As Chronicler: Persecution of 1096
Eliezer is also supposed to be the author of a history of the terrible events of 1096, the year of the German Crusade, part of the First Crusade. It expressed great antipathy towards the Christian crusaders, and wrestled with the matter of why God would allow so many Jews to be massacred. The persecutions of the Jewish communities in the towns along the Rhine, the horrible butcheries that were perpetrated, are faithfully depicted here in chronological order.
In this work various acrostic verses contain the name "Eliezer b. Nathan." In deference to a passage in Joseph ha-Kohen's Emeḳ ha-Baka, p. 31, which makes a certain Eleazar ha-Levi the author, some writers (as Landshuth and H. Grätz) have denied Eliezer's authorship of this chronicle. This view, however, was refuted around 1900. The chronicle was first edited by Adolph Jellinek (Zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Leipsic, 1854); and was republished as Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen Während der Kreuzzüge, by A. Neubauer and Stern, together with a German translation, in the Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, ii., Berlin, 1892.
Read more about this topic: Eliezer Ben Nathan
Famous quotes containing the word persecution:
“I hate Science. It denies a man’s responsibility for his own deeds, abolishes the brotherhood that springs from God’s fatherhood. It is a hectoring, dictating expertise, which makes the least lovable of the Church Fathers seem liberal by contrast. It is far easier for a Hitler or a Stalin to find a mock- scientific excuse for persecution than it was for Dominic to find a mock-Christian one.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)