Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T20:56:18.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 21 - Jewish Bible Exegesis in Muslim Lands in the Middle Ages

from Part III - Spiritual and Intellectual History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2021

By
Mordechai Z. Cohen
Edited by
Phillip I. Lieberman
Phillip I. Lieberman
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
Get access

Summary

Jewish learning in Muslim lands in the Middle Ages was transformed by its absorption of Muslim and Greco-Arabic learning, which included grammar and philology, poetics, hermeneutics, and philosophy, all of which contributed to the forging of substantially new methods of Jewish Bible exegesis. Earlier Jewish Bible interpretation was dominated by the creative midrashic forms of “rewriting” the Bible, which had been consolidated in the Talmud and various halakhic and aggadic midrashic compilations. But from the ninth century onward, Karaite scholars in the Muslim East rejected rabbinic authority and spearheaded a new philologically oriented exegetical method.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Judaism , pp. 701 - 727
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Select Bibliography

Ben-Shammai, Haggai. A Leader’s Project: Studies in the Philosophical and Exegetical Works of Seʿadyah Gaʾon [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 2015).Google Scholar
Brody, Robert. Saʿadyah Gaon, trans. Rosenberg, Betsy (Oxford, 2013).Google Scholar
Cohen, Mordechai. Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor: From Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides to David Kimhi (Leiden, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Mordechai. Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides’ Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of His Geonic-Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu (Leiden, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Mordechai. The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture in Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, c. 900–1270 (Philadelphia, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Daniel. Search Scripture Well: Karaite Exegetes and the Origins of the Jewish Bible Commentary in the Islamic East (Leiden, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Miriam. Karaite Exegesis in Medieval Jerusalem: The Judeo-Arabic Pentateuch Commentary of Yūsuf ibn Nūḥ and Abū al-Faraj Hārūn (Tübingen, 2011).Google Scholar
Khan, Geoffrey, Gallego, Maria Angeles, and Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith. The Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought in Its Classical Form (Leiden, 2003).Google Scholar
Klein-Braslavy, Sara. Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story of Creation [Hebrew] (second edition, Jerusalem, 1987).Google Scholar
Nemoy, Leon. Karaite Anthology: Excerpts from the Early Literature Translated from Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew (New Haven, 1952).Google Scholar
Polliack, Meira. The Karaite Tradition of Arabic Bible Translation: A Linguistic and Exegetical Study of Karaite Translations of the Pentateuch from the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries C.E. (Leiden, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polliack, Meira, ed. Karaite Judaism: A Guide to Its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Uriel. The Ear Discerns Words: Studies in Ibn Ezra’s Exegetical Methodology [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan, 2013).Google Scholar
Sklare, David. Samuel ben Hofni Gaon and His Cultural World (Leiden, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zawanowska, Marzena. The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ʻEli the Karaite on the Abraham Narratives (Leiden, 2011).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×