Joseph Halévy

See also: Halévy

Joseph Halévy (1827-1917) is a orientalist French and a large traveller. He is particularly famous to have been the first Western Juif to have met the Falashas , or Jews of Ethiopia in 1867-1868, and to have brought back a detailed description of their existence.

Its most important work was however carried out on behalf of the Academy of the Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres to the Yemen, which he traversed in 1869 and 1870 with the research of the inscriptions Sabéennes. On this date, no European had crossed this ground since centuries. The result was a statement of 800 inscriptions, which allowed a first approach of this old civilization. It was the first to propose a deciphering partial of the Sabéenne language.

From 1879, Halévy will become professor of Ethiopian languages to the Practical École of the High Studies of Paris.

The scientific activity of Halévy was very diverse, and its writings on the Philologie and the oriental archeology gained a world reputation to him. It is particularly known by its polemics with of eminent Assyriologistes about the not-Semitic idiom Sumérien found in the inscriptions Assyro-Babylonians. Contrary to the generally allowed opinion, Halévy proposed the theory (since abandoned) according to laquel the summérien was not a language, but simply a ideographic method of writing invented by the Babylonian S Semitic themselves.

In the specifically Jewish field, most remarkable of work of Halévy is its “Biblical Research”. It analyzes there the first twenty-five chapters of the genesis in the light of the documents Assyro-Babylonians recently discovered, and admits there to find an old Semitic myth almost completely Assyro-Babylonian, although considerably transformed by the spirit of the prophetic monotheism. The accounts of Abraham and its descendants, however, although embellished considerably, are regarded by him basically historical, and as the work of only one author, whereas the contradictions found in these accounts direct modern criticisms towards a multiplicity of authors. He is also opposed to the documentary Hypothèse, thesis fundamental of modern biblical criticism.

Principal books

archaeological Mission in the Yemen (Paris, 1872)
Test on the language Agaou, the dialect of the Falachas (Paris, 1873)
Voyage in Nedjrân (1873)
Berber Studies (1873)
Mixtures of Semitic epigraphy and archeology (1874)
Studies sabéennes (1875)
Studies on the wedge-shaped spelling-book (1876)
critical Research on the origin of Babylonian civilization (1877)
Test on the inscriptions of Safa (1882)
Mixtures of criticism and history relating to the Semitic people (1883)

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