INTERPRETED BY BENNO JACOB; HIS COMMENTARY ABRIDGED, EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY ERNEST I. JACOB and WALTER JACOB

Introduction to the 2007 Edition

The twenty-first century has rediscovered Benno Jacob (1862-1945). His exegesis of the Torah has informed a new generation of scholars and readers of the Bible. He was prescient as biblical studies are now less interested in speculation about the sources J, E, D, and P. He acknowledged that there were sources, but demonstrated that they could not be firmly established and that such scholarly efforts had obscured the meaning of the carefully preserved Masoretic text, its ideas, theology, ethical demands, and literary qualities. Benno Jacob understood the words of the Torah as thoughtfully, not haphazardly, crafted with concern for very detail. Jacob devoted a life time of study to a modern, many layered, omni-significant interpretation of the Torah. It is intended for lay as well as scholarly readers. His pioneer efforts have found broad appreciation during the last decades.

This Genesis Commentary provides the ideas of Benno Jacob’s pioneering study without the technical details of his complete commentary. He brings us a mastery of modern archeological discoveries, the texts of the ancient Near East, and centuries of Jewish and Christian biblical studies extant at that time. He counters the source criticism which he considered erroneous and often anti-Semitic. A series of symposia and books have dealt with his multi-faceted approach.

In twentieth century, interest in the Bible went in three directions. Some scholars concentrated on archeological or linguistic studies and dismissed everything else, especially earlier studies and commentaries. They saw the Bible as part of ancient literature which may present us with some insights into the development of our civilization. The second group saw a text with different clearly identifiable source documents; they concentrated on refining them and arranging them historically according to their preconceived models. Finally there were scholars who were profoundly religious and frequently ignored the contemporary studies entirely and wrote as if they did not exist. The three groups of Biblical scholars fought with each other, usually despised each other, but rarely enriched each other. Benno Jacob combined a critical, linguistic, and archeological approach with a deep devotion to the Torah and its religious message. He acknowledged that there were sources, but his careful analysis showed that identifying them as J, E, P, etc. was simplistic. The biblical text presents a religious unified message and theology; it needs to be understood in this way, not as a set of haphazardly arranged fragments. He acknowledged the hand of a creative editor, but felt that his sources could not be recovered. He considered the enormous energy spent on hypothetical reconstructions as wasted. The theories were untenable; the historical results based on them, wrong. Better results could be attained through a thorough study of the received text in which he considered nothing accidental or merely stylistic; synonyms and other variations were purposeful. This was in keeping with the long line of rabbinic exegesis; he too felt that no detail of the Hebrew text was without significance and he often found as yet undiscovered meaning in them, so Yaakov Elman has called him, the founder of the modern school of omni-significance. For his studies, Jacob used all the resources which existed - critical Hebrew, Greek, and Samaritan texts, modern commentaries, the newly discovered ancient literature in various languages, and above all the traditional commentaries, so often neglected by the critical scholars. He developed a fine feeling for language and its nuances and those insights appear throughout his work and are of special significance.

The reward for his achievement was to be largely ignored. It did not help his cause to be a Jewish scholar who served as the rabbi of a large German congregation. He was not an academician and the academy favors its own; it has always been suspicious of gifted individuals outside that circle. Nor was it helpful that he wrote in German just as the German Jewish community was on the verge of annihilation.

Benno Jacob was not only a scholar, but a fighter. When he saw errors he did not hesitate to point them out and to challenge even the most revered figures of Biblical scholarship. His major commentaries on Genesis and Exodus (available in an English translation), each more than eleven hundred pages in length, challenge the reader to think through the text in a religious manner. With biting sarcasm and careful detailed analysis Jacob attacked those who have taken wrong paths, never mind the prestige or position of the scholar.

Jacob’s combination of the tradition with modern critical methods have proven fruitful, and have provided hundreds of insights into the rhythm of the text, difficult sequences, and much more. This abbreviated version of the Genesis Commentary provides the essence of his stimulating thoughts and challenges the reader to study further. Jacob’s commentary uses the latest in linguistic and archeological studies alongside hundreds of earlier commentaries. He recognized that there may have been earlier sources, but that we do not now possess the means of discovering them, so he rejected the debates of biblical scholars which he largely demolishes in the complete commentary. Benno Jacob has been widely quoted by Martin Buber, Karl Barth, Gerhard von Rad, and Brevard Childs; each admired Benno Jacob and his Biblical studies, valued his contributions and used them. Benno Jacob presents us with a religiously engaged reading of the text and yet it is fully critical. He was ahead of his time with his emphasis on understanding the text we have; after a century of source criticism with its highly speculative conclusions, Jacob has come into this own; his works have been republished in German and are widely studied in North America, Israel, and Europe.