Emanuel Oscar Menahem Deutsch (1829 – 28 October 1873) was a German

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

scholar of Semitic studies, the Talmud and Middle Eastern studies.

Biography

He was born in Neisse,

Prussian Silesia The Province of Silesia (german: Provinz Schlesien; pl, Prowincja Śląska; szl, Prowincyjŏ Ślōnskŏ) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1919. The Silesia region was part of the Prussian realm since 1740 and established as an official ...

(now

Nysa, Poland Nysa (german: Neisse or ''Neiße'', szl, Nysa) is a town in southwestern Poland on the Eastern Neisse ( Polish: ''Nysa Kłodzka'') river, situated in the Opole Voivodeship. With 43,849 inhabitants (2019), it is the capital of Nysa County. It ...

). His education was begun by an uncle, to whose inspiration he owed his interest in oriental languages and literature. On reaching his sixteenth year, he began his studies at the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...

, paying special attention to

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

and the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

. He also mastered the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

and studied

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

. In 1855 Deutsch was appointed assistant in the library of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. He worked intensely on the Talmud and contributed no less than 190 papers to Chambers' ''Encyclopaedia'', as well as essays on the Targum and the Samaritan Pentateuch for Smith's ''Dictionary of the Bible'', essays for John Kitto's Biblical dictionary, and articles in periodicals. The monument of his official work in the British Museum is to be found in the ''Phoenician Inscriptions'', edited by William Sandys Wright Vaux, to whom Deutsch rendered assistance. In October 1867 his article on The Talmud, published in the '' Quarterly Review'', made him known, creating a great interest in the Talmud in Britain, including admirers such as

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

. The article was translated into French, German, Russian, Swedish, Dutch and Danish, and reprinted by the American Jewish Publication Society, Special Series No. 3 (Philadelphia, 1897). Deutsch was an important influence'Emanuel Deutsch's Literary Remains: A New Source for George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda"'
Mary Kay Temple, South Atlantic Review, Vol. 54, No. 2 (May, 1989), pp. 59-73 on

's Jewish characters and their ideas in her last novel Daniel Deronda. From 1869 to 1870, Deutsch was a special correspondent for ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

'' during the Ecumenical Council at the Vatican and wrote letters on its deliberations. He died at

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

on 12 May 1873. A collection, ''Literary Remains'', edited by Lady Strangford, was published in 1874, consisting of nineteen papers on such subjects as “The Talmud,” “Islam,” “Semitic Culture,” “Egypt,” “Ancient and Modern,” “Semitic Languages,” “The Targums,” “The Samaritan Pentateuch,” and “Arabic Poetry.”

Notes

References

External links

Article on Deutsch in 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deutsch, Immanuel Oscar Menahem 1829 births 1873 deaths 19th-century German theologians Jewish orientalists German orientalists Humboldt University of Berlin alumni German Jewish theologians Silesian Jews British Jews German emigrants to England People from the Province of Silesia People from Nysa, Poland 19th-century Jews German male non-fiction writers 19th-century German writers 19th-century German male writers 19th-century British theologians 19th-century English writers 19th-century Jewish theologians