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Abraham is best known as a grammarian and Biblical commentator, particularly the latter, though his versatility is remarkable. Besides grammar and exegesis he wrote on mathematics, astronomy and astrology, on religious philosophy, and was a poet of no mean order; though, as Zunz says, "flashes of thought spring from his words, but not pictures of the imagination."
Professing to be the work of Joseph ben Gorion, one of the Jewish commanders in the war with Rome and a prefect of Jerusalem, it is written in a Rabbinical Hebrew that is nearer the classical language than most medieval compositions. It was indeed argued on the ground of its pure classical idiom that it dated from the fourth century, but Zunz showed that this was impossible.
ZUNZ: Die Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters. "If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the nations if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes?"
All these efforts support Levinsohn's claim to the title of Founder of a modern Jewish Science in Russia, though his scholarly achievements cannot be classed with those of his German and Galician fellow-writers, such as Rapoport, Zunz, Jost and Geiger. Levinsohn stood entirely aloof from the propaganda of bureaucratic enlightenment which was carried on by Lilienthal in the name of Uvarov.
Yosippon indeed was soon translated into Arabic, and its narratives and legends passed into the current stock of Ghetto history. The book was swollen by later additions, which Zunz has proved to belong to the twelfth century.
Rapoport, in the article already referred to, seems to suspect the faulty reading: to justify it, he connects the men of Kheibar with the Rechabites and the sons of Heber the Kenite, basing his argument upon Jer. xxxv, Judges i. 16, I Sam. xxvii. 10, and I Chron. ii. 55. Neither Zunz nor Asher makes any comments upon this chapter of the itinerary.
Deronda had lately been reading that passage of Zunz, and it occurred to him by way of contrast when he was going to the Cohens, who certainly bore no obvious stamp of distinction in sorrow or in any other form of aristocracy.
Zunz, Geiger, and Jost, seeing that Judaism was gradually losing its hold upon their Jewish countrymen, resorted to exploring and narrating, in German, the wonderful story of their race, in the hope of renewing its ebbing strength.
Chiarini did not even shrink from repeating the hideous lie about the use of Christian blood by the Jews. He was taken to task by Jacob Tugenhold in Warsaw and by Jost and Zunz in Germany. Yet the evil seed had sunk into the soil.
As a result, Jost, Zunz, and Samuel David Luzzatto devoted themselves to the thorough examination of the Judaism of the Middle Ages. The outcome was a new science, the Science of Judaism. Rapoport published also a pamphlet against the Hasidim and their wonder- working Rabbis, and various articles on the necessity of promoting knowledge and civilization among the Jews.
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