The Basic Ideas of Biblical Religion

The German-born scholar of Jewish philosophy Julius Guttmann was a graduate of the University of Breslau and the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary. From 1911, he was a Privatdozent in philosophy at the University of Breslau, and from 1919, as Hermann Cohen’s successor, he taught at the Hochschule für Wissenschaft des Judentums (the Reform rabbinical seminary) in Berlin. In 1934, he fled Germany and settled in Jerusalem, where he became professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University. He is often described as one of the last representatives of the German school of modern critical scholarship, Wissenschaft des Judentums. His best-known work is his monumental History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig, which has been translated into many languages.