Lectures of Solomon Iakovlevich Lur’e in the Russian Palestinian Society

Abstract

The article deals with the lectures of a well-known Classicist S. Ia. Lur’e delivered at the meetings of the Russian Palestinian Society in 1923. The texts of the lectures have not survived, however, they were later revised and published in the USSR and Germany as articles and a part of a book; besides, they are mentioned in an article by Lur’e’s opponent V. V. Struve; there is a manuscript of Struve’s response to one of these papers; and the discussion on the other one is preserved in the minutes of the Palestinian Society (they are published in this article). Its interest towards Lur’e’s work was caused by his book Antisemitism in Antiquity (1922): he presented a paper The Stay of the Hebrews in Egypt according to the Hebrew Sources on 9 and 16 March 1923, and a paper on the problem of the so-called social revolution in Egypt — probably in June 1923, shortly before the society’s activities were suspended. In Lur’e’s view, both cases demonstrate literary fictions stemming from the Egyptian mythological motif of the country’s seizure by the evil god Seth and a gradual reversal of the normal order; hence doubts concerning the historicity of both Egyptian and Hebrew narratives. Lur’e’s method was based on the concepts by J. G. Frazer and F. F. Zelinskii, and his ideas were strongly challenged not only by Struve but also by other members of the Society. This might have led to his partial revision of the position, and eventually — to his withdrawal from these problems.