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Joseph Halévy (15 December 1827, in
Adrianople
Edirne (; ), historically known as Orestias, Adrianople, is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the Edirne Province, province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, Edirne was the second c ...
– 21 January 1917, in Paris) was an
Ottoman born
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
-French
Orientalist and traveller.
His most notable work was done in
Yemen
Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...
, which he crossed during 1869 to 1870 in search of
Sabaean inscriptions, no European having traversed that land since AD 24; the result was a most valuable collection of 800 inscriptions.
While a
teacher
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...
in Jewish schools, first in his native town and later in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
, he devoted his leisure to the study of
Oriental languages
Asia is home to hundreds of languages comprising several families and some unrelated isolates. The most spoken language families on the continent include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Japonic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turkic, ...
and archeology, in which he became proficient. In 1868 he was sent by the
Alliance israélite universelle to
Abyssinia
Abyssinia (; also known as Abyssinie, Abissinia, Habessinien, or Al-Habash) was an ancient region in the Horn of Africa situated in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.Sven Rubenson, The survival of Ethiopian independence, ...
to study the conditions of the
Falashas. His report on that mission, which he had fulfilled with distinguished success, attracted the attention of the French Institute (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), which sent him to Yemen in 1870 to study the Sabaean inscriptions. Halévy returned with 686 of these, deciphering and interpreting them, and thus succeeding in reconstructing the rudiments of the
Sabaean language
Sabaic, sometimes referred to as Sabaean, was a Sayhadic language that was spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of South Arabia, inc ...
and mythology. In 1879 Halévy became professor of
Ethiopic in the
École pratique des hautes études
The (), abbreviated EPHE, is a French postgraduate top level educational institution, a .
EPHE is a constituent college of the Université PSL (together with ENS Ulm, Paris Dauphine or Ecole des Mines). The college is closely linked to É ...
, Paris, and librarian of the Société Asiatique.
Halévy's scientific activity has been very extensive, and his writings on Oriental philology and archeology have earned for him a worldwide reputation. He is especially known through his controversies with eminent Assyriologists concerning the non-Semitic
Sumerian idiom found in the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions. Contrary to the generally admitted opinion, Halévy put forward the theory that Sumerian is not a language, but merely an ideographic method of writing invented by the Semitic Babylonians themselves.
[Halévy, Joseph. Étude sur les documents philologiques assyriens lecture read in 1878 In: idem, ''Mélanges de critique et d’histoire relatifs aux peuples sémitiques.'' Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie 1883, 241–364. Available online at .]
Halevy was a professor at the
University of Paris
The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...
.
Biblical research
For the student of specifically Jewish learning the most noteworthy of Halévy's works is his "Recherches Bibliques," wherein he shows himself to be a decided adversary of the so-called higher criticism. He analyzes the first twenty-five chapters of
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Religion
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...
in the light of recently discovered Assyro-Babylonian documents, and admits that Gen. i.-xi. 26 represents an old Semitic myth almost wholly Assyro-Babylonian, greatly transformed by the spirit of prophetic monotheism. The narratives of
Abraham
Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...
and his descendants, however, although considerably embellished, he regards as fundamentally historical, and as the work of one author. The contradictions found in these narratives, and which are responsible for the belief of modern critics in a multiplicity of authors, disappear upon close examination. The
hypothesis
A hypothesis (: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess o ...
of
Jahwist
The Jahwist, or Yahwist, often abbreviated J, is one of the most widely recognized sources of the Pentateuch (Torah), together with the Deuteronomist, the Priestly source and the Elohist. The existence of the Jahwist text is somewhat controver ...
ic and
Elohist
According to the documentary hypothesis, the Elohist (or simply E) is one of four source documents underlying the Torah, together with the Jahwist (or Yahwist), the Deuteronomist and the Priestly source. The Elohist is so named because of its ...
ic documents is, according to him, fallacious.
Works
His works are numerous, and deal with various branches of Oriental study.
The following are Halévy's principal works, all of which have been published in Paris:
*''Mission archéologique dans le Yemen'' (1872)
*''Essai sur la langue Agaou, le dialect des Falachas'' (1873)
*''Voyage au Nedjrân'' (1873)
*''Études berbères, Epigraphie Lybique'' (1873)
*''Mélanges d'épigraphie et d'archéologie sémitiques'' (1874)
*''Études sabéennes'' (1875)
*''La Prétendue Langue d'Accad, Est-Elle Touranienne?'' (1875)
*''Études sur la syllabaire cunéiforme'' (1876)
*''La Nouvelle Evolution de l'Accadisme'' (1876–78)
*''Prières des Falachas'', Ethiopic text with a Hebrew translation (1877)
*''Recherches critiques sur l'origine de la civilisation babylonienne'' (1877)
*''Essai sur les inscriptions du Safa'' (1882)
*''Documents Religieux de l'Assyrie et de la Babylonie'', text with translation and commentary (1882)
*''Essai sur les Inscriptions du Safã'' (1882)
*''Mélanges de critique et d'histoire relatifs aux peuples sémitiques'' (1883)
*''Aperçu Grammatical sur l'Allographie Assyro-Babylonienne'' (1885)
*''Essai sur l'Origine des Ecritures Indiennes'' (1886)
*' (1891–93)
*''Les Inscriptions de Zindjirli'', two studies, 1893, 1899.
*''Nouvelles Observations sur les Ecritures Indiennes'' (1895)
*''Recherches Bibliques'', a series of articles begun in "R. E. J."; continued, after 1893, in the ''Revue Sémitique d'Epigraphie et d'Histoire Ancienne'', founded by Halévy; and published in book-form in 1895.
*''Meliẓah we-Shir'', Hebrew essays and poems (Jerusalem, 1895)
*''Tobie et Akhiakar'' (1900)
*''Le Sumérisme et l'Histoire Babylonienne'' (1900)
*''Taazaze Sanbat'', Ethiopic text and translation, (1902)
*''Le Nouveau Fragment Hébreu de l'Ecclésiastique'' (1902)
*''Les Tablettes Gréco-Babyloniennes et le Sumérisme'' (1902)
*''Essai sur les Inscriptions Proto-Arabes'' (1903)
*''Etudes Evangéliques'' (1903).
In the earlier part of his life he was a regular contributor to the Hebrew periodicals, the clarity of his Hebrew being greatly admired.
Bibliography
*
Hayyim Habshush
Rabbi Hayyim Habshush (, alternate spelling, Hibshush, ca. 1833–1899) was a coppersmith by trade, and a noted nineteenth-century historiographer of Yemenite Jewry. He also served as a guide for the Jewish-French Orientalist and traveler Jos ...
& Alan Verskin, ''A Vision of Yemen: The Travels of a European Orientalist and His Native Guide''. Stanford, California:
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
Press 2019
* ''
Meyers Konversations-Lexikon
or was a major encyclopedia in the German language that existed in various editions, and by several titles, from 1839 to 1984, when it merged with the .
Joseph Meyer (publisher), Joseph Meyer (1796–1856), who had founded the publishing hous ...
'', viii. 219;
* ''
La Grande Encyclopédie'', xix. 755;
*
Fuenn, ''Keneset Yisrael'', p. 479;
*
Brainin Brainin is a Jewish matronymic surname literally meaning "son of Braina", the latter name is one of multiple variants derived from the color "brown".The Polish Given Names Database at JewishGenSearching for Text BRON/ref> Transliterated from Russian ...
, in ''Ha-Eshkol'', iv. 257.
*
Hayyim Habshush
Rabbi Hayyim Habshush (, alternate spelling, Hibshush, ca. 1833–1899) was a coppersmith by trade, and a noted nineteenth-century historiographer of Yemenite Jewry. He also served as a guide for the Jewish-French Orientalist and traveler Jos ...
&
S. D. Goitein, ''Travels in Yemen: an account of Joseph Halévy's journey to Najran in the year 1870''. Jerusalem:
Hebrew University
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. It is the second-ol ...
Press 1941.
* Halévy, Joseph
“Voyage au Nedjran” (pdf), Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Vol. 6, no. 4 (1873) and Vol. 6, no. 13 (1877). (French).
References
*
External links
Joseph Halévyon
data.bnf.fr
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halevy, Joseph
People from Edirne
1827 births
1917 deaths
Academic staff of the École pratique des hautes études
Turkish Jews
Academic staff of the University of Paris
French archaeologists
Jewish archaeologists
French orientalists
French Assyriologists
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Arabia
Yemen researchers
Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to France