86 Meira Polliack
on logical argumentations within a juridical or philosophical context, be-
came an essential accomplishment of the Jewish literate classes, who ac-
quired it through their wide reading of Arabic scientifi c, philosophical, and
theological works. By internalizing these disciplines to a degree unknown
among rabbinic Jews in pre-Islamic times, they created a new hermeneuti-
cal consciousness in three basic respects relating to the language, literature,
and history of the Bible.
First, Judaeo-Arabic exegetes generally conceived the language of bib-
lical texts to be governed by conventions which rule all forms of human
communication and which can be analyzed through the use of specifi c
tools, mainly, those of grammar. Sa‘adiah Gaon gives clear expression to
this stance in the introduction to his Translation and Commentary on Gen-
esis, in which he states, “Th e Torah was given in one of the languages.” His
approach recalls the dictum attributed to a mishnaic sage, Rabbi Ishmael:
“Th e Torah speaks as human beings do.” Th ough some medieval Rabbanite
exegetes drew on this affi nity to justify their linguistic approach, there is a
diff erence between Rabbi Ishmael’s hermeneutics and that of Sa‘adiah and
the Karaite exegetes.7 Th ese latter give voice to a scientifi c (secularizing)
conception of biblical language, viewing it as a system of signs comparable
to those of other languages and denying it an inherent mystical or mytho-
logical dimension. Accordingly, the divine origins of the Bible are not to be
sought in the texture of its language, as in the conceptions of classical mid-
rash (omnisignifi cance, indeterminacy of meaning, atomization, etc.) but
in its ideas and content. Th e rabbinic Sages’ conception of the divine es-
sence of scriptural language distances it from the ways of human discourse.
Judaeo-Arabic exegesis abandons this conception, though not always and
oft en not in an openly declared fashion. Th e Bible could now be analyzed
as a piece of literature, even if its content was still perceived as divinely
originated or inspired.
Judaeo-Arabic grammarians and exegetes inherited a science of com-
parative linguistics from the Arabs and applied it to Hebrew scripture. Th e
seeds of grammatical and lexical study of biblical Hebrew were planted in
the great works of 10th- to 11th-century linguists, be they David ben Abra-
ham al-Fasī, Yūsuf ibn Nūh., or Abū Faraj Harūn among the Karaites or
Sa‘adiah Gaon, Judah H.ayyūj, and Jonah Ibn Janāh. among the Rabbanites.
Th is linguistic framework enabled the consecutive and contextual analysis
of the biblical text to be largely based on the specialized understanding of
its lexicon and grammar. Th e Karaites made this approach a fundamen-
tal aspect of their exegetical system, in terms of lexical, grammatical, and