248 Marc Zvi Brettler
Jewish intellectual who is discussed elsewhere in this volume.5 Greenberg
discovered Kaufmann’s works in his father’s library, and his fi rst scholarly
article was based on Kaufmann; he soon thereaft er translated an article by
Kaufmann for the Journal of Biblical Literature. Th e two corresponded for
several years, and later Greenberg translated abridgements of Kaufmann’s
works in several forms. Th e two met only once, during Greenberg’s 1954
trip to Israel; Kaufmann had died before Greenberg settled in Israel to
teach at the Hebrew University in 1970.
Greenberg venerated Kaufmann. Th is is refl ected in Greenberg’s huge
eff ort to make Kaufmann’s insights accessible to the world of biblical
scholarship, in the manner in which Greenberg addressed Kaufmann in
his letters, and in comments Greenberg made aft er Kaufmann’s death, in
which he calls Kaufmann “the foremost Jewish Biblicist of our time and a
profound interpreter of Jewish history.”6 Greenberg also modeled himself
aft er Kaufmann; what Greenberg says about Kaufmann is true of Green-
berg himself: that “all of his life’s work is suff used with a devotion to his
people” and that Kaufmann, in contrast to many in his generation, did not
engage in pure empirical research but left “room for the answer of faith to
the phenomenon of the Bible.” Greenberg, like his mentor, “elevated the
discussion of biblical thought above ecclesiastical dogma and partisanship
into the realm of the eternally signifi cant ideas.” Finally, Greenberg appre-
ciated Kaufmann’s role as a Jewish nationalist who emphasized the crucial
nature of Jewish religion as defi ning Jewish ethnicity. Although Speiser was
Greenberg’s main formal academic teacher, Kaufmann was the more infl u-
ential fi gure.7
Greenberg breaks the mold noted by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, who
in discussing the participation of Jews in biblical theology observed,
“Th e issue of biblical authority has never been a question which bothered
Jews.”8 Jewish biblical scholarship has come of age, and although there are
now many contemporary Jewish Bible scholars who approach the Bible
from a historical-critical perspective, Moshe Greenberg is the one whose
identity as a Jew most suff uses his work. He has written a wide range
of self- refl ective essays, touching on so many aspects of Jewish biblical
interpretation.
Greenberg oft en writes from the double perspective of a university bib-
lical scholar and a practicing Jew. He is unafraid to speak of God — not only
“the God of Old”9 but a contemporary deity. He has been personally (and
not only academically) infl uenced by classical Jewish biblical interpreters,