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Before the Sixteenth Century

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The Jew and His History

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Abstract

Even if the predominant historiographical modes practised in Israel were the chain of rabbinic tradition and the messianic, it would be absurd and simplistic to assume that these two genres exhausted all historical interest. Such a view would overlook the chronicles of martyrology and persecution that began to appear from the earliest period of the Diaspora.1 This material does indeed embody a primary response to the major events affecting Jewish life, whether in Babylon, Spain, France or Germany, and constitutes also a reflection on those events.

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Notes

  1. In fact, Elias Tcherikower (‘Jewish Martyrology and Jewish Historiography’, Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, i, New York, 1946, 9–23)

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  2. A. N. Neubauer, Medieval Jewish Chronicles (repr. Amsterdam, 1970).

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  3. R. Ghazan, ‘R. Ephraim of Bonn’s Sefer Zekhira’, Revue des Etudes Juives, cxxxii (Jan-June 1973) fasc. 1–2. As a boy of thirteen R. Ephraim took refuge in the citadel of Wolkenburg near Cologne during the second crusade.

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  4. M. A. Shulvass, ‘Ha’Yedia b’Historiya ve’ha’Sifrut ha’historit bi’Tkhum ha’Tarbut shel ha’Yahadut ha’Ashkenazit bi’ymei ha’beinayim’, Sefer Ha’Yovel le’R. H. Albeck (Jerusalem, 1963) p. 465.

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  5. Ed. M. Grossberg (London, 1910); see also M. Steinschneider, Die Geschichtsliteratur der Juden (Frankfurt, 1905) p. 12, para. 11.

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  6. Collated and edited by Aaron Hyman (London, 1910); A. Spanier, Die Toseftaperiode in der tannaitischen Literatur (Berlin, 1936) pp. 5ff.

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  7. Edited by R. J. L. Ha’Cohen Maimon under the title Yehuse Tannaim Ve’ Amoraim (Jerusalem, 1963);

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  8. Mishneh Torah, Book i: Knowledge, ch. 1; Guide of the Per- plexed, iii, 29. See also S. W. Baron, History and Jewish Historians (Philadelphia, 1968) pp. 116ff.

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  9. Some of the reasons for this difference are examined in G. D. Cohen, ‘Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim’, Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture 9 (New York, 1967).

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  10. Torat Ha’Shem Temima, ed. A. Jellinek (Leipzig, 1853) pp. 30ff;

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  11. L. Stitskin, Judaism as a Philosophy (New York, 1960)

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  12. R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the Europeantradition of historical writing: 2. Hugh of St. Victor and the idea of historical development’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. xxi (1971) 159ff.

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  13. I. Elbogen, Abraham Ibn Daud als Geschichtsschreiber, Festschrift für Jakob Guttman (Leipzig, 1915) p. 187.

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  14. G. D. Cohen, op. cit., p. 288; see also I. Baer, Toldoth Ha’Yehudim bi’Sefarad Ha’Notzrit, 2nd ed., vol. i (Tel Aviv, 1965) pp. 38–9, and G. D. Cohen’s Messianic Postures, pp. 19ff.

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  15. Philippe Wolff, ‘The 1391 Pogrom in Spain-Social Crisis or not?’, Past and Present, no. 50 (Feb 1971).

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  16. Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, ‘Don Isaac Abrabanel: Financier, Statesman and Scholar’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Manchester, 1937)

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  17. Abraham Heschel, Don Yizchak Abrabanel (Berlin, 1937).

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  18. J. Sarachek, The Doctrine of the Messiah in Medieval Jewish Literature, 2nd ed. (New York, 1968), pp. 244ff.;

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  19. Jakob Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren des Isaak Abravanel (Breslau, 1916) pp. 99–100,

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  20. B. Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abrabanel (Philadelphia, 1968) pp. 245ff;

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  21. J. Rohr, ‘Die Prophetie im letzten Jahrhundert vor der Reformation als Geschichtsquelle und Geschichtsfaktor’, Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, xix, (Munich, 1898) pp. 29–56, 447–66.

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  22. Ateret Zekenim (Warsaw, 1894) p. 34. Abrabanel’s attitude to astrology is not clear. For a discussion cf. E. Shmueli, Don Yitzchak Abrabanel ve’Gerush Sepharad (Jerusalem, 1963) pp. 127ff. In any case it is clear that Israel’s good deeds could avert an unfavourable planetary conjunction (p. 132); see also Sarachek, op. cit., p. 297, and Guttman, op. cit., pp. 51ff.

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  23. See Leo Strauss’s remarks in Isaac Abrabanel, ed. Trend-Loewe (Cambridge, 1937) pp. 108–9.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, UK

    Lionel Kochan (Bearsted Reader in Jewish History)

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  1. Lionel Kochan
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© 1977 Lionel Kochan

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Kochan, L. (1977). Before the Sixteenth Century. In: The Jew and His History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02830-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02830-6_3

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-02832-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-02830-6

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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