15:22:05


[Login]   
[Book List]  
 
Bidding Information
Lot #    14868
Auction End Date    6/13/2006 1:29:30 PM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Jerusalem, oder ueberreligidse Macht und Judenthum
Author    Moses Mendelssohn
City    Frankfort - Leipzig
Publication Date    1791
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    181 pp., 184:114 mm., wide margins, light age and damp staining. A very good copy bound in contemporary paper wrappers.
          
Detailed
Description		    Important theological work by Moses Mendelssohn in which he defends Judaism and argues for emancipation. This work secured Mendelssohn's place in the history of Jewish thought. Its importance can be seen from the fact that the first edition, in German, was published in 1783, and only seven years later it had been translated into Italian, as well as other languages. The text of the title page states “overra della podesta ecclesiatica e del giudaismo di m. m. Dal Tedesco recata in Italiano,” that is, Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem translated from the German into Italian. Mendelssohn wrote Jerusalem in response to the public challenge of John Casper Lavater (1741–1801), a Swiss clergyma, to defend the superiority of Judaism to Christianity. Lavater dedicated his translation of a Christian theological work to Mendelssohn, writing that the latter should "do what wisdom, love of truth, and honor require, and what Socrates would have done had he read the treatise and found it irrefutable," that is, to convert. Mendelssohn responds in Jerusalem, writing that it is superfluous and therefore illogical to assume that revelation can disclose a truth at which man can arrive by his own capacity to reason. Revelation cannot convince any man of the validity of something his reason cannot understand. Mendelssohn is aware that his rejection of revelation on philosophical grounds clashes with the classic self-image of Judaism which conceives itself as based on the Sinaitic covenant between God and Israel. If Judaism is revealed, it cannot be a religion for Mendelssohn, or if it is a religion it cannot have been revealed. He resolves this dilemma by defining Judaism not as a "revealed religion" but as "revealed law." The central religious tenets of Judaism - the existence and unity of God, divine providence, and the immortality of the soul - are not specific Jewish notions but doctrines of the general religion of reason, which require no proof or act of revelation to be intelligible. What distinguishes the Jew from the non-Jew is not his religion, which is the common property of all men of reason, but the unique laws, statutes and commandments that were disclosed at Sinai. That God spoke at Sinai is for Mendelssohn a verite de fait, an established historical fact, because it was witnessed by the entire people of Israel with incontrovertible clarity.

Jerusalem is an eloquent response, arguing so expressively for toleration that the eminent philosopher Emanuel Kant described it as an irrefutable book whose basic idea is that the state had no right to interfere with the religion of its citizens. Reference Description

          
Reference
Description		    Britannica (1911); EJ; Guttman Philosophies 330-44
        
Associated Images
2 Images (Click thumbnail to view full size image):
  Order   Image   Caption
  1   Click to view full size  
  
  2   Click to view full size  
  
  
Listing Classification
Period
  
18th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Germany:    Checked
  
Subject
Reform:    Checked
Other:    Philosophy
  
Characteristic
Language:    German
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica