The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible

Download or read book The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible written by Alan T. Levenson and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing its history from Moses Mendelssohn to today, Alan Levenson explores the factors that shaped what is the modern Jewish Bible and its centrality in Jewish life today. The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible explains how Jewish translators, commentators, and scholars made the Bible a keystone of Jewish life in Germany, Israel and America. Levenson argues that German Jews created a religious Bible, Israeli Jews a national Bible, and American Jews an ethnic one. In each site, scholars wrestled with the demands of the non-Jewish environment and their own indigenous traditions, trying to balance fidelity and independence from the commentaries of the rabbinic and medieval world.