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Recha Welcoming Her Father, 1877 illustration by Maurycy Gottlieb

Nathan the Wise (original German title Nathan der Weise) is a play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, published in 1779. It is a fervent plea for religious tolerance. Its performance was forbidden by the church during Lessing's lifetime.

Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, it describes how the wise Jewish merchant Nathan, the enlightened sultan Saladin and the (initially anonymous) Templar bridge their gaps between Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

The centerpiece of the work is the Ring Parable, narrated by Nathan when asked by Saladin which religion is true: An heirloom ring with the magical ability to render its owner pleasant in the eyes of God and mankind had been passed from father to the son he loved most. When it came to a father of three sons whom he loved equally, he promised it (in "pious weakness") to each of them. Looking for a way to keep his promise, he had two replicas made, which were indistinguishable from the original, and gave on his deathbed a ring to each of them. The brothers quarrelled over who owned the real ring. A wise judge admonished them that it was up to them to live such that their ring's powers proved true. Nathan compares this to religion, saying that each of us lives by the religion we have learned from those we respect.

The character of Nathan is to a large part modelled after Lessing's lifelong friend, the eminent philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Similar to Nathan the Wise and Saladin, whom Lessing makes meet over the chess-board; they both shared a love for the game.^[1]

1. ^ Daniel Dahlstrom, Moses Mendelssohn, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3 December 2002. Accessed online 26 October 2006.

• Nathan der Weise, available at Project Gutenberg.
• Nathan the Wise, available at Project Gutenberg. (English translation by William Taylor)
• Unabridged German text at Zeno.org