THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS SCHOOL AND THE JEWS—AN HISTORICAL TURN? The History of Religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) both was and was not an historical turn with regard to the picture of the Jews. While some of its proponents more or less furthered the idealistic historiography found as early as in Semler into the twentieth century, new approaches and fi ndings paved the way for new ways of doing exegesis. The school marked—or wished to mark—an historical turn in the understanding of Christianity: “Religion is history” was the slogan, formulated by one of its fathers, Bernhard Duhm (1847–1928).1 And if religion was history, Christianity could not be understood apart from the religious matrix in which it developed. This pertained not least to Judaism. The confession of the History of Religions school was that New Testament studies were part of the historical sciences;2 this approach meant that instead of only seeing the New Testament and earliest Christianity in relation to the Old Testament, all contemporary literary material should be taken into consideration. And new materials changed the picture of Judaism, especially the fi ndings and publish- ing of Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The fi rst translation of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha by Kautsch, for example, was only published in 1898. The name ‘Religionsgeschichtliche Schule’ may imply more of a unifi ed school, as well as more about what the various ‘members’ stood for, than what is the case.3 The majority of these people were 1 Özen, “Die Göttinger Wurzeln der ‘Religionsgeschichtlichen Schule’ ”, 32–33. 2 Wiese, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutsch- land. Ein Schrei ins Leere?, 141 n. 38 quoting Bousset. 3 On the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, see Gerd Lüdemann, “Die Religionsge- schichtliche Schule”, in Theologie in Göttingen. Eine Vorlesungsreihe, ed. Bernd Moeller, Göttinger Universitätsschriften (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), Lüdemann and Schröder, Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule in Göttingen, Gerd Lüdemann, “Die ‘Religionsge- schichtliche Schule’ und die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft”, in Die “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”. Facetten eines theologischen Umbruchs, ed. Gerd Lüdemann, Studien und Texte zur Religionsgeschichtlichen Schule (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), Gert Lüdemann and Alf Özen, “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997). Lüdemann notes that it is not easy to place their exegetical principles under one common denominator, Lüdemann, “Die ‘Religionsgeschichtliche 144 part i. enlightenment exegesis and the jews also part of the ‘kleine Göttinger Fakultät’ (small Göttingen faculty), a group that was more or less infl uenced by Albrecht Ritschl.4 At the outset, the History of Religions school was predominantly a movement within New Testament studies.5 It became infl uential through its many publications in particular,6 with many important religious texts being edited and published. The ideas of the school also became infl uential through some of the second-generation scholars that were indebted to the school. Although Rudolf Bultmann would later break with ‘liberal theology’ and the History of Religions school, the structures of his work are to a great extent based on its approach and fundaments. Two representatives of the school deserve special attention due to their work on Jews and Judaism in relation to the New Testament: Wilhelm Bousset for his book on the religion of the Jews, and Johannes Weiss for his attempt to place Jesus in his religio-historical background. Schule’ und die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft”, 9. See also Carsten Colpe, Die reli- gionsgeschichtliche Schule. Darstellung und Kritik ihres Bildes vom gnostischen Erlösermythus, vol. 78, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testamentes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), with his profound insider criticism of the school and its methods. On the origin of the name, see Lüdemann, “Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”, 335–336. 4 The names most often included in the school are Wilhelm Bousset, Albert Eich- horn, Hermann Gunkel, Ernst Troeltsch, Johannes Weiss, William Wrede, Heinrich Hackmann, and later also Rudolf Otto and Wilhelm Heitmüller; earlier Alfred Rahlfs, too, is included, see Lüdemann, “Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”, 325. Özen, “Die Göttinger Wurzeln der ‘Religionsgeschichtlichen Schule’ ”, 23–24. Rahlfs’s main interest would, however, become the Septuagint studies, Lüdemann, “Die Religionsge- schichtliche Schule”, 330 n. 32. 5 Apart from the church historian Eichhorn, all members of the school, including Gunkel, were New Testament scholars, and the dominant issue was how to understand the New Testament against the background of neighbouring religions. The high lin- guistic and historical competence of the school and its teachers, e.g. Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891), Julius Wellhausen and Ulrich Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, contributed to its success. See A. F. Verheule, Wilhelm Bousset. Leben und Werk. Ein theologiegeschichtlicher Versuch (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Ton Bolland, 1973), 306. 6 E.g. Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG), the Göttinger Bibelwerk commentary series, the Religionsgeschichtlichen Volksbücher, published for the purpose of addressing vital questions pertaining to religion in an uncompromising manner. The scholarly series Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (FRLANT), as well as the journals Theologische Rundschau and Christliche Welt, also belonged to the publications that emanated from the school. See Nittert Janssen, “Popularisierung der theologischen Forschung. Breitenwirkung durch Vorträge und ‘gemeinverständliche’ Veröffentlichun- gen”, in Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule in Göttingen, ed. Gerd Lüdemann and Martin Schröder (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987). These publications could be vehemently criticised, Klaus Berger, “Nationalsoziale Religionsgeschichte. Wilhelm Bousset 1865–1920”, in Profi le des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1993), 281..