Edward Breuer, Jews and the Challenges of Modern Biblical Criticism
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Speakers
Description
Shoshana Shier Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture Series
Edward Breuer (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Jews and the Challenges of Modern Biblical Criticism
Lecture 1: Was Spinoza Really the Father of Modern Biblical Criticism?
It is often asserted that Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise played an early foundational role in the development of the modern historical-critical study of the Hebrew Bible. This lecture will examine that assertion, with an eye to gaining a proper understanding of the development of this field of scholarship.
Edward Breuer, a native of Montreal, Canada, studied at Concordia University and then received his MA and doctorate in Jewish intellectual history at Harvard. After teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and Loyola University Chicago, he and his family moved to Israel; he has been teaching at the Hebrew University since 2004. He has written extensively on Moses Mendelssohn, including a volume of translations of his Hebrew writings. His current long-term project, a collaboration with Marc Brettler (a Bible scholar at Duke University), is an examination of the Jewish reception of modern critical scholarship on the Bible.