Isaak Markus Jost - As Historian

As Historian

When Jost published his first historical work, Jewish historiography was still in its infancy. Of older works, that of Jacques Basnage was the best; the sources had not yet been collected; and for the religious history the unsystematic and uncritical works of the chroniclers were the only guide and source. It was inevitable that, with the appearance of Zunz's monographs and the numerous similar works, published either independently or in magazines, the work of Jost should soon become antiquated. He recognized this himself at the end of his life by taking up the work again. Another shortcoming is his rationalistic attitude toward the narratives in Talmudic sources, which leads him to see in many of the Talmudic authors shrewd impostors who played on the credulity of their contemporaries by feigning miracles (see his presentation of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in his Allgemeine Geschischte, ii. 108). His earlier works lack to a great extent the strictly historical interest, and evidence too much of Jewish sentiment (Allgemeine Geschichte ii. 387). His rationalism is found also in the bitterness with which he speaks of Judæo-German ("Jahrbuch," ii. 43). His best work is in the presentation of modern Jewish history, in which he is singularly exact and conscientious, and to which he gives an exhaustive literature of sources; here he exhibits not only a fine discernment of what is historically important, but a spirit of fairness which is the more creditable because he wrote in the midst of the struggle for Reform.

Jost endeavors to do justice to Samson R. Hirsch's mysticism as well as to Aaron Chorin's rationalism; he recognizes the importance of M. A. Günzburg and of Isaac Bär Lewinsohn, while Grätz, who wrote on this period a quarter of a century later, ignores Günzburg and Lewinsohn and speaks of Chorin with the bitterness of a partisan. It is undoubtedly due to that impartiality that Jost's work suffered by comparison with the warm Jewish spirit which permeates Grätz's work (see Grätz, "Gesch." xi. 456).