Midcentury Victorian England was witness to two controversies regarding science, scholarship, and Scripture: Darwinism and biblical criticism. The debates drew in a wide swath of churchmen and public intellectuals who perceived a threat to traditional teachings of Scripture and to the churches invested in its authority. The two controversies played out differently in the British public sphere, and for all that Darwinism would come to represent, it was the new openness to biblical criticism that garnered a more immediate and intense reaction.Footnote ¹ This was true for the Jews of Britain as well. Anglo-Jews were not particularly perturbed by Darwin's findings,Footnote ² but were far less sanguine when it came to the critical study of the Hebrew Bible.

This essay will explore the Anglo-Jewish responses to biblical criticism in the middle of the nineteenth century, a story that sheds light on Jewish intellectual life in mid-Victorian England. The study will unfold amid a move by a small number of Nonconformists and Anglicans to broaden the critical study of Scripture from a narrow textual focus to a consideration of the historical and literary development of the biblical books. Anglo-Jewish writers, we shall show, were attentive to the ensuing controversies and spoke out forcefully, judging the developments from the perspective of their parochial concerns. The central character of this essay, however, was a Jewish figure, a deeply learned Jewish scholar by the name of Marcus Kalisch, who openly promoted the historical-literary criticism of the Pentateuch. In this instance, the response on the part of Anglo-Jewish writers was markedly restrained and careful, and the essay will try to shed light on what this suggests about Jews in mid-Victorian England.

A brief historiographical note regarding the aim and scope of this study is in order. The historical study of Anglo-Jewish life in Victorian England has focused mainly on questions that relate to political, social, and economic issues. The intellectual life of midcentury Victorian Jews has not been of central interest for two related reasons: the writings and scholarship of Anglo-Jews paled in comparison with the sophistication of their continental coreligionists, and the Jewish scholarship that did manifest itself in nineteenth-century Britain was almost entirely the work of central European Jewish émigrés.Footnote ³ Both points are largely true, but as we shall see, the Anglo-Jewish response to biblical criticism offers a fresh way to see beyond the historiographical consensus.Footnote ⁴ The focus on the Bible, moreover, also informs other areas of intellectual history. The Victorian era spawned new ways of looking at Scripture, and one needs to examine the advent of biblical criticism as a particular case in the broader reconsideration of the authority of the Bible. This study, finally, should also serve as a chapter in the reception history of the Bible in the modern era, and the ways in which Christians and Jews viewed critical scholarship through the prism of their confessional differences.

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The story of biblical criticism in nineteenth-century England has been recounted elsewhere.Footnote ⁵ Although modern critical scholarship had roots in eighteenth-century Britain, its locus shifted to German lands at the end of that century as scholars began to ask new questions about the dating and composition of the biblical books. British scholars of the first half of the nineteenth century shied away from this endeavor, and what they called “biblical criticism” was limited to textual criticism, with the aim of obtaining, “as nearly as possible, the original words written by the inspired authors.”Footnote ⁶ The author of those words, a leading Bible scholar by the name of Samuel Davidson, was well read in contemporary German scholarship and even chastised his countrymen for insufficient familiarity with this literature.Footnote ⁷ But knowledge did not mean acceptance. Davidson censured the critically minded Germans for their “unbridled and daring speculations…. [which] are pernicious in the extreme,”Footnote ⁸ and, alongside other British writers, impugned their Christian orthodoxy by calling them “rationalists” and “Neologists.” The English wariness was bolstered by the knowledge that German scholars were divided among themselves, with some politically powerful and conservative Prussian academics pushing back against the new theories of Old Testament redaction. British scholars of the 1830s and 1840s acknowledged the erudition of the critically minded Germans but sided with the conservatives.Footnote ⁹

Anglo-Jews familiar with German biblical scholarship took a similar view, as evident in the 1844 publication of The Sacred Scriptures in Hebrew and English.Footnote ¹⁰ This Bible, largely forgotten and unappreciated, was the most learned Jewish tome to be published in England in the first half of the century. The new English version was produced by comparing translations of Scripture from late antiquity to the nineteenth century, with special attention to modern German Jewish renderings, and the commentary drew regularly on recent German Protestant scholarship.Footnote ¹¹ Although aware of the new critical ideas regarding Scripture emanating from German lands, these Jewish translator-exegetes eschewed the critical approaches, and their reading of the Hebrew Bible remained firmly traditional.Footnote ¹² It is worth noting that these Anglo-Jewish writers were in one respect more conservative than their Christian contemporaries in Britain: the former adhered steadfastly to the Masoretic text, rejecting the text-critical emendations that Davidson and others took for granted.

The British conservatism regarding biblical criticism began to give way at midcentury when a number of writers reassessed their views of German scholarship. The change began among members of the Nonconformist Protestant churches that functioned independently of the Anglican Church of England.Footnote ¹³ The most notable example was Davidson himself, a Congregationalist whose 1856 introductory survey of Old Testament scholarship announced his new orientation.Footnote ¹⁴ In a chapter titled “Authorship and Date of the Pentateuch,” Davidson presented the German “supplement-hypothesis,” the notion that the Pentateuch was formed of an “essential basis,”—the Elohist document—“which received very considerable insertions and supplements” by the Jehovist.Footnote ¹⁵ In a further revision of this volume, he wrote that “all competent scholars agree that nothing can be more certain in the department of higher criticism than that two documents at least enter into the composition of the first four books [of the Pentateuch].” For good measure he added that “we speak of course as critics; none other has a right to pronounce on the subject.”Footnote ¹⁶ Davidson did not waver from his belief in the inspiration of Scripture and its authority,Footnote ¹⁷ but this did not assuage his Congregationalist colleagues who soon forced him from his faculty position. The controversy, however, was contained within his church. As a Nonconformist, Davidson's critical views did not greatly concern the Anglican establishment, and there was little public debate.

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Davidson never explained his new critical turn, but he knew he was not alone. Years later he privately eulogized a biblical commentator who underwent a similar change of heart at almost the same time, lauding him as “a fine Hebrew scholar not surpassed by any in Great Britain, and who would have occupied a very high place even in Germany.” He seconded this comment by adding that the figure had “thoroughly imbibed and carried out the views of Graf and Wellhausen.”Footnote ¹⁸ The subject of Davidson's high praise was a largely forgotten but remarkable German Jewish émigré by the name of Marcus Kalisch, who was the first British scholar to apply a historical-critical approach in a commentary on the Pentateuch. Born in Prussian Pomerania in 1825, Kalisch received a thorough rabbinic education and also attended the university in Berlin, where he studied classical and Semitic philology and oriental languages.Footnote ¹⁹ Fleeing Prussia in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions, he arrived in London in May 1849 and quickly found employment as secretary to Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler and private tutor to his children. Kalisch supplemented his income by teaching German and Hebrew studies to the children of other families as well, including the London Rothschilds. By early 1853 he was serving as a full-time tutor for the Rothschilds, with whom he maintained a close life-long connection.Footnote ²⁰

Kalisch set to work on an ambitious new commentary to the Pentateuch. The Jewish Chronicle received advance word and heralded a work that promised to encompass “the researches of all Biblical interpreters, ancient and modern, Jewish and Christian, Oriental and Occidental.”Footnote ²¹ In follow-up letters to the Anglo-Jewish weeklies of the day, Kalisch presented his work as the continuation of the earlier Sacred Scriptures in Hebrew and English, although the principles he outlined suggested a commentary more learned and scholarly, and one that might appeal to a Christian readership as well. He explained that he would adhere fully to Jewish teachings but would also incorporate a comparative approach that noted the history, laws, and customs of other ancient nations. With regard to the new critical study of Scripture, Kalisch said he would uphold traditional views. Text-critical analysis would be limited to passages already discussed “by recognized Jewish authorities,” and “the modern skeptical hyper-criticism will only be mentioned in order to be combated, if possible, on its own ground, and with its own weapons.”Footnote ²²

When the first volume of A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament appeared in the summer of 1855—on Exodus, as plannedFootnote ²³—it was over 600 pages and included the Hebrew text and his English translation. The commentary demonstrated his impressive erudition. It drew on Jewish, classical, and Christian sources from late antiquity, historical and archaeological evidence, medieval and modern Jewish exegesis, and made frequent reference to modern—mainly German—scholarship, namely the work of Rosenmüller, Vater, De Wette, Gesenius, and Ewald. In his preface, Kalisch extolled the progress made in the “Biblical sciences” of the nineteenth century, especially in Hebrew philology and the knowledge of antiquity. Still, for all this appreciation, he underscored the problematic aspects of modern approaches. “Modern criticism also has its defects; like every new principle, it has been pursued with one-sided rigour; the desire of consistency has led to extremes. The treasures of the old, especially the Jewish commentators, were neglected; the positive basis was deserted; every traditional conception was rejected.… The sacred records were dismembered, transposed, falsified; the most aerial conjectures were framed; and the palm was awarded to those who excelled the rest in boldness and fanciful theories…. The most venerable documents were degraded to an aggregate of contradictions.”Footnote ²⁴ Kalisch's Commentary sought to provide some balance. “It has been our careful endeavor to avoid these extremes; we have disregarded none of the more important ancient commentators; we have tried to produce an equilibrium between the faith of former ages and the science of our century.”Footnote ²⁵

He returned to the issue of biblical criticism in the introduction, now with reference to claims of Exodus's redaction: “Its unity has been questioned, not only by that school of Biblical critics which dismembers the sacred writings, quite as arbitrarily and blindly as many hypercritical philologists of the last century dissected Homer's songs into incoherent fragments; but even more moderate interpreters believe that our book is disfigured by spurious interpolations.”Footnote ²⁶ The Commentary would meet this challenge directly. “We have in all such passages tried to refute this very questionable opinion. We see the completest harmony in all parts of Exodus; we consider it as a perfect whole, pervaded throughout by one spirit and the same leading ideas.”Footnote ²⁷ Indeed, Kalisch declared that “it is one of the chief objects of this commentary to prove that unity,” and he paused from time to time to excoriate the critical school for “arbitrary conjectures” that were as unfounded as they were unnecessary.Footnote ²⁸ All in all, this volume fit well with the kind of learned biblical conservatism of midcentury Victorian England, but like the earlier Sacred Scriptures in Hebrew and English, it was more conservative in one respect: it upheld the accuracy and reliability of the Masoretic version of Scripture, rejecting the use of ancient texts and modern conjectures to emend the Hebrew Bible.

With an eye toward readers who had no particular use for a Hebrew Bible or interest in his philological discursions, the author also published a somewhat abridged parallel edition for the “general reader,” presumably Christians.Footnote ²⁹ Kalisch had something more in mind than an expanded readership. With “impartiality its only guide,” he offered his Commentary as a work that was “perfectly unsectarian” which “does not labour to defend the doctrines of any particular creed.” His aim was positively ecumenical, convinced that this was the only means of “reconciling the conflicting opinions, and of promoting harmony and true brotherly love among the different sects of society.”Footnote ³⁰

Kalisch succeeded in garnering attention in the general press, including brief notices in two of the more widely read and influential British weeklies.Footnote ³¹ His “German industry,” as one review put it, was appreciated, and a leading Anglican journal made specific mention of his conservative stance regarding biblical criticism.Footnote ³² This was paralleled in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle in a review written by Leopold Dukes, a fellow émigré and friend of Kalisch, and a fine scholar in his own right who had contributed to modern advances in Hebrew and Bible studies.Footnote ³³ Dukes praised the author for his mastery of contemporary research as well as his impressive breadth and depth, and specifically emphasized the “judicious moderation” of the Commentary with regard to biblical criticism: “The author has conscientiously examined every useful result of modern Biblical inquiries; what is unavailable or fallacious he has rejected with a sound critical tact.… German criticism has frequently trespassed due bounds.” Kalisch believed that “true inquiry and historical criticism” gained much from a proper regard for tradition and could be marshaled in its favor.Footnote ³⁴

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In 1858 Kalisch published the Commentary on Genesis, another hefty tome issued in parallel Hebrew-English and English editions designed to appeal to both Jewish and Christian audiences. Although he never explained why he decided to include a Genesis commentary after all, it is easy to see the many ways in which this volume surpassed the Hebrew-English Genesis of 1844. The preface and preliminary introduction, for example, dealt with the historicity of the narratives, while the general introduction was devoted to a lengthy discussion of Scripture and the natural sciences.Footnote ³⁵ This time around, Kalisch did not explicitly raise the issue of biblical criticism, and his readers presumably took statements about setting aside “preconceived theory” and conclusions drawn with “unreserved frankness” in the spirit of his commentary to Exodus.Footnote ³⁶ But the commentary itself pointed to something different. Early in the volume, in a discussion about the discrepancies between the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2–3, Kalisch offered the following: “The second account has, then, been composed with clear consciousness after, and with reference to, the first; the author of the Pentateuch added to an ancient document on the creation, the history of man's disobedience, and its consequences…. He did not reject indiscriminately all former historical documents; but he arranged, revised, and completed them.… The first account was, therefore, composed independently of the second; but the second is a distinct and deliberate continuation of the first; it is intended as a progress in the narrative.”Footnote ³⁷

Further on, Kalisch explained that Genesis 5 was part of the same ancient document as Genesis 1:1–2:3, a document that “for the sake of brevity, and in conformity with general usage,” was “the account of the Elohist, in contradistinction to that of the Jehovist or the author of the Pentateuch.”Footnote ³⁸ An even clearer indication of a new approach was evident in his handling of the discrepancy between Genesis 6:19–20, which instructed Noah to take one pair of every species, and Genesis 7:2–3, where Noah was told to take seven pairs of “clean” animals but only one pair of an “unclean” species. In this instance, he harshly censured those who clung to traditional solutions: “The Bible cannot be abused to defy common sense, to foster sophistry and perverse reasoning, to cloud the intellect, or to poison the heart with the rank weeds of insincerity.”Footnote ³⁹ The only rational solution lay in the same “unobjectionable principle” already invoked:

For Kalisch, this approach was not about finding contradictions or competing voices in the Pentateuch: “The Jehovist designed full harmony with the Elohist, and he has preserved it in all other respects.”Footnote ⁴¹ In the Elohist account, Kalisch explained, “we have a perfect history of the deluge. But the Scriptures do not intend to give mere history. They desire to make the facts subservient to ideas … and thus to spiritualise the facts. And this task is frequently performed by the Jehovist.… He treats the events as a base for a spiritual edifice. He infuses into the mute materials the living breath of religion. And this is the advance which the Pentateuch shows within its own pages.… It is no dead letter; it admits of a more and more spiritual acceptation.”Footnote ⁴² Here, and in another dozen sections of Genesis, Kalisch employed the same approach to the composition of the Pentateuch cited by Davidson: the supplementary hypothesis then current in German lands and advanced by Heinrich Ewald, Friedrich Tuch, and others.Footnote ⁴³ This critical view posited the existence of a foundational document later supplemented to form what we know as the Pentateuch.Footnote ⁴⁴

Kalisch was independent-minded enough to express skepticism about some of the new critical ideas, such as Hermann Hupfeld's notion of two independent Elohist sources (an older Urschrift and a younger Elohist).Footnote ⁴⁵ But this Anglo-Jew had arrived, possibly independently, at the same set of historical-critical insights into the composition of the Pentateuch as Davidson.Footnote ⁴⁶ Neither of them ever explained their abrupt turn, but England now had two resident scholars, a Nonconformist and a Jew, drawn appreciatively to German critical theories that were either ignored or spurned by Anglican Bible scholars. Convinced that the study of Scripture could only benefit from these new critical ideas, Davidson and Kalisch sought to promote them among their English compatriots.

The publication of this volume was again noted in British journals. The erudition that informed the Commentary on Genesis was broadly acknowledged, although the reviews were now more mixed.Footnote ⁴⁷ The Athenaeum lamented a number of features, including interpretations that were “arbitrary and unwarranted.”Footnote ⁴⁸ While it did not specifically cite Kalisch's new critical views in this regard, other periodicals did. The Nonconformist noted that “since his Exodus, Dr. Kalisch has materially altered his ‘stand-point’ as an interpreter. His conception of the Pentateuch—its authorship, its historical character, and its objects—is not what it was when he issued his commentary on Exodus.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Westminster Review applauded the fact that the Commentary on Genesis “recognizes the Pentateuch as a compilation,” although disapproved of the author's propensity to discover “in the primeval narrative ideas of which the authors little dreamt.”Footnote ⁵⁰ The Scottish North British Review—which made it a point of noting Kalisch's Jewishness and wondered aloud about the firmness of his religious commitments—was also dissatisfied with readings that were forced. But this review was clear-eyed about where the Commentary now stood with regard to contemporary schools of biblical criticism: it “equals anything we have seen in German productions.”Footnote ⁵¹ Taken together, these British reviews noted Kalisch's adoption of new critical approaches and reacted to it with a mix of indifference and disapproval. Coming as it did from outside the Anglican establishment and the Nonconformist Churches, the Genesis volume was objectionable, but not a direct threat.

The reaction on the part of Anglo-Jews to Kalisch's Genesis volume was decidedly curious. Dukes was again asked to review the new commentary for the Jewish Chronicle. By this juncture, both Dukes and Abraham Benisch, the editor of this Jewish weekly, had spoken out against a different work of biblical criticism, namely Abraham Geiger's groundbreaking Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel.Footnote ⁵² Geiger argued that ancient Jewish scribes took advantage of a fluid biblical text in order to distance Jews from ideas deemed harmful, or in positive terms, that they shaped the meaning of the biblical texts and made it commensurate with contemporary beliefs through textual revision.Footnote ⁵³ Dukes would have none of this, and lashed out against Geiger and his supporters for promoting emendations of the Hebrew Bible that were “vain and presumptuous.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Benisch also protested, but more moderately. Without staking a claim for the perfect preservation of the biblical text, which he admitted would be nothing short of miraculous, he said that Geiger fell short in proving his central contention of intentional textual alterations. Benisch took issue with an attitude that favored novelty and conjecture over a sober-minded reliance on trustworthy if imperfect tradition.Footnote ⁵⁵ Geiger, of course, was touching on issues that focused specifically on the integrity of the biblical text itself; Kalisch's supplementary hypothesis had broached the issue of the Pentateuch's composition and redaction. Although these were wholly different challenges to traditional notions, the latter could hardly have been less objectionable.

Dukes's review of Kalisch, however, was glowing.Footnote ⁵⁶ The Genesis volume was hailed as thorough and lucid, “a worthy sequel of its predecessor.” Dukes commended Kalisch for his judicious moderation in balancing an openness to scholarship without succumbing to skepticism. By way of contrast, and in line with his objection to Geiger, Dukes decried the “deplorable excesses” of German criticism with regard to their emendations of the Bible. “They have abused their learning to produce absurdities. They have mocked Moses, common sense, the Hebrew language, the believing, and the disbelieving. They have pulled down behind them all bridges of tradition.” Not so Kalisch, who remained firmly conservative in upholding the Masoretic text: “The author of the commentary under review has not allowed himself to be deluded and carried away by these critical sirens; he seems to have felt that this mode of research, compared with the legitimate and useful investigation, is what glittering glass is to the true jewel.” Dukes went on to praise various aspects of the book and its author's temperament, even allowing that “English literature may be proud of possessing such a work.” There was, however, no mention of Kalisch's discussion of the redaction of Genesis.Footnote ⁵⁷

Two years later, Dukes contributed another review of Kalisch's Genesis and Exodus volumes for the newly revived Hebrew Review, a Jewish literary monthly.Footnote ⁵⁸ Dukes's four-part review was again highly positive, extolling the author's scholarly diligence and judgment. He praised Kalisch's abilities as a translator and his engagement with questions raised by contemporary scientific advances, and lauded many other elements of the Commentary. But for all its sweep, this lengthy review made no reference to Kalisch's view of the historical-literary composition of Genesis.Footnote ⁵⁹ And Dukes was not alone in his silence. The editor of this periodical, M. H. Bresslau, wrote that Kalisch's work “confers honour on the Jews” and encouraged him to continue his labors, wishing only that “a production of such merit” could emanate from a native-born Anglo-Jew.Footnote ⁶⁰ Bresslau also said nothing about Kalisch's foray into biblical criticism, and from all the available evidence, that silence extended to other Anglo-Jews as well.

This reluctance to address this Anglo-Jewish turn to critical scholarship was not mere oversight. Whatever they might have thought of this aspect of Kalisch's work—that is, whether they appreciated its critical daringness or viewed his ideas as dubious or even dangerous—the Anglo-Jewish writers active in the late 1850s chose not to mention it. Their silence may be explained by a number of overlapping concerns. For one, the German biblical criticism that Kalisch utilized was not altogether new to the European-educated writers like Dukes, Bresslau, Benisch, and other émigrés who constituted the Jewish intelligentsia of midcentury England. But the same was not true of most English Jews, for whom ideas concerning the authorship of the Torah would be new and possibly unsettling, and this might have given these Anglo-Jewish writers pause. Second, even if some number of Anglo-Jews appreciated Kalisch's approach, they might have been wary of other coreligionists, be they the chief rabbi, congregational ministers, or communal leaders, who might be far less accepting of these critical ideas. But even those hostile to biblical criticism found reason to sheath their pens, despite the fact that Jewish opposition to Kalisch's critical notions would have dovetailed with the prevailing English rejection of “German excesses” in biblical scholarship. The fact that British publications had already noted Kalisch's critical turn was not reason to draw more, possibly unwelcome, attention to it; the Anglo-Jewish intelligentsia accepted the relatively benign Anglican criticism of Kalisch for what it was, and let the matter lie.

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Unbeknown to these Anglo-Jews, the Anglican Church and the British public were about to be consumed by years of vociferous controversy about biblical criticism. In March 1860, a collection titled Essays and Reviews challenged Anglican conservatism by calling for a more critically minded and historically sophisticated study of the Bible. The contributors were not Hebrew Bible scholars, but as ordained churchmen or scholars with Oxford and Cambridge affiliations, their words carried weight. The collection dealt with the Bible broadly, and mainly theologically, and only one piece, by Rowland Williams, touched on the composition of the Pentateuch. His essay questioned whether “the Pentateuch is of one age and hand” and suggested that it might well be comprised of “numerous fragments of genealogy, of chronicle…. embedded in a crust of later narrative … which betray at least a time when kings were established in Israel.”Footnote ⁶¹ What really concerned Williams, however, was the quality of discourse around these issues in Britain, where writers had the habit of “denunciation … seldom defended by argument.” He hoped to replace this with the German “pathway streaming with light, from Eichhorn to Ewald,” where even the conservative resistance was “free and rational.”Footnote ⁶² Williams's wish was not to be. The public storm over Essays and Reviews and the church proceedings against him focused little on the redaction of the Bible or German scholarship and far more on issues of Anglican orthodoxy, institutional authority, and freedom of conscience.Footnote ⁶³ The controversy generated wide public interest. Essays and Reviews was reprinted seven times within the year, and called forth some 150 responses—almost all hostile—in the form of essays and books.Footnote ⁶⁴ This did not include extensive coverage in newspapers and weeklies throughout the British Isles.

This attention extended to the Jewish Chronicle, which discussed the Essays and Reviews and the church trials in dozens of items, including editorials, opinion pieces, letters, and notices.Footnote ⁶⁵ The interest on the part of this Jewish weekly was driven by more than curiosity regarding the public spectacle. The editorials and opinion pieces yielded a series of smug, facetious, and even angry comments directed at the “true” face of Christianity revealed by the Essays and Reviews and the ensuing controversy. With Benisch at the helm, the Jewish Chronicle depicted the Anglican opposition to the book as entrenched Christian intolerance, contrasting its interpretative dogmatism with the Jewish penchant for vigorous—not to mention sound—exegetical debate. Benisch complained of a historical double-standard: Anglicans insisted that Williams and the others had no right to deviate from the “authorised and national interpretation of the Scriptures,” while hoping that Jews did just that by abandoning their own rabbinic traditions of interpretation. In another vein, Williams's acknowledgement of the historical and textual fallacies in the Christological readings of Isaiah and Daniel was hailed as belated vindication.Footnote ⁶⁶ In aggressive tones, Benisch and other contributors struck back at the Christian denigration of Judaism and Anglican missionizing by inviting an honest comparison of Judaism and Christianity. The Jewish stress on deed over creed, the eschewal of textual literalism, the absence of theological dogma—all these were taken as hallmarks of religious sophistication and tolerance that Anglicans would do well to emulate. But like the Anglicans who entered the fray against Essays and Reviews, Jews who commented on the book did not bother to discuss the issue of critical scholarship itself. The chance to throw unflattering light on Christianity, it seems, gave these Anglo-Jews little reason to raise such thorny matters.Footnote ⁶⁷

The subject of biblical criticism, however, would soon come to the fore. In 1862, while the dispute over Essays and Reviews was still ongoing, John William Colenso, an Anglican bishop then serving in the British colony of Natal, began to publish The Pentateuch and Joshua Critically Examined. Unlike the Essays and Reviews, this was a substantive and detailed foray into the historical composition of the first six books of Scripture.Footnote ⁶⁸ The first volume set out to demonstrate that the pentateuchal “narrative, whatever may be its value and meaning, cannot be regarded as historically true,” by which he meant to say that the biblical accounts were recorded long after the events they purported to describe.Footnote ⁶⁹ Colenso's subsequent volumes took on the task of unraveling the Elohist and Jehovist sources of the Hebrew Bible and then identifying different strands within those documents themselves. He was also attentive to Deuteronomistic interpolations in the first four books of the Pentateuch, and using textual and linguistic evidence, he variously ascribed Elohist, Jehovist, and Deuteronomistic documents to Samuel, the Davidic reign, and Jeremiah, respectively.Footnote ⁷⁰ Colenso was trying to work out the supplementary hypothesis then regnant among German Bible scholars, although his work was occasionally marred by indeterminate conclusions and shifting assumptions, and hence confusing. Still, he was unwavering in his determination. He insisted that “the foundations of our National Church are laid upon the Truth itself,” and that the only way to secure the authority of the Bible was to “save its devout readers from ascribing to it attributes of perfection and infallibility … which the Bible never claims for itself.”Footnote ⁷¹

Colenso's first volume set off a storm, largely due to the tenor of his opening salvo, which irritated even those sympathetic to his scholarly aims.Footnote ⁷² This volume, focusing on what one contemporary called the “Arithmetic of the Pentateuch,” raised a series of quantitative problems in the Bible, among them the implausibility of the population increase between Jacob and the Exodus; the absurd mass of materials that the desert-bound Israelites needed for their cultic and ritual needs; and the inhuman burden of the priestly workload. While these arguments aimed to demonstrate the historical gap between the redaction of these texts and their putative occurrence, they struck some conservative Anglicans as being “the same shafts [that] were before launched against Moses, years ago, by the English Deists.”Footnote ⁷³ Colenso's insistence on the plain absurdity of the biblical record seemed to reduce Scripture to a series of folktales and to mock those gullible enough to believe them. Churchmen and the laity took this as a serious provocation, and coming from an Anglican bishop, scandalous. Colenso's work garnered immediate attention and sold thousands of copies within weeks.Footnote ⁷⁴ Victorians of all religious stripes were agitated, and Britons published dozens upon dozens of essays and treatises denouncing the bishop, with the uproar duly covered in the popular press.Footnote ⁷⁵ The Anglican establishment began formal proceedings to force a retraction or strip Colenso of his bishopric.Footnote ⁷⁶

Jews also reacted, and quickly. At first, the Jewish Chronicle treated Colenso's book much as it had the Essays and Reviews, by assailing Christian hypocrisy. Mocking a certain missionizing prelate, Benisch asked: “Why does his Lordship not found a society for regaining the faith of such men as his brother prelate, Bishop Colenso, [or] … the authors of ‘Essays and Reviews’ who have as much discarded certain articles of the Church's creed as the Jews themselves?”Footnote ⁷⁷ But he soon changed his tack, and only weeks after The Pentateuch and Joshua Critically Examined first appeared, he launched a fourteen-part critique of the bishop's work.

The opening editorial referred to the “unparalleled sensation which this work has created in our country,” but sought to reassure its Jewish readers. The arguments advanced by Colenso were neither new nor convincing, since “these objections, to some extent, have centuries ago been anticipated by the rabbis, without in the least degree shaking their faith either in the authenticity or the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.” Benisch averred that even if one allowed that “subsequent ages might have varied the transcripts thereof” or added explanatory phrases, this did not undermine the Bible's “historical character.” This was because the genuineness of the Pentateuch rested upon the prophetic authority of Ezra, who “examined the sacred compositions which form the Bible … and only allowed such historical explanations or references to remain as they knew were authentic and deemed useful.” He also wrote that Colenso's work was marred by its reliance on the Authorized Version and insufficient attention to the Hebrew original, and its failure to appreciate the “habits of thoughts and trains of ideas” that informed the words of the Pentateuch.Footnote ⁷⁸ The next thirteen installments went on to detail the textual and contextual errors that plagued Colenso's work and undermined his claims.Footnote ⁷⁹

Benisch's approach was considered and purposeful. As with his review of Geiger and his pieces on Essays and Reviews, he argued that rabbinic and medieval scholars were fully cognizant of the kinds of textual problems raised by Colenso, thereby undercutting their novelty and critical edge. The remaining installments, however, set aside postbiblical writings and insisted that Colenso's claims could be denied with a careful parsing of the biblical text alone.Footnote ⁸⁰ This textual approach gave him license to showcase Jewish grammatical and exegetical learning, but it also allowed him to avoid broader issues like the historicity of the Bible and its redaction. In fact, Benisch had no intention of addressing those questions. He ignored Colenso's second volume, which focused on the Elohist document and the late composition of parts of the Pentateuch, even though it appeared in January 1863 and before the Jewish Chronicle series was completed. He also ignored the subsequent volumes of The Pentateuch and Joshua Critically Examined.Footnote ⁸¹

Benisch was not the only Jew to enter the fray against Colenso. Hermann Adler, the recently ordained twenty-three-year-old son of the chief rabbi, penned a letter to the Athenaeum, a liberal periodical with broad readership. Adler declared that he was “one of those to whom a ‘critical examination of the Pentateuch’ is of special interest,” but that Colenso's work was marred by his insufficient knowledge of Hebrew and concomitant reliance on the Authorized Version, whose mistranslations he “servilely” copied.Footnote ⁸² He mocked Colenso for his hyperliteralism and argued that a familiarity with traditions of Jewish interpretation, both rabbinic and medieval, would have settled the bishop's queries.Footnote ⁸³ David Marks, the Reform minister of the West London Synagogue, also spoke out in a review of Benisch's anti-Colenso writing.Footnote ⁸⁴ He seconded Benisch's substantive rebuttals, but saw the review as too deferential to the bishop, whose work had “not even the merit of mediocrity.” Marks did venture a few comments about the contemporary state of critical scholarship, which he portrayed as a field whose novelty was largely spent and whose boldest claims had been satisfactorily challenged.Footnote ⁸⁵

These Jewish reactions to Essays and Reviews and Colenso's first volume were instructive. For one, the responses were unapologetically parochial: Essays and Reviews was greeted as a step towards the Christian liberalization of scriptural interpretation and, in the view of the Jewish Chronicle, a vindication of Judaism and its traditions of interpretation. Benisch thus saw fit to defend and praise the essayists—then being widely condemned by the Anglican establishment—for trying to promote new historically minded approaches to Scripture. Colenso, meanwhile, was roundly dismissed, with Benisch, Adler, and Marks declaring that his work failed the test of elemental Jewish scholarship. Adler and Marks, it bears noting, stood on opposite sides of the early Orthodox-Reform divide in England, yet shared an opposition to critical scholarship.Footnote ⁸⁶ What these Jewish writers did not do, even when claiming they would do so, was address the issue of biblical criticism in substantial terms. This evasion was again evident a few years later in Adler's book-length rejoinder to Colenso, by which point the Anglican prelate had published three more volumes and further arguments for the late redaction of the Pentateuch.Footnote ⁸⁷ As earlier, Adler denied that contemporary biblical scholarship represented an advance. “To the Jew, the criticisms of Dr. Colenso present few points of novelty. Centuries ago, most of the difficulties raised by the bishop, and by the German critics whom he follows, were perceived by the authors of the Talmud and Midrashim, and by other Jewish commentators.” Adler said that he had planned to reply to the whole of Colenso's work, and that considerable progress had been made in a response to Colenso's second and third volumes. He then reconsidered, explaining that those volumes “could scarcely attract the general reader” and were unlike the first, “written in so popular a style that it undoubtedly produced a remarkable effect upon the public mind.” And so, “it will be a matter for future deliberation whether the publication of a rejoinder to the later volumes be desirable.” It apparently was not, and the substantive crux of Colenso's scholarly work was never addressed.

* * *

Kalisch was hardly a disinterested party to these developments, but his first comments on this new critical scholarship were delivered anonymously. Barely a week after the publication of Colenso's first volume, the Spectator ran an unsigned review, one that was almost certainly penned by Kalisch.Footnote ⁸⁸ The review did not object to Colenso's critical perspective per se,Footnote ⁸⁹ but its reservations were telling. The reviewer explained that Colenso's focus on the “unhistorical nature” of the Pentateuch was too narrowly construed and hence missed a broader historical truth about its transmission.

Colenso dealt with the problem of unreliable biblical “numeration” by focusing not on the “flesh, the outward matter, the mere letter, but the inward core and meaning … the spirit.”Footnote ⁹¹ Our reviewer objected to the “implied negative element—a sort of disclaimer of any value in the historical narrative itself as a medium of revelation.” That narrative, preserved in the biblical record, was “the true story of a nation's growth in communion with the God of their fathers from age to age.” The details, lost in the fog of time, were beside the point. What really mattered was “a kind of historical testimony which multiplies a hundredfold our faith, not only in the living will of God, but in the general outlines of the domestic, social, and political destiny in which Hebrew Tradition reported to Hebrew History that will had been seen.”Footnote ⁹² This review rejected the extraction of God's Spirit from the narrative in favor of seeing it as an embodiment of the Hebrew nation's encounter with God. In claiming the Hebrew Bible for the people who bore it as a tradition, the review had all the markings of a distinctly Jewish approach to historical criticism. It also anticipated, by five years, Kalisch's work on Leviticus.Footnote ⁹³

Notwithstanding Colenso's Christian biases, Kalisch was not unsympathetic to his scholarly aims. Kalisch reached out privately to the prelate, then on an extended stay in London, with a short letter of introduction and support. He expressed appreciation for Colenso's “critical labours” and for advancing “the interests both of historical research and religious truth.” Unsure of his standing in Colenso's eyes, he addressed the prelate apologetically and in the third person: “If Dr. Kalisch was more cautious in his ‘Commentary on Exodus’ … he has proved, by his exposition of Genesis, that continued study had led him to much more decided results.”Footnote ⁹⁴ He added that he “will ever gratefully acknowledge how much the Bishop's lucid and fearless criticism contributes to open the public mind for an intelligent and unbiased investigation of the Scriptures.”Footnote ⁹⁵ Colenso, already facing furious denunciations, immediately wrote back asking if he could make public use of the letter. Kalisch responded positively, once again acknowledging his own evolution: “The manner in which your Lordship has opposed some of the views defended by me in my ‘Commentary on Exodus,’ so far from causing me any feelings of disappointment, serves me, on the contrary, as a most cheering proof that the earnest search after truth is rapidly taking deeper root and taking wider ground.”Footnote ⁹⁶ The two soon met, as we learn from a letter of Charlotte de Rothschild: “Dr. Kalisch, who has exchanged visits with Dr. Colenso, is much pleased with him, and has made an arrangement with that celebrity to pre[s]ent the letters, which have passed between the two worthies, to be read in Convocation.”Footnote ⁹⁷ We do not know whether these letters were the ones cited above, but Kalisch clearly rallied to Colenso's cause.

Kalisch's support of Colenso was made public. Writing to the Athenaeum in late February 1863, Colenso defended himself against his British critics: “When so much has been said on the other side, it seems only fair and right that English readers … [know] what is said about my book by real scholars.” What he submitted for publication as approbations from “real scholars” were letters from two eminent Germans, Hupfeld and Ewald, and the two letters from Kalisch cited above.Footnote ⁹⁸ What Colenso hoped to accomplish with these letters was unclear: the approbations only reinforced his association with critical scholars long dismissed in England as foreign and inappropriate.Footnote ⁹⁹ The inclusion of the letters from Kalisch was additionally curious, since it tacitly admitted that the only British Bible scholar to stand in his defense came from outside the Anglican establishment, and a Jew no less. Kalisch, for his part, may have been quite pleased to find himself in the literary company of two leading German Bible critics.

The Jewish Chronicle, always attentive to the mention of Anglo-Jews in the general press, did not let this piece in the Athenaeum pass without notice, especially given Benisch's series on Colenso then appearing in its pages. The next issue of the Jewish Chronicle carried an item stating that Colenso had published letters from several biblical scholars, and then reproduced the letters from Ewald and Kalisch. The inclusion of Ewald's letter was not without reason: it had lauded Colenso for his dedication to the true essence of Christianity, and Benisch, who expiated regularly on Christian hypocrisy, lashed out at Ewald for “establish[ing] the triumph of Christianity upon the ruins of the Writings of Moses.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ But the real point of this Jewish Chronicle item were the letters from Kalisch; the Jewish weekly wanted to let its readers to know that the erudite Jewish biblical commentator was publicly defending a deeply controversial bishop. It went ahead and reproduced the two letters, but remarkably, without a single word of editorial comment. Once again, nothing was said about Kalisch's commitment to critical scholarship.

* * *

In April 1867, Kalisch published the first of his two-volume Leviticus commentary. His preface spoke encouragingly of “an intellectual revolution” of the past few years in which “traditional views are questioned in every branch of science and learning,” going on to cite Essays and Reviews and Colenso alongside Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and others.Footnote ¹⁰¹ He laid out the many problems posed by the literary organization of Leviticus, and then offered his forthright conclusion: that while “a few older portions formed the ground-work of the Book … this collection of laws was enlarged and qualified by the addition and insertion of new sections … dating from later periods.”Footnote ¹⁰² The challenge, as he saw it, was to distinguish between these very elements and to determine when and how Leviticus took on its final shape.

The introduction was followed by a book-length “Preliminary Essay” that was astonishingly broad and ambitious, by far the most learned scholarly piece of any Anglo-Jew of the period. It presented a history of biblical religion set against religious developments of other cultures, anchoring the discussion of “Hebrew” rituals in a historical and anthropological analysis of ancient practices. Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity were subject to the same historical treatment, and he critiqued both as religious edifices that strained the biblical text beyond recognition.Footnote ¹⁰³

At the heart of this “Preliminary Essay” lay Kalisch's argument about the evolution of the cultic practices of Leviticus. His conclusions were clear and far-reaching: “The minute and complicated sacrificial legislation of Leviticus originated at a considerably later time than that of Deuteronomy; and as the Book of Deuteronomy can, from internal evidence, not have been written earlier than the seventh century before the present era.… the sacrificial laws of Leviticus were not compiled before the Babylonian period, and came into operation in the second Temple only, after the return of the Jews from captivity.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Kalisch took his assertion of the late redaction of the Pentateuch as the grounds for two crucial historical-national claims: first, that the “Hebrew sacrifices” were intimately connected to the advanced theological ideas that distinguished this nation from its pagan surroundings;Footnote ¹⁰⁵ and second, that the gradual development of the cultic practices of the Pentateuch reflected a highly developed and dynamic national spirit. The Levitical system of sacrifices, he wrote, was “rooted in the life of the people, and was the sum of the national experience. It gathered in one focus the scattered ideas and customs that had imperceptibly spread. It converted vague aspirations into distinct notions; it proposed a principle and created a unity. This is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the discrepancies pointed out between the Pentateuch and the historical Books: but that conclusion derives additional force from the fluctuations discoverable in the Pentateuch itself.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶

As was the case in the Genesis volume, Kalisch's analysis reflected the new critical directions of continental scholarship, especially the notion of the late or postexilic development of the priestly legislation.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ There were, at the same time, critical notions proffered by German scholars to which he did not relate, and it is unclear whether this reflected a degree of isolation or independence.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ But Kalisch's work was also exceptional by any mid-nineteenth-century standard. It devoted unprecedented attention to the particulars of the sacrificial order as laid out in Leviticus, carefully analyzing its component parts with an eye to demonstrating evolution towards ever-more refined notions of piety and devotion.

The publication of this volume was again noted in British periodicals. The reviews ranged from those that applauded “the distinctiveness and boldness of the views,” especially for readers already “initiated into these inquiries by the volumes of Bishop Colenso and Dr. Davidson,” to those who labeled the book as “entirely destructive in its character.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The reviews were clear-eyed about what Kalisch was saying as a critical scholar,Footnote ¹¹⁰ but given that he stood outside their churches, they seemed content to restate their own conservative positions without breaking a lance. If anything really displeased the reviewers, it was what Kalisch qua Jew said about Christianity, for example, its misappropriations of the Old Testament, or the equation of New Testament homilies with midrashic overinterpretation. The Athenaeum huffed that such statements were “too bold” and inappropriate, while others merely marked them as “a Jewish point of view,” allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.

And the Anglo-Jewish reaction? In an unusual and highly peculiar move, The Jewish Chronicle, in a notice presumably penned by Benisch, announced that it would not publish a review: “We do not intend to do more than notice this volume. Not that it does not deserve an ample review, but that we cannot spare either space or time for such a labour; and if we could there would scarcely be many of our readers that would care to peruse a thorough criticism of a series of most erudite disquisitions, the nature and contents of which place their consideration beyond the sphere of a popular journal.” This notice cited Kalisch's own suggestion that readers unable to suspend their preconceived opinions should just set the book aside. The announcement concluded with the following: “Although there is much in this volume that we approve, and more, that we admire, there is yet much more of its contents from which we dissent, and some few which we could have wished had remained unwritten. With these few remarks, we commend the volume to all those who are sufficiently prepared to appreciate and examine such grave matters. We can promise them that they will derive from the study thereof much information, and learn to regard the Bible from new, albeit not always acceptable, points of view.”Footnote ¹¹¹ In a mere three sentences, the Jewish Chronicle managed to convey respect, censure, and ambivalence, and without actually saying anything of substance regarding the book's methods or conclusions. It was a deft move that avoided the kind of public contretemps that had just riled England.

If this was indeed the aim, it succeeded well. In the months that followed, not a single Anglo-Jew said anything in print about this Leviticus commentary. Then, in late 1867, an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle announced a forthcoming tract, Dr. Kalisch's “High Criticism” on the Old Testament, and the Falacious Cavilling against Its Contents by Specious Arguments, which soon appeared as a self-published booklet. The author, Haim Guedalla, was a prominent leader of the Sephardic community and a member of the Board of Deputies, but also something of a gadfly.Footnote ¹¹² The opening words announced both frustration and alarm:

Knowing that he was not up to the task, Guedalla issued a public plea for someone to step forward, and his exasperation highlighted the Jewish reticence to speak out publicly. This reticence was then underscored by the fact that Guedalla's call was ignored.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Over the next five years, there was no Jewish review or direct discussion of Kalisch's Leviticus.

This did not mean that Kalisch went unnoticed, and the passing references were suggestive. In September 1869, the Weekly Dispatch published a piece titled “A Question for the Jews.” This article hailed progressive changes taking place among Christians and Jews and held out the hope that both “rabbinical and ecclesiastical systems” would give way to a unity of faith, one naturally fulfilled in the pure teachings of Christ.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The writer pointed to Essays and Reviews and Colenso as clearing the ground on the Christian side, and on the continent, to Jews like Geiger and the recent rabbinic synod in Leipzig. Among British Jews, he cited Kalisch, “the most able, learned, and current commentator,” noting not so much his notions of pentateuchal redaction but his naturalism with regard to miracles and prophecy. Miffed at this bit of liberal conversionism, Michael Henry, the new editor of the Jewish Chronicle, reprinted the Weekly Dispatch item and then followed up with a long response. What the author failed to understand, he explained, was that English Jews had not turned their backs on traditional Judaism, and that even the reform-minded Jews of the West London Synagogue embraced nothing of the progressivism of their German counterparts. As for Kalisch, the Christian writer was ill informed: “Dr. Kalisch, erudite and able though he be, is not our ‘most able, learned, and current commentator.’ His writings have not had, practically, any effect on the opinions and Creed of the great mass of Jews.” The piece in the Weekly Dispatch might applaud Kalisch's eschewal of supernaturalism, but the Jewish Chronicle saw this—and, one suspects, all of Kalisch's work—as “a string of assertions, unsupported by argument and utterly ineffective to leave the merest dint of impression on the mind of the believer or the student who happens not to think or reason after the fashion of Dr. Kalisch.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ The Jewish Chronicle never denied that some Jews might well think “after the fashion of Dr. Kalisch,” although who they were is unclear. But they, like Kalisch himself, were portrayed as marginal—or best seen that way.Footnote ¹¹⁷

* * *

The second volume of the Leviticus Commentary was published in 1872. While the exhaustive discussion of sacrifices rendered the first volume obscure, the second volume raised issues of ritual import that made it more relevant, but also more traditionally objectionable. Extending his analysis of the centuries-long crystallization of the Pentateuch, Kalisch argued that central practices associated with the Day of Atonement and Sukkot were late historical developments that found their way into the Bible only in the fifth century BCE.Footnote ¹¹⁸ In his view, such developments took nothing away from the Bible or Judaism, since the redaction of the Pentateuch told the story of a progressively refined religious evolution that was the signal achievement of Israelite history. Without this diachronic dimension, “the grand spiritual and political history of the ancient Hebrews, which extends over a period of more than a thousand years, can neither be comprehended nor adequately appreciated.” Further, “In abandoning the traditional conceptions of the origin of the Pentateuch, we gain a great and most valuable boon; for in viewing the marvelous religious edifice of the Hebrews as their own and patiently achieved creation, their intellectual life and struggles are brought home to our understandings and our human sympathies, and thus cannot fail to inspire us with a new interest and a higher admiration.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ As such, Kalisch articulated an argument for the compelling spiritual value of critical scholarship. Far from debunking or deflating the authority or integrity of the Pentateuch, this historical approach was used to highlight the ever-advancing spiritual refinement that unfolded in its verses.

The reviews in the British press were fairly predictable. Conservative periodicals found much that was objectionable, yet, not having to deal with a fellow Anglican, praised and even recommended the book to Christian readers for its wealth of insights and scholarship.Footnote ¹²⁰ As with the first Leviticus volume, a few reviews protested what Kalisch had to say about Jesus and early Christianity, although these criticisms were notably restrained.Footnote ¹²¹ On the other hand, a decade had passed since Colenso published his first volume, and some liberal-minded publications were expressing an openness to the new critical methods; they reviewed Kalisch's volume alongside Colenso's latest volume and measured both against recent advances in German scholarship.Footnote ¹²² Taken together, the reviews of Kalisch largely concurred with the Athenaeum's somewhat begrudging admission that “the literature of the Pentateuch has now fairly entered on a new phase in England.” Indeed, the late dating of the Levitical texts was just then emerging as the central question among German critical scholars, and Kalisch's contribution was seen as part of this advance.

The Jewish Chronicle, now under Henry's editorial guidance, changed course and announced that it would carry a review of Kalisch's Leviticus volumes.Footnote ¹²³ Months passed, and what finally appeared in the pages of this weekly was not a single review but a twelve-part critique that would appear over the course of a year.Footnote ¹²⁴ The review, like others in the Jewish weekly, was unsigned, but cognizant of the scholarly heft of Kalisch's work, the Jewish Chronicle made a point of describing the reviewer as accomplished scholar “whose attainments are worthy of competition with those of the gifted … scholar, whom he criticizes.”Footnote ¹²⁵ This reviewer was Michael Friedländer (1833–1910), another German Jewish émigré to London and principal of Jews’ College.Footnote ¹²⁶ The 18,000-word serialized review was indeed a learned work in its own right, and it offered a thorough if careful rebuttal of Kalisch's critical notions. Occasionally hard-hitting and blunt, sometimes exasperated and snide, the review nevertheless adopted a measured tone, calmly inviting the reader to a reasoned consideration of the evidence. The first two “notices,” as the installments were called, countered Kalisch's assertions of the textual disjointedness of Leviticus with arguments that sought to uphold the “internal unity” of the book.Footnote ¹²⁷ Kalisch was taken to task for his arbitrary distinctions, the overreading of biblical passages, and the tendency to find textual seams where they did not necessarily exist. From the third notice onward, Friedländer offered a chapter-by-chapter critique of the Commentary, pointing to questionable contentions or the failure to consider evidence to the contrary. He was especially displeased with Kalisch's quick dismissal of rabbinic explications. He drew attention to the Commentary's inconsistencies and self-contradictions, and censured Kalisch's rhetorical use of phrases such as “no doubt” and “very probable” as a means of concealing the speculative and dubious nature of his claims.

Friedländer, in sum, argued that for all of Kalisch's evident learning, the advances claimed in the Commentary amounted to nothing. The review focused carefully on Kalisch's reading of Leviticus and took the approach that a detailed refutation of his exegetical claims was enough to secure the integrity and authenticity of the Pentateuch. For all the impressive learning that went into this Jewish Chronicle review, the twelve-part series was narrowly cast and notable for what it avoided: with only one brief exception, it did not discuss the matter of biblical criticism as a scholarly endeavor.Footnote ¹²⁸ Friedländer ignored the hundreds of pages Kalisch devoted to the long historical development of religious practices and beliefs, and refrained from addressing the theological and religious issues that informed Kalisch's historical criticism. As such, the review also skirted the subject of revelation and prophecy, and in so doing, steered clear of questions that would call forth a delineation, or defense, of traditional orthodoxies.Footnote ¹²⁹ This was, in other words, a carefully calibrated effort that sought to undermine the Commentary without raising broader issues or fueling religious controversy. The textually detailed and learned nature of the response set out to bury Kalisch, and with minimal fuss. And this seemed very much the point.

These features of the review were brought into greater relief by an editorial written by Henry titled “Biblical Criticism” that appeared two weeks after the last installment. This editorial never mentioned Kalisch by name and made only one reference, almost in passing, to the Leviticus commentary. Henry seemed determined to set aside the Commentary and its perceived failings in order to address, separately and more broadly, “the spirit of Biblical Criticism with which our age is fraught.”Footnote ¹³⁰ The editorial argued that while the “blundering atheism” that impugned the authenticity of Scripture was an old enemy of religion, contemporary skepticism in the form of biblical criticism was new: it used “the aid of science and the instrumentality of plausibility founded on learned theories … to deny the authenticity of the Sacred Canon, while accepting its morality and patronizing its revelations.” Henry could not abide the smugness of the scholarly suppositions which traded the fallibility of the biblical record for the presumed infallibility of the new critical theories. Utilizing the well-worn trope of faith and reason, the editorial did not object to reason as much as to the easy dismissal of faith, especially by “men who deny the authenticity of Scripture, [who] too often mistake theorizing for reasoning.” The problem, then, lay beyond the shaky foundations of their theories: “The grand fallacy is this—that they take for granted certain authorities which they accept not only as sublime but as infallible, thus actually setting up new-bibles for the old Bible in which so many wise men have so long believed.” The fundamental problem with biblical criticism, Henry suggested, was its intellectual hubris.

* * *

The review in the Jewish Chronicle remained the only serious examination of Kalisch's work among Anglo-Jews. Kalisch soon fell ill, and although he published two shorter studies of biblical literature, he never completed his Commentary.Footnote ¹³¹ When he died in 1885, there were obituaries and notices in the Jewish Chronicle, Athenaeum, and The Times. He was hailed as “one of the most learned Jews of the century” with his biblical scholarship belonging to the “most advanced school of German thinkers.”Footnote ¹³² These obituaries also noted that Kalisch's work made little impact, even and perhaps especially among fellow Jews.Footnote ¹³³ The Jewish Chronicle offered a number of reasons for this: his work was too scholarly for all but the most learned Jews; the tomes were of “unwieldy dimensions” and “unprepossessing” form; and not least, the “advanced” nature of his views. Kalisch, in other words, was the author of his own marginalization. These were sensible assessments that rang true, but they were not the full story.

With regard to the Bible, midcentury Victorians maintained largely traditional and conservative views, and so did English Jews.Footnote ¹³⁴ The critical study of Scripture was broadly rejected, with few Britons willing to accept its presuppositions and conclusions. Kalisch was, by any measure, exceptional: he was among a very small number of Britons of any faith to embrace biblical criticism, and his level of sophistication was extraordinary, perhaps unmatched in the British Isles. Taken alone, his writings serve as a corrective footnote to the history of Victorian Jews, but as a singular contribution, it might leave in place the historiographical assessment of a community that was neither learned nor intellectually sophisticated. The events related here, however, are not about Kalisch alone, but about a group of Jewish writers, most of them German Jewish émigrés, who proved to be highly attuned to the intellectual and religious currents of English society. Biblical criticism attracted a great deal of public attention in Victorian England, and the Jewish reactions to Essays and Reviews and Colenso demonstrated not only the extent of their awareness, but their assessment of the public contretemps and willingness to provide a distinctive Jewish response. These writers saw fit to inform Anglo-Jews of the controversies and to shape their understanding of the religious winds blowing among Anglicans and in Britain as a whole. They seized the opportunity to measure Christianity and their Christian contemporaries against their own traditions. They portrayed Judaism as the more sophisticated religious tradition, one that eschewed narrow-minded dogmatism while boasting a long tradition of disciplined and reasonable biblical exegesis. Jews, they told themselves and their readers, had little to fear from biblical criticism. The new critical approaches were seriously flawed and contributed nothing to the Jewish study of the Hebrew Bible.

This engagement with the public controversies of their day informed the Anglo-Jewish response to Kalisch, even as it complicated what could, or would, be said. Given his erudition, the Commentary was a much more difficult target, and it could not be readily dismissed. We may never know what the more lettered Anglo-Jews were saying privately about Kalisch's historical-critical dissection of the Pentateuch, but in public, and to their community, the religious and lay leadership of Anglo-Jewry initially adopted a posture of avoidance. This held true during the storms of the 1860s, when Jews were in the awkward position of watching as some of the most “advanced criticism” emanated from one of their own. Were they to attack Kalisch too strongly or appear to be muffling his scholarship, they would forfeit the self-portrayal of Judaism as more tolerant of dissent and exegetically nondogmatic. This might have been reason enough to remain quiet, but the Anglo-Jews who refrained from challenging Kalisch also seemed to weigh the wisdom, or utility, of attacking biblical criticism in ideological or religious terms. When it finally came, the assessment of the Leviticus Commentary was calibrated to circumvent an argument about traditional belief or religious orthodoxies. If the Anglo-Jewish writers we have encountered here shared anything, it was a desire to bury the emergence of biblical criticism in their midst without a “Kalisch affair.” Judging by Kalisch's disappearance from the annals of Anglo-Jewish history, their marginalization succeeded rather well. It may be ironic, but it was the collective reaction to Kalisch, even more than his own scholarly work, that allows us to appreciate the not unsophisticated nexus of intellectual and communal concerns of mid-Victorian Jewry. The absence of a clash over something as contentious as the critical study of the Hebrew Bible might seem like a nebulous historical observation, but as this case demonstrates, it opens the door to a hitherto untold chapter of Anglo-Jewish history.