Nineteenth Century Opinions
"Modern" (that is, up to 1906) critics were divided in their opinions concerning Eldad. Pinsker, Grätz, and Adolf Neubauer saw in him a Karaite missionary endeavoring to discredit the Talmud by his statement that the four tribes did not know the names of the Tannaim and Amoraim, and that their halakot were different from those of the Talmud. This opinion was refuted by Moses Schorr and Adolf Jellinek, who observed that Eldad's halakot contain rules concerning the examination of slaughtered animals which are not accepted by the Karaites. P. Frankl regarded Eldad as a mere charlatan whose sayings and doings are not worth attention. Reifmann denied outright the existence of Eldad, and considered the letters of the community of Kairwan and of Ẓemaḥ ben Ḥayyim of Sura to be forgeries. Metz was the first to analyze the contents of Eldad's book in the light of the reports of other travelers. A. Epstein followed Metz's method, and came to the conclusion that Eldad's book is like a historical novel in which truth is mixed with imagination. The halakot are, according to him, genuine, and were in use among the countrymen of Eldad, either in a province of eastern Africa or in Yemen, where the Jews at that time knew Hebrew but not the Talmud. For Eldad could not have been a native of Ethiopia, the country of the Falashas, since there only Ge'ez is spoken; and no trace of this language appears in Eldad's Hebrew; there are, however, some traces of Arabic, which Eldad must have known, although he asserted the contrary.
Some Zionist thinkers have considered Eldad ha-Dani to be an early precursor of their movement, as having presented to the Jews of his time the bright vision of a sovereign Jewish state. The radical Revisionist Zionist Israel Eldad, whose original family name was "Scheib", had taken "Eldad" as his nom de guerre during his involvement in the anti-British underground and later made this his official family name.
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