Ancient Jewish Historians and the German Reich

Seven Studies

Daniel R. Schwartz

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9783110764833
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110765434
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

Apart from an opening survey of modern study of ancient Jewish history, which emphasizes the foundational role of German-Jewish scholars, the studies united in this volume apply philological methods to the writings of four of them: Heinrich Graetz, Isaak Heinemann, Elias Bickerman(n), and Abraham Schalit. In each case, it is argued that some seemingly trivial anomaly or infelicity, in a publication about such ancient characters as Antiochus Epiphanes, Herod, and Josephus, points to the way in which the historian constructed, and revised, his understanding of the Jews' situation under Greeks or Romans in light of his perception of the Jews' situation under the Second or Third Reich. The collection also includes a study that focuses on a Jewish medievalist, Philipp Jaffé, and unravels the indirect but inexorable process that led from a scholarly feud about the editing of medieval Latin texts, in the 1860s, to the "Berlin Antisemitism Dispute" (Berliner Antisemitismusstreit) of 1879–1881, which is commonly viewed as the opening act of modern German antisemitism.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Open-Access-Transformation in History
• Foreword
• Abbreviations
• 1 The Modern Study of Ancient Jewish History: Two Centuries and Three Stages
• 2 Graetz on Josephus: On Jewish Traitors and Cowards in the 1870s
• 3 A Changing Tale of Two Cities: Graetz on Jews and Greeks in Roman Judea
• 4 From Feuding Medievalists to the Berlin Antisemitismusstreit of 1879–1881
• 5 From Bismarck to Antiochus: On the Chaotic and “Worthless” Prehistory of Elias Bickermann’s Gott der Makkabäer
• 6 Hitler and Antiochus, Hellenists and Rabbinerdoktoren: On Isaak Heinemann’s Response to Elias Bickermann, 1938
• 7 Abraham Schalit on Herod and Josephus, before and after the Holocaust
• 8 Summary and Final Reflections
• Original Publications
• Illustrations
• Index of Authors Cited
• Index of Names and Subjects