In Italy appeared the invaluable Talmud-lexicon (ʽArūkh) by Nathan b. Yehiel, of Rome (d. 1106), who was indirectly indebted to Babylonian teaching. He does not strictly follow the system of Ḥayyūj. Other works of a different kind also originated in Italy about this time: the very popular history of the Jews, called Josippon (probably of the 10th or even 9th century), ascribed to Joseph ben Gōriōn (Gorionides)[1]; the medical treatises of Shabbethai Donnolo (10th century) and his commentary on the Sepher Yeẓīrah, the anonymous and earliest Hebrew kabbalistic work ascribed to the patriarch Abraham. In North Africa, probably in the 9th century, appeared the book known under the name of Eldad ha-Danī, giving an account of the ten tribes, from which much medieval legend was derived;[2] and in Kairawan the medical and philosophical treatises of Isaac Israeli, who died in 932.
The aim of the grammatical studies of the Spanish school was ultimately exegesis. This had already been cultivated in the East. In the 9th century Ḥīvī of Balkh wrote a rationalistic treatise[3] on difficulties in the Bible, which was refuted by Seadiah. The commentaries of the Geonim Exegesis. have been mentioned above. The impulse to similar work in the West came also from Babylonia. In the 10th century Ḥushīel, one of four prisoners, perhaps from Babylonia, though that is doubtful, was ransomed and settled at Kairawan, where he acquired great reputation as a Talmudist. His son Hananeel (d. 1050) wrote a commentary on (probably all) the Talmud, and one now lost on the Pentateuch. Hananeel’s contemporary Nissīm ben Jacob, of Kairawan, who corresponded with Hai Gaon of Pumbeditha as well as with Samuel the Nagīd in Spain, likewise wrote on the Talmud, and is probably the author of a collection of Maʽasiyyōth or edifying stories, besides works now lost. The activity in North Africa reacted on Spain. There the most prominent figure was that of Samuel ibn Nagdela (or Nagrela), generally known as Samuel the Nagīd or head of the Jewish settlement, who died in 1055. As vizier to the Moorish king at Granada, he was not only a patron of learning, but himself a man of wide knowledge and a considerable author. Some of his poems are extant, and an Introduction to the Talmud mentioned above. In grammar he followed Ḥayyūj, whose pupil he was. Among others he was the patron of Solomon ibn Gabirol (q.v.), the poet and philosopher. To this period belong Ḥafẓ al-Qūṭī (the Goth?) who made a version of the Psalms in Arabic rhyme, and Baḥya (more correctly Beḥai) ibn Paqūda, dayyan at Saragossa, whose Arabic ethical treatise has always had great popularity among the Jews in its Hebrew translation, Ḥōbhōth ha-lebhabhōth. He also composed liturgical poems. At the end of the 11th century Judah ibn Bal’am wrote grammatical works and commentaries (on the Pentateuch, Isaiah, &c.) in Arabic; the liturgist Isaac Gayyath (d. in 1089 at Cordova) wrote on ritual. Moses Giqatilla has been already mentioned.
The French school of the 11th century was hardly less important. Gershom ben Judah, the “Light of the Exile” (d. in 1040 at Mainz), a famous Talmudist and commentator, his pupil Jacob ben Yaqar, and Moses of Narbonne, called ha-Darshan, the “Exegete,” were the forerunners Rashi. of the greatest of all Jewish commentators, Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), who died at Troyes in 1105. Rashi was a pupil of Jacob ben Yaqar, and studied at Worms and Mainz. Unlike his contemporaries in Spain, he seems to have confined himself wholly to Jewish learning, and to have known nothing of Arabic or other languages except his native French. Yet no commentator is more valuable or indeed more voluminous, and for the study of the Talmud he is even now indispensable. He commented on all the Bible and on nearly all the Talmud, has been himself the text of several super-commentaries, and has exercised great influence on Christian exegesis. The biblical commentary was translated into Latin by Breithaupt (Gotha, 1710–1714), that on the Pentateuch rather freely into German by L. Dukes (Prag, 1838, in Hebrew-German characters, with the text), and parts by others. Closely connected with Rashi, or of his school, are Joseph Qara, of Troyes (d. about 1130), the commentator, and his teacher Menahem ben Ḥelbō, Jacob ben Me’īr, called Rabbenū Tam (d. 1171), the most important of the Tosaphists (v. sup.), and later in the 12th century the liberal and rationalizing Joseph Bekhōr Shōr, and Samuel ben Me’īr (d. about 1174) of Ramerupt, commentator and Talmudist.
In the 12th and 13th centuries literature maintained a high level in Spain. Abraham bar Ḥiyya, known to Christian scholars as Abraham Judaeus (d. about 1136), was a mathematician, astronomer and philosopher much studied in the middle ages. Moses ben Ezra, of Granada (d. about 1140), wrote in Arabic a philosophical work based on Greek and Arabic as well as Jewish authorities, known by the name of the Hebrew translation as ʽArūgath ha-bosem, and the Kitāb al-Maḥaḍarah, of great value for literary history. He is even better known as a poet, for his Dīwān and the ʽAnaq, and as a hymn-writer. His relative Abraham ben Ezra, generally called simply Ibn Ezra,[4] was still more distinguished. He was born at Toledo, spent most of his life in travel, wandering even to England and to the East, and died in 1167. Yet he contrived to write his great commentary on the Pentateuch and other books of the Bible, treatises on philosophy (as the Yesōdh mōra), astronomy, mathematics, grammar (translation of Ḥayyūj), besides a Dīwān. The man, however, who shares with Ibn Gabirol the first place in Jewish poetry is Judah Ha-levi, of Toledo, who died in Jerusalem about 1140. His poems, both secular and religious, contained in his Dīwān and scattered in the liturgy, are all in Hebrew, though he employed Arabic metres. In Arabic he wrote his philosophical work, called in the Hebrew translation Sepher ha-Kūzarī, a defence of revelation as against non-Jewish philosophy and Qaraite doctrine. It shows considerable knowledge of Greek and Arabic thought (Avicenna). Joseph ibn Mīgāsh (d. 1141 at Lucena), a friend of Judah Ha-levi and of Moses ben Ezra, wrote Responsa and Ḥiddūshīn (annotations) on parts of the Talmud. In another sphere mention must be made of the travellers Benjamin of Tudela (d. after 1173), whose Massa’ōth are of great value for the history and geography of his time, and (though not belonging to Spain) Pethahiah, of Regensburg (d. about 1190), who wrote short notes of his journeys. Abraham ben David, of Toledo (d. about 1180), in philosophy an Aristotelian (through Avicenna) and the precursor of Maimonides, is chiefly known for his Sepher ha-qabbalah, written as a polemic against Karaism, but valuable for the history of tradition.
The greatest of all medieval Jewish scholars was Moses ben Maimōn (Rambam), called Maimonides by Christians. He was born at Cordova in 1135, fled with his parents from persecution in 1148, settled at Fez in 1160, passing there for a Moslem, fled again to Jerusalem in 1165, Maimonides. and finally went to Cairo where he died in 1204. He was distinguished in his profession as a physician, and wrote a number of medical works in Arabic (including a commentary on the aphorisms of Hippocrates), all of which were translated into Hebrew, and most of them into Latin, becoming the textbooks of Europe in the succeeding centuries. But his fame rests mainly on his theological works. Passing over the less important, these are the Mōreh Nebhūkhīm (so the Hebrew translation of the Arabic original), an endeavour to show philosophically the reasonableness of the faith, parts of which, translated into Latin, were studied by the Christian schoolmen, and the Mishneh Tōrah, also called Yad haḥazaqah (יד = 14, the number of the parts), a classified compendium of the Law, written in Hebrew
- ↑ Two different texts of it exist: (1) in the ed. pr. (Mantua, 1476); (2) ed. by Seb. Münster (Basel, 1541). There is also an early Arabic recension, but its relation to the Hebrew and to the Arabic 2 Maccabees is still obscure. See J. Q. R., xi. 355 sqq. The Hebrew text was edited with a Latin translation by Breithaupt (Gotha, 1707).
- ↑ On the various recensions of the text see D. H. Müller in the Denkschriften of the Vienna Academy (Phil.-hist. Cl., xli. 1, p. 41) and Epstein’s ed. (Pressburg, 1891).
- ↑ A fragment of such a work, probably emanating from the school of Ḥīvī was found by Schechter and published in J.Q.R., xiii. 345 sqq.
- ↑ See M. Friedländer in Publications of the Society of Hebrew Lit., 1st ser. vol. i., and 2nd ser. vol. iv.
