Medieval Jewish biblical exegesis

This article explores rabbinic traditions that see in the character of Joseph a figure of uncertain sexual orientation. I examine a series of rabbinic and biblical texts in which an unconventional gender dynamic may be present. While it is true that these biblical and rabbinic texts ran contrary to the normative ideational and behaviorally prescriptive traditions concerning sexuality presented by the main body of biblical and rabbinic texts, it is nonetheless true that the texts I examine invite readers to see an alternative dynamic through their stories. I will employ a variety of methodologies, including philological/critical scholarship, close literary reading, and queer theory, through which we might most profitably examine the interpretative traditions I consider.

In recent decades, Psalms scholarship has paid increasing attention to the overall editorial arrangement of the book of Psalms, and to the placement of individual psalms as their literary context. An obvious objection to this enterprise is its novelty, especially since the Psalms have enjoyed unparalleled exegetical attention in the history of Christian and Jewish exegesis. This objection is fed by the nearly ubiquitous inaccurate presentation of Psalter-shape readings as originating in 1985 with Gerald Wilson. While Wilson has changed the landscape and is deservedly named as the recent ancestor of this project, that history is inaccurate. We will show that a desire to understand the shape of the whole Psalter, and its editorial intention, can be dated to the second century, leading through various stages to full-length commentaries following this approach being attempted in the nineteenth century. Finally, without detracting from Wilson's unique contribution, we will show that he was not alone in his own day but that others were engaged in this task concurrently and in the decades before him.

My sincere thanks to Edgar Xavier (https://independent.academia.edu/EdgarXavier2) for kindly pointing out some errors of fact in this paper. On page 70, the Herald is incorrectly identified as an Indonesian Catholic newspaper. The newspaper is Malaysian. And, of course, Kuala Lumpur (as mentioned in footnote 49), is the capital city of Malaysia - not Indonesia. So the phrase in parenthesis at the end of the second paragraph on page 70 should read "(an Arabic loanword in Malay [Bahasa Melayu])".  Again, sincere thanks to Edgar for his close reading of the paper and his taking the trouble to point out these errors.

Jonathan

Some of the key elements of the so-called
meteorological interpretation of the biblical creation narrative that
we encounter in the works of medieval Jewish philosophers can be
traced back to Syriac sources and ultimately to John Philoponus’
treatise on the creation of the world. Philoponus argued that the
words “water,” “firmament,” and “heavens” were used equivocally
in the biblical text and that the creation narrative can be understood
in terms of meteorological processes. Philoponus’ tract was utilized
by Jacob of Edessa, whose Syriac work on creation was probably
one of the sources of Da’ūd al-Muqammaṣ’s Judeo-Arabic
commentary on the creation narrative. Saadia Gaon and Jacob
al-Qirqisānī drew Philoponian ideas from al-Muqammaṣ’s work
and transmitted them to later generations of Jewish exegetes.

The article investigates three Genizah fragments of parts of
Saadya Gaon’s translation of the Pentateuch that contain Karaite
renditions and alternations. The largest and most important of
them is the Genizah fragment St. Petersburg, RNL, Yevr.-Arab. I
1753, which contains vestiges of Gen. 7-18; 32-44; Exod. 3-5; 9-19;
23-30; 39. Special attention is also given to alternate readings in
the latter that have parallels both in Ms. St. Petersburg, RNL,
Yevr. II C1 (~ 1009-1010, copied by Samuel ben Jacob), the earliest
comprehensive manuscript of Saadya Gaon’s translation of the
Pentateuch known to us, and in translation units of Saadya’s
exegesis of Exodus. An appendix following the article provides
a critical edition of the three Genizah fragments, including an
indication of the Karaite vestiges and comparative notes.

This article was published in Miriam L. Hjälm, ed., Senses of Scriptures, Treasures of Tradition: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims, (Series: Biblia Arabica: Text and Studies), Leiden, 2017, 104-124. The pagination of this file corresponds more or less with that of the published version.

The Genizot of Cairo have preserved a number of fragments of early (ninth-century) Judeo-Arabic texts containing questions and answers about the Bible. The earliest fragments are written in a non-standard, phonetic orthography that points to a cultural context in which Arabic was spoken, but authors had not yet been exposed in a significant way to Arabic literary culture. There are indications that these texts were composed in a Christian environment, most likely Upper Mesopotamia. Christian Syriac exegesis with its Antiochene tradition quite possibly had some impact on the exegetical concerns and method found in these texts. The questions found in these compositions tend to be concerned with historical issues and specific contradictions occurring between various biblical books. Together with the fragments of contemporary Judeo-Arabic biblical translations and glossaries, these texts reflect the scriptural-centricity of Jewish culture at the time. They are clearly Rabbanite and not sectarian. The exegetical approach of the answers is generally a literal one (peshat). As such, these texts represent the beginnings of the medieval Jewish literal exegesis that will flower in the continuous biblical commentaries of the tenth century, books written by Saʿadya Gaon, Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī, Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon, Yefet ben ʿEli and many others.

In his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Ibn Ezra uses astronomical and astrological concepts for establishing the meaning of some verses. These concepts reflect the influence of Ptolemy's systems, which were in use in the Middle Ages, and they are connected with theories of Arabic medieval scientists. By using these concepts, Ibn Ezra tries to justify the idea of Ecclesiastes that it is useless to be occupied in the matters of this world, because they are under the influence of stars. According to him, the perfection of the spirit through the deveIopment of wisdom is the only worthwile occupation in this life.

The article attempts to build a plausible argument accounting for the development of peshat in 11th century northern France.

Harris, Robert A. “From “Relgious Truth-Seeking” to Reading: The Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Emergence of Peshat and Ad Litteram as Methods of Accessing the Bible,” In The Oral and the Textual in Jewish Tradition and Jewish Education, edited by Jonathan Cohen, Matt Goldish, and Barry Holtz, 54–89. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2019.

This article deals with the transfer and fusion of scientific-biblical knowledge among Jews, converts, and Christians in the 1390s. Following up on hints supplied by a cryptic Hebrew report, the article tracks and explores a biblical-scientific discovery revealed by the convert Pablo de Santa María (the former Shelomo Halevi) in his commentary on Genesis 1:9. In that text, Pablo combined the latest Christian scientific theories of his day with Jewish biblical traditions and thus shaped a new explanation for both the baffling equilibrium between earth and water and the scriptural formulation: “Let the waters be gathered”. As the article shows, while naturalistic readings of this passage were quite common among Christians, in the Sephardic intellectual elite to which Pablo belonged it was almost a doctrinal principle to take these words as pointing to divine intervention in the order of nature. Accordingly, Pablo’s new providential-physical explanation made a significant impression on his Christian audience and became, in a famous Hebrew epistle by the crypto-Jewish convert, Profayt Duran, a token of his scholarly accomplishments. For us, however, it can provide a remarkable example for the kind of intellectual synergy among Jews, converts, and Christians in those years.

Among Maimonides’s many statements about extrascriptural laws in rabbinic literature, none has attracted as much attention as principle 2 in his Book of the Commandments. Modern scholars have largely understood this text to claim that very few of the laws found in rabbinic literature are Sinaitic in origin and of biblical status. Yet, until the twentieth century, principle 2 was primarily read as distinguishing between revealed laws that constitute enumerated commandments and revealed laws that do not. In fact, neither reading is consistent with other Maimonidean statements. By contextualizing principle 2 within the Book of the Commandments, this essay reconsiders Maimonides’s enumeration of the commandments and argues that many of the problems that principle 2 was designed to address, and that it also generated, resulted from the incongruity of his project of enumerating precisely 613 commandments alongside his understanding of revelation as a corpus that included not only the Written Torah but innumerable extrascriptural traditions as well. An appendix evaluates pertinent aspects of the most recent monograph dedicated to Maimonides’s scriptural hermeneutics.

Both Averroes and Maimonides are concerned with the relationship between philosophy and religion, between reason and faith. Both examine the exoteric and esoteric teachings of scripture and the role of allegory in sacred texts, share the same concern for the apparent contradictions between religious and philosophical truths, try to explain the reasons for these inconsistencies, and look for ways to reconcile both sources of knowledge. But their differences in understanding the role of sacred scripture as a source of knowledge are irreconcilable. Averroes relies on the Aristotelian notion of sign, which enables human apprehension of higher matters and is central for explaining certain kinds of figurative speech found in sacred scriptures. Maimonides is not aware of this epistemological tool, an ability to grasp the truth that pervades our cognoscitive structure and is the only way to communicate the incommunicable. Ignoring its central role in biblical texts leads Maimonides to theoretical agnosticism.

המאמר מראה כיצד הושפעה עמדתו של תנחום הירושלמי בעניין חיבור מזמורי תהלים מזו של ר' משה בן ג'קטילה. שניהם סברו שחלק ממזמורי תהלים נכתבו בימי בית שני, ושרבים מן המזמורים המיוחסים   
לדויד נכתבו ע"י משוררי החצר של דויד
פורסם: סיני 149:2 (תשע"ו), 73-91

To Saadia Gaon (882–942) belongs the distinction of having composed the first known personalized and programmatic Jewish commentary on the book of Esther. His more significant innovations in this commentary, which we shall briefly survey, include his treatment of various exegetical cruxes, his literary-thematic analysis and structuring of the biblical book (as well as his commentary thereon), his elucidative references to contemporary socio-religious and vocational realia, and his polemical appropriation of various exegetical topics.

Psalm 148 is a hymn inviting all beings in the celestial world and the earthly world to praise God. Even though the Psalm seems simple and easy to understand, two questions have been raised in the history of the exegesis of this Psalm: why are these specific creatures and not others mentioned in the Psalm, and why are they placed in this particular order? In Ancient Judaism, little attention was given to the explanation of this Psalm from a scientific perspective. Abraham ibn Ezra seems to be the first Jewish exegete to have written a systematic commentary on Psalm 148 to demonstrate that the biblical text describes the structure, composition and laws of the universe according to Aristotelian principles. Ibn Ezra's scientific comments on this Psalm were the starting point for future scientific analyses by later exegetes in southern France, such as David Qimhi and Menahem ha-Meiri. The latter interpreted this Psalm in the light of Aristotelian cosmology, and, more specifically, in consonance with scientific ideas set forth in Aristotle's Meteorology. It is the purpose of this article to analyze how Psalm 148 was interpreted by these three Jewish exegetes from a scientific perspective, and to examine how later exegetes explained, developed or even refuted the scientific interpretations of their predecessors. It also examines the sources that Ibn Ezra may have used to learn about Aristotle's ideas.

The tenth-century Karaite savant, Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī, wrote three major works: Tafsīr Bereshit (a commentary on the hexaemeron, the account of creation in the book of Genesis); Kitāb al-Anwār wal-Marāqib (a systematic legal code); and Kitāb al-Riyāḍ wal-Ḥadāʾiq (a commentary on the non-legal portions of the Pentateuch). This article seeks to clarify the chronological relationships between these three books. The Tafsīr Bereshit has been unknown until now and its structure and character are briefly described here on the basis of manuscripts. In addition, chapter titles from the commentary on the first sentence of Genesis, together with brief quotations from the text, are given in an appendix.

Sixteenth-century editions of the early Yiddish epic Shmuel-bukh evidence a range of editorial stances toward the transmission of the epic itself, as well as the biblical and rabbinic materials upon which it draws. Here, a comparison of two such editions, Augsburg 1544 and Krakow 1578, discloses how the intertextual practices of Shmuel-bukh editors evolved over time from a relatively flexible exegetical orientation towards the biblical text to one of increasing literalism and fidelity. The evolving editorial practices of Shmuel- bukh’s redactors suggest that the transmission of this genre involved the assumption of exegetically nuanced and historically diverse stances vis-à-vis biblical and extra-biblical authority. The very instability of Shmuel-bukh thus opens up an enlightening perspective on the dynamic conjunction of exegetical ideology and implicit poetic practice.

Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598) was one of the most important Spanish humanists of the Renaissance. His most significant undertaking was the edition of the Biblia Polyglotta Regia, published in Antwerp in 1569–1573. In his preface to this edition, Arias Montano defended the need to know biblical Hebrew for the correct interpretation of Scripture. A translation of Abraham ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Ten Commandments has been attributed to him. This article analyses this translation and compares it with the original in order to demonstrate the interest of a Spanish humanist like Montano in the work of a medieval exegete such as Ibn Ezra. The contents of Ibn Ezra's interpretations are compared to the explanations of the Ten Commandments contained in manuals of Christian doctrine written in the Renaissance period. This translation can be understood as an example of the appropriation of the Jewish exegetical legacy by Renaissance Christian humanists.

This paper, which was read during the  XI Convegno di studi Biblici  hosted by The Facoltà Teologica di Sicilia of Palermo (April 12-13 2019), tries to list the foremost Jewish Middle-Age commentators (i.e. Rashi and Abrabanel) and commentaries on the Books of Kings and to the sum up the historical, linguistic and exegetical issues.

The spread of Rashi’s renown to Spain is somewhat mysterious.  Historians, for the most part, tend to see Sefarad and Ashkenaz (Franco-Germany) as two distinct centers of Jewish life and learning, suggesting that “never the twain shall meet.”  Evidence of Rashi’s acceptance in Spain shatters the barrier between the two sides of the Pyrenees. After recognizing that the border between Sefarad and Ashkenaz is more permeable than previously assumed, the same methods can be used to explore the spread of the commentaries of Abraham Ibn Ezra.