf in the mid-19th century and published in 1856–1857 in Leipzig.3 Reckendorf (1825–1875), son of a Jewish teacher from Třebíč, Moravia, studied in local yeshivot and around the year 1856 moved to Leipzig, where he studied at the local university. In later years he also taught Hebraic studies in Heidelberg and became a member of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft. In addition to his translation of the Qurʾān, he was also a writer of popular Jewish history. Influenced by the French novelist Eugene Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, he published his Die Geheimnisse der Juden (Secrets of the Jews) in five volumes.4 A decade later he published another historical novel, titled Das Leben Mosis (Life of Moses).5 Unlike his son, Solomon Hermann Reckendorf (1863–1923), who studied Semitic languages in the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin and later became a professor of Arabic Syntax in Freiburg, Reckendorf is not mentioned very often in histories of German Orientalism as an orientalist at his own right.6 However, as will be demonstrated shortly, he was by no means unfamiliar with contemporary scholarship on Islam. Leipzig, to which Reckendorf moved close to the publication of his translation, was a center for scholarly cooperation in this field. As Ismar Schorsch has shown, this was the case thanks to the presence of the foremost German Orientalist of the time, Heinrich Fleischer, in its university.7 According to Schorsch, Fleischer encouraged scholars in the field of oriental studies – regardless of their confessional affiliation – and thus played a crucial role in the development of this field and its relation to Jewish Studies in Germany. Thus, Herrmann Reckendorf seems to be an interesting illustration of this phenomenon – a Jew of strong traditional background who emigrated from Moravia and became a translator and historian as well as a lecturer (probably a Privatdozent) at Heidelberg University. || 3 RECKENDORF, Der Koran. 4 IDEM, Die Geheimnisse; Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1905), Reckendorf, Hermann (Hayyim Zebi[!] ben Solomon), vol. 10, 343. 5 RECKENDORF, Das Leben Mosis. 6 B. Lewis’ comment is typical in this regard: “Hermann[!] Reckendorf (1863–1923), whose father incidentally[!] had translated the Qurʾān into Hebrew, wrote the standard work on Arabic syntax.” – L EWIS, The Pro-Islamic Jews, 143. 7 SCHORSCH, Converging Cognates.

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Reckendorf provided a text whose language resembles Biblical Hebrew, in accordance with the 19th century Haskalah (Hebrew Enlightenment) model. The full text appeared in 1857, a year after the first, partial, publication, and was dedicated by the translator to his father: ‫זכרון אהבה לכבוד אדוני אבי מורי התורני הצדיק היקר‬ [...] ‫והנכבד‬. The dedication-page was followed by a Hebrew poem in which the author referred to the diverse virtues of his late father and his suffering from the intolerance of his coreligionists; the eternal benefits of wisdom and learning; the eternal war between rival-confessions and the superiority of the “true faith.” The poem concludes with a call to “my own people” to accept the writer’s offering.8 Once again, all the elements of this poem are typical to the aesthetic and moral norms of the older German-Jewish Enlightenment – and contemporary East-European Haskalah Movement. This, together with the very fact that Reckendorf chose to translate the Qurʾān into Hebrew and not into German – the natural choice for scholarly translations in his time and place – testify that his pioneering project should be seen as a part of the 19th century Hebrew Haskalah of Eastern Europe – indeed, as an exceptional maskilic enterprise. Reckendorf, it should be noted, is not only a stepchild of German Orientalism; in the textbooks of Jewish enlightenment he is virtually unknown. This approach found its way also to Reckendorf’s scholarship. His book opens with a long introduction, divided into eight sections: 1. A history of Arabia and the Arabs before Muhammad; 2. The life of Muhammad; 3. The Qurʾān; 4–6: Jewish, Christian and pagan influences on Muhammad; 7. The Sunna; and 8. Major Muslim sects.9 This introduction was not an original work; most of it was explicitly based upon the work of George Sale: An English translation of the Qurʾān, published in 1732 and forwarded by an introduction. Sale’s introduction is also divided into eight sections, a division which Reckendorf followed. Reckendorf not only borrowed from Sale the structure of his essay, but also some of the titles and the content of the sections. Thus, Reckendorf’s first, second, third and eighth sections are based heavily on Sale – to which he refers in a footnote at the beginning of each section. The largest section, however, is the fourth, titled “What did Muhammad gather from the Jewish faith and Jewish books” ( ‫מה ליקט מוחמד מאמונת‬ ‫)ומספרי היהודים‬. This section, almost needless to say, was not based on the work of George Sale but rather on Abraham Geiger’s famous 1833 work, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen. “I ask for his [Geiger’s] permission to collect several flowers from the great garden of his wisdom.”10 Accordingly, after

|| 8 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, VII–IX. 9 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XI–XLVI. 10 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XXX–XXXI.

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a brief preface in which he refers to the roots of Jewish influence on Muhammad, who “confused and spoiled [the Midrashim] with his perplexed mind,” the chapter goes on to cite “All Talmudic sayings, Aggadah and Midrashim which are mentioned in the Qurʾān.”11 A sharer of the ideals of Jewish Enlightenment, Reckendorf took upon himself to spread general knowledge among Jews who did not read German. His personal and professional affiliation with the milieu of liberal Jewish scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums and German Orientalistik – such as Geiger, as well as Adolf Jellineck and Julius Fürst (both of Leipzig!) – whom he thanked for their help and support, underlines his role as a mediator and popularizer of “scientific” knowledge – a fundamental feature of the Haskalah Movement, and Enlightenment in general. It would seem that Reckendorf’s project was initiated and driven only by modern-secular intellectual interests; however, apparently this was not the case, since in different places throughout his introduction he did not hesitate to criticize the Qurʾān and its composer, Muhammad:12 The rhetoric of the Qurʾān is occasionally pleasant and edifying, but for the most part low, ugly, despicable and filled with emptiness […] In comparison to our sacred Torah, it is as worthless as Muhammad’s character is inferior to that of Moses, peace be upon him […] In truth, dear reader, if the Qurʾān did not form the basis of a widely popular religion, it would neither be worth looking at or reading.

Reckendorf, who addressed a relatively traditional audience, seems to have been very much aware of the potential religious sensitivities of his readers. Therefore, he did not hesitate to combine a strict polemical tone in his innovative project. Another illustration for this is given towards the conclusion of his essay, in the context of a reflection on the language of the translation: “And now […] I shall ask forgiveness from [God,] my Rock and Maker, for I sinned in desecrating our holy language by translating lies and words of emptiness into it.”13 Justifying his linguistic choice, Reckendorf marked the close proximity between Arabic and Hebrew, which makes the latter the most fitting option for translation. This, of course, may explain why he chose Hebrew and not German, for instance, but not how he allowed himself this “desecration” in itself. His second justification is that Hebrew is understood by all educated Jews.14 Although here, too, the fundamental problem is not solved, this reasoning does shed light on the kind of audience

|| 11 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XLIII. 12 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XXX. 13 RECKENDORF, Der Koran XLV–XLVI. 14 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XLVI.

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Reckendorf had in mind. Unlike his popular histories – written in German and carrying educational messages for acculturated German Jews15 – here it is the Hebrew-reading Jewish public of more traditional background that is addressed. Most important, however, is his third reason for translating the Qurʾān:16 Thirdly and mainly: anyone who reads the laws of our sacred Torah vs. the Qurʾānic laws, [anyone] who compares the pleasant tales and profound phrases of the Bible to the vanities included in the Qurʾān, is able to separate between sacred and profane, [between] pure and impure, and thus, one appreciates our sacred faith; for the value of the good and true is recognized only by contrast to the vapid and false.

Despite the clear polemical tone of these statements, it was not out of a polemical motivation that Reckendorf took this work upon himself, since Islam was by no means a threat, nor a religious attraction, for 19th century European Jewry. Furthermore, it is most unlikely that Reckendorf, who was influenced by Sale and Geiger’s works, and assisted by Jellineck and Fürst, was invested in such a complicated task just for the sake of attacking Islam. However, unlike the common image of Jewish scholars as relatively free from the prejudice that characterized several contemporary Christian scholars regarding Islam, Reckendorf turns out as not “philo-Islamic” at all.17 As mentioned above, this ambiguity is partly clarified by an identification of Reckendorf's expected audience and his care for its sensitivities. In actual fact, at the end of his introduction he even goes further and refers to the antagonism that his work raised even before its completion: “And thus I answered my rivals, who impiously mocked me more and more for doing this work.”18 The actual reason for the comparison in favor of the Hebrew Bible was not the need to prove the superiority of Judaism over Islam, but rather to refute internal Jewish criticism. It is possible, however, that initially Reckendorf decided to translate the Qurʾān into Hebrew out of sincere interest, as a part of the general knowledge-dissemination agenda of the Haskalah. Thus, it was only after he was starkly criticized by individuals or groups within his Jewish environment, before his move from Třebíč to Leipzig, for his daring translation, that he composed his introduction.

|| 15 On the ideological aspects of Reckendorf's popular historiography see: BEN-A RI, Romance, 147–186. 16 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XLVI. 17 LEWIS, The Pro-Islamic Jews; SCHORSCH, The Myth; HESCHEL, German Jewish Scholarship; IDEM, Abraham Geiger. 18 RECKENDORF, Der Koran, XLVI.

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Accordingly, this composition combined research and translations of scholars such as Sale and Geiger with religious apologetics.

* Within the boundaries of this paper I will not be able to examine the range of Reckendorf’s translation’s acceptance. It is noteworthy, however, that in his own town, Leipzig, the reviewer of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (edited by Ludwig Phillipson, a prominent figure of the German Jewish Enlightenment and a reform Rabbi), did not find this work very useful for Jews in Europe. “Hopefully,” he wrote, “this translation will find its way to the Oriental Jews, so that they get a better understanding of the law of the Turks.”19 Interestingly, Reckendorf’s translation indeed found its way to the ‘Orient.’ A hand-written copy of Reckendorf’s Qurʾān is kept in the National library of Israel. The manuscript, copied by an anonymous scribe in Sephardi-style letters, belonged to Aharon Buchbut, a rabbi and judge at the Jewish court-house of the city of Fezz, Morocco.20 In the title page the owner wrote: “bought […] to fulfill [the commandment] ‘know what to answer [a heretic].’” Thus, Buchbut followed both Phillipson’s hope and Reckendorf’s polemical attitude. On another level, however, it can be determined that, while this work remained marginal within the German context, it did play some role outside the immediate boundaries of European Jewish Enlightenment.

2 Yosef Yoel Rivlin: The Qurʾān as a Semitic Book The second published Hebrew translation of the Qurʾān is Yosef Yoel Rivlin’s AlQurʾān, which appeared in Mandatary Palestine in 1936, 80 years after this of Reckendorf. Rivlin was born in 1889 to a distinguished Ashkenazi family who settled in Jerusalem in the year 1840. He studied in the traditional “Etz-Chaim” Talmud Tora as well as in the modernized, German-oriented “Lemel” school. Later he joined the local Seminar for teachers – established by “Ezra,” the “Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden.” Rivlin was also one of the few Jewish students of the

|| 19 Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, 12.7.1858, 358 (Anonymous). 20 I thank Dr. Yaacov Fuchs of the Manuscripts Department at the National Library of Israel for his help with this identification.

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independent Islamic school Rawdat al-Maʿarif, founded in 1906. 21 This multilingual education had a significant influence on Rivlin, and provided him with an inside view of the local Arab elite together with comprehensive knowledge of Hebrew and German. In 1922, after several years of educational work and Zionist activity in Damascus and Tiberias, Rivlin moved to Frankfurt, where he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation, dedicated to Qurʾānic law, under the supervision of prof. Josef Horovitz. In 1927, after completing his studies, Rivlin started to work at the school of Oriental Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During his years at the Hebrew University Rivlin produced, inter alia, several translations of prominent Arabic writings such as the Qurʾān, Thousand and One Nights, and The Life of Muhammad.22 Rivlin’s diverse intellectual influences were reflected in his work on the Qurʾān. In the introduction to his Hebrew translation, Rivlin mentioned the various elements of his formation as a scholar:23 When I started this project twenty years ago I was aware of the burden of responsibility, but I did it out of inner impetus. To this end I followed the advice of my father in law, my teacher and my rabbi, the sage Rabbi Yitzhak Yehezkel Yahudah, one of the greatest Jewish scholars in the field of Arabic literature, and traveled to Europe to study this wisdom with my teacher prof. Josef Horovitz […] after I studied the Qur’an with Arab sages, according to their own spirit.

The translation and its author thus combine both the “spirit” of Arab sages as well as the “wisdom” (Torah) of Arabic literature, as taught in Europe. Rivlin’s translation is considered reliable, although, like Reckendorf’s, it requires a wide knowledge of biblical and rabbinical Hebrew. Naturally, this makes it not very useful for contemporary Hebrew readers. Initially, however, it was the broad Hebrew readership that Rivlin (and the Dvir Publishing House) had in mind. In the preface to his translation, after stressing the universal importance of the Qurʾān, Rivlin wrote:24 For us Jews, the Qur’an has a special value, as it is one of the most charming manifestations of the Semitic spirit. It is filled with the prophetic pathos which is unique to the sons of Shem, and it has the rhythm of our earliest compositions. Both originated from the tents of

|| 21 On this school see: GREENBERG, Majallat Rawdat al-Maʿarif, 79–80, and the sources in notes 5–6 there. 22 On this work see: RODED, A Voice in the Wilderness. 23 RIVLIN, AlQurʾān, VI. 24 RIVLIN, AlQurʾān, V.

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Shem. The Qur’an echoes the monotheistic desire for the one sublime and Almighty God. […] Now, when the Jewish People is awakening to return to the East, to its spirit and to its life, [now] is the right time to translate this book into Hebrew.

According to Rivlin the Qurʾān is not only a Muslim book; it is also, as a manifestation of the Semitic Spirit, an important book for the Jews. It is not foreign to them; on the contrary – similarly to the Bible, it is a prominent part of the Semitic, Arab-Hebrew corpus. In the spirit of Johann Gottfried Herder’s Vom Geist der Ebraeischen Poesie, it is not the religious aspect that Rivlin chose to emphasize, but rather, the poetic one. Indeed, Chaim Nachman Bialik, the Jewish “National poet” was initially deeply involved in this work as a copy-editor of Rivlin’s work. Moreover, it was actually not the national aspect, but rather the “racial” aspect that so appealed to Rivlin. According to his view, the Arabic Qurʾān, similarly to the Hebrew Bible, manifested the “Semitic Spirit” which is common to both peoples. Therefore, the translation of the Qurʾān was perceived as a part of a Jewish spiritual revival, a link to the wider sphere of the Arab world. This unique approach was expressed also in other works of Rivlin, such as the translation of Thousand and one Nights and his Biography of Prophet Muhammad. Unlike Reckendorf, who wrote for a traditional Jewish audience and considered inner Jewish constraints, Rivlin’s translation was meant to create a unified Arab-Jewish cultural sphere on the basis of what he perceived as the common heritage of the “Sons of Shem,” and thus promote Arab-Jewish rapprochement in Mandatary Palestine.25 Emphasizing the shared “Semitic” poetics of the Qurān and the Bible over the religious differences between them implied a secularization of these sacred texts in favor of a political-cultural agenda that was concerned with the text as a cornerstone of the modern national culture more than as the word of God. Such secularization was not uncommon among Zionist thinkers. However, while the common Zionist secularization, or rather re-interpretation, of the sacred text was concerned solely with the Bible and Jewish nationalism, here, in Rivlin’s introduction to his Hebrew Qurʾān, it took a step further toward the Arabs and “their” sacred text. In order to gain a better understanding of the historical and cultural meaning of the project it is necessary to view it within its institutional context. Rivlin worked in cooperation with the “Dvir” publishing house, a “Public National” Press as its founders called it. At the center of this institute was the poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik who, together with his partners Yehoshua Khone Ravnizky, Alter

|| 25 For a more comprehensive analysis of Rivlin’s translation and its production see: HARIF, Islam in Zion.

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Druyanow, Shemaryahu Levin and several others, undertook the enormous task of reviving the “Jewish national spirit” by collecting, editing and publishing virtually all the prominent works written throughout Jewish history. The goal of the Kinnus project – kinnus meaning, literally, “ingathering” or “assembling” – as described by Israel Bartal, was “the collection, editing and preservation of the nation’s cultural creative assets.”26 According to Bialik, the Kinnus included the search for collection of texts, classification, scientific editing and, most importantly in the context of this paper, translation, interpretation, publication and dissemination of texts among the Jewish readership. The project was conceived as a means of reviving the nation’s culture, and the scholars who were engaged in the project were “to adopt the national culture perspective that underlines the very idea of kinnus.”27 Rivlin’s translation of the Qurʾān was a part of this Zionist endeavor. The surviving correspondence between the branches of the Dvir publishing company in Berlin and its office in Jerusalem proves that the translation was on Dvir’s agenda despite various difficulties that resulted in delays. The fact that Bialik, the most prominent figure of cultural Zionism in terms of creativity and cultural initiative, was so deeply involved in the project, is illuminating in itself. Despite several disagreements that resulted at delays and, eventually, at Bialik’s abandonment of the shared work, it is clear that this project (was) meant to become a part of the Jewish national culture. An illuminating illustration to that is the fact that Rivlin’s AlQurʾān appeared in the first section, titled Sifrei ʿAm, namely, popular books, of the 1939 Dvir catalogue. The title of the section can be understood both as referring to the expected readership of the books in the section and also to their origin, following Herder’s concepts about the creativity of “the people.” The section contained mainly collections and anthologies including some prominent cultural Zionist initiatives such as Sefer haAggadah, Bialik and Ravnizky’s classic compilation of legends from the Talmud and Midrash; Alter Druyanow’s book of Jewish Humor; Yosef Meyuhas’ book of Oriental Jewish tales; and Micha Joseph Berdichevsky’s Mimekor Yisra’el, a collection of classical Jewish folktales. These works, together with several anthologies which were also included in the same section, were some of the milestones of the Kinnus project. (Tellingly) Rivlin’s translation of the Qurʾān was the one and only non-Jewish book in this category. The placement of AlQurʾān within the 1939 Dvir catalogue also suggests that the translation was directed at the general Hebrew-reading public, a book for the people. At the same time, it might also indicate that the Qurʾān was perceived as || 26 BARTAL, The Kinnus Project, 311. 27 BARTAL, The Kinnus Project, 317.

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an expression of the literature of the (Arab) people, the Volkspoesie of the Arabs. For Rivlin, as well as for Bialik, it was exactly this Herderian concept that operated as a driving force for the translation.

3 Aharon Ben-Shemesh: Pure Monotheism in Popular Style The third and last translation which will be discussed in this paper is The Holy Qurʾān: The Book of Books of Islam, published in 1971 (and reprinted in 1978 under a slightly different title).28 An English translation by the same author was also published in 1979.29 The translator, Aharon Ben-Shemesh (born: Shpektorov, 1899–1988), was a lawyer and an expert in Islamic law.30 Throughout his professional career as a legal advisor at the “Jewish Agency” and at the Land Department of the “Jewish National Fund” (JNF), he played a central role in the so-called “Juridical Underground.” This term, invented by Ben-Shemesh himself, signified the diverse juridical efforts undertaken by the Land Department of the JNF to enable the continuation of the Jewish-Zionist land purchase in the face of the British Mandate regulation (known as the “White Papers”).31 In 1955, after his retirement, Ben-Shemesh submitted a Ph.D. dissertation at Dropsie College, Philadelphia. This was an English edition of the early Muslim writer Yahyā Ben Ādam’s (d. 818) Kitāb al Kharāj (Book of Tax).32 This work, published in 1958, was followed by two further editions of early Muslim writings on Islamic Tax-law. Throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s Ben-Shemesh taught Islamic law at the Tel-Aviv University, and in 1967 he began work on his translation of the Qurʾān. It can thus be determined that Ben-Shemesh had many years of work in other fields behind him when he published his version of the Qurʾān, at the age of 71. Although this was not his first translation from classic Arabic, it is clear that producing a translation of the Qurʾān is very different from translating a legal text. || 28 BEN-S HEMESH, The Holy Qurʾān; B EN-SHEMESH, The Qurʾān. 29 BEN-S HEMESH, The Noble Quran. 30 For partial information on Ben-Shemesh see: “Aharon Ben-Shemesh,” Encyclopedia Tidhar, vol 4, 1575; BLUM, The Juridical Underground. Blum writes that Ben-Shemesh died in 1977, but in the preface to his Noble Qurʾān Ben-Shemesh refers to December 1978 as the date of publication of his Qurʾān. For his death records see: https://ru.billiongraves.com/grave/%D7%90% D7%94%D7% A8%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%9F-%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%A9/18829591#/ 31 BEN-S HEMESH, The Juridical Underground; BLUM, The Juridical Underground. 32 BEN-S HEMESH, Kitāb al-kharāj.

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This fact seems to have had some impact on his attitude to the project and indeed, his is somewhat unusual in comparison with the other translations under discussion. In his introduction Ben-Shemesh stated that his work was meant first and foremost to clarify the content of the Qurʾān, and therefore it was not divided into verses like Reckendorf’s and Rivlin’s editions (or most of the Qurʾān’s translations). His translation is commonly depicted by scholars as fluent but at the same time not meticulous.33 Indeed, it is written in a relatively “free” style, with no attempt made to use semi-biblical style in order to evoke an atmosphere of the book as a “Classic.” This does not, however, indicate that Ben-Shemesh was not concerned with the philological quality of his work. Although I will not be able to offer a comparison of his text to the Arabic source, it is clear that Ben-Shemesh was very much aware of the philological challenges in his work and that he consulted with experts in several cases regarding his innovations.34 Choosing a popular style for his translation was anchored in scholarly reasoning. Thus, in a letter to his friend, the historian S. D. Goitein (with whom he once published a book on Islamic law), dated September 1967, Ben-Shemesh both criticized the former Hebrew translations and stated his own attitude, in contrast to them:35 Rivlin […] seems to have followed the German translators’ example, but when I compare his translation with the English, French and German translations, I am encouraged to continue my translation in a simple, popular language, according to the best of the Arab commentaries […]

In his letters, Ben-Shemesh described to Goitein his work and innovations, as well as his contacts with scholars and translators such as A. J. Arberry, Rudi Paret, Meir J. Kister and others. In February 1968, after making much progress in his work, Ben-Shemesh wrote to Goitein:36 My goal is to provide a translation similar to that of Dawood (by the way, is he Jewish?) to the common reader, [written] in simple Hebrew, without biblical phrases which are incomprehensible in the Bible itself. ‘The Tora speaks in human language,’ and so did Muhammad. There is no point in distorting the simple words, which were [originally] understood by Bedouins, with linguistic investigations and commentaries never thought of by Muhammad […] [who] could not have been speaking in riddles.

|| 33 RUBIN, The Qurʾān, 13. 34 Below. See also his own statement, BEN-SHEMESH, The Holy Qurʾān, XV. 35 GOITEIN, Goitein’s Archive, 8.9.1967. 36 GOITEIN, Goitein’s Archive, 13.2.1968.

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The Iraqi-British scholar Nessim Joseph Dawood (1927–2014), a descendant of the well-known Yahudah family (and thus a relative of Rivlin’s first wife, Rachel), provided the English reader with a popular version of the Qurʾān, one which was reprinted many times.37 Ironically, for Ben-Shemesh this was the model for a Hebrew Qurʾān, and not the German translations which were apparently the model for Rivlin and Reckendorf. Clearly it is also the century that passed between Reckendorf’s and Dawood’s publications that influenced both their styles and their theoretical approaches. In another letter to Goitein, Ben-Shemesh provided further information regarding his methodology:38 My method is to find logic and common sense in the Qurʾān, which was originally directed to commoners who only understand common sense, and to whom Muhammad could not have been speaking in a language which is not comprehensible nowadays. The prophet’s generation understood him well, and we only should strive to understand his words in according to the rule – “The Tora speaks in human language.”

The style of this work is not independent of the translator’s cultural motivations. Indeed, the book’s introduction reveals some interesting considerations which Ben-Shemesh had in mind when he took the project upon himself. Thus, while Reckendorf provided the Jewish readership with a pioneering translation, shaped along the norms of the Hebrew Haskalah, and Rivlin tried to legitimize the Qurʾān within Hebrew culture as a part of the Zionist Kinnus Project, Ben-Shemesh seems, first and foremost, to have aspired to equip the Israeli reader with an easily-comprehensible Qurʾān. On yet another level, it is clear that there was also a deeper cultural motivation behind his work. The opening sentence of his preface hints at the reason he had for providing the Hebrew readers of his time with a new, more accessible version of the sacred Islamic book:39 ‘Islam’ means: a total devotion, which is an abbreviation of the fundamental principle of Judaism: “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

Ben-Shemesh goes on to quote rabbinic sources which use the grammatical conjugation of the word “Muslim” in a similar manner, and concludes: “To walk

|| 37 http://www.jpost.com/International/The-Jewish-master-of-Arabic-388614 38 GOITEIN, Goitein’s Archive, 4.9.1968. 39 BEN-S HEMESH, The Holy Qurʾān, IX.

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before God ‘truthfully and wholeheartedly’ (Isaiah 38:3) is the essence of the Muslim faith.”40 These statements function as a means to overcome the alienation which the Jewish-Israeli reader would probably have felt towards the sacred book of the Arab-Muslim “Other.” By describing Islam as a religion essentially close to Judaism, Ben-Shemesh stressed the proximity and linkage over the differences. In this respect he was not very different from Rivlin. But while the latter tried to bridge over the national gap by blurring the religious aspect of the Qurʾān and underlining its poetic character and its “Semitic spirit,” Ben-Shemesh focused on religion and thus endeavored to blur the differences between the religions themselves and to present Islam as a mere continuation of Judaism. Regarding Muhammad, Ben-Shemesh holds a similar attitude:41 The prophet Muhammad was the last of the prophets up to his time to proclaim the original monotheistic Judaism, which he described as the religion of Abraham, “who was not Jewish nor Christian” (verse no. 60 Besora [Surah] no. 3) […] In Mecca, as well as during his journeys to the land of Israel and to Syria, [Muhammad] met Jews and Christians and learned the principals of their faiths. The things that he learned evoked in him the desire to remove his people from the dark ignorance of idolatry and to bring them under the wings of the faith in one God, creator of heaven and earth.

Muhammad’s message, therefore, is not different from that of the biblical prophets. In other words, the differences between Judaism and Islam exist only in the details, not in essence. Essentially, the two religions are a part of the same spiritual phenomenon of “original monotheistic Judaism,” despite the differences in details, to which Ben-Shemesh also refers later on. Such an approach also carries a message regarding Judaism, namely, that it is actually pure monotheism and the unity of God which constitute it, or any other of the “monotheistic religions,” and not the details or specific commandments it entails. The Qurʾān, therefore, and original Islam, are a form of Judaism, a way to spread its message among the Arabs. Ben-Shemesh’s attention to the similarities between the Qurʾān and the Jewish sources serves the same goal. Unlike Reckendorf’s unfavorable conclusions regarding the worth of the Qurʾān in comparison with the Bible, Ben-Shemesh did not present the similarities to the Hebrew sources as a sign of a lack of originality; rather, by noting them he meant to emphasize the fact that the Qurʾān is

|| 40 BEN-S HEMESH, The Holy Qurʾān, IX. 41 BEN-S HEMESH, The Holy Qurʾān, X and XII.

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nothing but an Arabic version of Moses teachings: “[the Qurʾān] emphasizes dozens of times that, in itself, it is nothing but an Arabic version of the Torah of Moses.”42 Writing more than a century after Reckendorf, Ben-Shemesh did not feel any need to delve into polemics. His agenda is revealed by his efforts to stress the proximities between the religions, which are all based upon the “religion of Abraham,” who was “neither Jew, nor Christian.”

Conclusions Translations and the process of their creation often reflect the general cultural framework in which they are produced. Translations of sacred texts of the religious and/or national “Other” – such as the modern translations of the Qurʾān into Hebrew – provide, therefore, a useful perspective on modern Jewish culture. The three translations discussed above represent three different approaches to the Qurʾānic text and to its meaning for the Hebrew reader: Reckendorf’s translation testifies to the unique challenges which faced its author. Reckendorf, a Jewish-Bohemian intellectual who moved to Leipzig and became a scholar of Arabic and historian, aspired to spread knowledge among the “educated Jews” (to use his own term). This he hoped to do by translating the Qurʾān and by providing the readers with a learned introduction – also based on translations of earlier writers – all according to the accepted model of Jewish Haskala movement. Reckendorf had to face internal Jewish criticism and contempt from traditional circles as well as disregard on the part of men like Ludwig Phillipson, who saw little relevance to this project in Europe. Reckendorf’s polemical approach may be explained as a way to avoid criticism. For his own milieu, however, his Hebrew translation was less important and thus it remained somewhat marginal within the field of German Oriental scholarship and German-Jewish intellectual culture. The second and the third texts under discussion also demonstrate how the translation of the Qurʾān may serve as a mirror through which contemporary Jewish culture can be viewed – this time not in 19th century Germany but rather within the developing Jewish community in Mandatary Palestine and later in the State of Israel. Thus, both Rivlin and Ben-Shemesh stressed the monotheistic essence of the Qurʾān and therefore its essential proximity to the Bible. Both also shared an implicit aspiration towards an Arab-Jewish rapprochement, and saw their work as a step in that direction. Rivlin, who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s under

|| 42 BEN-S HEMESH, The Holy Qurʾān, XV.

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the influence of German Romantic nationalism as well as cultural Zionism, stressed the shared “Semitic Spirit” of the Jewish and Muslim sacred scriptures. Cooperating with Chayyim Nachman Bialik, the “national poet,” it is not surprising that he underlined the common bond manifest in the poetic expression of the Qurʾān. Accordingly, his attempt to reduce the contrast between the Hebrew and Arab cultures in a time of growing national struggle was characterized by secularization of the text and presenting it as “Semitic.” Ben-Shemesh, a lawyer, jurist and a translator of legal texts, was distant from the poetic tendencies of Rivlin and Bialik. For him it is the simplicity and clarity that mattered. Starting his work in the late 1960s, he did not try to challenge the basic division between “Arab” and “Jewish” cultures. He did try, however, to somewhat lower the walls between Jews and Muslims by stressing the proximity between both religions, without arguing against the national division. Describing Islam as essentially equal to Judaism might have served, in his eyes, as a way to bring closer Jews and Muslims in Israel. It seems that in the long run all three translations remained marginal. Admittedly, each of them left some imprint within the field of Oriental studies (mainly Rivlin’s, which was the only available Hebrew edition of the Qurʾān for several decades, and remained the semi-official translation until 2005). However, they had a very limited influence on modern Jewish culture in general. This fact has undoubtedly much to do with the nature of Israeli Hebrew culture and with the gloomy history of Jewish-Arab encounters during the past century. It is hoped, therefore, that the two translations which already (appeared) in the 21st century will find a broader and deeper acceptance among its potential readers, within the academy and outside it.

Bibliography ADAWI, Subhi Ali: The Qurʾān in Another Language, Translated to Hebrew. Amman: The Bayinat Center for Quranic Studies, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2015. BARTAL, Israel: The Kinnus Project: Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Fashioning of a ‘National Culture’ in Palestine. In: Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality and Cultural Diffusion/ Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (eds.). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, 310–323. BASAL, Naser: ‫ תרגומי הקוראן מלשונות אירופה לעברית‬:‫“( היהודים והקוראן‬The Jews and the Qurʾān: Translations of the Qurʾān from European Languages into Hebrew”, Hebrew). In: On Translating the Qurʾān: A Colloquium Marking the Publication of the Hebrew Translation of the Qurʾān by Uri Rubin/ ed. Y. Friedmann. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2012. 41–107. BEN-ARI, Nitsa: Romance with the Past. Jerusalem: Dvir, 1997.

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BEN-SHEMESH, Aharon: "‫“( המחתרת היורידית בתקופת "הספר הלבן‬The Juridical Underground at the ‘White Book’ Period”, Hebrew). In: ‫ קובץ לכבוד יוסף וייץ ליובלו השישים‬:‫“( בנתיב ההגשמה‬On the Road to Fulfillment: A Volume in Honor of Yosef Weitz, in his Sixtieth Jubilee”)/ Nathan Bistritzky (ed.). Jerusalem: Jewish National Foundation Press, 1950. 157–165. — : Kitāb al-kharāj. Yaḥyá ben Ādam al-Qurashī, translated from Arabic by. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1955. — : The Holy Qurʾān: Translated into Hebrew. Ramat-Gan: Massada, 1971. — : The Noble Qurʾān: Translated from Arabic. Ramat-Gan: Massada, 1979. — : The Qurʾān: Translated into Hebrew by Aharon Ben-Shemesh (Second revised edition). Tel-Aviv: Karni, 1978. BLUM, Shimon-Erez: The “Juridical Underground”: The Involvement of Jewish Lawyers in the Zionist Struggle in 1938–1947 in Mandatory Palestine. A Dissertation for J.S.D. Degree. TelAviv: Tel-Aviv University, 2012. DAWOOD, Nessim: The Koran: Translated. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1959. GEIGER, Abraham: Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? Bonn: F. Baaden, 1833. GOITEIN, Shelomo Dov: S.D. Goitein’s Archive at the National Library of Israel, 4*1911 1/65. GREENBERG, Ela: Majallat Rawdat al-Maʿarif: Constructing Identities within a Boys’ School Journal in Mandatory Palestine. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35, 1 (2008), 79–95. HARIF, Hanan: Islam in Zion? Yosef Yoʾel Rivlin’s Translation of the Qur’an and Its Place within the New Hebrew Culture. Naharaim 10,1 (2016), 39–55. HESCHEL, Susannah: Abraham Geiger and the Emergence of Jewish Philoislamism. In: Im Vollem Licht der Geschichte/ D. Hartwig et al. (eds.). Würzburg: Ergon, 2008, 65–86. — : German Jewish Scholarship on Islam as a Tool for De-Orientalizing Judaism. New German Critique 117, 39,3 (2012), 91–107. LEWIS, Bernard, The pro-Islamic Jews. In: Islam in History: Ideas, People and Events in the Middle East. Illinois: Open Carus Publishing Company, 2001, 137–151. RECKENDORF, Hermann: Die Geheimnisse der Juden. Leipzig: W. Gerhard, 1857. — : Der Koran: Aus dem Arabischen ins Hebräische übersetzt und erläutert. Leipzig: W. Gerhard, 1857. — : Das Leben Mosis: allen denkenden Bibelfreunden gewidmet. Leipzig: W. Gerhard, 1868. RIVLIN, Yosef Yoel: AlQurʾān. Translated from Arabic. Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1936. RODED, Ruth: A Voice in the Wilderness? Rivlin’s 1932 Hebrew Life of Muhamad. Middle East Critique 18,1 (2009), 39–59. RUBIN, Uri: The Qurʾān: Hebrew Translation from the Arabic, Annotations Appendices and Index. Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv Press and MAPA Publishers, 2005 (second edition: 2016). SCHORSCH, Ismar: Converging Cognates: The Intersection of Jewish and Islamic Studies in Nineteenth Century Germany. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 55 (2010), 3–36. — : The Myth of Sephardic Superiority. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989), 47–66

| Part 4: The Talmud

Ismar Schorsch

Missing in Translation The Fate of the Talmud in the Struggle for Equality and Integration in Germany Mendelssohn’s groundbreaking translation of the Torah (Pentateuch) in 1783 certainly raised the need for Jews living in German speaking lands to master German. No less consequential, it augured a paradigm shift in which the Hebrew Bible would soon replace the Babylonian Talmud as the basic text of German Jewry’s educational curriculum and religious life. Emblematic of that rupture in the Ashkenazic world was the floodtide to come of some twelve German Bible translations between 1783 and 1937, an intensity of effort unmatched by any other emancipated Jewish community.1 During that same span the Talmud was conspicuously missing in translation until 1896 when a rank outsider, a product of a Lithuanian yeshiva, undertook the task. Though the final volume of Lazarus Goldschmidt’s first edition did not come out until 1935, by 1912 he had singlehandedly completed, though not yet published, nearly the entire translation.2 The omission is worth pondering because talmudic law continued to govern much of the communal affairs of Jewish communities across Germany. In 1899 Erich Bischoff, a rare Christian student of Talmud at the time, in an invaluable critical survey of all partial translations of the Talmud into European languages since the Reformation chided German bureaucrats for not funding a collective effort to translate the Talmud into German according to the standards for which German scholarship was renowned, a project that he estimated would cost about one million marks.3

|| 1 SALZBERGER, Die neue deutsche Hausbibel; BEN-CHORIN, Jüdische Bibelübersetzungen; PLAUT, German-Jewish Bible Translations; BECHTOLDT, Jüdische Bibelübersetzungen. With his customary ingenuity, Heine in 1834 boldly articulated the import of the shift: “Just as Luther toppled the Papacy so did Mendelssohn the Talmud and indeed in the same way, by tossing out tradition. He declared the Bible to be the source of religion and translated its most important sections. He thereby destroyed the Catholicism of the Jews as Luther had that of the Christians. In truth, the Talmud is the Catholicism of the Jews.” (HEINE, Zur Geschichte der Religion 2, 113). On the dominance of the Talmud in the curriculum of rabbinic culture in Eastern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, see STERN, The Genius. 2 GOLDSCHMIDT, The Translation of the Babylonian Talmud. The best essay on the translation to date is by Adam MINTZ, The Talmud in Translation. 3 BISCHOFF, Kritische Geschichte der Thalmud-Uebersetzungen, 87–88.

https://doi.org/9783110592672-009

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What is known as the Babylonian Talmud is largely the discursive achievement of the rabbinic academies in Persia in the mid-centuries of the first millennium. Encyclopedic in scope and transmitted orally, it gradually became the foundational text of Jewish communities throughout the Jewish Diaspora during the unifying reign of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad.4 Before the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and their forced conversion in Portugal in 1497, individual tractates had already been printed in both countries, and thereafter in the 1520s and 30s by Daniel Bomberg, a devout Christian printer from Antwerp, who published in quick order at least three full editions in Venice. Indeed, from the individual tractates first published by Joshua Solomon Soncino in the town of Soncino in the Duchy of Milan in 1484 to the Romm press in Vilna in the 1880s, which is still the standard text of today, some 50 complete and partial editions of the Talmud were printed, including a full one in Berlin from 1862–1868.5 The dominance of Talmud study in the curriculum of the institutions of advanced learning in the traditional world of Eastern Europe helps account for the astounding publishing history of a monumental text of 63 tractates (of which some 36 ½ have Gemara) and some two-and-a-half million words.6 For more than two millennia Judaism has been structurally a binary religious system consisting of two canons, one written and closed, the other oral and open. While it was axiomatic that both were revealed, the latter served as commentary to explain, concretize, enliven, apply and modify the former. Inseparably intertwined, the commentary made for an intergenerational conversation that imbued Scripture with enduring malleability and relevance. In consequence, Judaism exhibited a deep conundrum: its wide-ranging commentary to Scripture overshadowed Scripture itself, that is the Talmud which was studied daily became more authoritative than the Torah, which was read but weekly in sequence from beginning to end in the synagogue in the course of an annual cycle. It was the Talmud that dictated what Jews actually practiced and believed. Thus the long delayed translation of the Talmud alludes to a hurdle more formidable than its mere size. By way of contrast, in the United States today there are three full translations of the Talmud in English, with two more in progress. Four of them are a product of the last three decades.7 Moreover, a good many

|| 4 BRODY, The Geonim of Babylonia, xix–xxi, 147–170; cf. FISHMAN, Becoming the People. 5 Printed by Julius Zittenfeld in Berlin, the set included 16 folio volumes. The Jewish Theological Seminary library has a copy of the complete set (call number BM499 1862). 6 HELLER, Printing the Talmud 3, 400–401. 7 The complete editions are EPSTEIN, Isidore: The Babylonian Talmud, 34 vols. London: Soncino Press, 1935–1948; NEUSNER, Jacob: The Talmud of Babylonia: An American Translation, 36 vols.

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colleges and universities offer courses in Talmud and rabbinic literature as a component of Jewish studies. In Germany, however, by the time of Mendelssohn the Talmud had been thoroughly discredited by centuries of Christian defamation, papal censorship and public pyres of countless confiscated copies. By the middle of the thirteenth century in Europe the Church had diminished its sufferance of Jews. Spearheaded by the mendicant orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, it altered its strategy to convert the Jews, who remained the sole non-Christian minority in Western Europe. Whereas in its first millennium the Church had focused its fire on the Old Testament to highlight the many passages it believed foreshadowed the redemptive drama of the New, it now redirected its fire against the Talmud as the subversive, depraved and blasphemous text that blinded Jews to the truth of the Gospels. The blindfold that covered the eyes of the female figure of the synagogue with her broken staff that decorated the architecture of medieval cathedrals visualized for the faithful the willful ignorance of Jews addicted to the study of Talmud. In 1239 for the first time the Pope ordered the archbishops and monarchs of Western Europe to confiscate all Jewish books in their realms. A year later in Paris both a public disputation and a clerical court found the Talmud to be riddled with doctrinal errors, despite vigorous rabbinic defense in each case. In 1242 the French king Louis IX, the only monarch to comply with the edict of the Papacy, had 24 wagon loads of manuscripts burned in a public square in Paris. During the next 500 years Church and State would often join forces to reenact the brutal desecration of the Talmud legitimized by the sacrilege committed in Paris.8 To prepare Christian disputants in their campaign against Jews and Muslims, the Dominicans opened schools in the middle decades of the thirteenth century for the study of Hebrew and Arabic and in 1278 Raymond Martini, who spearheaded the initiative, completed a massive source book of biblical and rabbinic passages called Pugio fidei (A Dagger for the Faith) to employ in countering the impiety, perfidy and impudence of Jews toward Christianity. With each passage quoted first in Hebrew or Aramaic and then followed by a Latin translation, the

|| Atlanta: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies, 1984–1995); The Schottenstein Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, 73 vols. New York: Mesorah Publications, 1990–2004. The unfinished editions are both by Adin Steinsaltz based on his completed Hebrew translation, 1965–2010: Random House scheduled to be 24 volumes (1989–) and Koren, to be 42 volumes (2012–). 8 COHEN, The Friars and the Jews, 51–76.

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collection proved to be an invaluable and accessible weapon for religious combat undulled by frequent use.9 The Reformation for all its seismic effects did not lessen the contempt for the Talmud. Much more impactful and lasting than the sympathetic study of rabbinic literature by a cluster of Christian humanists was the Protestant equivalent to Pugio fidei amassed by Andreas Eisenmenger and published posthumously a second time in 1711 in Königsberg. After a nineteen-year study of rabbinic literature in Amsterdam and elsewhere, he composed an encyclopedia of more than 2000 pages of well ordered Hebrew and Aramaic excerpts stitched together by his exposition to show the allegedly primitive, irrational, subversive and misanthropic nature of Judaism. Its very title Entdecktes Judentum (Judaism Revealed) heralded that for the first time Germans could acquire authentic information about the abhorrent character of Judaism that its leadership had consistently concealed from view, a religion that truly imperiled the welfare of Christian society. Eisenmenger organized his voluminous material for easy use. Like Pugio fidei, the passages were cited in Hebrew or Aramaic, though translated this time into German, making them far more accessible. Toward the same end, they were organized thematically and provided with a meticulous index. The upshot of his bill of particulars was that any rabbinic dictum once uttered remained in force forever.10 The republication of Entdecktes Judentum in 1893 in Dresden for the first time in 182 years, minus the Hebrew or Aramaic original text and somewhat abridged but still coming to 591 pages, clearly attested that its vitriol was still in demand. It is not an exaggeration to assert that Eisenmenger supplied much of the firepower for the forces of German anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.11 Given that unabated debasement of the Talmud in the medieval and early modern periods in Europe, it is not surprising that it remained a bitter bone of contention in the emancipation era. The process of secularization did not eliminate the animus, it merely altered the rhetoric.12 And the perennial ambivalence of German governments toward complete emancipation for all Jews perpetuated

|| 9 Ibidem, 103–169; IDEM, Living Letters, 23–71, 317–363. 10 Heinrich Graetz classified Eisenmenger as one of those creatures “who could draw poison from flowers.” Under pressure of a coalition of wealthy Jews from Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I in Vienna had Eisenmenger’s first edition (probably printed in Frankfurt am Main in 1700) confiscated, hence the necessity of a second edition permitted by Frederick I of Prussia (GRAETZ, Geschichte der Juden 10, 306–312, quotation 305–306. As for the nature and import of Eisenmenger’s work, see KATZ, Eisenmenger’s Method; ROHRBACHER, Gründlicher und Wahrhafter Bericht. 11 SCHIEFERL, Joh. Andr. Eisenmenger. 12 KATZ, From Prejudice to Destruction; MANUEL, The Broken Staff.

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the controversy. For opponents the Talmud accentuated the alienness of the Jews. It accounted for their disloyalty, addiction to money, adherence to a double standard of ethical practice, degenerate moral code and a conception of religion that stressed law over spirit. Emancipation could not correct these flaws because they were not the product of Christian persecution, but were innate to Judaism itself. Accordingly Fichte called for extending citizenship to Jews only after cutting off their heads, the source of all their incompatible ideas.13 Similarly Jakob Friedrich Fries, a professor of philosophy in Heidelberg, demanded in 1816 that Jews must first renounce completely the abomination of their ceremonial law and rabbinic culture and be guided in theory and practice by reason and justice, so that they might merge with their fellow Christians in a civic union.

And if not, they ought to be expelled as they once were from Spain.14 By the late 1870s when Ferdinand Weber, a young Protestant scholar bent on converting the Jews, was compiling the evidence and crafting the structure for his systematic theology of rabbinic Judaism, the antagonism had grown only more intractable. Though grounded in an impressive command of rabbinic sources, his eventual construct published posthumously in 1880 portrayed a soulless religion mired in a surfeit of law and addicted to its letter. From a Lutheran perspective allegiance to the Talmud with its legal minutiae and this – worldly orientation deeply offended a society for whom salvation was solely a matter of faith.15 There were voices within the Jewish community that concurred. For example, Isaac Markus Jost, who published a comprehensive history of the Jews in a multivolume work in the 1820s, drew a negative portrait of rabbinic Judaism and its medieval Ashkenazic reincarnation that would have pleased Voltaire. The very title of his history, Geschichte der Israeliten, conveyed his staunch preference for the religion of Moses, even though his narrative began long after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and should rightly have been called Geschichte der Juden.16 Irrespective of such internal concurrence, the Talmud throughout the century and a half to come was repeatedly subjected to withering attacks from outside. To be sure, it was no longer confiscated and burned, but the polemical discourse never subsided.

|| 13 KATZ, From Prejudice to Destruction, 57. 14 FRIES, Ueber die Gefährdung des Wohlstandes, 23. 15 WEBER, System der altsynagogalen palästinischen Theologie. 16 SCHORSCH, From Text to Context, 237–242.

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In 1871 August Rohling, a Catholic priest with a patina of academic training in the Old and New Testaments, authored a pamphlet of 100 pages entitled Der Talmudjude that recycled Eisenmenger in palatable form. The titled meant to disqualify Jews from German citizenship; they still abided by a reprehensible body of foreign law. By the 1880s it rode the tidal wave of a resurgent anti-Semitism, both popular and elitist, that had thrown the political arenas of Germany and Austria-Hungary into turmoil. By the eighth edition in the early 1880s it had grown to 144 pages with 72 devoted entirely to passages in German lifted from Eisenmenger and arranged thematically.17 The talmudic sources of each passage were duly noted, as if the product of his own research. A handful of distinguished and authoritative Christian professors testified against Rohling’s meretricious work, showing the degree to which it unabashedly exploited the Eisenmenger legacy.18 Eventually Rohling’s refusal to appear in court to demonstrate that he could read a page of Talmud sight unseen proved in stinging fashion that he was an utter fraud.19 Still the poison did not cease to flow. By 1922 Der Talmudjude had gone through 17 editions with each run circulating many thousands of copies. Similar defamatory tracts from other quarters reinforced the campaign of defamation.20 More germane to my interest are the spate of reactions, not all Jewish, to the reverberations set off by Rohling’s assault. Their substance betrays a determined recourse to scholarship to blunt the baleful effects of a millennial hatred of the Talmud. In 1886–87 August Wünsche in Dresden came out with two German tomes that translated for the first time the rich aggadic material from the first two divisions of the Babylonian Talmud. A Christian Hebraist trained by Franz Delitzsch, who had decisively testified in court against Rohling, and Julius Fürst, Leipzig’s long standing Judaica adjunct, he forged close ties to the young Jakob Winter who had recently graduated from the Breslau Seminary and settled in Dresden as its rabbi. Since 1880 Wünsche had in fact rendered into German with enormous diligence a vast selection of midrashic literature, with more than 3000 pages of translation. In the introduction to his later volume of talmudic aggada, he summed up the universal disdain in which the Talmud was still held. Some people, he wrote, regarded its norms on non-Jews as unethical, others its re-

|| 17 HELLWING, Der konfessionelle Antisemitismus, 85–88. 18 The most thorough, reliable and damning early exposé of Rohling’s Talmudjude was composed by Franz DELITZSCH: Rohling’s Talmudjude beleuchtet. 19 BLOCH, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 120–130. 20 HELLWING, Der konfessionelle Antisemitismus, 90.

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ligious imagination as primitive and still others its many separatistic injunctions against idolatry as meant for Christians.21 In the same vein of demystification was Hermann Strack’s Einleitung in den Talmud (Introduction to the Talmud) which appeared in 1887, packed full of invaluable information on every aspect of the Talmud. But 76 pages in its first iteration, the handbook expanded to 233 pages by its fifth edition in 1921 to become the standard introduction to rabbinic literature in any language. Strack was indisputably the leading Christian textual scholar of Judaism in his day and came to its defense publicly more than once.22 On the Jewish side, David Hoffmann, a Hungarian born Talmudist and docent at the modern Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Berlin, felt compelled to author some 20 articles in 1884 in the movement’s Jewish paper, Die jüdische Presse, to dispute the proliferating trashing of the Talmud. Bespeaking the urgency of the moment, Hoffmann assembled his articles into a book the same year under the lengthy title Der Schulchan-Aruch und die Rabbiner über das Verhältniss der Juden zu Andersgläubigen (The Schulchan-Arukh [the authoritative sixteenth-century code of Jewish law] and the Rabbis on their Relationship to Persons of Other Faiths). In 1894 it came out again in a revised edition. What Hoffmann did was to apply historical method to the study of halakha and thereby to contextualize the rabbinic pronouncements and injunctions against idolaters. They were operative only in the Greco-Roman world in which they were enunciated, though even then not applicable to individuals who adhered to the minimal standard of morality which the rabbis designated as the seven ethical commandments to which God had obligated Noah and all his descendants. Hoffmann showed in fact that this was the halakhic view of a highly respected Sephardic Talmudist of the late thirteenth century, R. Menahem ben Solomon of Perpignan, who had formulated the

|| 21 WÜNSCHE, Der Babylonische Talmud in seinen haggadischen Bestandtheilen, v. Wünsche dedicated the volume to Theodor Nöldeke. Volume two (Leipzig, 1887) contained aggadic selections from the third division (Seder Nashim) of the Talmud. Between 1880–1885 Wünsche had translated and published in separate volumes all of the midrashic collections to the Pentateuch and the five Scrolls assembled in Midrash Rabba. In 1887 Wilhelm Bacher, a graduate of the Breslau Seminary and one of the founders of its offspring, the Budapest Seminary, wrote a lengthy review of the five volumes of Talmudic aggadot for the MGWJ 35 (1886), 82–93, 122–143; 36 (1887), 184– 189. Despite many reservations in details, Bacher appreciated the intent and achievement of Wünsche’s contribution: “He who translates the Talmud into German today performs not only a purely literary service. He also offers the public, whose curiosity has been aroused by a vicious agitation that appears to be declining though is far from over, a chance to inform itself about the literature itself that is also the arsenal for the charges leveled by the agitation” (p. 84). 22 STRACK, Einleitung in den Talmud; IDEM, Einleitung in Talmud und Midraš.

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striking general principle that “anyone belonging to a nation governed by laws of justice and a belief in God, though different than ours, is to be treated as a Jew.” To buttress that position, Hoffmann went on to cite other basic rabbinic values that overrode the retention of ancient legal expressions of contempt.23 No less linked to the anti-Semitism roiling German speaking Jewry was the three-volume anthology of surveys and texts edited by Winter and Wünsche in Dresden and published in 1894–96. Bold in conception and sweeping in scope with a total of 2400 pages, the project was designed to offer a corrective to the bizarre and malicious view of rabbinic literature poisoning the public domain. The intended primary audience, as in the case of Hoffmann, was neither decent Christians nor bigoted anti-Semites but rather the rank and file in the Jewish community whose self-esteem and loyalty to Judaism were battered by the unremitting denigration of Judaism. With a team of participating scholars, the project covered the depth and diversity of Jewish literature from the close of the biblical canon to the sermonic literature of the nineteenth century with a generous sampling of each genre in translation. Volume one devoted to rabbinic literature did not shortchange selections from the Apocrypha, Targumim (Aramaic translations and expositions of biblical texts), Mishna, Tosephta, Yerushalmi, Bavli, and midrashim with a noticeable preference for aggada over halakha and ritual law over civil or criminal. The surveys unfurled the maturation of Jewish scholarship since 1818 in terms of primary sources, emergence of sub-fields and methodological sophistication. Overall with Winter at the helm, the undertaking heralded the spirit of the Breslau Seminary.24 Finally, the completion by Jacob Levy of his four-volume dictionary of Talmud and midrash in 1889 certainly made the study of rabbinic literature more accessible. Levy had studied with Wilhelm Gesenius in Halle and his dictionary was firmly grounded in the best of German philology. Inspired internally rather than externally, it was also richly endowed with examples of rabbinic usage of Hebrew and Aramaic words and idioms in German translation as well as greatly enhanced by the extensive philological addenda to each letter of the Hebrew alaphabet except the last by Heinrich Fleischer, Germany’s preeminent scholar of Arabic, Persian and Turkish.25 In retrospect, the long-running Rohling imbroglio did not precipitate a collective effort as urged by Bischoff to translate the entirety of the Babylonian Talmud into German. To be sure, during those unsettling years and beyond the || 23 HOFFMANN, Der Schulchan-Aruch und die Rabbinen, 5–6. 24 WINTER/W ÜNSCHE, Die jüdische Litteratur. 25 LEVY, Neuhebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch.

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translations of stray tractates did appear. The most substantial since Pinner was a translation of the legal tractate Bava Metzia in 1876 by Ascher Sammter, an independent rabbinic scholar living in Berlin. His folio edition included not only the Hebrew-Aramaic text but also a running commentary explicating its dialectic intricacies along with lengthy addenda to provide context and background.26 Victor Meyer Rawicz, a graduate of the Breslau Seminary serving in small pulpits in Baden, put out five tractates in translation from 1883 to 1908. Without the Hebrew-Aramaic text and short on introductions and explanatory notes, each octavo volume was little more than a pony. Their modesty reflected the indifference of the Jewish market to the Talmud. In the introduction to Megilla, his first translation in 1883, Rawicz lamented:27 Our coreligionists have turned away from the Talmud. They regarded it as outdated and threw it overboard in their belief that it would advance their auto-emancipation. But that was a prodigious mistake.

These desultory translations in fact highlight the prevailing consensus that to translate the Talmud would do more harm than good. No translation would dissipate the suspicion with which Christians continued to view the Talmud, irrespective of nearly a century of social acculturation, religious reform and critical scholarship. On the contrary, given the utter foreignness of the literature, a translation would be subject to rampant misunderstanding and malicious abuse, which would simply fuel the suspicion. To translate meant to lose control of the text and prompted German Jewish leadership to prefer a strategy of self-censorship as often pursued by vulnerable Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. It

|| 26 SAMMTER, Talmud Babylonicum Tractat Baba Mezia. I thank Prof. Menahem Schmelzer for bringing this translation to my attention. 27 See HERLITZ /KIRSCHNER, Jüdisches Lexikon 4, 1256; RAWICZ, Megilla, Einleitung. The vanishing of Talmud study among German Jews was a recurring lament throughout the nineteenth century among those who cared. Thus in a timely essay of 1883 entitled “The Fight Against the Talmud,” Nehemias Brüll, a critical scholar of Talmud, pulpit rabbi and talented journalist, picked up on an obituary for Zacharias Frankel written at the time of his death in 1875 which spoke of him as the last Talmudist in Germany. The moniker, Brüll averred, was essentially correct. Germany was bereft of Talmudists. Even rabbis no longer study Talmud regularly. Their jobs don’t require it, their congregants don’t demand it and many don’t even know how to study it properly. And this is not just a deficit of our Reform rabbis. “Our modern Orthodox are in this regard veritable exemplars for progressive Reformers. ‘Lernen’ has become secondary and anyone who takes it too seriously or too far can run into trouble. ‘Lernen’ [superficial knowledge] is a religious task that is tolerated as one of the usual ceremonial duties, a necessary accessory. But ‘Wissen’ is excess furniture” (B RÜLL, Kampf gegen den Talmud, 25–26).

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was that aversion and inaction in the face of repeated provocations that finally set the stage for an outsider to break the silence. In contrast, in the early days of the turn to Wissenschaft Jewish scholars were not averse to translation. When Zunz and Jost in 1830 rebutted the frontal assault on the Talmud by Luigi Chiarini, an Italian priest from Warsaw, they exhibited no fear of a translation, as Chiarini intended, as long as it met the highest standards of critical scholarship, which his samples with their heavy reliance on Eisenmenger most certainly did not.28 What induced a reconsideration was the bombastic announcement in 1832 by Ephraim Moses Pinner of his design to publish a complete translation of both the Bavli and Yerushalmi with traditional commentaries in 28 folio volumes in Amsterdam on fine paper. The vehicle for the announcement was a modest compendium packed with a few annotated sample translations and an abundance of information only loosely related to the project. At the time Pinner was an unknown 29-year-old Ph.D. from Posen who fortified his compendium with an eloquent dedication to David Friedländer, the venerated elder of the Berlin Jewish community, and a preface that carried a strong endorsement by the highly respected Johann Joachim Bellermann, the former long-term director of the city’s famous gymnasium Graues Kloster and a professor of theology at the University of Berlin. Pinner’s own introduction made it amply clear that his grand project was inspired by Chiarini’s assault.29 The compendium, however, aroused strong opposition. A quick look at it by Samuel David Luzzatto in Triest for the holidays convinced him that Pinner lacked the Hebraic, talmudic and critical expertise to succeed.30 Others contended that a correct and comprehensible German translation bordered on the impossible. Even if done by competent scholars such a translation given the cultural chasm between then and now would do Judaism no good.31 The first folio volume finally appeared in 1842 self-published by Pinner in Berlin. A translation of the Bavli’s opening tractate of Berakhot, it came with an extensive apparatus of traditional and critical commentaries to facilitate its use. For special recognition with a gushing dedication, Pinner singled out Tzar Nicholas I of Russia who had purchased prior to publication 100 copies. Pinner

|| 28 ZUNZ, Gesammelte Schriften 1, 296; JOST, Was hat Herr Chiarini, 49. 29 PINNER, Compendium. 30 CASSEL, Cultusfrage 47–48. 31 Unsigned review, probably by Julius Fürst, of a Latin commentary to an untranslated edition of tractate Makkot by H. S. Hirschfeld, Literaturblatt des Orients 1843, no. 21, cols. 371–376. The reviewer contended that this format, clearly reserved for a select audience, was preferable to a full translation of the talmudic text into German.

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claimed that the Tzar’s earlier support of Chiarini’s French translation and now his own German translation attested the Tzar’s commitment to the dissemination of scholarship and literature. Four full pages of other pre-publication subscribers, including the kings of Prussia, Holland, Belgium and Denmark, Prince Metternich of Austria, lesser dignitaries and upper clergy and a geographic sweep of citizens and subjects, both Christian and Jewish, from Vilna and Brody in the east to Paris and Dublin in the west speak volumes of the extent to which Pinner went to fund and create a European market for his adventure. Again it was an external threat that fueled Pinner’s labor, this time the recrudescence of the blood libel in Damascus in 1840 to which French authorities gave all too much credence. As so often before, the inaccessibility of the Talmud stripped its defenders of the means to refute the age-old accusation that it actually commanded the misanthropic practice:32 And why should not the Talmud contain such a law? because it has until now remained hidden from view and is utterly inaccessible to the world. Any fabrication can be attributed to the Talmud, for what can’t be laid at the door of a secret realm? Were not the Old Testament as yet translated and its contents like those of the Talmud still foreign to the world, why anything could then be imputed to it […].

But Pinner’s intense effort earned him neither recognition nor recompense and no other volume was ever forthcoming. Indeed, his volume put the prospect of translating the Talmud into deep freeze. The voices of those opposed grew louder, arguing either that it can’t be or shouldn’t be translated, and certainly not by one person. Some felt that the preparation of a Latin commentary for each untranslated tractate was sufficient to serve the needs of scholarship.33 Zacharias Frankel and David Cassel soon came out against and were joined in the 1880s by Moritz Steinschneider and Meir Ish Shalom in Vienna.34 In 1885 Graetz added his name to their ranks forging a formidable phalanx of scholars rarely in agreement who opposed the wisdom of translating. That year Graetz published an essay sketching the many hostile initiatives taken by the Church against the Talmud from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. In closing he unequivocally rejected the || 32 PINNER, Talmud Babli, the list of pre-publication subscribers, 1–5; the quotation, Vorrede. For fuller treatment, see MINTZ, Words, Meaning and Spirit; also LEIMAN, Hatam Sofer’s Retraction and IDEM, Some Notes on the Pinner Affair. The history of Jewish-Christian relations is rife with reverberations from claims and suspicions of secrecy, see CARLEBACH, Attributions of Secrecy and Perceptions of Jewry. 33 See note 30. 34 For FRANKEL, Tagesbegebenheiten, 39; for CASSEL, Cultusfrage, 48; for STEINSCHNEIDER, Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft, 42; for ISH SHALOM, Davar al odot ha-Talmud.

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palliative of a full literal translation to alleviate the baggage of ages. Rather what the turbulent moment called for and in fact was doable was a presentation of the ethics of the Talmud, a kernel of an idea that would come to fruition only after World War One in a grand five-volume anthology arranged dogmatically and ethically with texts, exposition and bibliography entitled Die Lehren des Judentums (The Teachings of Judaism).35 Der Verband der deutschen Juden, a large non-denominational association of communities and organizations founded in 1904, published and distributed the set. The editors pointedly omitted any treatment of Jewish law or what had become known as “das Zeremonialgesetz.”36 It is striking that throughout the decades-long debate over the wisdom of a translation the question turned entirely on external, defensive considerations. No one ever contended that such a translation might open the Talmud to Jews who might wish to study it or perhaps counter the prevailing apathy among them toward it that many bemoaned. To keep the Talmud out of the hands of our enemies outweighed putting it in the hands of our young.37 In the same vein wrote Markus Brann, Graetz’s successor in the Breslau Seminary, in 1900 in his review of Bischoff’s recently published book. Whom would a translation of the Talmud serve, he asked innocently and narrowly? The Talmud ought to be taught and studied at the university, where all sorts of exotic languages, texts and cultures are being brought into the purview of the West. Thus not surprisingly when the young Gershom Scholem in 1913 sought to find a Talmud class in one of the religious schools of the Berlin Jewish community there was none to be had. Fortunately, he and a few of his Zionist friends found Dr. Isaak Blichrode, a learned Talmudist and gifted pedagogue, who would teach them every Sunday for five to six hours for four years, provided they refrained from paying him. Not only was Scholem eternally grateful to him, but when in that first year on an April Sunday he could figure out a page of Talmud on his own and understand Rashi’s comment to the first verse of Genesis, he came close to having one of the only religious experiences of his life.38 Lazarus Goldschmidt was born in 1871 in Lithuania and had gained his Talmudic proficiency at the renowned yeshiva of Slobodka where he studied until age 18. Like many other talented young Eastern European Jews he made his way to Berlin to expand his intellectual horizon. After learning German and attaining

|| 35 GRAETZ, Die Schicksale des Talmud, 541. 36 BERNFELD/BAMBERGER, Die Lehren des Judentums. The omission is acknowledged explicitly in the Vorwort to volume one. 37 BRANN, Besprechungen, 287. 38 SCHOLEM, Von Berlin nach Jerusalem, 63–67.

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his Abitur, he majored in philology and Semitic languages in Berlin and Strassburg and soon began publishing Ethiopian texts with German translations. In 1895 as a new wave of anti-Semitism surged across Germany, friends urged him to undertake a translation of the Talmud. Enamored by the challenge, he threw himself into the project and by 1896 saw the first quires coming off the press. Goldschmidt chose to base his translation on the uncensored first edition of Bomberg and the one uncensored complete manuscript of the Bavli from 1343 in Munich in order to lay to rest the frequent anti-Semitic charge that the reason the printed Talmud text did not show the anti-Christian blasphemies that it allegedly contained was because the Jews duplicitously edited them out.39 Notwithstanding the nod to a critical text, the translation immediately evoked a withering review from David Hoffmann which Goldschmidt repudiated in kind just as swiftly. While Hoffmann stressed the almost insurmountable difficulty for a single scholar to produce both a critical text and a comprehensible translation at the same time, it is noteworthy that he never once objected to the larger issue of translating the Talmud into German.40 Whatever the depth of Hoffmann’s reservations, which induced Goldschmidt to undertake a revised edition of volume one, his gumption could also elicit an exuberant reaction.41 Early in 1896 Maximilian Harden, a provocative and fearless editor who as an adolescent had converted to Christianity, published in his widely read journal Die Zukunft a one page review simply entitled “Der Talmud.” Though unsigned the piece, according to Goldschmidt, was written by a Russian woman writer and artist friendly with the Calvary family, Goldschmidt’s publisher, and with Harden himself. Elsa von Schabelski saluted and celebrated the cultural significance of the translation, praised the handsome format of the first volume and lauded Goldschmidt’s regimen of long hours and self-deprivation:42 In play [in this project] is surely a bit of ambition that is not so much benevolent as vainglorious. Nevertheless, Mr. Goldschmidt belongs to those special sons of Shem who, like Marx, combine an exceptional disdain for worldly goods with a penetrating mind and tenacious diligence.

|| 39 GOLDSCHMIDT, The Translation of the Babylonian Talmud, 309–310. 40 HOFFMANN: Recensionen. GOLDSCHMIDT, Recension. 41 GOLDSCHMIDT, Lazarus: Der Babylonische Talmud, vol. 1, 2nd ed. Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1906. 42 Die Zukunft 15 (1896), 144. In his autobiographical essay, Goldschmidt identified the author and reprinted her Zukunft article (GOLDSCHMIDT, The Translation of the Babylonian Talmud into German, 313).

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Given the resonance of the venue, the review put Goldschmidt on the cultural map of Germany. By 1900 Goldschmidt had completed volumes one and three of his projected nine volumes., a milestone that prompted Calvary to persuade Simon Bernfeld, a prolific independent scholar of Judaica, to author a slim one-volume introduction to the “nature, meaning and history” of the Talmud that would culminate with a full-throated endorsement of Goldschmidt’s translation. A full-page advertisement of the two volumes already out followed the final page of Bernfeld’s disquisition.43 Clearly, Calvary was seeking to create a public for his investment. By 1912 Goldschmidt had translated carefully and literally nearly all of the Bavli text along with a scattering of textual variants and an assortment of philological and historical notes,44 and by 1922 eight folio volumes had been published, four by S. Calvary in Berlin, including the first ill-fated edition of volume one, and five including the second edition of volume one by Otto Harrassowitz in Leipzig, a major publisher of Oriental studies.45 The pagination of each of the folio volumes resembled the standard talmudic layout with the Hebrew and Aramaic text on the inside of the page and the translation running along the outside. Juxtaposing the text and translation with notes at the bottom of the page made for easier selfstudy. In his Hebrew introduction to volume one Goldschmidt wove a tale that limned the fate of the Talmud in a hostile environment: A traveler came upon a plaza with a palace in the middle that he was admonished not to enter. Outside it was guarded by monsters and inside beset by ghosts. The palace was in an advanced state of decay, full of detritus and vermin. When the traveler asked the man taking him around if he had ever set foot in the palace, he admitted that he had kept his distance, but others had and everyone knew what was concealed inside. Still skeptical, the traveler continued to pry how people came by their knowledge. Long ago, he was told, someone did go in and brought out samples of frightening refuse. Unconvinced, he demanded some eye-witness verification from someone living who had actually entered the precincts of the palace. At last people took him to its aged owner whom they did not really trust because he spoke unfailingly of the palace and its contents in glowing terms. Once the owner admitted the traveler into the palace, he was astounded by what he saw and

|| 43 BERNFELD, Talmud, 116–17. The advertisement for volumes one and three of Goldschmidt’s translation appears on the first of four supplementary pages of advertisements. Unlike the other ads, Goldschmidt’s has the whole page to itself. 44 GOLDSCHMIDT, The Translation of the Babylonian Talmud into German, 317. 45 S. Calvary published volumes 1 (1st ed.), 2, 3, 7, and Otto Harrassowitz 1 (2nd ed.), 4, 5, 6, 8.

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pressed the owner to open it to the public for all to see, to no avail. The owner lamented that he was too old and infirm to do the work required to restore the palace to its former glory. Someday, though, a young zealot would come along who was eager and able to tackle the task. Whereupon, the traveler from abroad exclaimed, “I am that man!”46 The remarkable publication history of Goldschmidt’s translation defied all expectations. He left Germany in 1933 for London where he completed his translation of the Bavli.47 Two years later volume nine of the folio edition finally came out as well as the last two volumes of the quarto-size set of twelve volumes in 1936, which from the beginning included only translation and numerous notes. Less well known, however, were still two other folio editions produced photographically, the first by the publishing house of Benjamin Harz in Berlin and Vienna in 1925, which divided the eight volumes of the original into eighteen for easier use and the second by Martinus Nijoff in Haag in nine volumes from 193335. In truth, the first eight volumes of the Dutch set were all dated 1933 and only the last bore the year 1935. According to the fine print on the last page of each volume, everyone was incredibly still printed in Germany, the first eight in Leipzig by F.A. Brockhaus and the last in Berlin-Charlottenberg by Victoria.48 The publisher of the smaller twelve-volume set, except for the first volume of 1929, was the tireless Zionist publishing house Jüdischer Verlag in Berlin. With volume two in 1930 it took over the project from Biblion and by volume three in 1930 began printing the remaining nine volumes of the set in Czechoslovakia. It was that smaller set that Sigmund Freud acquired in his final years in Vienna.49 According to Ernest Jones, at the last meeting of the board of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on March 13, 1938 two days after the Anschluss, Freud’s valedictory suggested that he had found some solace by identifying with the rabbinic sage Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai as he took flight from Jerusalem in the

|| 46 GOLDSCHMIDT, Der Babylonische Talmud 1 (2nd ed.), opening page. 47 BECHTOLDT, Jüdische Bibelübersetzungen, 589. 48 The Leo Baeck Institute has a complete set of each of the three folio editions, except for volume nine of the first. Only the set published in Haag actually has the final volume. I suspect that given its 1935 publication date not many copies reached their destination to complete the first folio set. The volume is quite rare. I have yet to lay my hands on a volume nine of the first set and suspect that given the dire circumstances that Goldschmidt may have been happy to settle for a single printing of volume nine for the Haag set. All eight volumes of the first set were bound in black leather with a different Art Nouveau design, including a few Jewish symbols, on each cover. I wish to thank Ms. Renate Evers, the LBI’s Director of Collections, for assembling the different sets for me and helping me figure out their publication history. 49 RICE, Freud and Moses, 94.

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face of the ever tightening siege of the Roman legions. A version of that oft-told tale appeared in Goldschmidt’s translation which Freud condensed greatly and garbled slightly:50 After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai asked for permission to open a school at Javne for the study of Torah. We are going to do the same. We are, after all, used to persecution by our history, tradition and some of us by personal experience.

By opening the sealed palace of the Talmud with his translation and making it readily accessible through four separate editions, Goldschmidt performed a service of existential import that enabled German speaking Jews to embark on a return to a Heimat from which they had been estranged for 150 years.

Bibliography BACHER, Wilhelm: Rezension von Aug. Wünsche, Der Babylonische Talmud in seinen haggadischen Bestandtheilen. MGWJ 35 (1886), 82–93, 122–143; 36 (1887), 184–189. BECHTOLDT, Hans-Joachim: Jüdische Bibelübersetzungen vom ausgehenden 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005. BEN-CHORIN, Shalom: Jüdische Bibelübersetzungen in Deutschland. Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 4 (1959), 311–331. BERNFELD, Simon/BAMBERGER, Fritz (ed. Verband der deutschen Juden): Die Lehren des Judentums, 5 vols. Leipzig: Engel, 1920–1924. BERNFELD, Simon: Der Talmud. Sein Wesen, seine Bedeutung und seine Geschichte. Berlin: Calvary, 1900. BISCHOFF, Erich: Kritische Geschichte der Thalmud-Uebersetzungen aller Zeiten und Zungen. Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1899. BLOCH, Joseph Samuel: Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. Wien/Leipzig: R. Löwit Verlag, 1922. BRANN, Markus: Besprechungen. MGWJ 44 (1900). BRODY, Robert: The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1998. BRÜLL, Nehemias: Der Kampf gegen den Talmud. Populär-wissenschaftliche Monatsblätter zur Belehrung über das Judentum für Gebildete aller Confessionen 3/2 (1883), 25–26. CARLEBACH, Elisheva: Attributions of Secrecy and Perceptions of Jewry. Jewish Social Studies (new series) 2 (1996), 115–136. CASSEL, David: Die Cultusfrage in der jüdischen Gemeinde von Berlin. Berlin: Adolf, 1856. COHEN, Jeremy: The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.

|| 50 JONES, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud 3, 221. The story of Rabban Yochana ben Zakkai is to be found in vol. 6, page 376 of the quarto-size set.

Missing in Translation |

183

— : Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jews in Medieval Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. DELITZSCH, Franz: Rohling’s Talmudjude beleuchtet. Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1881. FISHMAN, Talya: Becoming the People of the Talmud. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. FRANKEL, Zacharias: Tagesbegebenheiten. Zeitschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Judenthums 1 (1844), 39. FRIES, Jakob Friedrich: Ueber die Gefährdung des Wohlstandes und Charakters der Deutschen durch die Juden. Heidelberg: Mohr und Winter, 1816. GOLDSCHMIDT, Eliezer (= Lazarus): The Translation of the Babylonian Talmud into German (in Hebrew). Areshet 2 (1960), 309–330. GOLDSCHMIDT, Lazarus: Die Recension des Herrn Dr. D. Hoffmann über meine Talmud-Ausgabe im Licht der Wahrheit. Charlottenburg: A. Gertz, 1896. GRAETZ, Heinrich: Geschichte der Juden, vol. 10. Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1868 — : Die Schicksale des Talmud im Verlaufe der Geschichte. MGWJ 34 (1885). HEINE, Heinrich: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1968. HELLER, Marvin J.: Printing the Talmud. Brooklyn: Im Hasefer, 1992. HELLWING, Isak Arie: Der konfessionelle Antisemitismus im 19. Jahrhundert in Österreich. Wien: Herder, 1972. HERLITZ, Georg/KIRSCHNER, Bruno: Jüdisches Lexikon. Ein enzyklopädisches Handbuch des jüdischen Wissens, 4 vols. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1927–1930. HOFFMANN, David: Der Schulchan-Aruch und die Rabbinen über das Verhältniß der Juden zu Andersgläubigen. Berlin: Verlag der Expedition der “Jüdischen Presse”, 1894, 5–6. — : Recensionen. Zeitschrift für hebräische Bibliographie 1 (1896), 67–71, 100–103, 152–55, 181–85. ISH SHALOM, Meir: Davar al odot ha-Talmud. Pressburg, 1885. JONES, Ernest: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1953–1957). JOST, Isaak Markus: Was hat Herr Chiarini in Angelegenheiten der europäischen Juden geleistet? Berlin: Hayn, 1830. KATZ, Jacob: Eisenmenger’s Method of Presenting Evidence from Talmudic Sources (in Hebrew). Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 2. Jerusalem, 1971, 210– 216. — : From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1980. LEIMAN, Shnayer: The Hatam Sofer’s Retraction of his Approbation to the Pinner Talmud. Seforim blog, February 19, 2008. — : Some Notes on the Pinner Affair. Seforim blog, February 25, 2008. LEVY, Jacob: Neuhebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschim, 4 vols. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1876–1889. MANUEL, Frank E.: The Broken Staff: Judaism Through Christian Eyes. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1992. MINTZ, Adam: Words, Meaning and Spirit: the Talmud in Translation. Torah u-Madda Journal 5 (1994), 115–155. — : The Talmud in Translation, in: Sharon Lieberman Mintz and Gabriel M. Goldstein (eds.), Printing the Talmud from Bomberg to Schottenstein. New York: Yeshiva University Museum, 2005, 121–141.

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PINNER, Moses: Compendium des Hierosolymitanischen und Babylonischen Thalmud. Berlin, 1832. — : Talmud Babli. Babylonischer Talmud. Tractat Berachoth. Berlin, 1842. PLAUT, W. Gunther: German-Jewish Bible Translations: Linguistic Theology as a Political Phenomenon. Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture 36 (1992). RAWICZ, Meyer (trans.): Der Traktat Megilla. Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1883. RICE, Emanuel: Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. ROHRBACHER, Stefan: ‘Gründlicher und Wahrhafter Bericht:’ Des Orientalisten Johann Andreas Eisenmengers Entdecktes Judenthum (1700) als Klassiker des ‘wissenschaftlichen’ Antisemitismus. In: Schäfer, Peter / Wandrey, Irina (eds.): Reuchlin und seine Erben. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2005, 171–188. SALZBERGER, Georg: Die neue deutsche Hausbibel. Frankfurter Israelitisches Gemeindeblatt, December 1934, 133–134. SAMMTER, Asher (trans.): Talmud Babylonicum Tractat Baba Mezia. Berlin: Julius Benzian, 1876. SCHIEFERL, Franz Xaver (ed.): Joh. Andr. Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judentum. Dresden: Otto Brandner, 1893. SCHOLEM, Gershom: Von Berlin nach Jerusalem. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977. SCHORSCH, Ismar: From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1994. STEINSCHNEIDER, Moritz: Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft 6 (1883), 42. STERN, Eliyahu: The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. STRACK, Hermann Leberecht: Einleitung in den Talmud. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1887. — : Einleitung in Talmud und Midraš. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1921. WEBER, Ferdinand: System der altsynagogalen palästinischen Theologie Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1880. WINTER, Jakob/WÜNSCHE, August (eds.): Die jüdische Litteratur seit Abschluss des Kanons, 3 vols. Trier: Sigmund Mayer, 1894–1896. WÜNSCHE, August: Der Babylonische Talmud in seinen haggadischen Bestandtheilen, vol. 1. Leipzig: Schulze, 1886. ZUNZ, Leopold: Gesammelte Schriften, 3 vols. Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875–1876.

List of Contributors Chanan Gafni is a lecturer at the Jewish History Department in Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva. Michah Gottlieb is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at New York University. Hanan Harif is a lecturer at the Rothberg School of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and deputy director of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the study of Jewish communities in the East, Jerusalem. Katalin Franciska Rac is historian and library coordinator for Jewish heritage at University of Florida’s Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica. Dorothea M. Salzer is Lecturer for Hebrew language and Jewish studies in the Department of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies of the University of Potsdam. Stefan Schorch is Professor für Bibelwissenschaften at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and director of the Research center for Hebrew studies of The Leucorea Foundation, Wittenberg. Ismar Schorsch is Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History and Chancellor Emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.

Index of Persons Abraham Ibn Ezra 77 Adawi, Subhi Ali 149, 163 Ahad Ha-ʿam 11–12, 14 Al-Bagdadi, Nadia 136, 145 Ali, Abdullah Yusuf 142, 145 Altmann, Alexander 12 Arberry, Arthur John 159 Aschheim, Steven 53, 70 Assmann, Jan 60, 70 Azariah de Rossi 7, 79, 96 Bach, Hans 60, 70 Bacher, Wilhelm 173, 182 Bamberger, Fritz 178, 182 Barber, Christa Renate 146 Bartal, Israel 157, 163 Basal, Naser 149, 163 Bauer, Bruno 112, 122 Bechtoldt, Hans-Joachim 167, 181–182 Beer, Peretz (Peter) 25, 52 Behn, Wolfgang 136, 146–147 Bellermann, Johann Joachim 176 Ben-Ari, Nitsa 153, 163 Ben-Chorin, Shalom 167, 182 Ben-Shemesh, Aharon 19, 158–164 Ben-Zeʾev, Judah Leib 16, 81, 89–91, 93, 96 Berdichevsky, Micha Joseph 157 Berenbaum, Michael 123–125 Bernays, Isaac 60–61, 70–71 Bernfeld, Simon 178, 180, 182 Bialik, Chaim Nachman 156–158, 163 Billerbeck, Paul 108, 122–124 Bischoff, Erich 167, 174, 178, 182 Bistritzky, Nathan 164 Bitzan, Amos 5 Blichrode, Isaak 178 Bloch, Joseph Samuel 172, 182 Blum, Shimon-Erez 158, 164 Bomberg, Daniel 168, 179, 183 Böttrich, Christfried 124 Bowman, Paul 10 Brämer, Andreas 12

https://doi.org/9783110592672-010

Brann, Markus 178, 182 Brechenmacher, Thomas 123 Brenner, Michael 3 Bresselau, Meyer Israel 85 Breuer, Marc 71 Broadhurst, Jace R. 108, 122 Brocke, Michael 125 Brockelmann, Carl 132, 136, 145 Brody, Robert 168, 182 Bronstein, Menachem Mendel 94–96 Brüll, Nehemias 175, 182 Buchbut, Aharon 154 Büdinger, Moses Mordechai 36–42, 44–46, 48–49, 52 Bunge, Marcia 71 Carlebach, Elisheva 177, 182 Carlebach, Julius 125 Cassel, David 176–177, 182 Chalmers, Matthew VII Chiarini, Luigi 176–177, 183 Cohen, Jeremy 169, 182 Cook, Johann 13 Dabashi, Hamid 130, 146 Dan, Yosef 75, 96 Dawood, Nessim Joseph 159–160, 164 Delitzsch, Franz 172, 183 Diderot, Denis 56 Diner, Dan 71 Dohrmann, Natalie B. VII Drachman, Bernard 55, 70 Druyanow, Alter 157 Eastman, David L. 106, 122 Efron, John 53, 70 Ehrenberg, Samuel Meyer 33, 52 Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried 26–27, 36, 52 Einhorn, David 18 Eisenmenger, Andreas 170, 172, 176, 183–184 Elbogen, Ismar 3–4

188 | Index of Persons

Elias, Joseph 56, 71 Elman, Yaakov 163 Epstein, Isidore 168 Evans, Richard 70 Evers, Renate 181 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 171 Fishman, Talya 168, 183 Fleischer, Heinrich Leberecht 150, 174 Fraenkel, Seckel Isaac 85, 87–90, 93, 95–96 Fraisse, Ottfried 9, 131, 143, 146 Frankel, Zacharias 12–13, 175, 177, 183 Frederick I of Prussia 170 Freud, Sigmund 59, 181–184 Freund, Wilhelm 99, 122 Frevert, Ute 66, 70 Friedländer, David 176 Friedländer, Mardochai Hirsch 99, 122 Friedmann, Yohanan 163 Fries, Jakob Friedrich 171, 183 Fuchs, Yaacov 154 Fück, Johann 9 Fürst, Julius 152–153, 172, 176

Goldziher, Ignác (Ignaz) 9–10, 19, 129–147 Gordis, Robert 12 Görke K. Hasselhoff 52 Gottlieb, Michah 16, 53, 69, 70, 185 Gottschalk, Alfred 14 Gotzmann, Andreas 3 Graetz, Heinrich (Hirsch) 103, 109–113, 123, 170, 177–178, 183 Graham, William A. 139, 147 Greenberg, Ela 155, 164 Gregory, George 71 Grinz, Yehoshua Meir 81, 96 Grossmann, Louis 99, 105, 124 Grunfeld, Isidor 71 Güdemann, Moritz 9

Haberman, Daniel 71 HaCohen, Ran 26–29, 31, 48, 52 Hamori, Andreas 135, 146 Hamori, Ruth 135, 146 Harden, Maximilian 179 Harif, Hanan VII, 19–20, 149, 156, 164, 185 Hartwig, Dirk 7–9, 164 Harz, Benjamin 181 Hasselhoff, Görge K. 8–9, 52 Hausen, Karin 66, 70 Gafni, Chanan VII, 16–17, 75, 185 Heine, Heinrich 167, 183 Gans, David 78, 96 Heinemann, Isaac 60–61, 70 Gaster, Moses 13 Heinrich, Gusztáv 132, 146 Gedaliah ben Yahyah 78, 96 Geiger, Abraham 3–14, 16–20, 56, 58, 61–65, Heller, Bernát 132, 147 Heller, James G. 99–100, 123 69–70, 92, 96, 107, 109–116, 123, 143, Heller, Marvin J. 168, 183 146, 151–154, 164 Hellwing, Isak Arie 172, 183 Geiger, Ludwig 3 Herder, Johann Gottfried 53–59, 69, 71, 156, Gemünden, Petra von 124 157 Gershom ben Judah (= Rabbenu Gershom) 65 Herlitz, Georg 175, 183 Gershoni, Israel 163 Gesenius, Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm 85, 174 Hermann, Antal 146 Hershkowitz, Meir 89, 96 Gibson, Margaret Dunlop 94 Heschel, Susannah 7, 9, 111, 123, 153, 164 Gillman, Abigail 15 Hezil, Joshua Ben Samuel 90, 93, 96 Ginsberg, Asher Zvi Hirsch → Ahad Ha-ʿam Hirsch, Naphtali 71 Ginzberg, Louis 103, 123 Hirsch, Samson Raphael 16, 53, 55–63, Glatzer, Nahum N. 12 65–71 Glickman, Marc 94, 96 Hirsch, Samuel 109–113, 123 Goitein, Shelomo Dov 159–160, 164 Hirschfeld, Hirsch S. 176 Goldschmidt, Lazarus (Eliezer) 21, 167, Hirschler, Gertrude 71 178–183 Hoffmann, David 173–174, 179, 183 Goldstein, Gabriel M. 183

Index of Persons |

Holtzmann, Heinrich Julius 109, 111, 120, 123 Homolka, Walter 123 Horovitz, Josef 155 Horwitz, Rivka 60–61, 71 Hughes, Aaron W. 8 Hunfalvy, Pál 137, 139 Ish Shalom, Meir 177, 183 Isserles, Moses 81 Jacob, Walter 18, 114–115, 121, 123 Jastrow, Morris 135 Jellineck, Adolf 152–153 Jones, Ernest 181–183 Jost, Isaak Markus 10–11, 15, 25–52, 109–113, 123, 171, 176, 183 Judah Halevi 55–56 Kahana, Abraham 75, 96 Kalb, J. A. 60 Kalmar, Ivan 53, 71 Katz, Jacob 170–171, 183 Key, Andrew F. 100, 118, 123 Kirchheim, Raphael 61, 71 Kirschner, Bruno 175, 183 Kister, Meir J. 159 Kley, Eduard 85 Kohn, Samuel 13 Kormani, Navid 139, 147 Korn, Bertram Wallac 124 Kornfeld, Aaron ben Mordecai Baer 99, 123 Kramer, Martin 8 Krauskopf, Joseph 118 Kremer, Alfred von 131 Kressel, Gezel 85, 96 Lamed, Meir 99, 123 Lameer, Joep 132, 147 Langton, Daniel R. 118, 123 Lee, William Robert 70 Leiman, Shnayer 177, 183 Leopold I 170 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 56, 112 Levin, Shemaryahu 157 Levy, Jacob 174, 183 Lewis, Agnes 94 Lewis, Bernhard 8, 94, 150, 153, 164

189

Licht, Yaʿakov Shalom 75, 97 Lightfoot, John 108, 122, 123 Lindeskog, Gösta 6, 8–9, 17, 110, 119, 123 Loader, James Alfred 108, 123 Louis IX 169 Love, Carry Michelle VII Luther, Martin 167 Luzzatto, Samuel David 176 Maclaine, Archibald 124 Maimonides (= Moses ben Maimon) 55, 57 Manuel, Frank E. 170, 183 Marcus, Jacob Rader 105, 108, 123–124 Marsh, James 71 Martini, Raymond 169 May, Max B. 99, 124 McAuliffe, Jane Damme 129, 147 Meissner, Stefan 120, 124 Menahem ben Solomon of Perpignan 173 Mendelssohn, Moses 32, 49, 60, 167, 169 Meroz, Alice VII Metternich, Klemens von 177 Meyer, Michael A. 3–5, 10, 14 Meyuhas, Yosef 157 Mintz, Adam 167, 177, 183 Mintz, Sharon Lieberman 183 Montgomery, William 113, 124 Mosheim, Johann Lorenz von 102, 124 Müller, Max 129, 131 Myllykoski, Matti 113, 124 Nachmanides (= Moses ben Nahman) 77 Neusner, Jacob 168 Neuwirth, Angelika 8–10 Nicholas I of Russia 176 Nicolas, Michel 102, 124 Niewöhner, Friedrich 10 Nijoff, Martinus 181 Nöldeke, Theodor 9, 129, 142–143, 147, 173 Paret, Rudi 159 Paritsky, Karin 71 Patai, Raphael 130, 145–146 Penslar, Derek 53, 71 Philipson, David 99, 105, 124 Phillipson, Ludwig 154, 162 Pinner, Ephraim Moses 175–177, 183–184

190 | Index of Persons

Plato 56 Plaut, W. Gunther 167, 184 Plessner, Solomon 89–90, 92, 96 Rac, Katalin Franciska 19, 129, 185 Rappaport, Solomon Judah 18, 99, 108 Rashbam (= Samuel ben Meir) 77 Rashi (= R. Shlomo Yitzhaki) 50, 77, 178 Ravnizky, Yehoshua Khone 156–157 Rawicz, Victor Meyer 175, 184 Reckendorf, Herrmann (Zevi Hayyim) 19, 150–156, 159–162, 164 Reckendorf, Solomon Hermann 150 Reif, Stefan C. 94, 97 Reimarus, Herrmann Samuel 18, 112, 124 Reinhold, Karl Leonard 59 Renan, Ernest 119, 124, 142–143 Rice, Emanuel 181, 184 Rivlin, Rachel 160 Rivlin, Yosef Yoel 19, 154–164 Roded, Ruth 155, 164 Rohling, August 172, 174, 183 Rohrbacher, Stefan 3, 170, 184 Rösel, Martin 13 Rosen, Viktor Romanovich von 131 Rosenbloom, Noah 55, 61, 71 Rubin, Uri 149, 159, 163–164 Ruppenstein, Florian VII Saadya Gaon 77 Sachs, Shneur 91, 96 Sale, George 151, 153–154 Saleh, Walid A. 136, 147 Salzberger, Georg 167, 184 Salzer, Dorothea M. VII, 11, 14–15, 25, 79, 185 Sammter, Ascher 175, 184 Sandmel, Samuel 115, 124 Sarna, Nahum M. 13–14 Schabelski, Elsa von 179 Schaller, Bernd 108, 124 Schechter, Solomon 94–95 Schieferl, Franz Xaver 170, 184 Schiller, Friedrich 56, 59–62, 69, 71 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 3, 119, 124 Schmelzer, Menahem 175

Schoettgen, Johann Christian 108, 124 Scholem, Gershom 104, 120, 124, 178, 184 Schor, Joshua Heschel 92, 96 Schorch, Stefan 3, 13, 17, 99, 185 Schorsch, Ismar 3, 5, 11–12, 15, 20–21, 150, 153, 164, 167, 171, 184–185 Schulte, Christoph 3 Schwabacher, Heimann 35–38, 52 Schweitzer, Albert 18, 113, 119–120, 122, 124 Seelye, Kate Chambers 146 Segal, Moshe Zevi 77, 94, 97 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of 56 Shatzki, Yaʿakov 90, 97 Simon, Róbert 131, 137–138, 147 Simonyi, Zsigmond 146 Sinai, Nicolai 9 Singer, Isidore 123 Skolnik, Fred 123–125 Sofer, Moses (= Hatam Sofer; Moses Schreiber) 99, 177, 183 Soncino, Joshua Solomon 168 Spinoza, Baruch 7 Sprenger, Aloys 6–7 Stallmann, Imke 3, 5–6 Stegemann, Wolfgang 111–112, 124 Steinsaltz, Adin 169 Steinschneider, Moritz 10, 177, 184 Stern, Eliyahu 167, 184 Stern, Samuel Miklos 146 Strack, Hermann Leberecht 108, 122–123, 173, 184 Strauß, David Friedrich 107, 111–112, 125 Sue, Eugene 150 Teeter, David Andrew 13 Tertullian 102 Thomanek, Judith 124 Tödter, Christoph VII Torrey, Charles Cutler 75, 97 Turán, Tamás 10, 131, 146–147 Vahrenhorst, Martin 8 Venetianer, Lajos (Ludwig) Venuti, Lawrence 48, 52 Voltaire 171

9

Index of Persons |

Wagenhofer, Sophie VII Wald, Stephen G. 103, 125 Walton, Brian 81, 96 Weber, Ferdinand 171, 184 Weinberg, Joanna 7, 79 Weitz, Yosef 164 Weitzmann, Steven VII Wessely, Naphtali Herz 16, 32, 79, 81, 89–91, 96 Wiese, Christian 3, 18, 123 Wilansky, Dena 120, 125 Wilhelm, Cornelia 18 Wilke, Carsten 10, 99, 125, 146–147 Willi, Thomas 124 Winter, Jakob 172, 174, 184

191

Wise, Isaac Mayer 17–18, 99–109, 112–125 Wittler, Kathrin 53, 71 Wolf, Immanuel 4–5, 25, 52 Wrede, William 18, 124 Wünsche, August 172–174, 182, 184 Yahuda, Abraham Shalom 13 Yahudah, Yitzhak Yehezkel 155 Yahyā Ben Ādam 158, 164 Zacuto, Abraham 78, 96 Zibenberger, Isaac 90, 96 Zittenfeld, Julius 168 Zunz, Leopold 4–5, 10, 12, 14–15, 33, 52, 176, 184