A memoir by a Cornell University professor about a renowned scholar of law and religion who fled Hitler's Germany for England in the 1930s has been chosen among the top 10 recommended books to law professors and lawyers in Germany by a panel of distinguished legal scholars and practitioners.

The book, "Ideas and the Man: Remembering David Daube" (Vittorio Klostermann, 2004) by Calum Carmichael, professor of comparative literature and associate member of the law faculty at Cornell, was listed in Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, a weekly forum for the legal profession in Germany.

The citation mentioned the book's evocation of Daube as an "eminently learned and original legal historian of the ancient Mediterranean world." It also praised Carmichael for "[capturing] not just Daube's intelligence and humor, but also the distinctiveness of his approach to law."

In "Ideas and the Man," Carmichael praises Daube for "his absorption in the intricacies of different legal traditions [that] made him alert to elements of the law that find expression in the world of [ancient] literature, be it Christian, Greek, Jewish or Roman. In 'The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism' [a 1956 book by Daube], he revolutionized prevailing perceptions about ideas and institutions in the New Testament by applying his sophisticated understanding of how Talmudic law and literature illuminate that work."

After leaving Germany, Daube went on to become the Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College. Carmichael studied under him there and went on to help Daube publish his "Collected Works" and collaborate with him on U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities teachers' seminars. Daube, who eventually moved to the United States, died in 1999.

Carmichael, who researches the relationship between law and narrative in early biblical material, teaches biblical and cognate (Near Eastern and Talmudic) literature at Cornell.