HOFFMANN, DAVID (1843–1921), was a German rabbi, Jewish legal authority, Orthodox communal leader, and biblical and rabbinic scholar. David Tsevi Hoffmann was born in Hungary and studied in the yeshivot of Moses Schick and Esriel Hildesheimer. Hildesheimer, who affirmed the worth of secular culture and traditional rabbinic scholarship, had a profound influence on Hoffmann. This influence led Hoffmann to Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia), where he studied in both the famed Sofer Yeshiva and the Evangelical Gymnasium. Hoffmann began his university studies in 1865 in Vienna and immigrated in 1866 to Germany, where he completed his university education at Berlin and Tübingen; he received his doctorate in 1870 for his Mar Samuel, Rektor der Jüdischen Akademie zu Nehardea in Babylonien (Mar Samuel, rector of the Jewish Academy at Nehardea in Babylonia). This work was severely criticized by Samson Raphael Hirsch for its application of critical methods to the study...