Hyam Maccoby

Hyam Maccoby (born March 20, 1924 in Sunderland ; died May 2, 2004 in Leeds ) was a British Judaist and writer .

Life

Maccoby's grandfather was a traveling rabbi in the Ukraine and emigrated to England in 1890, where his father became a math teacher. Maccoby studied English at Balliol College , Oxford , and after four years of military service became an English teacher at Chiswick School in London during World War II. In 1975 he became a tutor and librarian at Leo Baeck College and began publishing a number of books. After his retirement he became a professor at the Center for Jewish Studies at Leeds University .

In his writings, Maccoby repeatedly dealt with the story of the historical Jesus , whom he embeds heavily in the troubled and uprising political context of the history of Judea under the Syrian legate . He also wrote about the phenomenon of ancient and modern anti-Semitism , the cause of which he sees in the representations of Judas Iscariot in the Gospels. The Talmudic tradition and the history of Jewish religion are also subjects of his works.

Fonts (selection in German translation)

• King Jesus: Story of a Jewish Rebel . From d. Engl. By Wolfdietrich Müller. Tübingen: Wunderlich, 1982
  • under the title Jesus and the Jewish struggle for freedom . Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg 1996, ISBN 978-3-89484-501-8
• The holy executioner: the human sacrifice and the legacy of guilt . Translated from the English by Eva Heim. Thorbecke, Stuttgart 1999
• The myth maker. Paul and the Invention of Christianity . Transl. And ed. by Fritz Erik Hoevels. Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89484-605-3
• A Paria people. On the anthropology of anti-Semitism. Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, Berlin Leipzig, 2019, ISBN 978-3-95565-307-1 .
• Anti-Semitism and the modern age. The return of the old hatred. Edited by Peter Gorenflos and trans. by Wolfdietrich Müller. Berlin / Leipzig: Hentrich & Hentrich 2020. ISBN 978-3-95565-349-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hyam Maccoby in the catalog of the German National Library
• Lawrence Joffe: Hyam Maccoby. A Jewish scholar challenging Christian myths , obituary, The Guardian , July 31, 2004