The study of “Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins” has roots in multiple scholarships and experiences.

The first scholars who during the Renaissance “rediscovered” ancient Judaism in dialogue with ancient Christianity, wrote in Latin and were part of an international philosophical movement of self-defined “Christian Cabbalists” who looked at post-biblical Jewish literature as a living source of ancient wisdom. Among them were the Italian Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) and Aegidius of Viterbo (1470-1532), the German Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), and the Frenchman Guillaume Postel (1510-1581). They were in touch, and often in conversation, with Jewish authors, such as Elia Del Medigo (c.1458-c.1493), Abraham ben Samuel Zacuto (c.1450-c.1510), Solomon Ibn Verga (1460-1524), and  Samuel Usque (16th cent.).

This new interest in post-biblical Jewish sources deeply influenced the beginnings of the Reformation. In 1523 Martin Luther (1483-1546)  offered the first theological reflection on the Jewishness of Jesus (Dass Jesu Christus ein geborner Jude sei), while in 1548 Paul Eber (1511-1569), a close friend of Philipp Melanchthon, wrote the first modern history of  the Jews “a reditu ex Babylonico exilio usqu’ad ultimum excidium Hierosolymae.”

The anti-Jewish invectives of the old Luther (Von den Juden und ihren Lügen, 1543) and Pope Paul IV’s document Cum nimis absurdum (1555) interrupted this brief period of dialogue and made the dream of a philosophical synthesis between Judaism and Christianity collapse in the midst of repression and religious intolerance. The tradition of polemical treatises, in which ancient post-biblical Jewish sources were “exposed” and “unmasked” as to reveal their “falsity” and “treachery,” would continue for centuries in the works of Pietro Colonna Galatino (Petrus Galatinus, 16th cent.), Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633-1705), Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (1654-1704), and Paolo Medici (1671-1738).

The call for making the knowledge of ancient Judaism part of the intellectual discourse, together with the study of Latin and Greek cultures, did not vanish, however. In spite of any imposed restrictions, works of Jewish scholars, such as David ben Solomon Gans (1541-1613), Leone Modena (1571-1648), and Jehiel ben Solomon Heilprin (1660-1746), continued to be published and read throughout Europe.

A new generation of Christian Hebraists carried the torch. Bonaventura Corneille Bertram (1531-1594) and Johann Buxtorf  (1564-1629) in Switzerland, John Selden (1584-1654) and Edward Pococke (1604-1691) in England, Carlo Sigonio (1524-1584) and Giulio Bartolocci (1613-1687) in Italy, Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633-1705), Campegius Vitringa (1659-1722) and Johann Christoph Wolf (1683-1739) in Germany, Gustav Peringer (1651-1710) in Sweden, and Adrian Reland (1676-1718) in Flanders, dedicated their lives to the study of ancient Jewish customs, religion and laws. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Johann Albert Fabricius (1668-1740) collected the material from Second Temple Judaism in the first edition of “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” (Codex pseudepigraphicus Veteris Testamenti, 1713-23).

Contemporaneously to the process of their “rediscovery,” Jewish post-biblical sources began gradually to be used to gain a better understanding of the New Testament. Johann Clemens Drusius (1550-1616), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), and Christopher Cartwright (1602-1658) were the avant-garde of a new exegetical trend that found its first landmark in 1658-74 with the publication of the Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae by John Lightfoot (1602-1675)

The work of the international movement of Christian Hebraists was seminal to the emergence of the first “national” schools in the eighteenth century, when with the Enlightenment Latin began to be replaced by vernacular languages and national States took their shape in Europe.

First it was the French. By preparing his monumental work of ecclesiastical history, in Les moeurs des Israélites Claude Fleury (1640-1723) described, with dignity and respect, the rituals, habits, artifacts, and social structure of ancient Jews. In 1706 Jacques Basnage (1653-1723) composed the first history of modern Jews “depuis Jésus Christ jusqu’à present,” and Augustin Calmet (1672-1757) applied the new appreciation of Jewish sources to the study of the Old and New Testament.

Then it was the English. In 1716-18, by “connecting the Old and New Testament in the history of the Jews,” Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724) created the field of “intertestamental Judaism” and provided the first comprehensive introduction to the period “for it may serve as an epilogue to the Old Testament in the same manner as a prologue to the New.”  In 1718 William Wotton (1666-1727) embarked upon the first attempt to describe “the traditions and usages of the Scribes and Pharisees,” that is, Judaism “in our Saviour Jesus Christ’s time.”

Next, German scholarship entered the frame. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), August Friedrich Gfrörer (1803-1862), and Heinrich Ewald (1803-1875) are only the first in a long line of scholars who established what would become known in the nineteenth century not only as the most respected national school in Second Temple Judaism but the one that more systematically brought to completion the establishment of the field of Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte.

In the nineteenth century an American and an Italian school in Second Temple Judaism also joined the international arena. In America its origins can be traced back to the activity of newly established Theological Seminaries: Archibald Alexander (1772-1851) was the first principal of Princeton Theological Seminary, and Enoch Pond (1791-1882) professor at Bangor Theological Seminar. On the other hand, in Italy the interest in Second Temple Judaism first developed in secular settings through the works of Aurelio Bianchi-Giovini (1779-1862) and Raffaele Mariano (1840-1912) before influencing the birth of the modernist movement of Salvatore Minocchi (1869-1943).

Since the emancipation, Jewish scholars contributed to the formation of the many national schools—Peter Beer (1758-1838) and Solomon Loewinsohn (1789-1821) in Austria, Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860), Levi Herzfeld (1810-1884), Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) and Heinrich Hirsh Graetz (1817-1891) in Germany, Joseph Salvador (1796-1873), Salomon Munk (1803-1867) and Joseph Derenbourg (1811-1895) in France, Morris Jacob Raphall (1798-1868) and Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900) in the United States, Solomon Schechter (1847-1915) in England, Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865) and Elia Benamozegh (1823-1900) in Italy, and many others.

By the early twentieth century, in spite of the influence of rampant anti-Semitism, we can talk of an established multinational (and multi-religious) movement of scholars devoted to the study of post-biblical Judaism in connection with Christian origins: Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855-1938), and Charles Guignebert (1867-1939) in France, Emil Schürer (1844-1910), Wilhelm Bousset (1865-1920), and Ismar Elbogen (1874-1943) in Germany, R.H. Charles (1855-1931), Claude Montefiore (1858-1938), and R. Travers Herford (1860-1950) in England, George F. Moore (1851-1931), Charles F. Kent (1867-1925), and Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953) in the United States, Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo (1883-1970), Umberto Cassuto (1883-1951) and Giuseppe Ricciotti (1890-1964) in Italy, and many others. With the rise of Zionism and the pioneering work of Joseph Klausner (1874-1958) and Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) came also the emergence of an Israeli national school at the newly founded Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

After World War II, the desire for a reappraisal between Judaism and Christianity after the tragedy of the Holocaust as well as the discoveries of the Nag-Hammadi library and the Dead Sea Scrolls prompted an unprecedented interest in the field. The generation of Louis Filkenstein (1895-1991), André Dupont-Sommer (b.1900), Gerard von Rad (1901-1971), Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987), Matthew Black (1908-1994), Samuel Sandmel (1911-1978), Annie Jaubert (1912-1980), Bruce Metzger (1914-2007), Morton Smith (1915-1991), Alejandro Diez Macho (1916-1984), Yigael Yadin (1917-1984), David Flusser (1917-2000), Josef Milik (1922-2006), and many other distinguished specialists, laid the foundation for the contemporary flourishing of studies.

The picture would not be complete without mentioning the important contributions given in more recent years by new national schools, which after the end of the Cold War have rapidly (re)joined the chorus from Central and Eastern Europe, while current interesting developments make South America, Oceania, Africa and Asia the next frontiers for Second Temple Jewish studies.

The most dramatic consequence of this explosion of nationalities and languages involved in the field, on one hand, and of the information revolution that has cut down the time of communication to instantaneous, on the other hand, is the current emergence of English as the “new Latin,” the new international language of scholarship. This phenomenon has accelerated the possibilities of exchange and interaction among scholars, but has also raised the challenge of how the past, present and future diversity of national schools can be preserved and integrated.

The goal of the Enoch Seminar is not assimilation to a unified model that annuls diversity, but rather integration, dialogue and mutual respect. The biggest challenge is, on one hand, to preserve the distinctive traits and identity of our national schools even when expressing ourselves in international English, and on the other hand, to share our diversity within the international community and give finally to the study of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins the place it deserves as an autonomous field of research.  

                                                                                    Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan
October 2007