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Georg Lorenz Bauer (1755–1806) is known for coining the term »historical-critical« and writing one of the first works of Old Testament theology, but he is hardly remembered for publishing what is arguably the first independent work of Old Testament ethics. His two-volume Biblische Moral des Alten Testaments (1803) still ranks among the most extensive publications on the subject. This article situates Bauer's work within the history of OT ethics research, arguing that it was the first of its kind, while providing an overview of its contents, methodology, and reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short introduction presents the background context from which this special issue originated. It briefly sketches how the Dutch Spinoza Society (Vereniging het Spinozahuis) organized two conferences, one in 1997 and one in 2023, with an increasing focus on reflecting on the spreading of Spinoza’s thought in different countries. The papers published here are mostly derived from the 2023 conference, although they are continuous with the longer-term project already initiated in 1997.

George Finlay was a British gentlemen and philhellene, resident in Greece in the mid-nineteenth century. His journals, letters, library and antiquities now reside at the British School at Athens, collections that provide a wealth of information both about Finlay himself and about the world of his contemporaries. This paper looks at two episodes from Finlay's life as preserved in his archive, documenting two overseas travels: the first is a tour around Egypt, Jerusalem and the Near East in 1845 and 1846, and the second is a series of repeat visits to Switzerland beginning in 1859 and continuing in the late 1860s. By looking at Finlay's itineraries and at the activities he undertook in Egypt and Switzerland, and by analysing what and how Finlay chose to document in his notebooks, the aim of this paper is to understand more about Finlay's motivations for travel and his intellectual formation. While Finlay's time in the Near East was likely spurred by the recent publication of handbooks and by a developing fashion for (biblical) tourism, his time in Switzerland coincided with the flurry of excitement from recent excavations of the Swiss lake villages, allowing Finlay to re-engage an interest in prehistory that he had long since developed. In each case, Finlay's social connections and his networks played a large part in directing his programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the classical scholar Nicola Festa (1866-1940) outlined a fascisticized account of Renaissance humanism in a series of lectures later published as his Umanesimo (1935). It specifically examines Festa's treatment of the role of Byzantine Greek scholars in Italian humanism. Fascism's preoccupation with romanità and italianità implied a cultural anxiety over indebtedness to cultures regarded as foreign, un-Roman, and un-Italian. Greek language and culture posed a specific challenge as they had traditionally been regarded as both foreign and familiar to Italy's national culture. This paper analyzes Festa's response to this friction in his discussion of the Greek presence in Italian humanism, demonstrating how he dissociated the 'Romans' of Byzantium from the 'true' Italian representatives of humanism. The case study sheds some light on the understudied ways in which non-Italian influences could be negotiated in fascisticized accounts of Italian culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study makes available for the first time five previously unknown letters from Gershom Scholem to Abraham Joshua Heschel, sent between 1940 and 1953. A contextualizing introduction precedes a transcription and annotated English translation of the original Hebrew letters. The letters printed here, along with two more from Heschel to Scholem that remain unpublished due to copyright issues, trace an arc of scholarly interaction that begins with gestures toward overlapping historical interest and ends with the silent acknowledgment of a methodological and more broadly intellectual distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soon to celebrate his centennial year, Michael Loewe is certainly the most eminent Han historian today. Without his numerous publications—including not only such foundational reference works as The Biographical Dictionary of Qin and Western Han and Early Chinese Texts but also a wide range of more specialized studies—it is hard to imagine how the once-neglected field of Han history could have garnered such respect among scholars in allied fields in Euro-America and abroad. In these introductory remarks, we reflect on Michael Loewe's distinguished contributions to the field of early Chinese history over several decades and his extraordinary record as teacher. We draw special attention to several ways in which Professor Loewe's work continues to challenge such outdated and anachronistic paradigms as "Confucianism," and we note the careful ways he correlates received, "found," and excavated sources. We conclude the introduction with a set of reflections situating Professor Loewe as teacher within a distinguished Sinological lineage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The summary deals with the different approaches of Richard Lepsius and Christian Carl Josias Bunsen regarding Egyptian history. Although Lepsius is often considered the "founder" of Egyptology, he actually had less influence on the development of the discipline than previously assumed. Bunsen had a more lasting influence on Lepsius, and both scholars initially worked together but had disagreements regarding chronology. Despite their differences, both recognized the importance of Egyptian monuments for establishing a chronology. Lepsius called for an investigation of an alleged manuscript by Uranios but had doubts about its authenticity himself. Despite the controversy, Lepsius' contribution to Egyptology is undeniable as he established a solid chronological foundation. [Extracted from the article]

Medieval Scandinavian Studies started emerging as a discipline in the 19th century, at a time when Old Norse literature had become an important source both for the reconstruction of an alleged Germanic worldview, and the substantiation of national political claims. Scholars in the early 20th century consolidated this view, and thereby even coined public ideas of a Germanic past that became influential in the reception of the Middle Ages in general. To the present day, the popular fascination with these Middle Ages thus is strongly informed by Old Norse sources, and a wealth of recent adaptations seem to perpetuate this view. However, the same sources, as well as earlier scholarship, are used by extremist groups to substantiate populist and racist claims. Scholars in Medieval Scandinavian Studies find themselves at the intersection of these conflicting and yet connected spheres of appropriation. Their task to take a stance in this situation is all the more challenging as the international field struggles with cutbacks of budgets, study programs, and institutes. The present special issue seeks to bring together current opinions on this ambivalent state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sebastian Tengnagel was the court librarian of the Imperial Library in Vienna from 1608 until his death in 1636. At the same time, he was an active member of the Republic of Arabic Letters, the circle of European scholars devoted to acquiring and disseminating knowledge of the Orient in early modern Europe. The Austrian National Library holds two groups of texts that can help us understand the complexity of his intellectual endeavours: the corpus of manuscript letters describing his work as an Orientalist and as a librarian, and the collection of Oriental manuscripts built up by Tengnagel. The two sources must be studied together, because each sheds light on the other. Only by interlinking them can we attempt to answer the crucial questions: how and why, in early 17th-century Vienna, did one become an Orientalist? What were the ‘tools of the trade’? This paper is a survey of this material, based upon the interdisciplinary project The Oriental Outpost of the Republic of Letters. Sebastian Tengnagel (d. 1636), the Imperial Library in Vienna, and Knowledge of the Orient carried out at the University of Vienna at the Department of Near East Studies and the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. Through specific case studies it shows how it is possible to reconstruct both the provenance and trajectories of certain books, and the stories of those who carried or studied them.

Popular music scholars generally agree that the popular music studies discipline emerged between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s in Western Europe and North America, mainly on the initiative of young sociologists, and that it focuses primarily on modern pop-rock music. Many academics from the former Eastern bloc countries share this narrative. Consequently, the history of popular music's systematic exploration in this region remains largely unknown. Recent years, however, have witnessed growing interest in the history of popular music research in East-Central Europe, as shown by a few (Czech, Slovakian, Polish, and Hungarian) texts, albeit focusing exclusively on local issues. The present study is the first to deal with the history of popular music research between 1918 and 1998 in a wider Central European context, and the Czech lands and Hungary in particular. It provides a detailed analysis of an extensive collection of Czech and Hungarian sources (archival materials and published texts of both an academic and non-academic nature - monographs, individual studies, articles in popular music magazines, and so on). It aims to show the specifics of theoretical reflection on popular music in both states and the manner and extent of the contacts between the respective scholarly communities in light of developments in popular music and cultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new account of the origins of the Synoptic Problem in the late eighteenth century. It shows that the Problem first arose in the context of the long debate about whether Matthew had written in Aramaic (as the earliest Christian sources had maintained) or in Greek (the modern scholarly consensus). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the debate became confessionalised, with Catholics adopting the former position and Protestants the latter. Surprisingly, the Catholic position triumphed in eighteenth-century Germany, above all due to its propagation by Johann David Michaelis. As part of his argument, Michaelis resuscitated and revised the ancient claim that a version of the Aramaic Matthew had been found in India. His conclusions were widely accepted, and directly inspired the numerous speculations on the composition of the Synoptic Gospels by German theologians and scholars in the 1780s and 1790s. What is now the best-known solution, that of Johann Jakob Griesbach, was in fact highly idiosyncratic in rejecting the existence of an Aramaic ur-gospel. Moreover, all the solutions were informed by historico-theological assumptions and composed with an apologetic purpose in mind: often, they were designed to counter the anti-Christian arguments of Hermann Samuel Reimarus. Biblical philology had not emancipated itself from theology. The article also reveals the earliest known stemmatic diagram in the history of Western scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the creation and impact of book "Luther for Our Time" by Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider. It mentions selections of Luther's texts prepared in response by the more conservative Protestants Friedrich Perthes and Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent and the ultramontane Catholics Nikolaus Weis and Andreas Räß. It also mentions actual use of reformers and their broad reception by various readers, as well as shed new light on the polemics of the early nineteenth century.

Copyright of Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Medieval Scandinavian Studies started emerging as a discipline in the 19th century, at a time when Old Norse literature had become an important source both for the reconstruction of an alleged Germanic worldview, and the substantiation of national political claims. Scholars in the early 20th century consolidated this view, and thereby even coined public ideas of a Germanic past that became influential in the reception of the Middle Ages in general. To the present day, the popular fascination with these Middle Ages thus is strongly informed by Old Norse sources, and a wealth of recent adaptations seem to perpetuate this view. However, the same sources, as well as earlier scholarship, are used by extremist groups to substantiate populist and racist claims. Scholars in Medieval Scandinavian Studies find themselves at the intersection of these conflicting and yet connected spheres of appropriation. Their task to take a stance in this situation is all the more challenging as the international field struggles with cutbacks of budgets, study programs, and institutes. The present special issue seeks to bring together current opinions on this ambivalent state.

The ecumenically conceived project, “Religionspädagogik als Autobiographie (Religious Education as Autobiography)”, begun by Horst Rupp and Rainer Lachmann at the end of the 1980s now comprises seven volumes with more than 120 autobiographies of religion teachers as well as general and elementary school educators. This essay describes the project and elucidates the academic questions related to autobiography and contemporary history, radical subjectivity and the history of scholarship, teaching and narrative, as well as the specifics of the autobiographies of theologians and educators. These considerations are also connected to the particular didactic interest of making the autobiographies fruitful for biographical learning in the course of studies and training for theologians and Christian educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to confirm or refute the thesis about the influence the Jewish faith had on attaining and performing the office of rector at the German section of the University of Prague between 1882 and 1933. It deals with four Jewish scholars who were elected rectors of the German (Charles-Ferdinand) University in Prague, namely Robert Zuckerkandl, Otto Frankl, Samuel Steinherz, and Ludwig Spiegel. The 1867 December Constitution of Austria-Hungary and the 1920 Constitutional Charter of the First Czechoslovak Republic granted equal rights to all citizens, regardless of their religious affiliation and language. Nevertheless, there were still surviving unwritten customs in the university milieu that did not allow for the post of rector to be held by an academic of the Jewish faith; the post of dean, however, was repeatedly occupied without hindrance by Jewish professors. This study analyses the circumstances surrounding the election to, and performance of duties of, the rector's office by Jewish scholars in connection with the position taken by the superior ministry, and the reaction of the academic community and the general public. The intervention by German-national students and academic sympathizers against Jews holding the position of rector may be interpreted as a threat to the autonomy of universities in the First Czechoslovak Republic. In a broader context, the rector elections may be seen as a symbolic indicator of the share of power wielded by anti-democratic and nationalist forces in the state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of XVIIe Siècle is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book‐based knowledge in his approach to ancient art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the eighteenth-century classical scholar Richard Bentley once announced but never finished an ambitious project for a critical NT edition. What is less well known is that numerous entries of his archive have been preserved in Wren Library of Trinity College (TCL), Cambridge, until today. This article provides some prolegomena to a comprehensive enquiry into Bentley's unfinished NT project. It includes an updated summary of the archive, relevant secondary literature, a few examples for illustration, and on the basis of all this, some suggestions for future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the history of scholarship in general and, more specifically, to the emergence of critical historical and anthropological literature from and within ecclesiastical scholarship. However, few studies have discussed the Jewish figures who took part in this process. This paper analyzes the role played by historiographical and ethnographical writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian Jewish–Christian polemics. Tracing various Christian polemical ethnographical depictions of the Jewish rite of shaking the lulav (sacramental palm leaves used by Jews during the festival of Sukkot), it discusses the variety of ways in which Jewish scholars responded to these depictions or circumvented them. These responses reflect the Jewish scholars’ familiarity with prevailing contemporary scholarship and the key role of translation and cultural transfers in their own attempts to create parallel works. Furthermore, this paper presents new Jewish polemical manuscript material within the relevant contexts, examines Jewish attempts to compose polemical and apologetic ethnographies, and argues that Jewish engagement with critical scholarship began earlier than scholars of this period usually suggest

Scholarship customarily frames Henrik Gabriel Porthan’s discussion of parallelism as rhythmus sensus within a genealogy of Finnish scholars’ discussions of kalevalaic poetry. Porthan’s discussion appears somewhat more than a decade after Robert Lowth’s revolutionary study of the poetics of biblical Hebrew, in which he coined the term ‘parallelism’ (parallelismus membrorum) for the phenomenon so widely recognized today. This modest paper explores eighteenth-century discourse on poetic parallelism to explicate the chain of works linking Porthan’s presentation of parallelism ultimately to that of Lowth. It illustrates how publications enabled the wide circulation of ideas. Academic convention allowed authors to reproduce references to and quotations from works to which they might have no access as though they had read them first hand. The chain from Lowth to Porthan includes this type of reproduction of information and quotations already at least once recontextualized in another author’s discussion as well as responses to such works. Each link in this chain seems to have been familiar only with the link immediately preceding it or perhaps two, with the consequence that the ideas become echoes from work to work, terminology is exchanged and translated while Lowth’s own name fades in the resonant discussion of the concept of parallelism, by which it is wholly eclipsed in Porthan’s work. At the same time, this study draws attention to how scholars construct genealogies of ideas in relation to their focus and interests, and these also become recirculated until they get interrogated from another perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Onofrio Panvinio was hired by sixteenth-century Roman families to write their histories and, where necessary, be prepared to bend the facts to suit their interests. This occasionally entailed a bit of forgery, usually involving tampering with specific words in documents. In most respects, however, Panvinio employed the same techniques—archival research and material evidence such as tombs and inscriptions—which distinguished his papal and ecclesiastical histories. This suggests that genealogy, despite being commissioned by aristocratic families to glorify their ancestries, can be seen as a more serious field of historical investigation than is often assumed. Yet the contours of this genre of history for hire in sixteenth-century Italian historiography are nowhere near exact. Panvinio struck a balance between fulfilling the expectations of the noble families who commissioned him and following his own scholarly instincts as an historian, but he nevertheless did not seek their publication. By contrast, Alfonso Ceccarelli, who also composed family histories, veered considerably in the direction of flattering his patrons, even forging entire papal and imperial privileges. Indeed, he was condemned to death for the forgery of wills concerning the property rights of nobles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isaac Casaubon's 1605 Persius edition and its companion-piece, the De satyrica Graecorum poesi et Romanorum satira , likewise published in 1605, have long been considered milestones in the history of scholarship on Ancient satire. Marshalling evidence from humanist correspondences, annotated copies of early printed books, manuscripts and visual materials, this study offers a fresh and much fuller and more nuanced view of either book's trajectory from concept to print and distribution, of the motivations and guiding principles behind Casaubon's research, and, more generally, of scholarly endeavor around the turn of the seventeenth century. I demonstrate how Casaubon's work on satire is linked to the humanist recovery of Ancient scholia, how its erudition integrates observations on the contemporary world and non-textual evidence, and how it is marked by fierce scholarly rivalry and – hitherto underestimated – confessional differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes part in the recent project of reevaluating the place, role, and importance of different forms of engagement with Arabic and Arabic manuscripts in seventeenth-century Spain, and more broadly in Europe, by focusing on a single institution—the royal library of San Lorenzo of the Escorial. I examine if, and how, the Escorial fits within the new narrative of the history of Arabic in seventeenth- century Spain. Did the presence of an exceptionally sizeable collection of Arabic texts facilitate, hinder, or have no effect on the new Orientalism of the seventeenth century? More specifically, the article explores four questions: (1) What did Spanish and European scholars think about the collection of Arabic manuscripts in the Escorial? (2) What did the Hieronymites, the friars in charge of the library, do with its Arabic manuscripts? (3) What did the Hieronymites think about the study of Arabic? and (4) What access to the collection, if any, did Spanish and European scholars have? The answers to these questions suggest that the Escorial became a shrine of Arabic knowledge, to which scholarly pilgrims sought access, and that during seventeenth century Spain preserved its reputation among European orientalists as an important site for the study of Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Humanities scholars seem to have become increasingly pessimistic due to a lack of success in their efforts to be recognized as a serious player next to their science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) colleagues. This appears to be the result of a profound uncertainty in the self-perception of individual disciplines within the Humanities regarding their role both in academia and society. This ambiguity, not least, has its roots in their own history, which often appears as an interwoven texture of conflicting opinions. Taking a stance on the current and future role of the Humanities in general, and individual disciplines in particular thus asks for increased engagement with their own past, i.e., histories of scholarship, which are contingent on societal and political contexts. This article’s focus is on a case study from the field of Old Norse Studies. In the face of the rise of populism and nationalism in our days, Old Norse Studies, with their focus on a ‘Germanic’ past, have a special obligation to address societal challenges. The article argues for the public engagement with the histories of individual disciplines to strengthen scholarly credibility in the face of public opinion and to overcome trenches which hamper attempts at uniting Humanities experts and regaining distinct social relevance.

This short essay follows a thread of evidence employed across many languages and lands, genres and generations to defend the historicity of the Samson story. Based upon this line of interpretation it stresses some necessary lessons for scholars writing the history of biblical scholarship. The inquiry extends beyond an interest in modern history to show the relevance of the history of scholarship for present research on ancient history and biblical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When folklore began to emerge as a valid expression of a people during the early stages of national romanticism, it did so alongside texts and artifacts from the Middle Ages. The fields of folklore and medieval studies were hardly to be distinguished at that time, and it was only as folklore began to develop its own methodology (actually analogous to medieval textual studies) during the nineteenth century that the fields were distinguished. During the 1970s, however, folklore adopted a wholly new paradigm (the "performance turn"), regarding folklore as process rather than static artifact. It is here that folklore offers a challenge for medieval studies, namely to understand better the oral background to all medieval materials and the cultural competence that underlay their uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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