The Hebrew Bible Reborn : From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books. A History of Biblical Culture and the Battles over the Bible in Modern Judaism

This work, the first of its kind, describes all the aspects of the Bible revolution in Jewish history in the last two hundred years, as well as the emergence of the new biblical culture.

It describes the circumstances and processes that turned Holy Scripture into the Book of Books and into the history of the biblical period and of the people – the Jewish people. It deals with the encounter of the Jews with modern biblical criticism and the archaeological research of the Ancient Near East and with contemporary archaeology.

The middle section discusses the extensive involvement of educated Jews in the Bible-Babel polemic at the start of the twentieth century, which it treats as a typological event.

The last section describes at length various aspects of the key status assigned to the Bible in the new Jewish culture in Europe, and particularly in modern Jewish Palestine, as a “guide to life” in education, culture and politics, as well as part of the attempt to create a new Jewish man, and as a source of inspiration for various creative arts.

"Das Buch zeichnet sich durch seine gründliche und methodische Auswertung des - ebenso umfassenden wie disparaten - Quellenmaterials und durch dessen abwägende Bewertung aus. Es illustriert die fundierende Bedeutung der Bibel in unterschiedlichen Lebensbezügen, Problemlagen und Fragestellungen und erlaubt ebenso lehrreiche wie spannende Einblicke in die facettenreiche Geschichte der historischen Bibelkritik im Judentum."
Michael Tilly in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 10.134/2009

"[...] its scope and depth make this thoroughly researched study on a highly consequential subject an invaluable source for Jewish and German religious and intellectual history."
Michael M. Meyer in: American Historical Review 2/2009