Wissenschaft des Judentums Beyond Tradition

Jewish scholarship on the Sacred Texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Dorothea M. Salzer, Chanan Gafni, Hanan Harif, Dorothea M. Salzer, Chanan Gafni, Hanan Harif

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110590517
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology
• Index: History

The scholarly study of the texts traditionally regarded as sacred in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has been an important aspect of Wissenschaft des Judentums and was often conceptualized as part of Jewish theology. Featuring studies on Isaak Markus Jost's Jewish children's Bible, Samson Raphael Hirsch's complex position on the question whether or not the Hebrew Bible is to be understood within the context of the Ancient Orient, Isaac Mayer Wise's "The Origin of Christianity," Ignaz Goldziher's Scholarship on the Qur'an, modern translators of the Qur'an into Hebrew, and the German translation of the Talmud, the volume attempts to shed light on some aspects of this phenomenon, which as a whole seems to have received few scholarly attention, and to contextualize it within the contemporary intellectual currents.

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.72 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 earlier73 – 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.

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.

1Jost 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.74 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 “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:75

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.76 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.77

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”).78 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.79

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.80 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 anti-Jewish ideas.

Despite this fundamental distinction between “Israelites” and “Jews,”81 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,82 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.83

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:84 […] 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...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Hebrew Bible
• Part 2: Apocrypha and New Testament
• Part 3: The Qurʾān
• Part 4: The Talmud
• List of Contributors
• Index of Persons