Welcome back with a vengance.
Mendelsohn was a philosopher, and a pretty retrograde one at that, not a critic. Recall that Kant was his contemporary but the Mendelsohn took no part in the Kantian revolution.
It may very well be that Mendelshon held critical views, but would not print them in his torah edition. the main purpose of that edition was to provide a pure German translation to Central european Jewry so they would stop speakin the jargon = yiddish, and start speaking pure German, thereby opening the doors to assimilation. in some the bans of his biur, the Rabbis understood that central point, i think in the noda beyuda's ban. See M Eliav's book in hebrew on education in germany from the time of mendelsohn until mid-19th century. furthermore, the biur on vayikra was done by naphtali herz weisel (Wessely) which was interested in demonstrating how torah shepa'al peh stemmed from the verses, and he was the first to do so, before the ktav vekabalah shel Meklenburg.
>It may very well be that Mendelshon held critical views, but would not print them in his torah edition.
Impossible. There is too much evidence that he, personally, opposed critical views of the Bible. The only sort of modern Bible scholarship which he accepted was of the literary kind (eg, conceiving of biblical poetry as parallelism).
That said, the rest of what you've written about the point of his Chumash edition is true. The only thought revolution he intended to spark was in terms of language and therefore access to culture, but he didn't conceive of parshanut in any but traditional - albeit rational and peshat-like - terms.
Avakesh, in his own time he was considered a distinguished philosopher. Don't forget, Kant himself placed second to Mendelssohn in an essay contest.
I'm interested in that they transliterate tzeireh with a ts- instead of what i'd expect, a German z-.
but hey, i'm the Geek Orthodox Patriarch... what else would i be interested in?
Written Latin influence? A comment on late 18th century German pronunciation?
I'd like to know if their "ts-" sounded the same as "z." I've seen evidence that German Jews of the period pronounced the tsade more like a samech. Could it be that somehow "ts-" conveyed that sound closer than "z"?
what i meant by "it may very be...." was whatever the truth is on that point...
if S has researched it and knows the facts, i'll accept that.
What's the deal with that illustration on the title page? As best I can tell, the Latin motto means something like, "This is what will be prayed for." I suppose that hanging box, vaguely suggestive of Raiders of the Lost Ark, somehow symbolizes revelation. Can anyone clarify further?
Mendelssohn (M.) was a distinguished philosopher, who in the area of metaphysics followed in the path of Leibniz and Wolff. He was a pioneer, however, in the area of aesthetics.
M., indeed, took a gnerally conservative approach to the Humash. He did, however, say some radical things sbout Tehllim in a private letter-- I forget just now to whom.
It is an exaggeration to say that the Biur just followed in the path of the traditional pashtanim. In several instances the Biur emphasizes the aesthtic features of the Biblical text.
By the way, I have the impression that the now standard idea that there are four main medieval parshanim, namely, Rashi, Rashbam, ibn Ezra and Ramban, stems from Dubno's and M's Intros to the Biur.
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