Beyond the Crisis in Pentateuchal Studies: Benno Jacob as Instigator for Modern Pentateuchal Exegesis
Final Report Abstract
The field of critical biblical studies, which explores the most important part of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch or Torah, the basic book of Judaism, is also its most difficult. The historical-critical study of the Pentateuch was dominated by Protestant scholars in the 19th century and reached its peak in the works of Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918). As a result of the differentiation of research after the Second World War, the consensus reached up to that point on important source theories (in particular documentary hypotheses) broke down, which is briefly referred to as the Pentateuch crisis. Other approaches, such as redaction criticism, canonical or workimmanent exegesis, which focus more on the final form of the biblical text and less on the reconstruction of sources, gained influence. In this context, the works of the important Jewish biblical scholar Benno Jacob (1862-1945), a contemporary of Wellhausen and one of the few representatives of "Wissenschaft des Judentums" who focused entirely on critical research into the Torah, were rediscovered or edited for the first time. What is special about Jacob's modernized Jewish pshat exegesis, i.e. the search for the simple meaning of the word, in the tradition and continuation of the great Jewish commentaries, is that it was located beyond the 'orthodox' rejection of biblical criticism, but also contradicted its uncritical reception (Wiese). It is now impossible to imagine research without Jacob's thousand-page Genesis commentary (1934/2000) and his equally monumental Exodus commentary (1997). This 'renaissance' of Jacob (Liss) includes, among other things, the cataloguing of his extensive estate and the start of a major edition. The aim of the DFG project "Jenseits der Pentateuchkrise: Benno Jacob als Impulsgeber für die aktuelle Pentateuchforschung" was to edit all relevant previously unknown Pentateuch studies from Jacob's estate in two project phases, corresponding to two edition volumes, and to introduce them into the modern research discourse through detailed commentaries. By including shorter fragments and preliminary studies, the aim was also to contribute to shedding light on Jacob's biography and to understanding his creative working process in dialogue with rabbinical literature. The first project volume, "Studien zur Thora", edits and comments on early Pentateuch studies that look at the changing names of God from different perspectives, which played an important role in the development of the document hypotheses, a literary study on Numbers 32, as well as manuscripts on Benno Jacob's exegetical methodology. The 400-page volume was published in 2021. The second volume of the project brings together manuscripts that relate to the sacrificial order (Lev 1-7) and shed light on the background to Jacob's major commentaries. The volume will be published in 2025.
Publications
-
Kult, Tora und Offenbarung. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 130(2), 268-281.
Gesundheit, Shimon
-
Zur Werkbiografie Benno Jacobs aus der Zeit vor seinen großen Kommentaren. Deutsch-jüdische Bibelwissenschaft, 215-232. De Gruyter.
Aurin, Hans-Christoph
-
Benno Jacob: Studien zur Thora, Calwer Verlag, Stuttgart 2021. 446 Seiten. ISBN: 987-7668-4507-8
Reinhard G. Kratz, Shimon Gesundheit, H.-Chr. Aurin & Till Magnus Steiner
-
Benno Jacob zu Levitikus. Eine Studie zu seinem Nachlass mit Edition des Manuskripts „Leviticus 17–20“, Tübingen 2022. ISBN: 987-3-16-161036-3
H.-Chr. Aurin
-
Researching the Estate of Benno Jacob. [Zu B. Jacobs Levitikusexegese im Hintergrund seiner Interpretation der Akeda (Gen 22)]. Beitrag auf der Benno Jacob Tagung am Taube Department of Jewish Studies der Universität Wrocław am 26.10.2022
H.-Chr. Aurin
-
Learning how to count in the Decalogue. Or: Modernizing Benno Jacob’s Literary Approach. Referat auf dem 12. EAJS Kongress in Frankfurt am 19.7.2023. Im Rahmen des Panels: The Legacy of the Biblical Scholarship of Benno Jacob, gemeinsam mit: Lieve M. Teugels (Amsterdam), Edward Skubisz (Wrocław). und Jan Willem van Henten (Amsterdam)
H.-Chr. Aurin
-
Benno Jacob als Impulsgeber für die Pentateuchforschung, in: Bibel und Kirche 79 (2024), S. 47–51
Shimon Gesundheit
