Elijah Levita

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Elijah Levita or Elias Levita , also Elia (s) Levi (born February 13, 1469 in Ipsheim or Neustadt an der Aisch ; † January 5 / January 28, 1549 in Venice ) was a German philologist , rabbi , Jewish humanist and Yiddish poet .

Life

Career up to the Sacco di Roma

He is also known under the names Elija Bachur Levita, Elija Levita Bachur ( Bachur = "the younger"), Eliyahu Bahur, Elija ben Asher ha Levi, Elia Levi Ben Ascher Aschkenasi ("Elia, son of Ascher, called the German") or Yiddish Elje Bocher . His father was the learned rabbi Ascher Levita (Ascher ha Levi). Elijah had eight older brothers. Her mother's name was Hendlin and died in 1492. Since his family moved to Neustadt an der Aisch due to a decree from Margrave Albrecht Achilles dated January 7, 1473, which allowed Jews to move, it was assumed, among other things, that Elijah Levita was born there. In a copy of the dictionary he wrote from the early 16th century, however, there is an entry presumably made by the author himself, according to which Levita comes from Ipsheim. However, he spent his youth safely in Neustadt.

He dealt with the Hebrew grammar from an early age . He later moved to Mestre , Padua and finally to Venice, where he can be traced back to 1496 and taught the French ambassador Georges de Salva . The reason for his move to Italy could have been that the Margrave Friedrich the Elder , who came to power in 1486, again showed a lower tolerance towards Jews, so that the persecution began again. 1504 Levita was in Padua Hebrew teacher for Jewish children and in 1506 he held at the city's university and nationally acclaimed lectures on the grammar of Moses Kimchi . As a writer, he also wrote knight poems , which were at least partially designed as parodies . He also emerged as a translator of psalms into German (for those Jews who could not speak Hebrew). A copyist of his glosses by Moses Kimchi (see under works) cheated him and published his work in Pesaro without naming the author.

Levita probably traveled to Rome in 1509 after his possessions and writings were lost during the siege and sack of Padua the year before. From Rome he traveled back to his hometown Neustadt . In the Franciscan monastery of St. Wolfgang (Neustadt-Riedfeld) he is said to have introduced the Pforzheim Franciscan prior and humanist Konrad Pellikan (actually Konrad Kürschner) to the Hebrew language and literature when he visited the monastery in 1514 . Levita also had to leave his hometown in 1515, after the death of Electress Anna in 1512, due to a decree of April 1515, according to which all Jews had to leave Neustadt from December 1515 to January 1516, and then never returned to Neustadt or the Aisch Valley. In 1515 he met Aegidius de Viterbo , cardinal and general of the Augustinian order , and taught him Hebrew , whereupon the latter took him and his family into his home and provided him and his family with an apartment in an annex to the Augustinian monastery in Rome. This enabled Levita to pursue his scientific work without financial worries. Up to this point he had worked as a Hebrew teacher, writer and proofreader. In Rome he became a friend of Martin Luther , who attended the Levitas lectures and learned Hebrew from him. He stayed in Rome for thirteen years and worked on many of his works. The stay with Viterbo shaped Levita and made him familiar with the humanistic methods that subsequently shaped his work. Levita was in written contact with the humanist and Hebrewist Sebastian Münster .

Late work

After the Sacco di Roma 1527, in which Levita and his family had again lost all their material possessions, he returned to Venice and became a proofreader in Daniel Bomberg's famous office (Levita fell out with the printer Bomberg, however). Levita taught again numerous influential personalities, such as Georges de Selve (1508–1541), who brought the French king to offer Levita a professorship at the University of Paris , although Jews were actually not allowed to live in France. Out of consideration for his fellow believers, from whom he would have become estranged, he declined the offer to the Sorbonne .

From 1540 to 1542 Levita lived in the free imperial city of Isny in the Allgäu . At the request of the reformer and Hebraist Paul Fagius , whom he also taught in Hebrew, he also corrected some of his own works there, which Fagius wanted to print and publish. This may also have been a reason to return to Germany in old age, as the printing works in Venice no longer existed. From 1542 to 1544 he lived in Constance and then returned to Venice.

An increasing eye disease forced him to end his extensive literary work from 1544.

Elija Levita died at the age of 79 on January 28th ("9th Shebath ") 1549 in Venice. He is a direct ancestor of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron .

Meaning and works

One side of the Shemot Devarim

With the Hebrew grammar Sefer ha-Bachur , Elijah Levita was the first Jew to impart and teach the Jewish language to European humanists. The book was published in Rome in 1518 with a dedication to Aegidius de Viterbo and was reprinted in Isny ​​in 1542.

This linguistic work was supplemented in 1520 by the Pirke Elijahu ("Treatises of Elijah"), which deal with further grammatical questions, and the Sefer ha-Harkava ("Book of Connections"), which refers in particular to the language of the Bible. The influence of these books extended, among others, to Sebastian Münster , who translated some of Levita's works written in Hebrew into Latin ( Sefer ha-Bachur and Sefer ha-Harkava 1525, Pirke Elijahu 1527). As a result, Levita also had a certain influence on the Reformation : for example, he exchanged letters with Osiander and the humanist Reuchlin, known as Kapnion , and Philipp Melanchthon at least used his works.

In addition, Levita dealt constructively with the linguistic works of other authors. As early as 1508 he had written glosses on the Hebrew grammar of Moses Kimchi , in 1545 a commentary on the grammar of David Kimchi appeared and in the following year the glosses on his work Sefer ha-Shoraschim appeared . The Sefer ha-Tischbi 1541, however, provides an annotated alphabetical index represents 712 rabbinical terms. In the same year the after arose roots parent Targumlexikon Sefer Meturgeman , one of Paul Fagius out given Chaldean dictionary. With the Schemot Devarim (Latin Nomenclatura Hebraica ), which was also created in collaboration with Paul Fagius in 1542, Levita also created a four-language dictionary of Yiddish, Hebrew, Latin and German.

In his research Levita also used the Sefer ha-Sikaron ("Book of Memory") written by Joseph Kimchi , in which the concept of five long and five short Hebrew vowels is introduced.

In Massoreth ha-Massoreth ("Traditions of Traditions"), probably his most important work, which he had written inspired by his patron Aegidius von Viterbo, he uses linguistic methods to deal with the origins of the Old Testament , which, however, he also deals with Made enemies among the Jewish scholars, especially the "rabbinical Massoreth" . He justified his assumption that the vocalization of the Bible was done by human hands, only the phonemes were based on divine revelation.

Levita's research result, which he also called “Massorah” , is not based on writings before the Babylonian kidnapping, but on a Palestinian family of texts and has been criticized by researchers (for example by Paul Kahle ) just as sharply as his claim that the vowel signs are of more recent origin .

In addition, the tolerant Levita, who was also benevolent towards Christians, was accused of passing on the teaching that God had entrusted to the house of Jacob to the unsolicited.

His “Masso-Ethical Concordance” never appeared in print. A book he wrote about the accents was lost when Rome was sacked in 1527.

In West Yiddish he published knight episodes such as the 650 stanzas verse novel Bovo d'Antona and translations of psalms. This so-called Bovo book , written between 1507 and 1508, became extremely popular and, since 1541, has been printed in at least forty editions. Other of his works are an adaptation of the Provencal epic Paris and Vienna, the Sreyfe-Lid about the fire in Venice on January 13, 1514 and the Ha-Mavdil-Lid, which is directed against his enemy Hillel Kohen .

Work editions

  • Shemot Devarim. Facsimile print of the Isny ​​1542 edition. London 1988.
  • Poetic creations in yiddish. Elia Bachur's poetical works. Volume 1: Bowo de Antona, with a short arajnfir fun Juda A. Joffe . o. O. 1949; ( online ).
  • Bovo d'Antona by Elye Bokher. A Yiddish Romance. A Critical Edition with Commentary. Edited by Claudia Rosenzweig. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2016 (=  Studies in Jewish History and Culture 49), ISBN 9789004306844 .
  • Paris and Vienna. A 16th century Yiddish punch novel by (or from the circle of) Elia Levita. Edited by Erika Timm and Gustav A. Beckmann, based on the Verona edition in 1594. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1996, ISBN 3-484-60174-4 .
  • The Massoreth Ha-Massoreth of Elias Levita, being an exposition of the Massoretic notes on the Hebrew Bible, or the ancient critical apparatus of the Old Testament in hebrew, with an English translation, and critical and explanatory notes, London, Longmans, 1867;
    Digitized: Ginsburg, 1867: The Massoreth Ha-Massoreth of Elias Levita .
  • Melanie Lange: A milestone in Hebrew studies. The »Sefer ha-Bachur« Elia Levitas in Sebastian Munster's translation and edition. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2019 (edition and translation of the Hebrew and Latin versions of the grammar).

literature

  • Ludwig Geiger :  Levita, Elias . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, pp. 505-507.
  • Günter Mayer:  Levita, Elias. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 402 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Melanie Lange: A milestone in Hebrew studies. The »Sefer ha-Bachur« Elia Levitas in Sebastian Munster's translation and edition. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2018 (= works on the Bible and its history 62).
  • Christoph Rückert: An important son of Ipsheim. In: Streiflichter from the local history . Volume 20, 1996, pp. 45-51.
  • Gérard E. Weil: Élie Lévita. Humaniste et Massorète (1469-1549). E. J. Brill, Leiden 1963 (=  Studia Post-Biblica 7).
  • Ittai J. Tamari: Elijahu ha-Lewi (Levita), or a Frankish Jew in Italy . In: Michael Brenner; Daniela F. Eisenstein (ed.): The Jews in Franconia . Oldenbourg, Munich 2012 (= Studies on Jewish History and Culture in Bavaria . Volume 5), ISBN 978-3-486-70100-5 , pp. 43–50.
  • Marion Aptroot: Bobe-Mayse. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 375-376.
  • Max Döllner : Development history of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch up to 1933. Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 1950. (New edition 1978 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Ph. CW Schmidt Neustadt an der Aisch 1828–1978. ) P. 166–170.
  • Christoph Daxelmüller : Between Kabbalah and Martin Luther - Elija Levita Bachur, a Jew between religions. In: Ludger Grenzmann (Ed.): Mutual Perception of Religions in the Late Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Age. Volume 1: Basic conceptual questions and case studies. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021352-2 , pp. 231-250 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 167.
  2. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 169.
  3. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), pp. 58, 167 and 170.
  4. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 168.
  5. ↑ August Strindberg : Historical miniatures . 1912, p. 64.
  6. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 168.
  7. ↑ Hartmut Bobzin: "I am now preparing some Hebrew and Aramaic books ..." Sebastian Münster in Heidelberg (1524–7) and the foundation of Semitic studies .
  8. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 168.
  9. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 168 f.
  10. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 169.
  11. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 169.
  12. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 169.
  13. ↑ Max Döllner (1950), p. 169.
personal data
SURNAME Levita, Elijah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levita, Elija Bachur; Levita, Elias; Elijah ben Asher ha Levi; Elia Levi Ben Ascher Ashkenazi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish poet, humanist and linguist
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1469
PLACE OF BIRTH Ipsheim or Neustadt an der Aisch
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 1549 or January 28, 1549
Place of death Venice