Heinrich Graetz and the Exegetical Contours of Modern Jewish History

Heinrich Graetz, known to twenty-first-century readers as a famous historian of the Jews, was also a prolific and influential biblical exegete. With his passing in 1891, Graetz was remembered by subsequent generations as both historian and exegete, but by the mid-twentieth century Graetz's exegetical scholarship had been dropped from his intellectual biography. Recent publications have overwhelmingly focused on Graetz's historical writings, and we still lack a comprehensive account of Graetz's biblical hermeneutic and its broader cultural and political significance. Restoring Graetz's exegetical scholarship to his oeuvre substantially reorients our understanding of his thought: we regain access to some of the most fascinating and influential scholarship Graetz published that is not visible in his historical writings; we perceive a series of dialogical networks woven across the pages of his exegetical publications; we encounter several of Graetz's most polemical interventions in German historical and biblical scholarship; and we gain access to the full meaning of his historical writings. Even as we await a thorough account of Graetz's biblical hermeneutic, this essay offers an entrée into to Graetz's exegetical oeuvre by detailing how Graetz's exegetical scholarship determined the contours of his famous History of the Jews.