Robert
Chazan.
God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade
Narratives.
Berkeley: California
U.P., 2000.
The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in
Jewish
Studies.
xi,270pp.
Hardback, ISBN
0520221273.
Publisher's
recommended price £25.00
Although
closely
focused on the remarkable Hebrew First Crusade narratives, Robert
Chazan's
new interpretation of these texts is anything but narrow. 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.
In
the first part
of the book, Chazan looks closely at the three texts in order to
resolve
some of the questions raised by earlier scholarship, questions of
dating,
provenance, interrelationship, and objectives. Highlighted in his
analysis
are the early dating and startling sophistication of the Mainz
Anonymous;
its role as a source for the first and lengthiest segment of the Solomon
bar Simson Chronicle; the diverse segments comprising the latter
narrative;
the vigorous editorial interventions of the twelfth-century Jew who
stitched
together the pieces of this composite chronicle; and the adaptation of
the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle into the slightly later Nathan
bar Nathan Chronicle.
Finally
he compares
these accounts with earlier Jewish history writing and with
contemporary
crusade historiography, and finds that 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. Persecutoirs and victims alike, in Chazan's view, showed an
audacious
sense of the centrality of human heroism in setting the course of
history.
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