Writing Jewish History: Ancient Judaism as a Political Problem in Central Europe at the Rise of the Nation State

Project Information

AJAPP

Grant agreement ID: 749628

DOI

10.3030/749628

Project closed

EC signature date 22 February 2017

Start date 1 September 2017

End date 31 August 2019

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 183 454,80

EU contribution

€ 183 454,80

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AJAPP (Writing Jewish History: Ancient Judaism as a Political Problem in Central Europe at the Rise of the Nation State)

Reporting period: 2017-09-01 to 2019-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project investigated the contested integration of an ancient Middle Eastern religion into the cultural imagination of modern Europe. The research scrutinized representations of ancient Judaism in the context of 19th-century political history. It focused on historiography written by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in the German-speaking lands. The goal was to understand how portraits of the past reflected the concerns and the conditions of modern times and, in turn, how these portraits impacted contemporaneous debates on national, cultural, and religious identity.

As regionalism, nationalism and right-wing extremism have risen in Europe, this project addressed a central problem on the local, international and global levels. It revealed how contemporary assumptions were inscribed on conceptions of the past – conceptions then deployed in discussions of the present. It analyzed how contemporaneous political difference and prejudice were manifest in representations of the ancient past, how boundaries were made in a shared religious tradition, and how identities of belonging were configured in regional entities. The 19th century is extremely important as it was a time when regions were negotiating their political relationships to one another, when public discourse was debating which communities had which stakes in and rights to the political realm and when the past was becoming contested territory for deciding who were insiders and outsiders in national identity.

The project had three principal objectives: (1) to determine the political values built into Prussian historicism and track their impact on ancient histories that incorporated Judaism; (2) to uncover the diversity of Jewish representations of the Jewish past and establish convergence with contemporary debates concerning assimilation; (3) to trace the contours in Austria and Bavaria of historical writing on antiquity in general and Judaism in particular and ascertain the incorporation of ancient Jews into a common Catholic narrative and within their different national profiles.

This research produced a number of results. The project showed how the national-political contingencies of the 19th century caused German Protestant classicists to marginalize ancient Judaism in the field of classics. In addition, it revealed how Christian scholars accepted empirical methods yet rejected their historical implications because of moral, historical, and aesthetic challenges to theological commitments. Further, it demonstrated how in this “age of history” Protestant interpreters portrayed Jewish antiquity as bereft of historical consciousness. Moreover, it unearthed how diagnostic features used by Jewish scholars to identify ancient Jewish texts and authors mapped onto the complex redefinition of Jewishness in the 19th century. Besides, it laid bare how forgotten Catholic intellectuals told a story of ancient Judaism that differed from those of liberal Protestants. Finally, it explicated the diverse constructions of ancient Jewish law in modern politics, culture, scholarship, aesthetics, and religion.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A number of conferences, workshops, and seminars were attended. Among them were the German History Research Group in Cambridge, the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, and the congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament. Participation in a two-week summer school for early-career researchers enhanced the research empirically and methodologically. Individual meetings were also held with colleagues across Europe to continue or begin collaboration.

A website was created to announce presentations, publications, and events. It also shared its collection of digitized sources to support research by others. During the life of the grant, it had 684 sessions, 353 users, and 2,110 pageviews. The host institution has kept the website active beyond the funding period.

The project also organized a successful workshop. The event explored how understandings of biblical law impacted discussions of legal structures, models, and institutions amidst the consolidation of German states in the 19th century and how that modern discourse affected understandings of ancient law.

Findings were disseminated through oral presentations at a variety of seminars, workshops, and conferences. Academic presentations were delivered in Basel, Boston, Cambridge, Coimbra, Ghent, Leiden, and Oxford. A public talk was given at the Woolf Institute, a center devoted to outreach on relations between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The project also organized its international and interdisciplinary workshop with support from the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, a platform for religious literacy and public education.

Throughout the 24 months of research, the project produced publications to disseminate its results across a range of disciplinary constellations. A total of 5 articles and 1 book are now published, forthcoming, under peer-review, or in final preparation.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project pushed beyond the state of the art. The research design defined new parameters for analysis. First, the project selected sources that revealed important diversity in the historiography of Jewish antiquity. Not only did the inquiry counteract a tendency to essentialize work as typically Christian or Jewish, but it also rediscovered key Catholic texts and authors long forgotten. Second, the research widened the geographical scope for historical writing. By bringing Austria and Bavaria into view, it counterbalanced a tendency to equate specifically Prussian historical work with either German or German Christian scholarship as a whole. Third, the project expanded the chronological horizon with a stress on the early 19th century. It thus underscored the rise of new theories, methods, and interpretative trends that consolidated in the late 19th century. Fourth, the research foregrounded the political representations of ancient Judaism. This approach moved beyond the frequent focus on ethnic, social, or religious aspects and foregrounded the contemporary political concerns that impacted constructions of Jewish antiquity. Finally, the project emphasized the mutual shaping of antiquity and modernity. While religious and political transformations of the 19th century impacted representations of the ancient world, these representations also became sources for those same transformations in modern history.

Beyond the new analytical framework and the specific results, the project yielded methodological contributions. It showed the insights gained from sources seldom considered by contemporary historians. Additionally, it demonstrated the importance of inquiry into roads abandoned in the history of scholarship. Further, it exposed how much contemporary research echoes the claims of its own sources from the 19th century.

The research offered wider lessons on the nature of history-writing. The project illustrated the malleability of the past: the problems it posed and the solutions it offered. The inquiry also elucidated the diverse, oft contradictory applications of the ancient world for debates over modern politics, culture, and religion. The examination shed light, too, on the subtle theological dimensions of allegedly neutral empirical research on antiquity. The research further illumined the deeply ambivalent place of ancient Judaism and the Middle East in the historical imagination of modern Europe.

Portraits of Theodor Mommsen, Leopold Zunz, and Ignaz Döllinger

Front of project conference program (full PDF could not be uploaded)

Conference poster, Cambridge Inter-faith Programme

Histories by Carl Grysar, Eduard Meyer, and Heinrich Graetz