Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Concepts of Scripture among the Jews of the Medieval Islamic World 93

Hebrew term peshat, focusing on the plain meaning of the text, was rela-
tively short-lived (it fl ourished mainly within the school of Rashi’s disciples
in northern France of the 11th to 13th centuries), in the Islamic sphere — as
well as in Christian northern Spain and southern France, which had his-
torical connections with Islamic culture — there developed a longstanding
tradition of nonhomiletic exegesis which lasted from the 9th to the 14th
centuries and beyond. In Arabic, the term used to designate such a type of
context-bound exegesis highlighted its relationship to the “surface/appar-
ent” meaning of the text (t.hāhir), but this term is not identical with Hebrew
peshat, and its translation from Arabic into Hebrew as peshat, already in
medieval times (by Judah Ibn Tibbon), caused confusion. Th e couching of
this context-bound exegetical enterprise in the philosophical and scientifi c
language and culture adopted from the Arabs, as well as its fueling, sharp-
ening, and distilling within the Karaite-Rabbanite polemic, forged a much
stronger orientation toward a linguistic-contextual-literary-historical ori-
entation in biblical study among the Jews of the Islamic world. Th is tradi-
tion was eventually adapted from its original Judaeo-Arabic language into
Hebrew and further transformed within Hebraic culture in the works of
commentators such as Abraham Ibn Ezra, who was born in Muslim Spain
and emigrated to Christian lands, David Kimhi, and Moses Nahmanides
(1194 – 1274). In this manner, it eventually found its way into the Renais-
sance works of later Jewish commentators such as Profayt Duran and Don
Isaac Abravanel, who developed independent literary treatises on specifi c
biblical themes and narratives.15

Th e Karaite Impetus to the Linguistic, Literary, and

Historical Aspects of Judaeo-Arabic Exegesis

Expertise in the Biblical Hebrew as a Prerequisite to Biblical Study

Th e Karaites considered the detailed study of biblical Hebrew as a pre-
requisite to the pursuit of the Bible’s meaning. Th ey developed the lexical
and grammatical study of the Bible, oft en as a conscious substitute to its
homiletic expansion in classical rabbinic and medieval Rabbanite tradi-
tion, subjugating all analysis of Scripture to its primary linguistic control.
Karaite biblical study, at the height of its achievements throughout the 10th
to 11th centuries, was conducted through the interrelated disciplines of
grammar, translation (into Arabic), and exegesis.