Objectives
This project examines the contested integration of an ancient Middle Eastern religion into the cultural imagination of modern Europe. The threefold investigation scrutinizes political representations of early Judaism in the context of 19th-century nationalist thought. It focuses on diverse historiography between and among Prussian Protestants; Prussian and Austrian Jews; and Austrian and Bavarian Catholics. For analysis, this research has three principal objectives: (1) to determine the political values built into Prussian historicism and to trace their impact on ancient histories that incorporated Judaism; (2) to uncover the diversity of Jewish representations of the Jewish past and to establish convergence with contemporary debates concerning assimilation; (3) to trace the contours in Austria and Bavaria of historical writing on antiquity in general and Judaism in particular and to ascertain the incorporation of ancient Jews both into a common Catholic narrative and within their different national profiles. More broadly, it analyzes how contemporaneous political differences and subtle prejudices were manifest in discussions of the ancient past, how boundaries were made in a shared religious tradition, and how identities of belonging were configured in regional entities. This investigation reveals the implicit assumptions inscribed into a conception of the past that then found their way back into the present.
