Heinrich Graetz devoted the third volume of his eleven-volume, comprehensive Geschichte der Juden to the period from the death of Judas Maccabaeus in 160 BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, a period in which he…
Isaac Halevy (1847-1914)
Rabbi Isaac Halevy Rabinovitz presented the most comprehensive, profound, and significant Orthodox response to the Wissenschaft des Judentums school of historiography. He was born in Ivyanets, near Vilna (now Belarus), and received an Orthodox Yeshiva education, including studies in the…
Robert Eisler (1882-1949)
Robert Eisler, born in Vienna, was a Jewish scholar of ancient history, cosmology, myth, and economics. Trained at Vienna and Rome, Eisler served as head of the League of Nations’ Committee of Intellectual Cooperation in Paris between 1925-1931, and taught…
Micha Josef Berdyczewski (bin Gorion) (1865-1921)
Hebrew novelist, essayist, scholar, and thinker Micha Josef Berdyczewski was a life-long admirer of Josephus. An autobiographical short story, Be-Derech Rehokah (On a Long and Winding Road), describes Micha Josef’s first encounter with Sefer Yosippon (Book of Yosippon) as a…
Emanuel bin Gorion (1903-1987)
Emanuel bin Gorion was a literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Son of the Hebrew novelist Micha Josef Berdyczewski (who later took on the name bin Gorion), bin Gorion inherited his father’s enthusiasm for Josephus’s legacy and for Josephus as a…
Jacob Naftali Hertz Simchoni (1884-1926)
Jacob Naftali Hertz Simchoni (Simchowitz) was an Eastern European Jewish scholar, translator, and educator. He was born in 1884 into a Maskilic family in Slutsk (in present-day Belarus), where he spent his childhood. As a teenager he studied Latin and…