To be completed. http://www.benedictinesmontdesoliviers.org/
To be completed.
The Prussian Consulate in Jerusalem was established in 1842. From 1868 it operated as the Consulate of the Norddeutsche Bund and during the years 1871‐1913 as the Consulate ‐ and since 1913 as the Consulate General ‐ of the German Reich. In 1844 a German Consular Agency was established in Jaffa, which acted as a branch of the Consulate in Jerusalem. In 1870 the office in Jaffa was recognized as a Vice‐Consulate. A professional consul was appointed in Jaffa in 1895 and the status of the office was altered accordingly to include jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters. In Haifa a Consular Agency began functioning in 1877 which became a Vice‐Consulate in 1908. With the conquest of Palestine by the Allied armies in 1917 the consulates were closed and German interests were handled by the Spanish Consulate. In 1924 a German Consular Representative was attached to the Spanish Consulate and in 1925 a German Consul for Palestine was re‐appointed. The Consulate was closed in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II.
During its first 25 years, the Jerusalem consulate was subordinate to the administrative authority of the consulate-general in Beyrouth; it was placed under the direct supervision of the foreign ministry in Berlin in 1868 and officially elevated to the rank of “consulate-general” in 1913.
During its 97 years of activity, the territorial limits of the consulate in Jerusalem underwent several changes. During the Ottoman period, the jurisdiction of the consulate was coextensive with the administrative domain of the sanjak (district) of Jerusalem, which included Jaffa and the Gaza area. In 1871, the sanjaks of Acre and Nablus were added, but a decade later the sanjak of Acre, including Haifa, was transferred to the authority of the German consul in Beyrouth. In 1883, the new sanjak of Ma’an (southern Transjordan) was brought under the jurisdiction of the consul in Jerusalem.
Archives held at ISA (Jerusalem) with a duplicate in Berlin.
Jacques Tournay was born in Paris, in the 16th arrondissement, on March 28, 1912. He attended the Brothers' School of the Christian Schools of the Rue de Grenelle, then the Stanislas College and the Albert de Mun College in Nogent-sur-Marne. In 1926, after a serious pleurisy, he was forced to take refuge in the mountains: it was there that he met Dominicans, including Fr. Festugière.
He entered the novitiate in Amiens in 1930, where he received the name Raymond. It is at the Saulchoir de Cain, in Belgium, that he completed the philosophy and theology curriculum. He was ordained a priest on July 14, 1936. However, when he became Fr. Congar's secretary, he was approached by Fr. Chenu, who was under pressure from Fr. Lagrange to find a successor to the Orientalist Edouard Dhorme, to go and study at the École Biblique.
Tournay therefore began studying assyriology in 1938 in Leuven, learning Assyrian-Babylonian and Akkadian with Fr. Vincent Scheil, the first translator of the Hammurabi Code.
Tournay arrived in Palestine in September 1938, shortly after the death of Fr. Lagrange, in the middle of an intifada.
Reformed for health reasons, he was not mobilized in 1939 but took advantage of wartime to go to Rome for his biblical license. Just before Mussolini's entry into the war alongside the Germans, he was able to take refuge in Paris where he helped Fr. Vincent to continue as best he could the publication of the Bible Review under the name of Vivre et Penser.
He was then invited to teach Hebrew and exegesis at the Saulchoir d'Etiolles until the end of the war. In 1942, Fr. Chenu entrusted him with a translation of the Psalms made by Fr. Synave. This was the starting point of his interest in Hebrew poetry. He began his work with the help of a Jewish poet, Joseph Leibowitz, who was arrested shortly afterwards. From that moment on, Tournay sought to restore the psalms to their rhythm and accents.
Throughout the war, Tournay followed the courses of René Labat and Jean Nougayrol at the EPHE. He began studying the legends of Gilgamesh, which led to the publication of his Epic of Gilgamesh in 1994. He also became professor of Assyro-Babylonian at the Institut catholique de Paris.
After seeing some arrests of Jewish friends up close, he decided to join the Resistance and became a liaison officer for a group that broadcast clandestine programs from abroad. He also helps Jewish friends to hide from being caught many times.
In October 1945, Fr. Vincent and Fr. Tournay were finally able to return to Palestine. Tournay continues his research in Assyriology and travels to Mesopotamia, Syria and Turkey.
Since the creation of the State of Israel, Tournay has been committed to efforts towards peace. He was helped by his friend Léopold Sédar Senghor, a great lover of poetry like him. Subsequently, Tournay became involved in the defence of three villages near Latroun that had been destroyed by the Israeli army during the Six-Day War.
In 1964, Tournay became a tutor to Prince Hassan of Jordan, brother of King Hussein. He regularly stays in Amman and teaches him French, Hebrew and even Aramaic for several years. In 1967, after the loss of Jordanian sovereignty over Palestine, Tournay became the informal contact of Jordanian diplomacy for France and the Vatican. In 1997, he helped Prince Hassan write the French version of his book Christianity in the Arab World (1995), written to promote Christian-Muslim relations. The result of this work was the publication of the book Le Christianisme et l'Islam sont nés en Orient (Brepols, Paris, 1997), which opens with a preface by Fr. Tournay.
During his many years in Jerusalem, Fr. Tournay was involved in charitable works, especially through Caritas Jerusalem, of which he was the delegate. He also worked to help the poorest in a very concrete way, by redistributing the surpluses from various kitchens. He was also responsible for the creation of children's clinics in Bethlehem.
Fr. Tournay was a teacher at the École Biblique for 46 years (1946-1992). In addition to the Akkadian and Sumerian classes, which he interrupted when Marcel Sigrist arrived in 1975, he focused on wisdom literature and, above all, on the Psalms. He was in charge of translating the Psalms for the first Jerusalem Bible, and was assisted in this by Raymond Schwab, a poet of Jewish origin. The translation published in 1950, the result of a very careful study of the richness of Hebrew poetry, is recognized as one of the best ever done. He was then asked to provide a version adapted for the sung liturgy, which he did in 1954 with the help of the PP. Gélineau and Chifflot. However, he never abandoned the Prophets, on which he published until 1997. His latest work, Seeing and Hearing God with the Psalms, or the prophetic liturgy of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (Paris, Gabalda, 1988), synthesizes his research on the Psalms and those on the Prophets.
Tournay was naturally indicated to publish the great commentary on the Song of Songs on which André Robert had worked until his death. This one appeared in 1963, Fr. Tournay having added a long comparison with the extra-biblical parallels received from the different ancient worlds. After various evolutions, his interpretation of the Song was summarized in a new book, When God Speaks to Men the Language of Love. Studies on the Song of Songs (Paris, Gabalda, 1982).
Fr. Tournay was also very interested in the translation of the Pater's 6th request. He lectured and published articles on the subject, and tried to persuade various bishops to change the translation so that one could no longer have the impression that it was God who was the cause of temptation. He finally received the approval of the French Bishops' Conference in 1998.
In 1968, Tournay became the director of the Bible Review, and remained so for 25 years. In addition, he was Director of the School for three terms from 1972 to 1981.
In 1972, he was promoted to Master of Theology by the Master of the Order. That same year, he received the National Merit Medal, before being decorated with the Legion of Honour nine years later. In 1994, the University of Fribourg awarded him an honorary doctorate for 50 years of scientific activity and charitable efforts.
He died at the Bible School on November 25, 1999. The funeral mass was presided over by Bishop Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
One of the masters of the founding generation of the School was Félix- Marie Abel, o.p., born in Saint-Uze, in the Drôme, in 1878. He arrived as a novice in December 1897, and as soon as M.-J. Lagrange had identified his exceptional abilities, it was decided that he would remain in Jerusalem. He quickly became known for his mastery of Greek sources (texts and inscriptions), for the history and geography of Palestine. He wrote the historical part of Louis-Hugues Vincent's archaeological studies on Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron. He composed a large commentary of 1- 2 Maccabees (1949), books that he also translated for the fascicle edition of the Jerusalem Bible. For the second edition of the Jerusalem Bible, his work was largely taken up by Jean Starcky. Abel had also been asked to translate the Book of Joshua, which he was also commenting on at the time of his death.
Abel taught geography courses in Palestine at the Bible School for nearly 50 years. In 1932, he and Vincent carried out excavations on the site of the Byzantine Emmaus. In 1940, he was appointed consultant to the Pontifical Biblical Commission.
His three most enduring works remain: Grammar of the Biblical Greek followed by a selection of papyrus, Bible Studies series (1927), Geography of Palestine (I. 1933; II. 1938), and History of Palestine from the conquest of Alexander to the Arab invasion (1952). It is less well known that this scientist was an accomplished watercolorist, who wrote an illustrated guide to the Holy Land.
He died at the École Biblique on the eve of the 1953 Annunciation.
Born on December 14, 1916 in Seiches-sur-le-Loir in Anjou, Claude Boismard entered the Dominican province of Lyon in 1935, after a bachelor's degree in philosophy, where he received the name Marie-Émile. After military service in the transmissions, immediately followed by the war, he was able to return to the studentate of Saint-Alban-Leysse in 1940, and was ordained a priest in April 1943. He continued his studies at the Saulchoir d'Etiolles and obtained the readership in theology with a thesis on the doxa in Paul's epistles. His superiors decided to have him continue his studies at the École Biblique, which he managed to join in January 1946, after the resumption of regular links.
It is the Master General of the Order who, at Fr. Benoit's request, decides on his definitive assignment to Jerusalem. He joined the faculty in January 1948, after passing the Bible Commission exams. He then specialized in Johannine literature; that is why, in 1948, he was entrusted with the Apocalypse for the edition of the first Jerusalem Bible. He did an excellent translation and a very innovative commentary.
In 1950, the Master of the Order appointed him Professor of the New Testament at the University of Fribourg. Benoit persuaded Fr. Spicq to take his place. Boismard was therefore able to return to Jerusalem and embark on new research on the fourth gospel and Catholic epistles.
He is also involved in a commented synopsis project promoted by Fr. Benoit. He composed about 70% of this synopsis, then the entire literary commentary. He was helped in this task by Fr. Arnaud Lamouille. The commentary appeared in 1972. The literary theories developed there were not unanimously accepted.
With Lamouille, Boismard then attacked the Acts of the Apostles and very quickly realized that the boundary between textual criticism and literary criticism was unstable (the book was indeed known in two versions, the Western text and the Alexandrian text). The result of the work of textual criticism appeared in 1985 in the form of the book Le texte occidental des Actes des Apôtres. Reconstruction and rehabilitation. He then undertook a literary examination of it, presented in the book Les Actes des deux Apôtres, published in 1990. In 1991, Fr. Lamouille, a victim of very serious eye problems, had to leave Jerusalem. Father Boismard lost with him his dearest collaborator.
Boismard then completed two studies begun with Lamouille: Le Diatessaron: from Tatien to Justin (1992) and the first volume of Un évangile préjohannique; Jean 1, 1-2, 12 (1993). He defends one of his dear ideas: the canonical version of the gospels would be longer than their original version. He taught at the School until 2001.
In 1984, he was made an officer of the National Order of Merit and, in 1988, Doctor Honoris causa of the University of Louvain. He died of cancer on April 23, 2004. In his last years, he had published a History of My Life (2002).
Fr. Bernard Couroyer arrived at the Ecole Biblique after very solid studies in classical and modern literature, as well as the theological and philosophical training given at Le Saulchoir. In 1929, he passed the examinations of the Biblical Commission.
He had been called to the School by Fr. Lagrange to become a professor of Assyriology. But Fr. Dhorme, director at the time, asked him to dedicate himself more to Egyptology; he therefore followed Fr. Abel's Coptic courses and learned hieroglyphics by himself. After a stay in Cairo to supervise the work of the new convent, he resumed teaching Egyptology and Coptic in Jerusalem. From 1929, he also became a biblical Hebrew teacher, until Father Lemoine's replacement in 1952. In 1955, when Fr. Marmadji died, he even became an Arabic teacher!
A member of the Palestine Oriental Society of Jerusalem, he was elected president in 1938.
Over the years, he forged his specialization: "Bible and Egyptology".
He translated the book of the Exodus for the Jerusalem Bible. He devoted much of his time to the study of the relationship between Bible passages and Egyptian civilization.
Fr. Couroyer was also prosecutor of the convent from 1945 to 1952.
Born in Paris on 17 December 1903, Roland de Vaux studied at the Collège Stanislas, then at the Sorbonne. After his degree, he entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, where he was ordained priest on June 29, 1929. But, having resolved to enter the Order of Preachers, he entered the novitiate at Amiens in September 1929, made profession there on 23 September 1930 and immediately made his studies at the Saulchoir de Cain in Belgium, where he remained until 1933. He then turned particularly to medieval philosophy, which explains the research leading to his first publication, dedicated to Avicenna. But he also turned to orientalism, before being asked, in 1933, by the École Biblique to complete the team of teachers then famous but aging. He arrived in Jerusalem in September 1933.
Father de Vaux first studied there for two years, under the direction of the PP. Lagrange, Vincent, Abel or Savignac. He passed the Bible Commission exams in June 1935. Back in Jerusalem, he was appointed professor of biblical history and archaeology, two subjects that would also be his main fields of research for the rest of his life. He taught these two disciplines from 1935 to 1971 without interruption. He also taught Assyro-Babylonian from 1935 to 1940 and Old Testament exegesis from 1946 to 1949, while preparing his translations for the first Jerusalem Bible. His former students agree in praising his pedagogical sense and brilliant presentations, with the absolute honesty he demonstrated as a researcher.
From these teachings came out several important works, starting with the Jerusalem Bible fascicles on Genesis, the Books of Samuel and the Kings. He also played a major role in the one-volume edition of the Jerusalem Bible in 1956. The two volumes of his Old Testament Institutions were translated into many languages.
He began his work as an archaeologist with modest campaigns that followed his first archaeological exploration in the Salt region of Transjordan in the summer of 1937. That same year, he and Fr. Savignac excavated the church of Ma'în, near Madaba (Jordan). In 1944, he and Fr. Stève carried out the excavation of an old caravanserai near the biblical Qiriat Yearim (Abu Gosh). Still with Fr. Stève, he then worked (1945-1946) on the site of el-Ma'moudiyeh, a Byzantine sanctuary dedicated to St. John the Baptist, west of Hebron. In 1946, he attacked a more important site: the Tell el-Far'ah of the North, later identified as the ancient Tirça, the first capital of the northern kingdom, from which King Omri emigrated to Samaria. Nine campaigns were devoted to this site until 1960.
In the middle of these Tell el-Far'ah campaigns, the "Qumran affair" arose, named after the manuscripts discovered in caves on the Dead Sea in 1947. From 1949 to 1958, Fr. de Vaux was responsible for the excavations of the various caves for the Bible School, and then for those of the Qumran site itself. In 1952, de Vaux organized a campaign of excavations at the wadi Murab'baat, followed by an excavation of the Qumran site every winter until 1956. Father de Vaux was also in charge of the international team responsible for studying and publishing the manuscripts, which were stored in the scrollery of the Rockefeller Museum until 1967. The findings of his research were presented in reports published in the Bible Review and in the 1959 "Schweich Lectures", lectures published in 1961 under the title Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls. From this book, Kathleen Kenyon could say: "This publication of his lectures is an monument to his skill as an excavator, as a historian and as an authority on the scrolls themselves".
Shortly afterwards, Fr. de Vaux was associated by Miss Kathleen Kenyon with the Jerusalem excavations: he was in charge of the southern part of the Mosque Esplanade, in the el-Khâtoûnîyeh district, which he searched from 1961 to 1963. The search was then resumed by Professor Mazar.
At the École Biblique, he also had heavy responsibilities to fulfil, since he was director of the Rebue Biblique from 1938 to 1953, director of the School from 1945 to 1965, as well as prior of the convent from 1949 to 1952. Appointed Consultant of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1956, then Master of Theology in 1958, he was called to Harvard as Visiting Professor for the year 1964-1965. The honours also followed since he was appointed correspondent member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1952, before becoming a non-resident free member in 1962. In 1961, he became a corresponding member of the British Academy, while subsequently being elected an honorary member of various scientific societies around the world. Several universities and colleges have also awarded him the title of Doctor honoris causa.
Struck by arteritis in early 1971, he gradually lost his health and died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Jerusalem on September 10, 1971. The funeral was held in Saint-Etienne on the 13th. His last work, Ancient History of Israel, was unfinished and was later completed and published by Fr. Langlamet.
The Central Zionist Archives preserves more than 1,500 personal papers of the leaders and activists of the Zionist Movement and the Yishuv. Some of these archives are very small (one or two files), but most of them are very large (tens of boxes). The list of personal papers includes well-known figures in Zionist history, such as: Theodor Herzl, Nahum Sokolow, David Wolffsohn, Max Bodenheimer, Henrietta Szold, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, Haim Arlossoroff and other functionaries and professionals, but also the papers of less well-known people who dealt with important aspects of Zionism and the development of the yishuv. The personal and public correspondence, diaries, family letters and photographs, are preserved in their archives and contribute to an understanding of their character and their work.
The collection of personal archives has been constantly growing. As the fields of study have changed over the years, so has the range of personal papers that the CZA is interested in collecting and preserving. Recently, the archives of men and women, who are perhaps less well known, but were active and influential in their specific areas of expertise, have been accepted for preservation by the CZA. For example, we are happy to have the papers Rudolfina Menzel, who developed the field of dog training in Palestine, and Sarah Bavli, who dealt with matters of nutrition, as well as the papers of people active in Zionist and Jewish affairs overseas, such as Yitzchak Harkavi, an active Zionist in South America, and Jean Halperin, a prominent activist amongst the Jews of France.