(1825-1889)
Among writers on Biblical topics Dr. Alfred Edersheim occupies a
unique place. Bred in the Jewish faith, he brought to his writings the
traditions of his ancestry. The history of the Children of Israel was
a reality to him, who had known the Talmud and the Old Testament
through the lessons of his boyhood, and had been taught to reverence
the Hebrew sacred rites handed down through the ages. All the
intangible, unconscious religious influences of his youth entered into
the work of his manhood. And although this converted Rabbi wrote as a
Christian, yet the Bible stories were colored and vivified for him by
his Jewish sympathies. Thus his work had the especial value of a
double point of view.
Born in Vienna in 1825 of German parents, he studied at the university
of his native city and in Berlin, finishing his theological education
in Edinburgh. He became a minister of the Free Church of Scotland in
1849, passing over to the Church of England in 1875. In 1881 he
received from Oxford an honorary A.M., and was for a time lecturer on
the Septuagint at the university. He died in Mentone, France, on March
16th, 1889.
The earlier writings of Dr. Edersheim consist almost entirely of
translations from the German, and of Jewish stories written for
educational purposes. Of his later works the most important are--'The
Bible History,' his largest work, in seven volumes; 'The Temple, its
Ministers and Services as they were at the Time of Christ'; 'Sketches
of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ'; and a 'History of the
Jewish Nation after the Destruction of Jerusalem under Titus.' From
the evangelical point of view, his 'Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah' is of final authority, brilliantly exemplifying his peculiar
fitness to be the interpreter of Jewish life and thought at the period
of the rise of Christianity. He presents not only the story of the
Christ of the Gospels, but draws a picture of the whole political and
social life of the Jews, and of their intellectual and religious
condition--a picture which his Rabbinical learning and his race
sympathies make authentic. He wrote English with unaffected
directness, embodying in the simplest forms the results of his wide
scholarship. His books have a very wide and constant sale.