In Search of the Hebrew People: Bible and Nation in the German Enlightenment [Hardcover]

As German scholars, poets, and theologians searched for the origins of the ancient Israelites, Ofri Ilany believes they created a model for nationalism that drew legitimacy from the biblical idea of the Chosen People. In this broad exploration of eighteenth-century Hebraism, Ilany tells the story of the surprising role that this model played in discussions of ethnicity, literature, culture, and nationhood among the German-speaking intellectual elite. He reveals the novel portrait they sketched of ancient Israel and how they tried to imitate the Hebrews while forging their own national consciousness. This sophisticated and lucid argument sheds new light on the myths, concepts, and political tools that formed the basis of modern German culture.

Ofri Ilany is a postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

Thanks to its erudition, the monograph could serve as an effective introduction to German history, biblical studies and modern nationalism, among other fields.

Ilany's book has much to offer to biblical scholars invested in understanding the development of their field, but also to scholars of 18th- and 19th-century Germany and to those interested in the relationship between the academy and the ideological process of nation building more broadly.

Recommended.

Sound, well-informed, and original. No one seriously interested in the history of biblical criticism will be able to ignore this work.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Troglodytes, Hottentots and Hebrews: The Bible and the Genesis of German Ethnography
2. The Law and the People: Mosaic Law and German Enlightenment
3. The Eighteenth-Century Polemic on the Extermination of the Canaanites
4. Is Judah Indeed the Teutonic Fatherland? The Hebrew Model and the Birth of German National Culture
5. Lovers of Hebrew Poetry : The Battle over the Bible's l2