God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives
Robert Chazan, Helen F. Siu, and Donald Sutton
Abstract
Although closely focused on the remarkable Hebrew First-Crusade narratives, this book's new interpretation of these texts is anything but narrow, as the title strongly suggests. The three surviving Hebrew accounts of the crusaders' devastating assaults on Rhineland Jewish communities during the spring of 1096 have been examined at length, but only now can we appreciate the extent to which they represent their turbulent times. After a close analysis of the texts themselves, the book addresses the objectives of the three narratives. It compares these accounts with earlier Jewish history writing ... More
Although closely focused on the remarkable Hebrew First-Crusade narratives, this book's new interpretation of these texts is anything but narrow, as the title strongly suggests. The three surviving Hebrew accounts of the crusaders' devastating assaults on Rhineland Jewish communities during the spring of 1096 have been examined at length, but only now can we appreciate the extent to which they represent their turbulent times. After a close analysis of the texts themselves, the book addresses the objectives of the three narratives. It compares these accounts with earlier Jewish history writing and with contemporary crusade historiography. It is in their disjuncture with past forms of Jewish historical narration and their amazing parallels with Latin crusade narratives that the Hebrew narratives are most revealing. We see how they reflect the embeddedness of early Ashkenazic Jewry in the vibrant atmosphere of late-eleventh- and early-twelfth-century northern Europe.
Keywords:
Hebrew,
crusaders,
Jewish communities,
Rhineland,
Jewish history writing,
Ashkenazic Jewry
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2000 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780520221277 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520221277.001.0001 |
