Joseph Ibn Kaspi Research Articles

The Role of Esoterics and Contradictions in Joseph Ibn Kaspi’s Exegesis

This article explores Joseph Ibn Kaspi’s Biblical exegesis and his relationship to Maimonidean thought.

Joseph Ibn Kaspi on Contradictions in the Bible

The Provençal philosopher, biblical commentator, and grammarian Joseph Ibn Kaspi interprets some of the internal contradictions in the biblical text by using a methodology based on Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed. By drawing on Maimonides’s seven categories of contradictions, he argues that the first, third, fourth, and seventh type of contradictions explain inconsistencies within the Bible. He recognizes the first contradiction in the subjective influence of different biblical authors; the third contradiction in the differing parables of the resurrection of the dead; the fourth contradiction in whether or not children are punished for the sins of their parents and also in the contradictory decrees by King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther; and the seventh contradiction in the relationship between God’s determinism and human freedom. At the same time, this article illustrates that Ibn Kaspi considers the first, third, and fourth contradictions to be only apparent contradictions, asserting that they merely appear as such to the reader. It is only the seventh type that is a true contradiction since, in Ibn Kaspi’s estimation, this was created by the biblical author with intent, in which one notion is intentionally false and the other intentionally true—thus revealing a dialectic of both freedom and determinism embedded in the biblical text.

Logic of theological debate in the Book of Job: Criticism of Maimonides’ interpretation in the Jewish biblical exegesis in the 14th century

The article discusses the critical understanding of Maimonides’ interpretation of the Book of Job, representing a theological debate on Divine Providence. Maimonides ascribes certain assessments on this issue to Job and his friends, linking their opinions to some theological or philosophical schools of the 10th–12th centuries, developed in the context of Arabic culture. A number of Jewish exegetes, who were working in a diverse cultural context and were writing in Hebrew, such as Joseph Ibn Kaspi and Gersonides, considered this distribution of opinions an anachronism. Being Maimonidean followers, they nevertheless criticized the distribution of opinions between Job and his friends proposed in The Guide of the Perplexed. The main argument of this criticism was logic. We will discuss the origins of such an approach and analyze some nuances of logical solutions, suggested by Maimonidean followers, juxtaposing them with a range of problems touched upon in The Guide of the Perplexed in regards to the Book of Job. It will be stressed among others, that the interpretation of Gersonides, coming from his statement on the logical completeness of the solution of the question of Divine Providence in the Book of Job, can be justified by the means of modern formal logic.

Rationalistic Messianism and the Vicissitudes of History: The Final Chapter of Joseph ibn Kaspi’s Tam ha-kesef

Born around 1280, the Provencal Jewish philosopher Joseph ibn Kaspi was a prolific writer whose works touched upon a wide range of subjects. I present here an English translation of the eighth chapter of his final work, The Silver is Spent (Tam ha-kesef). In this chapter, Ibn Kaspi discusses the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Coloured by his Aristotelian philosophical outlook, the chapter has a number of interesting features, including its naturalistic approach to history, and the arguments presented for the rationality of belief in a future messianic era.

Joseph Ibn Kaspi on the Book of Job

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

On the Book of Esther as an Allegory in the Works of Joseph Ibn Kaspi: A Response to R. Eisen inREJ160/3-4

On the Book of Esther as an Allegory in the Works of Joseph Ibn Kaspi: A Response to R. Eisen in<i>REJ</i>160/3-4

The Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentary on the Book of Job (review)

604 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:4 OCTOBER 1992 Saadia Ben Joseph AI-Fayyumi. The Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentaryon the BookofJob. Translated by L. E. Goodman. Yale Judaica Series, Volume XXV. New Haven: Yale University Press, ~988. Pp. xvii + 481. Cloth, $75.oo. The Yale Judaica Series has long had an excellent reputation for presenting quality translations of classicJudaica to an English-speaking audience. Volume I of this series was Saadia Gaon's Book of Beliefi and Opinions, the first major work of Jewish philosophy written in the Middle Ages. The tenth-century Saadia Ben Joseph AI-Fayyumi, known as a Gaon (head of the Rabbinical Academy in Iraq), was a seminal thinker, known for his philosophy, philology, legal opinions, calendrical studies, exegesis, grammar , and polemics. It was only fitting, therefore, that the Yale Judaica Series begin with his principal philosophical composition. Volume XXV of the series is devoted to Saadia's Translation and Commentaryon theBook ofJob. This work is especially.difficult to transpose into English, since it requires a translation of a translation (Saadia's Arabic version of the Hebrew original) as well as a commentary based upon that translation. In this volume, Lenn E. Goodman has faithfully rendered Saadia's Arabic into a pellucid, idiomatic English, composed a comprehensive introduction, and added valuable notes. He has, thereby, performed a yeoman's job in maintaining the high level established by his predecessors in this series. Saadia's Commenta~ onJob was the first in a series ofJewish philosophical interpretations of this enigmatic biblical masterpiece, a tradition followed by such important thinkers as Maimonides and Gersonides. ~The Commentary is a product not only of the Jewish tradition, but also, to a great extent, of Saadia's Islamic environment; and its theodicy derives much from the Kalam and from Islamic teachings concerning Job and his sufferings. A successful presentation of this work in English requires a translator who is perfectly comfortable with the Jewish and Islamic cultural milieus, is quite sensitive to nuances of language and semantics, both in Hebrew and Arabic, and is conversant with the philosophical and theological issues involved in theodicy. Lenn Goodman combines all of these qualities, making for a very effective English rendering of Saadia's composition, while at the same time placing it within an appropriate intellectual framework. Despite the obvious strengths of Goodman's exposition of Saadia's translation of and commentary to Job, some reservations persist. This book is overrich in some places and impoverished in others. Thus, Goodman often lets his fertile mind run wild, adducing illustrative material to Saadia's work not only from compositions Saadia may have known (Jewish, Greek, or Islamic), but also from such diverse authors as Hume, Kant, Copernicus, Marsilio Ficino, and AIonso de la Vera Cruz, a sixteenth-century jurist who wrote about the rights of New World Indians. In addition, Goodman often engages in gratuitous editorializing. Thus, he claims that if, in relation to the almah passage of Is. 7:14, Christians had adopted "Saadia's method of using proof-texts to 1Goodman often refers to both authors; other important philosophical commentaries on Job, those of Yefet ben Eli the Karaite (tenth century) and Joseph Ibn Kaspi (early fourteenth century) are unjustifiably ignored. aOOK REVIEWS 605 establish the semantic parameters, endless confusion might have been forestalled" (297) . Is the Christian doctrine of virgin birth really dependent upon faulty semantics? Goodman further opines that Job should not be faulted for owning slaves, nor Saadia for being insensitive to that fact, because neither the author of Job nor Saadia "holds Job responsible for social offenses lying beyond the horizon of social consciousness accessible to a conscientious householder of Job's day" (164). One almost expects to be told that the suffering of Job was patently unfair despite his cruelty to animals, as evidenced by his offering them as sacrifices. Goodman's overwhelming erudition is evident on every page; the reader may have been better served by a small dose of selfrestraint ." If Goodman is overgenerous in his search for parallels and illustrative materials, he is quite sparse when it comes to textual information. The reader is informed only by a hint in the Preface...

Joseph Ibn Kaspi's 'Gevia' Kesef': A Study in Medieval Jewish Philosophic Bible Commentary

Joseph Ibn Kaspi's 'Gevia' Kesef': A Study in Medieval Jewish Philosophic Bible Commentary

Basil Herring. Joseph Ibn Kaspi's “Gevia Kesef”. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982, 303 pp. + 45 pp. (Hebrew text)

Basil Herring. Joseph Ibn Kaspi's “Gevia Kesef”. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982, 303 pp. + 45 pp. (Hebrew text)

Sharshoth Kesef. The Hebrew Dictionary of Roots, by Joseph ibn Kaspi

Sharshoth Kesef. The Hebrew Dictionary of Roots, by Joseph ibn Kaspi

On the Biblical Exegesis of Joseph ibn Kaspi

On the Biblical Exegesis of Joseph ibn Kaspi