Mendelssohn’s Bi'ur

Mendelssohn’s Bi'ur
Name	Mendelssohn’s Bi'ur
Caption	First edition
Author	Moses Mendelssohn
Language	German, Hebrew
Subject	Biblical translation and commentary
Published	1780s

Contents

Mendelssohn’s Bi'ur

Moses Mendelssohn produced a Hebrew-German translation and commentary known as the Bi'ur in the 1780s, part of the Haskalah movement and the Jewish Enlightenment. It intersected with figures and institutions across Prussia, Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Dresden, Königsberg, Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, and the broader European intellectual network, engaging readers familiar with Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Montesquieu, Edmund Burke, and institutions such as the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, University of Halle, University of Göttingen, University of Berlin, Leipzig University, and presses in Basel and Pest.

Background and Origins

Mendelssohn’s Bi'ur emerged during the late-18th-century Haskalah, responding to debates among maskilim including Naphtali Herz Wessely, Isaac Satanow, Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Leopold Zunz, Salomon Maimon, Aaron Worms, Daniel Itzig, Joseph Hertz, and patrons like David Friedländer and collectors such as Leopold Zunz. It was shaped by polemics against traditionalists exemplified by rabbis linked to communities in Frankfurt am Main, Lübeck, Cracow, Vilnius, Breslau, Kraków, and opponents in Zion, with contemporaneous resonance in debates involving Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Baron von Rothschild (Napoleonic era), Nathan Mayer Rothschild, and broader civic reforms advocated by figures in Prussia and the Austrian Empire. The project intersected with print culture in Berlin, where Mendelssohn collaborated with printers, booksellers, and Hebraists influenced by scholarship from Oxford University, Cambridge University, Sorbonne University, and the Royal Society.

Mendelssohn prepared a running German translation alongside a Hebrew commentary, engaging exegetical traditions of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Abravanel, Sforno, Targum Onkelos, Talmud Bavli, Midrash Rabbah, and the philological methods practiced by scholars in Paris, Leipzig, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Milan, Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Prague, Brno, Lviv, Odessa, Reval, Riga, and Copenhagen. The commentary adopted rationalist exegesis aligned with contemporaries such as Samuel David Luzzatto, Salomon Maimon, and critics like Johann Salomo Semler, while dialoguing with classical philologists including Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Ludwig Klüber, and August Wilhelm Schlegel. Mendelssohn’s approach echoed translators of sacred texts like Martin Luther, King James I, Alexandre Vinet, and Giovanni Battista Vico and paralleled studies in biblical criticism in institutions such as University of Halle-Wittenberg and University of Tübingen.

Mendelssohn employed classical Hebrew for the Bi'ur’s glosses and idiomatic German in the translation, influenced by grammarians and lexicographers including Wilhelm Gesenius, Elias Levita, Hayyim Joseph David Azulai, Elijah Levita, Johann Christoph Adelung, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He drew on manuscript traditions housed in collections such as the British Museum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Vatican Library, Library of Congress, and the Bodleian Library. The work engaged biblical editions by editors like Johann Jakob Griesbach, Johann David Michaelis, Richard Simon, Karl von Hase, Franz Delitzsch, Hermann Hupfeld, Wilhelm Vatke, and the emerging critical apparatus used by scholars at Leiden University and Utrecht University.

The Bi'ur provoked responses across religious and secular arenas involving figures such as Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, Rabbi Akiva Eiger, Rabbi Moses Sofer, Baruch Hurwitz, Eleazar of Worms, Isaac Samuel Reggio, Solomon Munk, Samuel Holdheim, Isaac Leeser, Leopold Zunz, Samuel Adler, and European intellectuals including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Alexander von Humboldt, and Johann Gottfried Herder. The translation shaped Jewish print culture in centers such as Vilna, Lemberg, Corfu, Salonika, Alexandria, Cairo, Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, Acre, and influenced educational programs at institutions like the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, and seminaries in New York and London.

Controversies focused on the Bi'ur’s perceived accommodation to Enlightenment thinkers including Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and critics within Orthodox leadership such as Rabbi Akiva Eger and communal authorities in Poznań, Vilnius, Lublin, Kraków, and Dubno. Critics ranged from traditionalists citing halakhic concerns linked to Shulchan Aruch authorities to liberal maskilim aligned with David Friedländer and Joseph Hertz, while Christian clergy and university scholars such as Johann Salomo Semler debated theological implications with Protestant and Catholic academics in Leipzig, Wittenberg, Erlangen, Munich, and Tübingen. Legal and civic responses involved debates in the legislatures of Prussia and the Austrian Empire over Jewish rights, with figures like Christian Wilhelm von Dohm referenced in public discourse.

Modern scholarship situates the Bi'ur within studies by historians and philologists including Salo Baron, Ismar Schorsch, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Jacob Katz, Gershom Scholem, David B. Ruderman, Shlomo Avineri, Haym Soloveitchik, Moshe Idel, D. S. Katz, Michael Brenner, Dalia Marx, Steven B. Smith, Israel Bartal, Adam Sutcliffe, Markus Brann, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Daniel Elazar, and researchers at institutions such as Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, Yad Vashem, The Jewish Museum Berlin, The National Library of Israel, The Wohl Library, The Leo Baeck Institute, The Center for Jewish History, The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and university presses in Princeton University, Harvard University, Cambridge University Press, and Yale University Press. Contemporary editions and digital humanities projects in Jerusalem, New York, London, Berlin, and Paris continue to reevaluate Mendelssohn’s methods in light of manuscript studies, reception history, and comparative theology, informing curricula at Columbia University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, School of Oriental and African Studies, and graduate seminars across Europe and North America.

Category:Jewish literature