This monograph is a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation completed in 2015 at the University of Göttingen. It surveys the works of two prominent figures of modern biblical studies—the German Protestant scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) and the Ukraine-born Israeli biblicist Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889–1963)—with special attention to their conceptions of ancient Israel and its religious history, as well as the impact of their intellectual traditions on their own works. The monograph consists of three main parts: Wellhausen's reconstruction of the history of Israel (chaps. 1–3); Kaufmann's interpretation of ancient Israel (chaps. 4–7); and a comparison of Wellhausen and Kaufmann (chaps. 8–9).

Wellhausen and Kaufmann represent two diametrically opposed models for the historical study of ancient Israel and biblical religion. Wellhausen postulated a notion of the Hebrew Bible as a legacy of a minority phenomenon in ancient Israel, reflecting a gradual evolution of monotheism from a primitive animism during the biblical period. Kaufmann, on the other hand, criticized Wellhausen's hypothesis and advanced an alternative notion of the Bible as a collective product of ancient Israel, reflecting monotheism as a popular phenomenon from the beginning of the biblical period, and as a religion fundamentally different from any other in antiquity. Wellhausen presented his historical account most thoroughly in his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Prolegomena to the History of [Ancient] Israel; 2nd ed., Berlin: G. Reimer, 1883; 3rd ed., 1886; Eng. trans., 1885), whereas Kaufmann set forth his comprehensive study in Toledot ha-’emunah ha-yisre'elit (A History of the Israelite Faith [Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Dvir and Mosad Bialik, 1937–56]; Eng. abr. trans., 1960; henceforth Toledot).

Elrefaei contends that a comparative analysis of Wellhausen and Kaufmann helps us reflect on how to engage in critical investigation of ancient Israel and its religious history. Granted much of their works are considerably dated, Elrefaei maintains that their multifaceted disagreements—especially on theoretical, historical, historiographical, and theological issues—are fundamental and still relevant to the current concerns in scholarship. Elrefaei is also a self-declared native of Egypt and Muslim. “Coming from a perspective outside of the Jewish academic and the German Protestant frames of reference,” he seeks to “provide some basis for reaching a middle ground between [the two scholars]” (9) and lay “the groundwork for further investigations” (ix).

The monograph's central thesis is relatively simple. It identifies the real divide between the two scholars as stemming from their differing attitudes toward the historicity of biblical texts: “Both agree that the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is the primary source on which to base writing about the history of ancient Israel, but differ concerning the authority [read: historicity] of its text. … Wellhausen sought to write the history of Israel as one would write the history of any other nation. Kaufmann, on the other hand, was a child of his cultural [i.e., Jewish-Zionist] background in his attempt to defend the religion of Israel and the antiquity of its foundation” (8). In other words: “The former was a critical scholar working deep under the surface of the text, whereas the latter credited the authority [again, better: historicity] of the text without being critical of its content” (230). Elrefaei admits that Wellhausen is not free from the influence of his Protestant background. Therefore, observing, as it were, from a “middle ground,” he states: “To say that Wellhausen's thoughts presupposed certain Christian dogmas about Judaism is balanced by saying that Kaufmann followed the traditional Jewish exegesis of the Hebrew Bible” (274).

This work exhibits several substantive problems. Space permits to address but three points.

1. Neither the topic nor the thesis of Elrefaei's work is particularly unique. There is a series of comparative studies on Wellhausen and Kaufmann from a variety of perspectives, including those by Stephen Geller, Menahem Haran, Thomas Krapf, David Liber, Nahum Sarna, Baruch Schwartz, Peter Slymovics, Binyamin Uffenheimer, and Moshe Weinfeld—all listed in the bibliography. To those acquainted with this field, the monograph at times may evoke the sense of a collage of these and other works; furthermore, its first part—especially, Wellhausen's view on the place of law in the history of Israel—largely repeats much of what has already, and deftly, been discussed in Weinfeld's The Place of the Law in the Religion of Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2004) and in his other works (Weinfeld is mentioned only in passing; e.g., 106 n. 484; 110 n. 519; 264). Had the work described the current state of scholarship, readers themselves could have understood how the present work seeks to contribute to the field—and, more importantly, if and how it has actually achieved that goal.

2. The monograph oftentimes dismisses works, interpretations, and opinions that can potentially undermine its own thesis—this includes some of the works listed in the bibliography. Take, for example, Jon Levenson's seminal article on the influence of Christian biases on some of the founding figures of modern biblical scholarship, including Wellhausen.Footnote ¹ Elrefaei cites this article in passing in a footnote (52 n. 207); however, he never mentions the thrust of its argument. In that article, Levenson demonstrates, among other things, that Wellhausen historicizes Protestant theology: that Wellhausen's reconstruction of Israelite history—which culminates in the Pauline freedom from the Law—not only “presuppose[s] certain Christian dogmas,” as Elrefaei puts it, but actually models itself on Pauline-Lutheran theology. Levenson's article makes readers wonder not only whether Wellhausen indeed “sought to write the history of Israel as one would write the history of any other nation,” as Elrefaei writes, but also whether Elrefaei himself sought to genuinely compare the two scholars from “a middle ground.”

3. The present work does not adequately attend to the foundational theoretical assumptions about historical and cultural studies that Kaufmann uses as the basis for his work, and which Kaufmann spells out clearly in Toledot (2nd ed., vol. 1, pp. xxi–xliv; repr. from Mozna'im 13 [1941]: 237–51). When we look at the history of human culture, argues Kaufmann, we observe an infinite variety of creative forms in practically all spheres of human life, such as in the arts, language, law, or religion. Whether on the individual or collective level, this phenomenon cannot be explained by an artificial speculative scheme or material or social conditions alone. Kaufmann suggests we must assume the creative potential of the human ruaḥ (mind or spirit; cf. Geist in German) as an empirical category of historical experience. Indeed, to discount this category is to ignore what constitutes defining characteristics of our humanness—that is, our diversity, spontaneity, and unpredictability.

Accordingly, Kaufmann predicates the existence of the creative ruaḥ on the basis of disunity and diversity in cultural creative forms, and not, like Hegelian or romanticist thinkers, on the unity and commonality of such forms. Kaufmann thus differentiates himself from Jewish thinkers (e.g., Nachman Krochmal, Aḥad Ha-’am) who espouse the notion of the Bible as a product of the ruaḥ le'umi or collective spirit of ancient Israel in a speculative Hegelian or romanticist sense, which, for him, has no real empirical existence. In contrast, he insists on using the term ruaḥ only in the empirical sense.

Kaufmann explains this use of the term in his reply to reviews by Aharon (Armand) Kaminka, Shelomo D. Goitein, and Ephraim E. Urbach. His reply is a concise digest of his concentrated theoretical discussions, which Kaufmann presented in his historical-sociological interpretation of Jewish history, Golah ve-nekhar [Exile and alienation] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1929–30). Kaufmann's theoretical discussions, however, are extremely dense and, more often than not, ignored even by academic readers. Indeed, even after the publication of this reply—and inclusion in Toledot as the general introduction—his use of the term is still occasionally misconstrued as Hegelian or romanticist.

Elrefaei is no exception. True, when discussing Kaufmann's exegetical approach, he refers to Kaufmann's use of the phrase “infinite diversity of cultural forms” (186); however, he does not explain why Kaufmann addresses this phenomenon. Instead, he cites Kaminka, Goitein, and Urbach as definitive critiques of Kaufmann's scholarship (190–91)—without mentioning that Kaufmann, in turn, sought to clarify their misconceptions. Elrefaei thus repeats the very misconceptions Kaufmann strove to eliminate. Equally striking are his final remarks in that section: that Kaufmann “claimed too much for the people of Israel and too little for God” (191), namely, that Kaufmann understands the idea of monotheism itself as a “product of the creative spirit of the people of Israel” (187–88, 191). However, nowhere does Kaufmann claim that the content of monotheism itself is an invention of the people of Israel. The creative ruaḥ, for Kaufmann, is but a medium through which humans intuit and objectify such content. In fact, Kaufmann explicitly states that empirical investigation cannot penetrate into what is behind the ultimate nexus of reality and, accordingly, cannot—indeed, need not—account for the origins of biblical monotheism. For Kaufmann, what empirical research can consider is only the history and phenomenology of the monotheistic idea after its inception. (Elrefaei himself quotes Kaufmann's similar statements on pages 188 and 216.)

Elrefaei seems to have taken his cue from Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran's The Hebrew Bible Reborn (Berlin: 2007)—also published by De Gruyter—an extensive study of the emergence of the new Bible culture in modern Jewish history. He gives Shavit and Eran the final say on the subject and quotes their words as a “sound critique of Kaufmann's view”: “Kaufmann had in effect replaced a transcendental view with a meta-historical view; namely, he had replaced revelation with a collective genius” (191; quoted from Shavit and Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn, 395). Elrefaei's account of Kaufmann echoes what Shavit and Eran claim in their work: “Kaufmann … did not believe in a divinely given Torah, but in one that originated in the unique genius of the Jewish people, a genius that created the idea of monotheism ex nihilo” (Shavit and Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn, 455; not cited in Elrefaei's work). However, Kaufmann's response to Urbach and others makes clear that he does not address the divine origin of biblical literature, not because he does not believe in revelation, but because he regards it as beyond the scope of empirical research. As Kaufmann puts it: in his work, “there is neither the affirmation nor the denial of faith in revelation. We discuss only empirical history and not matters [lit. faith] of the heart” (Toledot, vol. 1, xxxviii; my translation). Shavit and Eran made no effort to probe Kaufmann's own work but, instead, accepted Urbach's account as given and definitive (see, e.g., Shavit and Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn, 395). Neither Elrefaei nor Shavit and Eran thus represent a “sound critique of Kaufmann's view.”

Wellhausen and Kaufmann are both scholars of outstanding stature and a rigorous comparative analysis of their scholarship—especially from a theoretical and hermeneutic perspective—would be an important contribution. Alas, this work does not provide that analysis.