S. D. Luzzatto’s Program for Restoring Jewish Leadership in Hebrew Studies

This article demonstrates that S. D. Luzzatto’s Prolegomeni a una grammatica ragionata della lingua ebraica (1836) was a critical response to the scholarship of Christian Hebraists, motivated by the drive of its author to reclaim from Christians the leading position in the study of the Hebrew language. Luzzatto took exception to Christian scholars’ reliance on Arabic in their linguistic descriptions of Hebrew, an approach championed by the eighteenth-century Dutch Hebraist Albert Schultens. Somewhat unfairly, Luzzatto attributed this approach to his contemporary Wilhelm Gesenius, whose grammar of Hebrew inspired him to undertake his own rival analysis of the language. Melding comparative linguistics with the Enlightenment notion that language was the truest expression of national character, Luzzatto sought to establish scientifically, and in line with rabbinic belief, a close historical linkage between Aramaic and Hebrew. Luzzatto’s committed efforts to disseminate his theory among Christians and Jews reveal his determination to win a scholarly dispute over language by negotiating between philological reasoning and reverence to tradition. However, his program to subvert Christian scholarship by undermining its foundations failed. Luzzatto’s reliance on nationalistic theories of language origin hampered his attempts to master empirical methodology and thus supersede Gesenius’s comparative approach. By examining Luzzatto’s methods as well as contemporary scholars’ reactions to his work, this article shows how Hebrew linguistics could serve as a vehicle for Jewish apologetics and a medium for defending Jewish tradition against critical scholarship that challenged the divine revelation of Scripture

Art · Enlightenment · Hebrew · Judaism · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Law · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy

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