Joseph Ibn Kaspi on the Book of Job

Abstract

Joseph ibn Kaspi (b. 1280) was a significant philosopher-exegete in medieval Judaism. Born in Provence, he produced over twenty works most of which were biblical commentaries. Like many Jewish philosophers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Kaspi advanced the exegetical program set forth by Maimonides in his Guide of the Perplexed by composing commentaries on the Bible in a philosophical vein. However, like many of his cohorts in medieval Jewish philosophy, Kaspi has not fared well in modern scholarship. Relatively little work has been done on him.1