Stephen Burnett

Portrait of Johannes Buxtorf (1564-1629)

Stephen G. Burnett

Education:

• Ph.D. 1990, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• M.A. 1983, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
• M.A. 1982, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• B.A. 1978, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Honors and Fellowships:

• Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, 2009
• Franklin Fellowship, American Philosophical Society, 2009
• Faculty Development Leave, Spring Semester, 2009
• Grant-in-Aid, Research Council, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009
• Pauley Fund for Excellence in History, UNL History Department, 2008
• Research Fellowship, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuttel, 2004 (Fall)
• Grant-in-Aid, Research Council, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004
• Fulbright Fellowship, University of Potsdam, 2001-2002
• Oldfather Fund Grant-in-Aid, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2001
• Exchange Professor, University of Hannover, Germany, 2000
• Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture International Fellowship, 2000-2001
• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1999-2000
• Center for Judaic Studies Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania (Fall), 1999
• Grant-in-Aid, Humanities Institute, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1999
• Peer Review of Teaching Fellow, 1998-99
• Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries Grant-in-Aid, 1998
• Nominated Outstanding Teacher of the Year, Association of Students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1996
• Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 1995
• Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for book From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies, 1994
• American Academy of Religion Research Assistance Grant, 1991

Professional Teaching Experience:

• Associate Professor in Classics and Religious Studies, and History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2003 - Present
  Received tenure and promoted, August 18, 2003
• Assistant Professor in Classics and Religious Studies, and History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2000-2003
• Lecturer in History, Classics, and Judaic Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1996-1999
• Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Judaic Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1993-1996

Courses Taught:

• Biblical Hebrew, first and second year
• Judaism, Christianity, Islam
• Judaism and Christianity Conflict and Coexistence
• Introduction to Jewish History
• The Holy Land: Israel from Biblical to Modern Times
• Jews in the Middle Ages
• Ancient Israel (History from Patriarchs to Mishnah)
• Jews, Christians and the Bible

Publications:

Books:

• From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf I (1564-1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century. Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Vol. 68. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996.
• Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth Century Germany. Ed. Dean P. Bell and Stephen G. Burnett. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006
• Later Christian Hebraists, 785-801. In:Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, Vol. 2: From the Renaissance to the Enlightment. Ed. Magne Saebo and Michael Fishbane. Gottlingen Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.

Articles in Journals/Congress Volumes:

• "Judische Vermittler des Hebraschen und ihrer chirstlichen Schuler im Spatmittelalter." 173-188. In: Wechselseitige Wahrnehmung der Religionen in Spatmittelalter und in der Fruhen Neuzeit. I. Teil. Bericht uber Kolloquien der Kommission zur Erforschung der Kulter des Spatmittelalters 2004 and 2005. Ed. Ludger Grenzmann, Thomas Haye, Nikolaus Henkel and Thomas Kaufmann. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen. Berlin: Walter de Gruter, 2009
• "Philosemitism and Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1620)," 135-146. In: Geliebter Feind--Gehasster Freund. Philosemitimus in Geschichte and Gegenwart. Ed. Irene A. Diekmann and Elke V. Kotowski. Berlin: Verlag fur Berlin-Brandenburg, 2009.
• "later Christian Hebraists" 785-801. In: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, Vol. 2: From the Renaissance to the Enlightment. Ed. Magne Saebo and Michael Fishbane. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008
• "German Jewish Printing in the Reformation Era (1530-1633)," 503-527. In Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth Century Germany, ed. Dean P. Bell and Stephen G. Burnett. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006. Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/62
• "Spokemen for Judaism: Medieval Jewish Polemicists and their Christian Readers in the Reformation Era," 41-51. In: Reuchlin und seine Erben. Ed. Peter Schaefer and I. Wandrey. Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften, Vol. 11. Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 2005. Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/52
• "Johannes Buxtorfs Charakterisierung des Judentums: Reformierte Orthodoxie und Christliche Hebraistik," 189-210. Trans. Achim Detmers. In: Bundeseinheit und Gottesvolk. Reformierter Protestantismus und Judentum in Europa des 16. und 17. Jarhunderts. Ed. Achim Detmers and Jan Marius J. Lange van Ravensway. Emder Beitrage zum reformierten Protestantismus, no. 9. Wuppertal: Foedus-Verlag, 2005.
• "Christian Aramaism in Reformation-Era Europe," 421-36. In: Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays Offered to Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Ed. Ronald L. Troxel, Kelvin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magary. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005. Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/48/
• "Reassessing the "Basel-Wittenberg Conflict: Dimensions of the Reformation-era Discussion of Hebrew Scholarship," 181-210. Hebraica Veritas? Christain Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulsen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/61
• "Christian Gerson of Recklinghausen and Johannes Buxtorf of Kamen: two Christian Interpreters of Judaism in the Reformation Era." Vestische Zeitschrift 99 (2002): 35-46.
• "Johannes Buxtorf Westphaulus und die Erforschung des Judentums in der Neuzeit." Judaica. 58/1 (March 2002): 30-43.
• "Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Munster's Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1529/39)." Archive for Reformation History 91 (2000): 168-190.* Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacupub/45.
• "Christian Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth Century: Printers, humanism, and the Impact of the Reformation." Helmantica 51/154 (April 2000): 13-42. Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/51.
• "The Regulation of Hebrew Printing in Germany, 1555-1630: Confessional Politics and the Limits of Jewish Toleration." 329-348. In: Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture. Ed. Max Reinhart and Thomas Robisheaux. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, no. 40. Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998.* Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/49.
• "Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Modern Germany: A Review Article." Sixteenth Century Journal, 27/4(1996): 1057-1064.
• "Distorted Mirrors: Antonius Margaritha, Johann Buxtorf and Christian Ethnographies of Judaism." Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994): 275-187. Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/63
• "Hebrew Censorship in Hanau: A Mirror of Jewish-Christian Coexistence in Seventeenth Century Germany," 199-222. In: Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson, eds., The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After. Garland Studies in Available online: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/46/
• "Calvin's Jewish Interlocutor: Christian Hebraism and Anti-Jewish Polemics during the Reformation." Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 55 (1993): 113-123.
• "Johannes Buxtorf I and the Circumcision Incident of 1619." Basler Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Altertumskunde 89 (1989): 135-144.

Works in Progress:

• "The Strange Career of the Biblia Rabbinica among Christian Hebraists." Saint Andrews University, Scotland, July 2010 (invited paper).
• "Christian Hebraism at the University of Tubingen." Weingarten, Germany, March, 2010 (invited paper).
• Book project with working title: Encounter with Judaism: Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era [1500-1660].

Web Publications:

• Coeditor, "Hebraica Veritas? An Exhibition for the Collection of the Center for Judaic Studies Library," University of Pennsylvania, May 2000.
  www.library.upenn.edu/cajs/ OR Available in pamphlet form: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/47

Book Reviews:

• Thirty-nine academic books in Critical Review of Books in religion, Hebrew, Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Central European History, H-Net (online),), and Sixteenth Century Journal.

Conference Papers Delivered:

• Jean Plantavit de la Pause's Bibliotheca Rabbinica (1645) and seventeenth- century Jewish Bibliography." World Congress of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, August 6, 2009.
• "Half a Loaf? Conrad Genser's Bibliotheca Universalis (1545-1555) and Christian Awareness of Jewish Books." Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Saint Louis, MO, October 23-26, 2008.
• Philosemitism and Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1620)." To be presented at the international conference Beloved Enemy, Hated Friend: Philosemitism in History and in the Present. Mose Mendelssohn Zentrum. University of Potsdam (Potsdam, German), June 10-13, 2007 (invited paper).
• "Betraying a Trust? Jewish Mediators of Hebrew Language Scholarship and their Christian Pupils in Late Medieval and Reformation-Era Europe." GTU-UC Berkeley Joint Doctoral Program Symposium:" The Spoken and Written Word: Language and Jewish Identity in Ancient, Medieval and Modern Times." Berkeley, March 14, 2007 (invited paper).
• "Solomon Hirsch's Yudischer Theriak (Hanau, 1615): Censorship, Printing, and the Limits of Jewish Expression in the Reformation Europe." Association for Jewish Studies Annual Meeting, San Diego, December 17-19, 2006.
• "Encounter with Judaism: Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1660)." Midwest Jewish Studies Colloquium. Omaha, Nebraska. May 21, 2006.
• "Both Sides of the Street: Printers of Hebraica for Jews and Christians in the Reformation Era." Invited paper for the Ruth Meltzer Seminar, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. December 14, 2005 (invited paper).
• "Betraying a Trust? Jewish Hebrew Teachers and their Christian Students in the Late Middle Ages." [In German]. Invited paper for "The Situation of the Jews in the Late Middle Ages with Particular Reference to Missionary Efforts Directed Against Them." Gottingen, Germany: Academy of Sciences, November 17-18, 2005 (invited paper).
• "Hebrew Printing in Hanau: Jewish Business and Christian Confessional Conflict." Midwest Jewish Studies Association, Madison, Wisconsin, September 18-19, 2005.
• James Ussher in the Correspondence of the Buxtorf Circle." November 20, 2004, James Ussher and the Republic of Letters: An International Conference, Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin, Ireland (invited paper).
• "Johannes Buxtorf and Christian Hebrew Lexicography." Morris Jastrow and Rabbinic Lexicography: A Symposium and Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Jastrow Dictionary, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, November 16, 2003 (invited paper).
• "Conrad Waldkirch: A Christian Printer of Judaica in Early Modern Basel (1597-1616)." Midwest Jewish Studies Association, Omaha Nebraska, September 14-15, 2003.
• "Johannes Buxtorf's Characterization of Judaism and the Jews: Reformed Orthodoxy, Christian Hebraism and Religious Difference," Reformierter Protestantismus und Judentum in Europa des 16. and 17. Jahrhunderts, Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek, Emden, Germany. September 12-14, 2002 (invited paper).
• "Spokesmen for Judaism: Medieval Jewish Polemicists and their Christian Readers in the Reformation Era." Sixth Johannes Reuchlin Congress: Reuchlin and His Heirs: Researchers, Thinkers, Ideologists and Crackpots. Reuchlinhaus, Pforzheim, June 20-23, 2002 (invited paper).
• Christian Hebrew Scholarship in Early Modern Europe: A Research Report Interdiziplinares "Forum Judische Geschichte und Kultur der Fruhen Neuzeit und im Ubergang zur Moderne," Mulheim/Ruhr, March 14, 2002.
• "Trusting Jewish Scholarship: Sebastian Munster's Vision for Christian Hebraism." Fruhneuzeitliche Interdiziplinar Conference. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, April 19-22, 2001.
• "Martin Luther and Judaizing Interpretation." Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Cleveland OH, November 4, 2000.
• "Martin Luther's Encounter with Jewish Bible Commentaries," Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists, Jews and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, May 1-3, 2000 (invited paper).
• "The More Things Change: Jews and Other Germans in Eighteenth Century Germany." Jews and Pietists in Dialogue in Enlightenment America, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, September 30-October 2, 1999 (invited paper).
• "Luther and the Jews of Genesis." Association of Jewish Studies Annual Meeting, December 20-22, 1998.
• "Martin Luther, Sebastian Munster and the Uses of Jewish Biblical Commentaries" Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Toronto, Canada, October 22-25, 1998.
• "The Significance of the Biblical Languages at the University of Wittenberg." Ninth International Congress for Luther Research, Heidelberg, Germany, August 18, 1997.
• "Christian Printers of Judaica in Early Modern Germany: Ambrosius Froben of Basel (1578-1584) and the Hebrew press of Hanau (1609-1630)." Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 3, 1997.
• "The Regulation of Hebrew Printing in Germany, 1555-1630; Confessional Politics and the Limits of Jewish Toleration." Fruhe Neuzeit Interdiziplinar, Duke University, April, 1995.
• "Johannes Buxtorf's Jewish Synagogue (1603): Eyewitness Account of German Jewish Life or "Halakhic Manual"?" at the Society for Jewish Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, Mass., December, 1994.
• "Medieval Anti-Jewish Polemics and the Rhetoric of Sebastian Munster's Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1539)," at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Toronto, Canada, October, 1994.
• "Distorted Mirrors: Johann Buxtorf and the Jewish Ethnographic Tradition," at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, October, 1992.
• "Calvin's Jewish Interlocutor: A Cautionary Tale," at the Central Renaissance Conference, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, April, 1992.
• "Hebrew Censorship in Hanau: A Mirror of Jewish-Christian Coexistence in Seventeenth Century Germany," at "The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After," University of California-Davis, April, 1992.

Public Lectures:

• "Fit to Print? Solomon Hirsch, Leon Modena and the Limits of Jewish Expression in the Reformation-Era Europe." UNL Lecture Series: Jewish/Christian/Muslim Relations, sponsored by the Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, January 2007.
• "Sacred Israel and the Historical Memory of Judaism, Christianty and Islam," Winter Lecture Series, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 13, 2005.
• Deutsch-Judischer Druckereien im Zeitalter der Reformation (ca. 1530-1631)." [German Jewish Presses during the Reformation Era]. Lecture presented twice: Stipendiary Lecture, Herzog August Bibliothek, October 11, 2004. Institut fur Judische Studien, Universitaet Duesseldorf, December 1, 2004.
• "Jews and Judaism in Mel Gibson's, The Passion of the Christ." Panel Contribution to Department of Classics/Religious Studies Presentation on The Passion of the Christ, February 29, 2004.
• "Johannes Buxtorf Westphalus und Die Erforschung des Judentums in der Neuzeit," Presented at the Institutum Judaicum, University of Munster, June 11, 2001, the Leopold Zunz Zentrum, Universitat Halle-Wittenberg, Wittenberg, May 6, 2002, and the Judaica Institut, Frei Universitaet Berlin, June 11, 2002.
• "Der Weinberg des Herren: Hebraistik an der Universitat Wittenberg zur Zeit Luthers." Leopold Zunz Zentrum, Universitat Halle-Wittenberg, Wittenberg, April 22, 2002 (Leopold-Zunz lecture series).
• "Christianus Gerson aus Recklinghausen und Johannes Buxtorf aus Kamen: zwei Humanisten als Wegbereiter der Verstandigung zwischen Juden und Christen im Reformationszeitalter." Recklinghausen, Bochum, Kamen, Germany, May 28, 30, 2001 (lecture given on three occasions).

Professional Memberships:

• American Academy of Religion

Research Interests:

My research focuses on Jewish Christian relations in early modern Europe (c. 1450-1750). I have written a book on Johannes Buxtorf the elder, one of the founding fathers of Jewish studies as an academic discipline. I have also co-edited (with Dean Bell) a book on the effects of the German Reformation upon German Jews and Judaism. I am completing work on a book entitled Encounter with Judaism: Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1660). Christian Hebrew scholarship in early modern Europe was an offshoot of Renaissance humanism. Its devotees--biblical scholars, theologians, lawyers, physicians, scientists, philosophers, and Latin school teachers--borrowed and adapted texts, literary forms, and ideas from Jewish scholarship to meet Christian cultural and religious needs. In my book I will provide a new framework for interpreting this intellectual movement, based upon an analysis of the European Hebrew book trade, to explain the growth and institutionalization of Hebrew studies in this period. In addition I will consider the effect of this new knowledge of Judaism and Jewish literature upon elite perceptions of Judaism. I will also explore the dimensions of Jewish-Christian cooperations in the growth of Hebrew scholarship and the reception of Christian Hebrew scholarship by Jews living at the time.

Further Information on Christian Hebraism:

In 1999-2000 I was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Pennsylvania) and participated in a year-long seminar on Christian Hebraism. In addition to the conference volume Hebraica Vertias? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulsen, our work is documented in the web exhibit that Seth Jerschower and I co-edited: "Hebraica Vertias? An Exhibitiion for the Collection of the Center for Judaic Studies Library", www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/cajs. The exhibit can also be downloaded in pamphlet form: digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/47/. The Leopold Zunz Zentrum of the University of Halle-Wittenberg has created an informative, lavishly illustrated web exhibit (in German) on Hebrew scholarship at the University of Wittenberg from 1502 until 1830, entitled "Im Weinberg des Herrn. Traditionen der Hebraistik in Wittenberg" [In the Vineyard of the Lord: Traditions of Hebrew Scholarship in Wittenberg] (www.hebraistik.de).