Guy G. Stroumsa - The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth

Although most chapters of this book were written in Jerusalem, I have used library facilities also in Oxford, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Berlin, and Paris. I started working on it during my Oxford stint, as the first Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions. My College, Lady Margaret Hall, is located at the end of Norham Gardens, where Max Mller once lived. My original puzzlement at the fact that the Chair had only been established in 2009, rather than in his days, a century-and-a-half earlier, lies at the root of this book.

A generous Research Award from the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung, in 2008, permitted the initial research on this project. My intensive involvement with its topic started as I worked on the Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion, which I delivered in the spring of 2013 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I wish to thank Catherine Hezser for her kind invitation. I did not guess at the time that it would take me so long to transform these lectures into a book. My gratitude also goes to Peter Mack for the Workshop on Judaism and Islam in the Mind of Europe that he asked me to organize at the Warburg Institute, of which he was then Director, on June 6, 2013. I am grateful to the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for a Fellowship in 2015, and to the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago for a Kohut Visiting Professorship in 2016. I was able to pursue research on this book with the help of remarkable libraries in Ann Arbor and Chicago. I wish to thank Luca Guliani, former Rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, for having extended to me a Fellowship at this remarkable institution in 2017. The excellent conditions at the WiKo did much to facilitate my research. The lecture I gave at the reception (jointly with Sarah Stroumsa) of the Leopold-Lucas Prize in Tbingen on May 8, 2018 provided further incentive to publish my views on the topic (Guy G. Stroumsa and Sarah Stroumsa, Eine dreifltige Schnur: ber Judentum, Christentum und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft [Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020]). I wish to express my gratitude to the Evangelical Theological Faculty at the University of Tbingen for this award.

I am beholden to Rajeev Bhargava (CSDS, Delhi), Corrine Bonnet (Toulouse), Arthur Bradley (Lancaster), Renaud Gagn, Simon Goldhill and Geoffrey Lloyd (Cambridge), Charles Stang (CSWR, Harvard), and Carsten Wilke (Central European University, then Budapest) for having invited me to present parts of this work at a number of workshops and conferences. Over the years, Dominique Bourel (CNRS, Jerusalem) read a number of the chapters in their draft form and discussed their content with me. In acts of true friendship, both Philippe Borgeaud (Geneva) and Maurice Kriegel (EHESS, Paris) read the whole typescript; I am much indebted to them for their important comments. Naphtali Meshel (Jerusalem) and Perrine Simon-Nahum (CNRS, Paris) kindly agreed to read various chapters. Theodor Dunkelgrn (Cambridge) and Robert Priest (Royal Holloway, London) commented on Chapter six. My own reflection on Renan has benefited from almost daily conversations with Franois Hartog (EHESS, Paris) in Chicago during the fall of 2016, when we were both teaching in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. A French version of the first half of Chapter four, published in Asdiwal in 2018, was dedicated to the distinguished Parisian Sanskritist Charles Malamoud, in recognition of his friendship and generosity over the past five decades. Jacques Le Brun, with whom I discussed various aspects of this book, will not be able to read it: he became a victim of Covid-19 in early spring 2020.

At Oxford University Press, I was lucky to have Tom Perridge as a thoughtful and gracious editor. I am most grateful to the anonymous readers, who called my attention to a number of serious problems in the original typescript. The reports they produced helped me to clarify and sharpen my thought and to prune my text of many errors and typos. Once more, Sara Troppers excellent editing saved me from many oddities and infelicities. I am beholden to Marc Sherman, who compiled the indices with great care. I wish to thank the Centre des monuments nationaux in Paris for allowing me to use their photo of Renans study at the Collge de France, as reconstituted in Renans native home in Trguier, for the dust jacket. My gratitude goes to Margo Stroumsa-Uzan for suggesting this photo.

Throughout the years, Sarah Stroumsa has been my first, last, and toughest reader. My debt to her is infinite.

I dedicate this book to Tema and Mark Silk, in gratitude for half a century of constant friendship and intellectual exchange.

Jerusalem,

January 2021

Les fleurs de lhistoire religieuse sont des fleurs tranges.

[The flowers of religious history are strange flowers]

Ernest Renan, Nouvelles tudes dhistoire religieuse, Preface

Es gelingt dem Gelehrten erst mit Hlfe der Geschichte (aber nicht von seiner persnlichen Erfahrung aus), es gegenber den Religionen zu einem ehrfurchtsvollen Ernste und zu einer gewissen scheuen Rcksicht zu bringen

[It is only with the help of the study of history (but not from personal experience) that a scholar becomes able to treat religions with a reverent seriousness and a certain shy regard]

Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Bse, 58

Car cest inou, la rage des gens dune religion tudier celle des autres.

[Its unbelievable, the craze that people of one religion bring to study the religion of others.]