Higher Anti-Semitism

The historical approach to the Hebrew Bible has often been tinged with, in the words of Solomon Schechter, “higher anti-Semitism.”

An excerpt from an introduction to the Hebrew Bible by Marc Zvi Brettler that puts the matter in perspective, and touches on recent scholarship that is sometimes alleged to be anti-Semitic (for example, the Copenhagen school), is available online. Go here. A key graf:

The most notable attack on the historical-critical perspective came from a renowned scholar of rabbinics, Solomon Schechter. At a 1903 banquet, he offered an address titled "Higher-Criticism — Higher Anti-Semitism." He equated Wellhausen's approach with "professional and imperial anti-Semitism," calling it an "intellectual persecution" of Judaism. Schechter's essay had an immense impact on the Jewish attitude toward the Bible. Its influence seems to explain why until the present generation many professional Jewish biblical scholars have been less engaged in historical-critical study than their non-Jewish counterparts.

Schechter actually offered a fair critique of Higher Criticism as it was practiced in Germany in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Like nearly all Christians of the time, its proponents believed in the moral superiority of Christianity to Judaism, and they used their scholarly works to illustrate this. Wellhausen, for example, likened Judaism in late antiquity to a dead tree. He applied that image vigorously, describing the late biblical book of Chronicles thus: "Like ivy it overspreads the dead trunk with extraneous life, blending old and new in a strange combination… [I]n the process it is twisted and perverted."

      End quote. For the full text of Schecter's lecture, courtesy of Kevin Edgecomb, go here. 

    Brettler goes on to remark: "As painful as [Wellhausen's] sentiments are for Jews, they neither diminish the brilliance of much of his Prolegomena, nor negate the correctness of its basic methodology." True enough, but still. The OUP edition of Brettler's volume is entitled “How to Read the Jewish Bible.” Brettler writes very well, but his introduction still strikes me as a missed opportunity. An introduction to the Hebrew Bible that recovers its historical sense and demonstrates continuities and discontinuities with its resignification by rabbinic Judaism, has yet to be written. We need such a work.

Comments

[Jim Getz]

What I found ironic is that Brettler published How to Read the Bible with JPS, but How to Read the Jewish Bible with OUP USA.

[JohnFH]

We really need an introduction to the Jewish Bible. Brettler's volume misses the mark by half.

[Iyov]

Thanks so much for continuing the discussion with your insightful remarks. I've added a few comments to this post (and a related post) here.

[Jim Getz]

I'm sorry, folks; but I'm still not seeing what irks you so about Brettler's introductions. They are how he (as a Jew) sees the text. He's writing to a lay Jewish audience, introducing them to higher criticism. It seems like you've come to his intros expecting them to do something that he doesn't do.

[Iyov]

Here is what I wrote:

In those responses, John discusses a (very good) book by Mark Zvi Brettler. (We could have a debate over whether Brettler's techniques are really Jewish or more generally secular -- obviously, Brettler takes great pride in his religion demonstrated by his co-editing Oxford's Jewish Study Bible -- but one can fairly ask of his exegetical work whether it could not equally well have been done by a non-Jew. Nonetheless, that's not the direction I wish to go in this work.)

[John Hobbins]

I'm not irked by Brettler's introduction. The volume serves a need, I imagine, at Brandeis and elsewhere.

It's just that an approach to the Tanakh that integrates historical critical insights and traditional insights is a desideratum, and Brettler seems just the kind of person to attempt a synthesis. But perhaps I'm wrong about that.

[Hebrew Scholar]

It is very rare to find an introduction to the Hebrew Bible which does well for both Jewish and non-Jewish readers. Non-Jewish potential authors will always introduce the Tanakh by calling it the Old Testament, as a prelude to the Christian New Testament, and this makes it unreadable by a non Jewish audience. But Jewish writers would interpret the Hebrew Bible so much through the eyes of the Talmud, and famous dead Rabbis and Jewish commentators, that it becomes unreadable by a non-Jewish audience. It seems that nobody has found a middle ground that would satisfy both audiences.