Samuel Hirsch and David Einhorn

110 chapter six CHAPTER SIX RELIGIONSWISSENSCHAFT AND EARLY REFORM JEWISH THOUGHT: SAMUEL HIRSCH AND DAVID EINHORN GERSHON GREENBERG The use of the newly available data of Religionswissenschaft by early Reform Jewish thinkers has been overlooked by scholarship in the field.1 Here I will open the subject for research by looking at the work of Samuel Hirsch (1815–1889) and David Einhorn (1809–1879).2 Their interest in data about ancient religions was at least in part apologetic. The philosophic systems of importance to early Reform, those of Hegel and Schelling, used the data to fortify Christocentric positions and challenged the likes of Einhorn and Hirsch to support Judaism-centered history. Neither Einhorn nor Hirsch drew from the primary texts of ancient religions, translated or otherwise. Hirsch relied on the scholarship 1 The exception appears to be Geiger; see Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judentum aufgenommen? (Bonn: F. Baaden, 1833); and Jacob Lassner, “Abra- ham Geiger: A Nineteenth-Century Jewish Reformer on the Origins of Islam,” in The Jewish Discovery of Islam, ed. Martin Kramer (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1999), 103–136. 2 On Hirsch see Emil Fackenheim, “Samuel Hirsch and Hegel,” in Jewish Phi- losophers and Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1996), 21–40; Gershon Greenberg, “The Historical Origins of God and Man: Samuel Hirsch’s Luxembourg Writings,” LBIYB 20 (1975), 129–148; Kenneth Koltun-Fromm, “Public Religion in Samson Raphael Hirsch and Samuel Hirsch’s Interpretation of Religious Symbolism,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 9 (1999), 69–105; Manfred Vogel, “Does Samuel Hirsch Anthropologize Religion?” Modern Judaism 1 (1981), 298–322; and Christian Wiese, “Von Dessau nach Philadelphia: Samuel Hirsch als Philosoph und Reformer,” in Jüdische Bildung und Kultur in Sachsen Anhalt, ed. Giuseppe Veltri and Christian Wiese (Berlin: Metropol, forthcoming). On Ein- horn see Gershon Greenberg, “The Significance of America in David Einhorn’s Conception of History,” AJHQ 63 (1973), 160–184; idem,“Mendelssohn in America: David Einhorn’s Radical Reform Judaism,” LBIYB 27 (1982), 281–293; Christian Wiese, “Samuel Holdheim’s ‘Strongest Comrade in Conviction’: David Einhorn and the Discussion on Jewish Universalism in the Radical Reform Movement,” in Re-defining Judaism in an Age of Emancipation: Comparative Perspectives on Samuel Holdheim, ed. Christian Wiese (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 306–373. book-wiese.indb 110 19-3-2007 15:40:12 samuel hirsch and david einhorn 111 of Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Rhode (1762–1827)—which did include lengthy portions of Johann Friedrich Kleuker’s translation of the Zend Avesta—and Peter Feddersen Stuhr (1787–1851). Einhorn drew from Friedrich Creuzer (1771–1858); and both Hirsch and Einhorn drew from Karl Christian Wilhelm Felix Bähr (1801–1874) and most likely (albeit without attribution) from Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860). Einhorn’s treatment was concise, some thirty pages in length. His citations were specific, and he continued his interest in ancient religions after he left Pesth for Baltimore in 1855. Hirsch’s treatment was lengthy, some three hundred pages, and while his citations of rabbinic sources were precise, his citations of Rhode, among others, were vague. He did not continue his interest in the data after he left Luxembourg for Philadelphia in 1866 (where he succeeded Einhorn at Reform Congregation Keneset Israel). They both employed a priori measurements for authentic religiosity, Hirsch from his teacher Karl Immanuel Nitzsch (1787–1868) and Einhorn from Franz Joseph Molitor (1779–1860). Of the various religions each dealt with, they both dealt with Hinduism, Buddhism, and the religions of Zoroaster and Egypt—and this article will focus on those religions. A. Hirsch 1. Nitzsch In introducing his major work, Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden (1841), Hirsch stated that he would be using the terminology of Karl Im- manuel Nitzsch, who had introduced him to the Wissenschaft of theology at the University of Bonn.3 In his System der Christlichen Lehre (first edition, 1829), Nitzsch wrote: 3 Hirsch studied Theological Morality, Christian Dogma, History of Dogma, Biblical Theology, and Encyclopedia of Theological Wissenschaften with the Bonn theologian Carl Immanuel Nitzsch; see Archiv, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; for Nitzsch, see Friedrich Schweitzer, “Kirche als Thema der praktischen Theologie: Carl Immanuel Nitzsch, sein wissenschaftstheoretisches Programm und dessen Zukunftsbedeutung,” ZThK 90 (1993), 71–86; Henning Theurich, Theorie und Praxis: Die Predigt bei Carl Immanuel Nitzsch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975); and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, “Carl Immanuel Nitzsch, 1787–1868,” in 150 Jahre Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn, 1818–1968: Evangelische Theologie (Bonn: Bouvier, 1968), 15–30. book-wiese.indb 111 19-3-2007 15:40:12.

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