Abstract
The Introduction chapter of the book sets the ground for the discussion on the Parable of the Three Rings and its transmission and development throughout the premodern era. The chapter presents the main questions and themes that will be examined and analyzed throughout the book: the changing attitudes toward religious toleration, the intellectual developments that created the discourse of religious skepticism, and the interreligious encounters between Christians and non-Christians and their influence on the manner in which the parable was transmitted and altered during and after the thirteenth century. The chapter also introduces Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s play, Nathan the Wise and its version of the Parable, and demonstrates how all of these developments helped create a pluralistic worldview.
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Notes
- 1.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise. Ein dramatisches Gedicht in fünf Aufzügen, Berlin, 1779, pp. 142–148.
- 2.
Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, p. 140.
- 3.
Hannah Arendt’s speech at the reception of the Lessing Prize, Hamburg, 1959. Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing,” trans. Clara Winston and Richard Winston, in Men in Dark Times, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968, pp. 3–31.
- 4.
From the Translator’s Foreword to: Nathan the Wise: A Dramatic Poem, trans. William Taylor. London, R. Philips, 1805.
- 5.
Gothold E. Lessing, Nathan the Wise, trans. Bayard Quincy Morgan, New York: Ungar, 1955, 75–77.
- 6.
Cf. Galili Shahar, “Ring / Ding Objekt, Kunstwerk und die Darstellung von Macht bei Lessing und Wagner,” in: Erzählte Dinge Mensch-Objekt-Beziehungen in der deutschen Literatur, ed. José Brunner, Schriftenreihe des Minerva Instituts für deutsche Geschichte der Universität Tel Aviv 32, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2015, pp. 37–52; Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch: 1743–1933, New York: Picador, 2003 pp. 62–64; On the Hebrew translations of the play and their vicissitudes see, Jan Kühne, “‘Deutschlands besseres Selbst’? – Nathan der Weise in Israel,” in Lessing und das Judentum Lektüren, Dialoge, Kontroversen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Dirk Niefanger, Gunnar Och and Birka Siwczyk, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2015, pp. 431–456.
- 7.
Shmuel Feiner, “Lessing’s Nathan the Wise: A View from Jerusalem,” in: Milestones: essays in Jewish history dedicated to Zvi (Kuti) Yekutiel, eds. Immanuel Etkes, David Assaf, Yosef Kaplan, Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar center for Jewish history, 2015, pp. 219–277 (in Hebrew).
- 8.
Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 6, Paris: L’Imprimerie de Fain, 1817, p. 804.
- 9.
See: Iris Shagrir, “The Parable of the Three Rings: A Revision of its History,” Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), pp. 163–177; See also: Mario Penna, La parabola dei tre anelli e la tolleranza nel medio evo, Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1953, pp. 32–49.
- 10.
Elisabeth Labrousse, “Religious Toleration,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. R.P. Wiener, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973, pp. 112–113.
- 11.
The Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, vol. 3, Berlin: Lagarde, 1801, p. 296 defines it as follows: “Tolérance (Duldung) condescendance, indulgence pour ce qu’on ne peut pas empêcher; ou ce qu’on croit ne devoir pas empêcher.” Later, religious tolerance was defined as: “La tolérance ecclésiastique ou religieuse consiste à ne point traiter d’erreur nuisible au salut certaines opinions ou certaines points de pratiques.”
- 12.
Avishai Margalit, “The Ring: On Religious Pluralism”, in Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed. David Heyd, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 147–157.
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Shagrir, I. (2019). Introduction. In: The Parable of the Three Rings and the Idea of Religious Toleration in European Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29695-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29695-7_1
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