<p> My thesis investigates and evaluates Hermann Cohen's interest in and
critiques of Protestant biblical criticism. In this thesis, I argue that Cohen's
interest in Protestant biblical criticism stems from his quest to rejuvenate Jewish
learning, foster relations between Jewish and Christian scholars and develop a
philosophically sophisticated method for the study of the Hebrew Bible. To argue
this point, I look at Cohen's philosophical construction of concepts such as
monotheism, messianism and social justice, his methodology for the study of
texts, his philosophical conception of "Jewish sources", and how this conception
reflects contemporary interactions and tensions in Germany between scholarly
biblical criticism, Jewish intellectual culture, and antisemitism. In doing so, I also
examine how Cohen's complicated relationship with Protestant biblical criticism
can be seen as part of Cohen's attempts to balance the assumptions he shared with
Protestant biblical scholars, such as Julius Wellhausen, with his polemical
response to Protestant biases in the work of other biblical scholars, such as Rudolf
Kittel. This thesis, then, looks at both Cohen's implicit and explicit critiques of
Protestant biblical scholarship in several of his "Jewish Writings" and in his
Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, and investigates how Cohen's
interactions with Protestant biblical criticism influenced his own methodology for
the study of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/19368 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Pomazon, Alisha |
| Contributors | Hollander, D., Religious Studies |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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