Yehezkel merchant

Yehezkel Kaufmann , Hebrew יחזקאל קויפמן Ezekiel Koifman (born 17th December 1889 ^greg. In Dunaivtsi , Russian Empire ;. D 9. October 1963 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli religious philosopher and biblical scholars.

Life and teaching

Born as the son of the trader Mordechai Nahum Koifmann (the mother's name is unknown), Yehezkel Kaufmann grew up in poor circumstances. Since his giftedness was recognized early, he still received private lessons.

In 1907 Kaufmann went to the Yeshiva of Chaim Tschernowitz in Odessa to study the Talmud , which Chaim Nachman Bialik also visited and combined the impulses of the Jewish Enlightenment with traditional education. This was followed by studies at Baron David Günzburg's Academy for Jewish and Oriental Studies in Saint Petersburg. A fellow student at that time was Zalman Shazar , later Prime Minister of Israel. In 1914 Kaufmann went to Bern to study philosophy, which he completed with a doctorate on Kant (with Richard Herbertz ). Kaufmann was not primarily concerned with philosophy, but with access to the academic world of Western Europe. With his mentor Tschernowitz he worked on an edition of the Talmud. The modern document hypothesis , which dominates Protestant biblical studies, was represented in Bern by Karl Marti , whose listeners also included Jewish students, who later became rabbis. Kaufmann also belonged to this group.

Kaufmann lived in Berlin from 1920 until he emigrated to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine (1928).

After moving to Palestine, Kaufmann taught at the secondary school in Haifa for around 20 years before he was appointed to a chair at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . From 1949 to 1957 he was then Professor of Biblical Studies.

Kaufmann, who wrote his main works in New Hebrew , is considered the most important Jewish biblical scholar of the 20th century:

• The four-volume work גולה ונכר Gola weNechar "Exile and Alienation", published 1929–1930, is a study of the history of the Jewish people from antiquity to modern times. In contrast to contemporary nationalist explanations, for example by Achad Ha'am , Kaufmann saw monotheism as the peculiarity of Judaism.
• In the eight-volume work תולדות האמונה הישראלית Toledot haEmuna haJisraelit "History of the Israelite Religion", Kaufmann presented the history of Israeli religion from the beginnings to the destruction of the Second Temple (70 AD). The main idea here is that monotheism is not a late development the Israelite religion, but appeared early and in contrast to the pagan environment. The Pentateuch and in particular the Priestly give loud Kaufmann a true picture of the pre-exilic Israel, they were essentially in the early monarchy, if not yet emerged earlier.

Kaufmann's early dating of the priestly script was not compatible with the basic assumptions of the newer document hypothesis. For this reason, Kaufmann and his academic students were sometimes not received in German-language historical-critical biblical studies and sometimes classified as fundamentalist. A rethink began here in the 1990s.

Major academic students of Kaufmann in Israel are Moshe Greenberg , Menahem Haran, Israel Knohl and Baruch Schwartz, and in the United States Jacob Milgrom .

Honors

• 1956 Bialik Prize .
• 1958 Israel Prize in the Biblical Studies section.
• 1961 Bublik Prize.

Publications (selection)

• Problems of the Israelite-Jewish religious history I. In: Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft , 48 (1930), pp. 23–43.
• Problems of the Israelite-Jewish religious history II. In: Journal for the Old Testament Science, 51 (1933), pp. 35–47.
• The Bible and Mythological Polytheism . In: Journal of Biblical Literature 70 (1951), pp. 179-197.
• The calendar and age of the code of priests . In: Vetus Testamentum 4 (1954), pp. 307-313.
• Christianity and Judaism: two covenants . 2nd edition, Magnes, Jerusalem 1986. ISBN 965-223-694-2 .
• The religion of Israel: from its beginnings to the Babylonian exile . Version abridged and translated by Moshe Greenberg . Sefer Ve Sefel Pub., Jerusalem 2003.

literature

• Aly Elrefaei: Wellhausen and Kaufmann: ancient Israel and its religious history in the works of Julius Wellhausen and Yehezkel Kaufmann . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016. ISBN 978-3-11-045212-9 .
• Job Y. Jindo, Benjamin D. Sommer, Thomas Staubli (Eds.): Yehezkel Kaufmann and the reinvention of Jewish biblical scholarship . Academic Press Friborg / Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-7278-1813-4 , ISBN 978-3-525-54414-3 .
• Thomas Krapf: Yehezkel Kaufmann: a way of life and knowledge of the theology of the Hebrew Bible . Institute for Church and Judaism, Berlin 1990. ISBN 3-923095-62-7 .
• Thomas Staubli : Yehezkel Kaufmann. The Bernese years of a genius . In: René Bloch , Jacques Picard (Ed.): How about clouds. Jewish worlds of life and thought in the city and region of Bern 1200–2000 , Zurich 2014, pp. 241–256. ( PDF )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Yiddish form of the name, which he used alongside the German when he enrolled in Bern, is Haskel Koifmann .
2. ^ Thomas Staubli: Yehezkel Kaufmann. The Bern years of a genius , Zurich 2014, p. 241.
3. ^ Thomas Staubli: Yehezkel Kaufmann. The Bern years of a genius , Zurich 2014, p. 244.
4. ↑ Aly Elrefaei: Wellhausen and Kaufmann: ancient Israel and its religious history in the works of Julius Wellhausen and Yehezkel Kaufmann , Berlin / Boston 2016, p. 15.
5. ↑ Aly Elrefaei: Wellhausen and Kaufmann: ancient Israel and its religious history in the works of Julius Wellhausen and Yehezkel Kaufmann , Berlin / Boston 2016, p. 17.
6. ↑ Aly Elrefaei: Wellhausen and Kaufmann: ancient Israel and its religious history in the works of Julius Wellhausen and Yehezkel Kaufmann , Berlin / Boston 2016, p. 19.
7. ↑ Thomas Krapf: The priestly script and the pre-exilic period: Yehezkel Kaufmann's neglected contribution to the history of the biblical religion . Friborg and Göttingen 1992, p. 14ff.
8. ^ Thomas Staubli: Yehezkel Kaufmann. The Bern years of a genius , Zurich 2014, p. 251.