In Search of the Hebrew People: Bible and Nation in the German Enlightenment
224
In Search of the Hebrew People: Bible and Nation in the German Enlightenment
224Hardcover
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253033512 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2018 |
| Series: | German Jewish Cultures |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Troglodytes, Hottentots, and Hebrews: The Bible and the Sources of German Anthropology
In 1773, orientalist Johann Ernst Faber (1745–1774) published the first volume of what was to be his final work, Archäologie der Hebräer, in Halle — he died a year later at the age of twenty-eight, with the book uncompleted. The published text, entitled Haüslisches Alterthum, begins with a clarification: with so many previous publications about "the antiquity of the Hebrews" [Altherthümer des Hebräer], yet another essay might seem superfluous. The writer offers this justification for its publication: his work does not purport to deal with the Hebrews' religious or legal history but rather to address their "private lives." "Since no essay has been dedicated to that antiquity dealing with the Hebrews' daily lives, lodgings, nutrition, arts, and sciences. ... I allow myself to dedicate this archeology to this mission ... to describe the private life of this nation."
With this work, Faber inaugurated a tradition of monographs on Hebrew history that included numerous essays over the following decades. A native of Limmerhausen (Saxony), Faber underwent standard training in the burgeoning field of biblical orientalism, studying under Michaelis at Göttingen and rounding off his education with ethnography and natural history. In 1770, he took up the post of lecturer in oriental languages at Kiel, where he founded the Oriental Society. He published two books on Arabic grammar and established close ties with Herder, who planned to study Hebrew and Arabic under him. The plan fell through when Kiel became part of Danish territory, and in 1772, Faber relocated to Jena, where he completed two years of study before his death. Besides his essays on grammar, he also penned some works on biblical topics, such as animals in the book of Zephaniah and the manna the Israelites consumed in the desert. He furthermore edited an anthology of travelers' accounts of biblical lands translated from English. During these years, he was embroiled in a fierce academic dispute with Michaelis. His untimely death, attributed by some of his colleagues to overzealous academic preoccupation, left the three planned volumes of Archäologie der Hebräer uncompleted.
The novelty of Faber's book is evident from its very first chapter. Unlike previous scholars who had engaged with the subject, Faber does not begin the text with Moses (or, in fact, with Abraham). Rather, the book's first section deals with the troglodytes — the cave-dwellers he claimed lived in and around Canaan prior to Abraham's arrival there. Mentioned by Herodotus and other Greek writers, the troglodytes were a favorite object of eighteenth-century scholarship. Anthropological writing of the period describes them as semihuman dwarves who lived in faraway lands, and Carl von Linné (1707–1778), in his influential biological system of classification, went as far as to dedicate an entire species to these mysterious beings. Linné divided the genus Homo into two species — sapiens and troglodyte, identifying the latter with the ape we now refer to as the orangutan.
As cave-dwellers play no role in the Bible, Faber had to muster an interpretive effort to incorporate them into the narrative of Hebrew history. He relied principally on Josephus, who mentions "a land of Troglodytes" as the place in which Abraham's sons from his wife Keturah settled on their father's command. Faber developed Josephus's casual remark into a comprehensive theory of humanity's ancient history in its wild state [wilder Zustand], adding that caves were humankind's earliest dwelling places, where shelter from rain and thunder was found.
Faber finds proof of cave-dwelling in several biblical stories as well as in various accounts of travelers to the Orient, from which he deduces that "there are entire settlements and peoples dwelling in caves." This form of existence, he argues, had proliferated since the time of Cain, who was the original troglodyte. Faber further claims that the majority of the peoples dwelling in the land of Canaan were, in fact, made up of troglodytes, in particular the Chorites, the Hivites, and the Raphaites. All of these flourished in the land until their downfall, which was brought about by the invasion of the Israelites: "The many caves that can be seen to this day in Palestine give credence to the conjecture that Palestine — including the other side of the Jordan — in the past housed many Troglodytes, who were, however, banished with the invasion of the Israelites."
In contrast to the cave-dwellers, the Israelites brought a different, more advanced form of life to Canaan, namely shepherding and tent dwelling. A prevalent contemporary Enlightenment social theory defined shepherding as the second of four stages of human development — occupying the rung between hunting-gathering and agriculture. According to Faber, the shepherds' way of life began to evolve just before the Flood, initiated by Cain's son Jabal. After the Flood, humanity was divided into troglodytes and shepherds. He claimed further that permanent homes were rare — even though Noah was taught the art of architecture directly by God. Abraham and his offspring lived as nomads and tent dwellers [Sceniten] — the most prevalent way of life in Mesopotamia, Abraham's homeland, which he brought westward with him to the land of Canaan.
Faber's version of "the archaeology of the Hebrews" presents the biblical account of the Israelites' origins as a progression of civilization. Their early history is tied to the ancient state of humanity as a whole, with the patriarchs' entrance into Canaan signifying the end of a base form of existence, that of the troglodytes. As I show later, in describing the battle between Hebrew shepherds and troglodytes in Palestine, Faber was developing a theory hatched before him by, among others, his master and nemesis, Michaelis. The question revolving around the origin of the Israelites occupied many German writers of the period and gave rise to many a scholarly essay.
In what follows, I discuss theories developed by thinkers of the German Enlightenment regarding the Israelites' origin and their emergence as a distinct group. While traditional Christian interpretation treated Abraham's story as a moment of religious revelation — and as humanity's first step on the way to salvation — German scholars of the mid-eighteenth century began reading it as a description of the emergence of a people or a clan. This view accorded new meanings to Hebrew history, a view that was incorporated into universal history.
As Reinhart Koselleck has argued, the foremost characteristic of the modern concept of history as fashioned in the eighteenth century was the move to a homogenous, linear time frame. Other scholars have maintained that the fundamental innovation associated with the new historical writing that evolved at Göttingen University during this time was the move toward natural circumstantial rationalization, which focused on singular events and their placement in contextual webs alongside other events. Indeed, scholars of the Enlightenment — especially German Bible scholars of the historical-critical school — sought to place the appearance of the Hebrews within the wider historical and scientific context of the emergence of peoples at the dawn of mankind. Reading the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis, they grappled with questions such as: Where had this people come from? What stage in its development had humanity reached during the period in which they lived? What parallels may be drawn between them and other peoples? And what enduring imprints did its formative stage leave on the Israeli nation — until its exile and even thereafter? The question of this people's origin is a highly charged one, as it holds the key to the Hebrew people's "fundamental" characteristics.
Through readings of various texts that describe the ancient Israelites, I trace the link between the emergence of the Hebrews' historical image and the anthropological discourse of the time — both in its historical guise (descriptions of ancient peoples) and its ethnographic aspects (descriptions of "wild" peoples penned by travelers to the Orient and the New World). I thus seek to ascertain the place the Hebrews were allotted within Enlightenment-era scholars' Weltanschauung. In the context of this debate, I introduce and discuss several key figures in German research into the antiquity of the Hebrews: central figures such as Michaelis and Herder as well as less prominent scholars, who nonetheless capture the sentiments and conceptions of the time.
The First Nation of Believers: The Israelites in Salvation History
Investigation into the origins of humanity and the emergence of peoples and cultures during the eighteenth century was frequently conducted as part of scholarly engagement with "universal history." This genre was well developed in German universities as far back as the sixteenth century under the influence of the Protestant humanism of Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560). It produced lengthy essays following mankind's history that were typically divided into different chapters that constituted the different stages of salvation. Within this genre, the history of biblical times and ensuing eras was conceived as a single comprehensive system leading from the world's creation to the present day.
According to the traditional Christian conception of salvation history, the Israelites played a prescribed and meaningful role as God's chosen people and as the first "nation of believers." This description highlighted Abraham's role as "the father of believers" [Vater der Gläubigen]. God's covenant with Abraham was perceived as having inaugurated the third chapter in his dealings with humanity, following the previous covenants with Adam and with Noah.
This conception was likewise prevalent among many orthodox theologians of the eighteenth century. Thus, in the chronicle Introduction to Universal History [Einleitung zu der Universal-Historie] published in 1740 by Pietist scholar Johann Friedrich Hochstetter (1698–?), Abraham's appearance on the stage of history is explained solely in the context of the history of faith: "From the moment people began to disperse across the earth; they gradually forgot God and became more and more immersed in contemptuous idolatry; and that is what led God to take Abraham, son of Terah, out of Chaldea, where his kin had dwelt, and reestablish in his home the rite of the True God."
According to this narrative — a mainstay of holy history biblical chronicles — the origin of the Israelites was of major significance: they were the first people to shed idolatry and ignorance, a process which was to culminate in the arrival of Christ. Abraham's appearance on the historical scene signifies the transition from an age of idolatry to an age of belief in the true God [Verherung des wahren Gottes]. Therefore, many of these texts contain a lengthy description of the prevalence of idolatry in the era preceding the Israelites' history.
As Frank Manuel has shown in The Eighteenth Century Confronts God, the received wisdom among most early modern scholars was that idolatry first appeared at some point following the Flood, when the sons of Noah were dispersed in different lands. In fact, belief in the one true God originated with Adam, and this belief was passed on through the generations to Noah and his sons; but life's hardships in the era following the Flood, humankind's ongoing estrangement from its ancient sources, and the accumulation of a string of misdemeanors that emanated from the feeble human mind brought about a gradual weakening and degeneration of belief.
One of the proponents of this theory was the Dutch humanist scholar Gerhard Vossius (1577–1649). According to Vossius, Noah still preserved the major religious traditions concerning the immortality of the soul, the Trinity, and the Last Judgement. As Noah's offspring spread over the earth, they lost touch with the antediluvian tradition. Idolatry emerged alongside the gradual corruption of tradition.
According to a particular outlook prevalent among church scholars, idolatry was spread by the sons of Ham — especially the Egyptians and the Canaanites. Belief in the one true God endured only among the sons of Shem, even while idolatry spread among the rest of humanity. Luther went so far as to adopt a stance previously elaborated in the Talmudic tractate Nedarim, according to which Shem himself was the figure referred to in Genesis as Melchizedek — and that it was he who passed the belief in the true God on to Abraham.
This narrative recounting the transmission of tradition, religion, faith, or ancient divine knowledge accords Abraham and his offspring a special place at the center of world history by virtue of their sole function as bearers of the faith. Abraham is seen as a link in a chain beginning with Adam and Noah and continuing through David and Jesus. Whether narrating seamless knowledge transmission from Noah to Abraham or describing the renewal of the True faith following God's revelation to Abraham, this traditional description of the patriarch is constructed as an answer to the question of the roots of faith.
Transformations in the understanding of human history in the early modern era undermined the Israelites' status as a nation of believers elected by God. The causal description of history obliged writers to adhere to natural explanations, feeding into a rationalist theology that undermined the legitimacy of particular election. Tracts rejecting the Jewish people's singular status in history appeared in the Netherlands, France, and England as early as the first half of the seventeenth century. The most resounding attack on the traditional concept of the Jews' election was formulated in Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which rejected the assertion that God chose the Hebrews above all nations and claimed that this kind of choice would run counter to His nature. Spinoza went on to portray the Hebrews as a childish, vulgar people, maintaining that Moses had actually chosen them in order to bind them to his rules and persuade them to uphold the covenant.
Spinoza's ideas left a lasting impression on radical Enlightenment circles and were adopted by several German anticlerical philosophers, including Johann Christian Edelmann (1698–1767) and Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768). However, as Ernst Cassirer has shown, the German Enlightenment traced its origins not to Spinoza but to the intellectual tradition of the Reformation, and thinkers of the Aufklärung sought not to deconstruct the biblical text, or to undermine its authority and supremacy, but rather to distill its original meaning, dismantling the hermeneutic intermediaries that rendered it inaccessible.
Well into the 1770s, scholars in German universities took care not to topple the edifice of salvation history altogether but to preserve the Israelites' role in it. In major essays of the period, the Israelites are accorded a new role — this time as harbingers of the Enlightenment. This idea was manifested in various ways, some closer to traditional Christian historical schemes and others based on a "philosophical" system, that is, a rationally oriented conceptual system. The roots of these theories are to be found in the writings of Renaissance and Baroque-era Christian Kabbalists and Hebraists who sought to narrate the transmission of ancient knowledge or religion, of prisca theologia or philosophia perennis from Adam to Abraham and Moses.
One of the most prominent figures of early German Enlightenment and classicism, Johann Christof Gottsched (1700–1766), claimed in 1733 that Hebrew philosophy was the most ancient in existence — apart from that of the Chaldeans. According to Gottsched, Abraham's family preserved much of the knowledge accumulated by humankind prior to the Flood (and which was subsequently lost), passing this "somewhat faulty" wisdom from father to son and conveying it to Palestine. His family then developed further ideas to ease human life, especially in the realms of morals and the economy.
The chosen people's religious calling is exchanged in Gottsched's work for Weltweisheit, a term denoting a moral — but not religious — philosophy. In 1750, Friedrich Andreas Walther (1727–1769), head of the Göttingen philosophy faculty, published an entire essay devoted to the wisdom of the Hebrews, The History of the Ancient Hebrews' Wisdom [Geschichte der Weltweisheit der alten Hebräer]. He describes Abraham as the first philosopher of the epoch following the Flood: "If we opt not to reduce the meaning of the word philosopher ... it could include Abraham, as well. Scripture describes him as a man endowed with exceptional wisdom and intelligence. ... In ancient times just as in new, it could not have escaped people's attention that Abraham must be regarded as one of the great philosophers, as well as the man responsible for bringing all wisdoms to the Orient at large."
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsIntroduction 1. Troglodytes, Hottentots and Hebrews: The Bible and the Genesis of German Ethnography2. The Law and the People: Mosaic Law and German Enlightenment3. The Eighteenth-Century Polemic on the Extermination of the Canaanites4. "Is Judah Indeed the Teutonic Fatherland?" The Hebrew Model and the Birth of German National Culture5. "Lovers of Hebrew Poetry": The Battle over the Bible's Relevance at the Turn of the Nineteenth CenturyConclusion BibliographyIndexWhat People are Saying About This
"Sound, well-informed, and original. No one seriously interested in the history of biblical criticism will be able to ignore this work."
Sound, well-informed, and original. No one seriously interested in the history of biblical criticism will be able to ignore this work.
Sound, well-informed, and original. No one seriously interested in the history of biblical criticism will be able to ignore this work.