Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Concepts of Scripture in Nahmanides 145

is able to agree with it [BT Avodah Zarah 36a]. Why do you “devour the

inheritance of the Lord” [2 Sam. 20:19]? 16

Nahmanides, most likely owing to a combination of personal belief and
political necessity, here stresses the importance of diversity in interpreta-
tive opinions. A perspectival approach to Torah, in other words, risks over-
looking its inexhaustible richness. Th is richness, in turn, is connected to its
language of revelation, Hebrew, which is full of sacral power. Nahmanides
refers to it as a “sacred language” because it is the language of creation and
of God’s communication to Israel:

I hold that this is the same reason why our Rabbis call the language of the

Torah “the sacred language” [lashon ha-qodesh] because the words of the

Torah and the prophecies, and all words of holiness were all expressed in

that language, it is thus the language in which the Holy One, blessed be He,

spoke with his prophets, and with His congregation. . . . He is called by His

sacred names: El, Elokim, Tzebaoth, Shaddai, Yah, and the Great Proper

Name [i.e., the Tetragrammaton]. In [this language] He created His world,

and called the names shamayim [heavens], eretz [earth], and all that is in

them, His angels and all His hosts — He called them all by name [Is. 40:26].

Th e names of Michael and Gabriel are in this Sacred Language. In that

language He called the names of the holy ones that are in the earth [Psalm

16:3]: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, and others. 17

Nahmanides’s conception of Hebrew as a sacred language (lashon qodesh)
provides a startling contrast to Maimonides’s purely conventional and
functional conception of Hebrew. Th is critical distinction plays a central
role, as we shall see later, in the disagreements between the two scholars.
Nahmanides’s approach to the Torah in the preceding passage, and
more generally, is predicated on what he perceives to be an intersection
of peshat and sod, the plain and secretive meanings, respectively. It is this
intersection that permits Nahmanides to put in counterpoint a universally
accessible meaning with a more esoteric or mystical one meant for the se-
lect. Th e former arises from the consensus of previous interpretive sources
(e.g., Talmud, midrash, later commentators such as Abraham Ibn Ezra and
Rashi); whereas the latter emerges from refl ection on the divine Name that
can only be hinted at in a commentary.
Th is juxtaposition is one of the defi ning elements of Nahmanides’s
commentary. Whether because he was writing very early in the historical