The Political Perfection of Original Judaism: Pedagogical Governance and Ecclesiastical Power in Mendelssohn's Jerusalem
Moses Mendelssohn famously penned his Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism in response to a public challenge. Mendelssohn had declared “ecclesiastical power” to be a contradiction in terms, and had thus come out strongly against the use of coercion in religious life, and against the ban of excommunication by rabbinic authorities, in particular. In the anonymously published The Search for Light and Right, August Cranz defies Mendelssohn to explain how he could reconcile this liberal view of religion with his continued commitment to—and his insistence that Jews were still obligated to observe—Jewish law. “As reasonable as all you say [about religious power] may be, to just that degree it contradicts the faith of your fathers . . . and the principles of its church . . . expressly set down in the books of Moses,” Cranz argues. “The theocratic ruling staff drove the whole people . . . with force and punishment.” True, Cranz concedes, exile reduced the capacity of Jewish authorities to enforce Jewish law, “but these ecclesiastical laws are there even if their exercise is no longer a must.” Cranz challenges Mendelssohn to explain his apparently irreconcilable commitments: “How can you persist in the faith of your fathers and shake the whole structure by clearing away its cornerstones, dear Mr. Mendelssohn, when you contest the ecclesiastical law given as divine revelation through Moses?”
Moses Mendelssohn;: A biographical study
Preface 1 Years of Growth Childhood in Dessau * Early Years in Berlin * The Budding Philosopher * Lessing * The Metaphysician * The Bel Esprit * A Learned Society * Kohelet Mussar 2 Maturity and Fame Marriage and Family Life * Thomas Abbt * The Prize-Essay * The Correspondence about the Vocation of Man * The Phaedon * Questions and Answers * Cognate Hebrew Writings 3 Turning Point: The Lavater Affair 'Juif de Berlin' * The Prehistory of the Lavater Affair * Lavater's Challenge and Mendelssohn's Reply * First Reactions and Behind-the-Scene Activities Lavater's Reply and Mendelssohn's Epilogue * Reverberations of the Conflict * Literary Concerns and Another Lavater Episode 4 Changes in the Pattern of Life The Strange Illness * Ups and Downs A Chronicle of Events * Hebraica and Judaica * The Chronicle Continued * Some Philosophical Preoccupations * Friends in Unexpected Quarters 5 The Teacher The Avant-Garde of Haskala * The German Translation of the Pentateuch * Obstacles on the Road * Completing the Work 6 Political Reformer Spokesman of his People * Co-operation with Dohm * A Momentous Event and a New Tract for the Times * The Issue of Educational Reform * The Summer of 1782 * Jerusalem 7 Strains and Stresses Friendship with Lessing: The Last Phase * A Projected Essay on Lessing's Character * Jacobi's Attitude toward Mendelssohn: Antecedents of their Conflict * An Uneasy Correspondence 8 Guardian of the Enlightenment The Contest * Literary Activity, 1783-1785 * Morning Hours * In Combat * The Social and Domestic Scene * The End * Epilogue Notes Index of Subjects and Names
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.