In his separate commentary to Maimonides’ “Laws of Idolatry” published a few years later, we can see the beginning of Soloveitchik’s intellectual trajectory, which will culminate in our Qol Qore on Mark and Matthew. Commenting on Maimonides’ history of idolatry in chapter 1 of “Laws of Idolatry,” Soloveitchik writes: “Our teacher [Maimonides] brings proof from Jeremiah that even when Jeremiah was rebuking Israel for abandoning God and going after other gods of wood and stone, he said that all nations know that only God is one; they only err by elevating those that God himself elevated.” This is a fairly close, conventional reading of Maimonides’ text, but this sentiment will again appear in his commentary to the New Testament many times, where Soloveitchik will criticize his fellow Jews who think that Christianity maintains that Jesus is God, even in one place defending the Trinity as a “great mystery.” If the ancient idolaters even knew that God was one, certainly those in antiquity who had already been exposed to the monotheism of the Israelite religion must have known so.
During this early period in his publishing career (the 1840s), Soloveitchik was already interested in reaching beyond the Jewish world through translation. We have no information as to what brought him to this, although below I will discuss possible motives. He published a German translation of his edition of Maimonides’ “Book of Knowledge” in 1846 in Königsberg. In the introduction, he writes: “I decided to print these holy words, to publish this book as an aid to all. I am now here [in Königsberg] to seek help for my illness…. I have already published the first volume [in Hebrew]. And now I publish the second edition in German translation for those who do not know the original Hebrew.” Does this refer to Christians? We do not know.32 However, Dov Hyman found two approbations for the German edition that were apparently from non-Jews, suggesting that a non-Jewish readership existed and was desired.33
After this period, we have little knowledge of Soloveitchik’s whereabouts until at least the early 1850s. We do know that in 1853, he was likely in Volozhin because he was asked by Eliezer Yizhak Fried, who became dean of the Volozhin yeshiva sometime in the late 1840s, to travel to Berlin to raise money for the yeshiva, which he did.34 We also have a letter of introduction dated August 17, 1857, from a Rabbi Ettinger from Berlin. Such letters were common for Jews traveling to new communities.35 This letter was apparently used when Soloveitchik traveled to London.
In 1863, Soloveitchik, likely living in London, continued his work on Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, publishing an English translation of Maimonides’ “Laws of Kings,” which appears in the last volume of Maimonides’ multivolume collection. The frontispiece states only that the work was translated by “Learned Writers” and edited and revised by Elias Soloweyczyk. In the preface to his English edition, Soloveitchik writes: “The wise observations, sound judgment and true impartiality, which stamp this learned word—Yad Hazakah36 of Moses Maimonides—has induced me to translate his pages into modern languages, as to bring it within the pale of the modern reader. I have thus issued two editions in Germany, which met with great success not only among the Jewish doctors, but also among the most eminent Christian scholars.” While we cannot be sure why Soloveitchik specifically published Maimonides’ “Laws of Kings” at this point, we may surmise that it was part of his larger work on Christianity, since the “Laws of Kings” includes Maimonides’ understanding of the criteria of messiah. Thus Soloveitchik’s Maimonides publications seem to function as a preface to his work on the Gospels. I will discuss his use of Maimonides in his commentary in a separate section below.
Before we turn to the complex nature of the present translation of the text Qol Qore, we must mention an earlier work by that same title that Soloveitchik published in English in London in 1868. The book Qol Qore: A Voice Crying, the Law, the Talmud and the Gospel was published without Soloveitchik’s name in London, only stating that it was written by “Several Learned Men.” This text was discovered by Jacob Dienstag and given to Dov Hyman. There is no mention of this work until the preface of the 1985 reprinting of our Qol Qore in Jerusalem by Protestant printers that mentions that the work had been translated into French, German, Polish, and English. No other record had an English translation. The reason may be that this 1868 Qol Qore is not the same book as the other editions that begin to appear in 1870 with the French translation. Our Qol Qore is a commentary on the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke (Luke was lost). The 1868 English Qol Qore is an elucidation and commentary on Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles of Faith.” After some prefatory remarks, Soloveitchik devotes an entire chapter to each of the principles of faith, arguing that none of them stands in contradiction to Christianity. His prefatory remarks make clear that this is part of his larger project on New Testament commentary that will appear in French in 1870.
Hyman makes the very plausible suggestion that Soloveitchik’s New Testament commentary was likely written in Hebrew between 1863 and 1868, at which time he published the English Qol Qore on Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles.”37 In fact, in the 1868 English edition, Soloveitchik begins by saying: “It may, perhaps, appear presumptive of us to undertake writing a commentary on a book like the New Testament, and to choose a path that has seen trodden by so many…. But our object is not to comment; but be impelled by the circumstances of the times…. [W]e desire to institute an inquiry into the cause of an existing misunderstanding.” This assumes that this work on Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles” is part of what will later be published as his commentary to the Gospel. By “misunderstanding,” it is not clear whether he means the desire to convert the Jews of Eastern Europe, which was becoming popular at that time, or the rising anti-Semitism fueled partly by theological precepts.
Writing in a Christian voice, the author (or translator) states that the misunderstanding has three components: (1) “Our Jewish brethren have no faith and that the summit of the Christian belief centers in the eradication of the Law of Moses [italics in the original]”; (2) “That we Christians are their opponents and merely seek their subversion”; and (3) “That the generality of Jews, as well as Christians, being unacquainted with that which constitutes the Judaism of the present day (viz. the Rabbinic Tradition) look upon the chasm that separates Judaism from Christianity to be of such great magnitude as to render all efforts of reconciliation in vain.”38
Making this even more complicated, there appear to be two editions of the 1868 English translation of Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles.” The second one includes Soloveitchik’s name as the author on the frontispiece (but still translated by “Several Learned Men”) and includes a letter addressed to “My Christian Brethren” in Soloveitchik’s own voice that begins with “I much regret to find that there exists amongst you a deeply rooted aversion to the sayings of the Talmud.”39 This will become relevant when we examine the work of Alexander McCaul and his Old Paths below, which is a running critique of the Talmud published in London around the same time, which may have been a motivation for Soloveitchik’s project.40 One notices a few differences from the 1868 version reproduced by Hyman and what appears to be a second edition. First, the version in Hyman has the subtitle “The Law, the Talmud, and the Gospel”; and this second version has “The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament.” Second, the version reproduced by Hyman has a verse from Ezekiel 37:17 as an epigraph: And join them one to another and there shall become one in thine hand, while the other edition has a verse from Isaiah 57:17 that reads: Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, says the Lord, and I will heal him. There are many substantive differences in the body of the text as well. Most pronounced, and relevant to our concerns, is that what appears to be a second edition has a long chapter, “The Doctrine of the Trinity,” and a commentary on the first three chapters of Matthew, ending abruptly after verse 8 in chapter 3. A version of the chapter “The Doctrine of the Trinity” also appears in the first Hebrew edition published