126 This claim by Soloveitchik is not a novum but has precedent among certain Christians as far back as the third or fourth century, most prominently in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which were viewed by people such as Reform theologian Kaufmann Kohler as proof of the symmetry between the two religions. See, e.g., Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 8.6–7, which reads: “Jesus is concealed from the Hebrews, who have taken Moses as their teacher, and Moses is hidden from those who have believed Jesus…. For there is a single teaching by both, God accepts one who has believed either of these.” Others, such as the eighteenth-century Deist John Tolland, in his Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (London, 1718), make this case as well. Kohler wrote his essays on Christianity after Soloveitchik, and there is no indication that Kohler knew about Qol Qore (even though he studied with Samshon Rafael Hirsch, who we know had a copy of the book!), and it is not at all clear that Soloveitchik had read Pseudo-Clementines or even Graetz’s work published in his lifetime (Graetz also cites Pseudo-Clementines). See Kaufmann Kohler, “Clementina, or Pseudo-Clementine Literature,” in Jewish Encyclopedia 4:114–116; and, more generally, Yaakov Ariel, “Christianity Through Reform Eyes: Kaufmann Kohler’s Scholarship on Christianity,” American Jewish History 89 (2001): 181–191; and Reed, “Secrecy, Suppression, and the Jewishness of the Origins of Christianity.”
127 Emden, ‘Etz Avot (Amsterdam, 1751), to M Avot 5:22, ‘Etz Avot 58b, cited in Schachter, “Rabbi Jacob Emden,” 366n10.
128 See, e.g., Schachter, “Rabbi Jacob Emden,” 388.
129 Qol Qore (London, 1868), 3. Writing for a Christian audience, the prefatory note speaks of “we” with regard to Christians. Either this was rhetorical on Soloveitchik’s part, or a Christian wrote these words summarizing Soloveitchik’s sentiment.
130 Qol Qore (Jerusalem, 1985), 8, 9; and Hyman, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, 126, 127.
A Note on the Text
As far as we know, Soloveitchik’s Qol Qore consisted of a commentary to Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Luke has not survived. The commentary to Mark survives only in an 1870 French translation by Rabbi Lazare Wogue (1817–1897). The first Hebrew edition of Matthew was published in Paris in the late 1870s, probably 1879. The frontispiece of the first Hebrew edition has no date. We agree with Dov Hyman about the late 1870s date because we know that Soloveitchik had left Paris by 1880 and was living in Frankfurt am Main; we assume, with Hyman, that he was in Paris to oversee the first Hebrew edition as well as a Polish translation from the French that appeared in Paris in 1879. A reprint of the first Hebrew edition of Matthew appeared in a Jerusalem edition in 1985, published by a Protestant mission. We initially did an international search for an original copy of the Hebrew edition of Matthew. The only copy of that edition we could find was cataloged in the Alliance Israélite in Paris, but they could not locate it. We did find a copy of the Alliance Israélite Paris edition of Matthew in the National Library in Jerusalem and were able to compare it with the 1985 Jerusalem reprint. We found the editions almost identical, with small incidental and nonsubstantial changes and some grammatical corrections from the Paris edition. We decided that the 1985 edition was the best base text to use for our work and incorporate the necessary changes from the Paris edition. For Mark, we used the original 1870 French translation.
A Translator’s Foreword
Rabbi Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik was a nineteenth-century Orthodox rabbi, Maimonidean scholar, and an unlikely contributor who lent his voice to commenting on the Gospels. He perceived a striking resemblance between the writings of the New Testament and many of the teachings in the Talmud and was determined to point out all the similarities in his commentaries on the books of Matthew and Mark.
Although Soloveitchik allegedly wrote commentaries on all four of the synoptic Gospels, only those on Matthew and Mark are known to be extant. Both were originally composed in Hebrew and translated into French by Soloveitchik’s colleague Rabbi Lazare Wogue. The Hebrew commentary on Matthew still exists, and the translation before you comes directly from Soloveitchik’s Hebrew. To our knowledge, the commentary on Mark exists only in Wogue’s French; therefore, my English translation comes from the French text. Currently, with the exception of this edition, these works are not known to be fully or formally available in English.
Soloveitchik dedicated much time and energy to providing the world with a Jewish commentary on what he deemed the extraordinarily Jewish literature of the Gospels. He endeavored to return the Gospels to their proper Jewish, rabbinic milieu, placing Jesus and his disciples back into their original context, religion, and culture. He demonstrated this by writing his commentary in a traditional Jewish format.
Perhaps the profundity of Soloveitchik’s self-appointed task is lost on us as modern students of religion and biblical literature. His works were in no way received well, as he explains in his introduction. For most Jews during Soloveitchik’s day, the New Testament was still commonly seen as a primary source of anti-Semitism as well as a book assumed to be overflowing with idolatrous teachings. Soloveitchik did not hold to these views. He recognized a Jewish, and even Talmudic, tenor of the New Testament writings and labored to show Jews and Christians that Jesus and his disciples were Jews who observed the Law of Moses and kept many of the “traditions of the elders” of their era. This type of positive, Judeo-centric commentary—written by an Orthodox Jew—was groundbreaking and practically unheard of in Soloveitchik’s day.
Typically, when Jesus is referenced in Jewish literature, the shortened name “Yeshu” is used. This is purported to be a pejorative acronym (yimaḥ shemo vezikhro, “may his name and memory be blotted out”). Soloveitchik did not use this name; instead, he chose to use the name “Yeshua,” Jesus’ full Hebrew name. Doing so was pointedly intentional and fit his ethos of bringing Jesus into his Jewish context, reminding Jews and Christians of Jesus’ Israelite and Jewish identity. Therefore, in my translation of Soloveitchik’s commentary, I use the name “Yeshua” instead of “Jesus,” to honor his aim.
Since Jesus’ name appears in its Hebrew form, I also chose to transliterate all Hebrew names of Jewish characters who appear in the Gospels, in order to maintain consistency. This convention assists Soloveitchik in his goal of the Gospels being read originally as Hebrew, Talmudic-style literature. So as not to weary the reader with too many perhaps unfamiliar Hebrew names, all characters who appear in the Old Testament retain their conventional anglicized names (for example, Abraham, Moses, Elijah); all who lived afterward, including the ancient sages of the Talmud and Mishnah, retain their Hebrew names. The only exception are names of Greek or Roman origin; they retain their conventional anglicized forms (Herod, Alexander, Pilate).
As a source text for his commentary, Soloveitchik likely used an early edition of Franz Delitzsch’s famous Hebrew translation of the New Testament. Delitzsch was a German Hebraist and a contemporary of Soloveitchik’s who was respected in both Jewish and Christian worlds. Since my translations retain Hebrew names, and Soloveitchik used a Hebrew translation of the Gospels as his source text, I used an English New Testament edition directly based on Delitzsch’s scholarship: The Delitzsch Hebrew English Gospels (DHE), published by Vine of David Press. This English translation of the Gospels retains all Hebrew names of persons and places.
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