22 - Philosophy and Science in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Bible

Summary

During the Middle Ages – the age of commentary par excellence – four distinct methods of Jewish biblical exegesis developed. These methods, formalized in the thirteenth century, were designated by the acronym PaRDeS. The four methods were peshat, the literal/grammatical/historical/contextual method of interpretation; remez, the philosophical/allegorical approach; derash, the method of rabbinic midrash; and sod, the esoteric method of the kabbalists, who read the Bible through the ten sefirot, the names of God, and letter permutations.

This chapter introduces the second of these four canonical methods of interpretation. It surveys the main philosopher-exegetes and schools of thought during the Middle Ages by their period and geographical location. These include the rise of philosophical-theological exegesis in the Islamic East; the exegetical traditions of the Islamic West, especially in al-Andalus; the Maimonidean traditions in Provence, Italy, and to a lesser extent Christian Spain; and the post-Maimonidean developments in Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen. The final section focuses on anti-philosophical and anti-Maimonidean traditions of exegesis. These traditions developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, often as a direct response to the spread of Maimonideanism, and continued into the fifteenth century, when Jews were influenced by contemporary trends of anti-Aristotelianism.