Nathan the Wise

Nathan the Wise
Recha Welcoming Her Father, 1877 illustration by Maurycy Gottlieb
Written by	Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Characters	Nathan, Saladin, Young Templar, Patriarch, Monk, Recha, Sittah, Al-Hafi
Date premiered	14 April 1783
Place premiered	Döbbelinsches Theater (), Berlin
Original language	German
Setting	Jerusalem ca. 1192

Nathan the Wise (original German title: Nathan der Weise) is a play published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1779. It is a fervent plea for religious tolerance. Its performance was forbidden by the church during Lessing's lifetime; it was first performed in 1783 at the Döbbelinsches Theater () in Berlin.

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. Its major themes are friendship, tolerance, relativism of God, a rejection of miracles and a need for communication.

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 pleasing 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 quarreled over who owned the real ring. A wise judge admonished them that it was impossible to tell at that time – that it even could not be discounted that all three rings were replicas, the original one having been lost at some point in the past; that to find out whether one of them had the real ring it was up to them to live in such a way that their ring's powers could prove true, to live a life that is pleasant in the eyes of God and mankind rather than expecting the ring's miraculous powers to do so. 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 modeled after Lessing's lifelong friend, the eminent philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Similarly to Nathan the Wise and Saladin, whom Lessing makes meet over the chess-board, they both shared a love for the game.