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Semitic Philology and the Wissenschaft Des Judentums

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Semitic Philology and the Wissenschaft Des Judentums philological encounters � (�0�7) �96-3�0 brill.com/phen Semitic Philology and the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Revisiting Leopold Zunz’s Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur (1818) Elizabeth Eva Johnston Kingsborough Community College [email protected] Abstract The article begins with a brief sketch of the beginnings of Semitics and the Wissenschaft des Judentums, highlighting the theological roots of the former and the relation of each to Jewish emancipation in Prussia. The second section presents a close reading of Leopold Zunz’s Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur (1818), a text that initiates the Wissenschaft des Judentums, and highlights several aspects of the work: the tension Zunz grapples with between rabbinic rupture and Jewish continuity, the former of which dominates; the contemporaneous use of “our science” and the relation between knowledge and the power it asserts; and the theological foundations of the program he proposes. It then looks at Zunz’s later writings, emphasizing the continuity of his thought and how he revises some of his earlier views. In closing, the article speculates as to why Zunz did not engage the field of Semitics. Keywords Leopold Zunz – Wissenschaft des Judentums – semitics – emancipation – Christian Hebraism – orientalism * An earlier version of this article was presented at the conference “Semitic Philology within European Intellectual History,” held in Berlin in 2013, and organized by the pro- gram “Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship” at the Forum Transregionale Studien, where I was a postdoctoral fellow at the time. I would like to thank the program for the opportunity and means to develop this piece. Additionally, I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided very thoughtful, critical feedback on an earlier draft and helped me to revise the essay. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/�45�9�97-��Downloaded3400�9 from Brill.com09/29/2021 09:31:23AM via free access Semitic Philology and the Wissenschaft des Judentums 297 I The Beginnings of Semitistik and the Wissenschaft des Judentums The fields of Semitistik (i.e., the comparative study of Semitic languages) and the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism)—two nineteenth- century, historical-philological disciplines—are examples of the “new” or particularly “modern” science of philology, an attribute of the more recent age.1 What makes these fields modern? Do they connect to each other, and if so, how? Among what distinguishes the modern field of Semitics as it took shape over the nineteenth century, is not the idea of a genealogical relationship between Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic—Jewish grammarians had written on this in the Middle Ages, as had Christians in Europe from the sixteenth century—but, rather, how this newly named family becomes articulated, theorized, histori- cized, investigated, and compared to others, most notably the “Indo-European.” Before “Semitic” languages were named as such, they were grouped together among “Oriental” languages. Hebrew, as a language of Scripture, was of long- standing importance to the Church. However, it was only from the late fifteenth century, in the context of Renaissance humanism, that Christian scholars began to take an increased interest in learning Hebrew.2 In the Reformation Era, the desire and need for Hebrew knowledge greatly increased as Protestant theologians returned to the biblical text in order to critique Church dogma and authority. University curricula quickly incorporated Hebrew study, and soon after its cognate languages (e.g., Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopian languages), because these too could help clarify the “Old Testament.” In this way, learning Oriental languages became requisite for one’s pursuit of Christian theological studies. With the Age of Enlightenment and an increased interest in the Near East, the study of Oriental languages took shape as a field in its own right, and became no longer only ancillary to biblical studies. With this, Hebrew’s central position as the oldest or most paradigmatic member of the family was increas- ingly disputed, as was its antiquity and privileged proximity to the Ursprache. Other languages—both Oriental and European—were argued to be more ancient.3 1 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 113-197; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970). 2 Stephen G. Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1660) (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 11-22. 3 Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 1-13. philological encounters 2 (2017) 296-320 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 09:31:23AM via free access 298 johnston Developments occurred as the nineteenth-century field of Semitics con- nected to eighteenth-century ideas about languages, nations, and the bible. In 1710, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) expressed a conception of the world’s language families that would become widespread a century later. Leibniz compared languages across Asia and Europe and concluded that these descended from a common source, which he then called “Japhetic.” He linked this tongue to one of Noah’s three sons, and distinguished it from what was spoken by the descendants of Shem and Ham, whose languages, he posited, formed a different family.4 By the mid-eighteenth century, the idea that languages shape nations and nations shape languages had become prevalent, as reflected in an essay com- petition from 1757 on the topic “What is the reciprocal influence of the opin- ions of a people on the language and of the language on the opinions?” The biblical scholar Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791) wrote the prize-winning essay, Dissertation on the Influence of Opinions on Language, and of Language on Opinions (1759), which treats language as a human archive. The Dissertation examines how a people’s characteristics contribute to the “relative richness or poverty” of its language, and presents a more perfect language as one better able to advance knowledge.5 Towards the last quarter of the century, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) challenged Michaelis’s hierarchical view in his On the Origin of Language (1772), which argues that no language is more or less natural, or more or less perfect, than any other. Responding to Michaelis’s view that language’s role is to advance universal knowledge, Herder claims language is “more than an instrument”; it is, first and foremost, an expression of a people’s inner spirit.6 Both Herder’s romantic position and Michaelis’s enlightenment one would influence nineteenth-century philologists. Of the two, Herder was the far greater influence on Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), a figure widely acclaimed as the founder of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, even if Michaelis’s own work arguably connects more directly to the beginnings of Semitics. It is no coinci- dence that Michaelis taught the two men who would give the field its name, the historian and polymath Ludwig Schlözer (1735-1809), and the theologian and comparative philologist Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1753-1827). From as 4 Martin F. J. Baasten, “A Note on the History of ‘Semitic,’ ” in Hamlet on a Hill: Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. M. J. F. Baasten and W. Th. Van Peursen (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 59-61. 5 Tuska Benes, In Babel’s Shadow: Language, Philology, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 30-34. 6 Ibid., 40-46. philological encountersDownloaded from 2 Brill.com09/29/2021(2017) 296-320 09:31:23AM via free access Semitic Philology and the Wissenschaft des Judentums 299 early as 1771, “Semitic” and “Semites” were used to refer to a people, but not yet to the language they spoke.7 In 1781, Schlözer suggested “die Semitische” as a name for what “Semites” spoke back when the nations that descended from Noah’s son Shem (e.g., Syrians, Babylonians, Hebrews, and Arabs) were still one people.8 As Leibniz had done before him, Schlözer derived the name from the table of nations in Genesis 10. “Semitic” gained greater acceptance as a technical, scientific term through Eichhorn’s extensive efforts, from his influ- ential Einleitung ins Alte Testament (1787) to his essay on “Semitic Languages” (1795), in which he advocates using the new name.9 By the turn of the century its use was widespread. Even though the “Semitic” language family was known long before the “Indo- European,” one cannot discuss nineteenth-century Semitics without also ad- dressing Indo-European studies (or “Indo-Germanic” or “Aryan”—depending on time, place, and author). Both fields develop out of the early modern field of Oriental languages, with its roots in Christian Hebraism, and their trajectories remain connected, even when they diverge.10 In the nineteenth century, they shared a focus on origins, and used philological science to trace and recon- struct humanity’s language(s) and development back as far as linguistic data and the imagination could legitimate.11 At the turn of the century a romance with India was on the rise among German romantics, thanks in large part to Friedrich Schlegel’s (1772-1829) pop- ular Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808).12 Schlegel’s work did two 7 Baasten, “History of the ‘Semitic,’ ” 66-67, 67n35. 8 A. L. Schlözer, “Von den Chaldäern,” Repertorium für biblische und morgenländische Litteratur 8 (1781), 161. 9 Baasten, “History of the ‘Semitic,’ ” 68. 10 Even after academic appointments increasingly split into “Semitic Languages” or “Sanskrit and Comparative [Indo-European] Grammar” by the mid-nineteenth century, a philolo- gist’s training was likely to include Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Arabic. Thus, Indologists were in a position to engage the field and findings of Semitics, and vice versa.
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