Edward Breuer, Jews and the Challenges of Modern Biblical Criticism
When and Where
Speakers
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Shoshana Shier Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture Series
Edward Breuer (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Jews and the Challenges of Modern Biblical Criticism
Lecture 2: Cancel Culture or Victorian Prudence, or: Why You've Never Heard of England's Outstanding Jewish Bible Scholar
Biblical criticism often sparked controversy among Christians and Jews, pitting religious conservatism against scholars who were determined to use modern critical approaches to better understand the Hebrew Bible. The Jews of mid-Victorian England were determined to avoid any such public controversy, and in so doing, managed to erase the most learned Anglo-Jewish scholar from the annals of Jewish history.
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.