Talk:Abraham ibn Ezra

Wikifiable source

The following is from a friend, and I don't yet have his permission to add this text as such to Wikipedia. Let's use it as the basis for a section of the entry.

When considering Ibn Ezra's contributions to the study of the Torah, we should begin with his own words regarding his overriding method:

The words of the Torah are never less than straightforward... therefore, if there appears something in the Torah which seems to contradict reason or to refute the evidence of our senses then here one should seek for the solution in a figurative interpretation. For reason is the foundation of everything. The Torah was not given to men who cannot reason and man's reason is the angel which mediates between him and his God. (Abraham Ibn Ezra, Introduction to the Torah)

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Sources

The major comment which initiates the discussion is found at the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy. Whenever possible, I use the new JPS translation (TaNaKh, Philadelphia, 1985). The reader in English should understand that precisely because we are dealing with difficult passages, relying on any English rendering is problematic and sometimes it is almost impossible to understand the underlying difficulty because the translation glosses over it. I will do my best to explain this in the sections below. To the best of my knowledge, there is no version of Ibn Ezra's commentary in English, therefore the credit or blame for accuracy in the translation here belongs to me.

Deuteronomy 1:[1-2] These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan... Ibn Ezra: [At 2] And if you understand the secret of the twelve, and also of "And Moses wrote", and "The Canaanite then dwelled in the land", and "On the mount of the LORD there it shall be provided" [RSV, the NJPS translation makes understanding Ibn Ezra almost impossible in this case], and "His iron bedstead is now in Rabbah", then you will understand the truth.

To understand this cryptic comment, it is obvious that we must turn to the verses that Ibn Ezra referenced. First, let's look at the verses and Ibn Ezra's comments where they exist:

Genesis 12:[4] Abram went forth as the LORD had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. [5] Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the wealth that they had amassed, and the persons that they had acquired in Haran; and the set out for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in the land of Canaan, [6] Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Schechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanite was then in the land. Ibn Ezra: [After mentioning one possible explanation adds] And if it is not so, then there is a secret to it, and the wise man will be silent.

Genesis 22:[14] And Abraham named that site [where the Binding of Isaac had taken place] Adonai-yireh, whence the present saying, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided." Ibn Ezra: And for the meaning of "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided" see "These are the words" [Deuteronomy 1:1].

Deuteronomy 3:[11] Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim. His bedstead, an iron bedstead, is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites; it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide by the standard cubit! [Lit: by a man's forearm]

For "And Moses wrote" there are a number of possible verses including Exodus 24:4 and Numbers 33:2. Asher Weiser (Mossad Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1976), who edited a scholarly edition of Ibn Ezra (and upon whom I've relied on for my sources) seems to think the most likely candidate is in Deuteronomy itself at Deuteronomy 31:[22] That day, Moses wrote down this poem and taught it to the Israelites.

The chronologically last citation is what Ibn Ezra actually referred to first: "the secret of the twelve". This refers to the last twelve verses of Deuteronomy (34:1-12), of which the most important for this purpose is the first: Deuteronomy 34:[1] Moses went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo... Ibn Ezra: In my opinion, from this point Joshua wrote, since after Moses went up he could no longer have written, and Joshua [understood what to write] by means of prophecy.

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Analysis

As I think most people would agree, the point of these verses are not immediately obvious. But what we should agree *is* obvious (in my opinion) is that we have been brought to this particular collection of verses deliberately by Ibn Ezra. That fact is incontrovertible simply because the juncture of the verses was provided by Ibn Ezra himself in his comment to Deut 1:2. So how can we proceed in attempting to ascertain what he meant by these verses which are labeled "secret" at least twice? While it would be possible for us to speculate, fortunately, the groundwork has been laid for us.

In the latter half of the fourteenth century, a rabbinic commentator became famous for his expertise in explaining the many mysteries of Ibn Ezra's commentary. His name was Joseph ben Eliezer Bonfils, more commonly known to Jews as Tov Elem (Hebrew for Bonfils). He prepared a commentary to Ibn Ezra at the specific request of the Maggid of Damascus, David ben Joshua. He called his commentary Tzafnat Paneah. Such a commentary, a commentary to a commentary, is often called a "supercommentary" in Jewish literature. This commentary rapidly gained fame as the best commentary to Ibn Ezra, as it precisely explained Ibn Ezra's most cryptic comments.

Unfortunately for Bonfils, his own work was subjected to criticism because he defended what others regarded as Ibn Ezra's heresy, and for centuries, most people could read the commentary only in censored form. The censored work was published as Ohel Yosef and also as part of a collection commentaries to Ibn Ezra known as Margalit Torah. Although it was not easy to view the unexpurgated commentary, enough was known about it and sufficient copies survived that R. David Herzog was able to publish the unexpurgated version between 1911 - 1930. The edition is entitled "Josef Bonfils und sein 'Tzofnat Paaneach'" and was reprinted in 1967. I mention this not only because of its inherent interest, but also because readers need to know that if they have an edition of the Miqra'ot G'dolot (Hebrew Bible printed with a number of commentaries and supercommentaries) and they do not find the remarks of Bonfils in the indicated verses, it is because of this censorship issue.

To read the remarks in full, you need to either obtain the Herzog edition, or be satisfied with excerpts quoted in Weiser's edition of Ibn Ezra published by Mossad Rav Kook. I must note that since I do not personally have a copy of Herzog, I am relying on texts quoted in other sources such as Weiser and Sarna, but if anyone thinks that I am misrepresenting Bonfils, they are of course welcome to post the citations.

The problem pointed to by "the Canaanite was then in the land" is the chronological difficulty. The text in Genesis referring to Abraham comes from a period in which the Canaanites lived in what would later become the Land of Israel, and that is of course precisely what the author, whoever he might have been is making. But if we say that the author of the text was Moses, why make this point? The people Moses was addressing were the Israelites who had not yet conquered the Promised Land, so obviously there were still Canaanites in the land. And so what would they have made of the statement "The Canaanite was then in the land"? Of course, if the author were a person who lived after the Conquest, when the Canaanites had been pushed out, then the sentence makes perfect sense.

Ibn Ezra was quite familiar with the usual explanation provided by other commentators for the remark, namely that it might refer to the Canaanite conquest of the land from its earlier inhabitants, but he knew that this did not make sense because "not in the land" does not seem to imply a period of conquest, and Ibn Ezra, as a highly competent grammarian could not tolerate this interpretation of the particle "'az" which means, "then, at that time" as opposed to "now". So he goes on to say "and if that is not so, then I have a secret explanation, and the wise man will keep silent about this." Bonfils provides the details:

       Moses could not possibly have employed the word "then" for
       reason demands that the word would have been written at a time
       when the Canaanite was no longer in the land, and we know that
       the Canaanite departed only after the death of Moses when
       Joshua conquered it.  Consequently, it would appear that Moses
       did not write this word here, but only Joshua or one of the
       other prophets wrote it. [At this point Bonfils moves into his
       role as apologist for Ibn Ezra.] Now since we have to believe
       in the words of tradition and in the words of prophesy, what
       difference does it make whether Moses or some other prophet
       wrote it since the words of all of them are truth and were
       received by prophesy? [Bonfils, Tzafnat Paneah, ad loc.]

The next text of interest is drawn from famous story of the Binding of Isaac. The important aspects for the issue under discussion are that Abraham has taken Isaac to the place identified as Moriah in order to fulfill God's commandment to sacrifice him. But, Abraham is interrupted before he can carry out the act, and a ram is substituted for Isaac. The story continues with verse 22:[14] So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.".

To understand the issue here, it is important to understand how Jewish tradition has identified the mountain in the land of Moriah (22:2). Because this is where the sacrifice was to have taken place, but instead animal sacrifice was substituted, the tradition has always regarded Moriah as Jerusalem, the Temple Mount. That is the "mount of the LORD", and that is the mountain upon which sacrifice was provided,

• but only long after the death of Moses*, in fact not even Joshua could

be intended here, since Jerusalem was unavailable to Jews until after David conquered it from the Jebusites. And so, the term "as it is said to this day" seems to be pointing not to the time of Abraham, not to the time of Moses, but to the time when the Israelites are in control of Jerusalem.

We now move to Deuteronomy chapter 3 and the matter of Og, King of Bashan. The text of the Torah cited above tells us that Og was conquered by the Israelites and we are all invited to examine his fabulous iron bed, which is "now" in Rabbah. The question is, when is "now"? The problem is that Moses accomplished this conquest toward the end of his life, and at that time, the Israelites claimed to have conquered all of Og's territory. But the text tells us in a mater-of-fact fashion that we can view the bed (whose enormous size is evidence of the might of the king the Israelites defeated), as if quite some time has been passed since the Conquest. Remember that the scene of Deuteronomy is Moses addressing the people before they are about to cross over into Canaan. These are the very people who defeated Og. Do they need to view the "iron bed" to be convinced of his huge size?

This brings us to the text "And Moses wrote." There are two possible issues here. The first is the use of the third person. Keep in mind that Deuteronomy is presented as Moses' final address to the people and much of it is written in the first person. For example, at 1:9 "I am not able alone to bear you." It is thus a little jarring to experience the shift to the third person. I believe this point was picked up particularly by Spinoza. But the more important problem may have less to do with the words "Moses wrote" and more to do with the continuation: 31:[24] "When Moses had put down in writing the words of this Teaching *to the very end*". But as you have probably already realized from reading the sources at the outset of this article, Ibn Ezra had already concluded that Moses had not written the text *to the very end*.

Which brings us finally to the "secret of the twelve". This is of course not much of a secret any longer. The "twelve" are simply the last twelve verses of the book which are written after Moses has gone up to the mountain to die, and "no man knows the place of his burial

• to this day*" Could Moses have known at the time of his death that his

grave would not be known even to "this day" -- but if Moses were writing this remark, then what could possibly be meant by "this day"?

It would be absurd to claim that Ibn Ezra was unaware of the classical midrash (exegesis) that describes Moses weeping as God dictates the story of his death without entering into the Promised Land. If you read what he has to say about midrash in his Introduction to his commentary on the Torah, it becomes obvious that while he accepts the truth of the midrash on the allegorical level, it cannot be used to overrule the plain, logical, grammatical sense of any text. In fact, he accepts the notion of prophetic communication, but insists that the prophet who communicated the last verses cannot have been Moses, but must have been Joshua.

No one claims that Avraham Ibn Ezra was the originator of the "Documentary Hypothesis". I have no personal doubt that he would have regarded any such notion as heresy. But it is impossible to deny that Ibn Ezra understood the difficulty of these verses and pointed us to passages which have been understood in modern times to be the anachronisms that betray at least part of the story of when these books were actually written.

--- An contrary to Ezra Wax's claim, this understanding of Ibn Ezra's is supported by the following traditional and Orthodox rabbis.

R' Yosef ben Eliezer haSefardi "Bonfils," 14th C; R' Yom Tov ben Yosef Shaprut, 14th C; R' Elazar Ashkenazi ben Nathan haBavli, 14th C; R' Moshe ben Yehuda ben Moshe Nearim, 14th C; R' Elazar ben Mattityahu; R' Azariah de Rossi, 16th C; R' Eliezer Ashkenazi, 16th C; R' Moshe Almosnino, 16th C; R' Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea, c. 1680-1743; R' Gad del Aquilla, 18th C; R' Shmuel David Luzzatto, 19th C; R' Moshe Ashkenazi, 19th C; and R' Shlomo Netter, 19th C.

Source: March Shapiro, "Maimonides' Thirteen Principles: The Last Word in Jewish Theology?" _The Torah U-Madda Journal, Vol. Four 1993_, p. 202.

Phantom Caption

How is the photo in the article not have the traditional grey box and caption? Someone needs to fix this. HereToHelp 22:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

merge

The merge template has been up for about four months. The Abraham-ben-Méir Aben-Ezra article does not compare with this one, though some info can be merged. --Shuki 21:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Sephardic?

He was born in Spain; thus I assume he was Sephardic, not Ashkenazi. Anyone know for sure? --172.147.2.65 07:37, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

As you say, he was from Spain, so by definition he was Sefardi. I don't understand your question. Zsero 02:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

He occasionally referred to himself as "Abraham the Sephardi"--enough said? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.247.208 (talk) 23:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Tudela

Tudela wasn"t islamic when he born.ישי2 (talk) 16:36, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Ibn Ezra and Authorship of the Pentateuch

The article wrote: "Ibn Ezra is claimed by the proponents of the higher biblical criticism of the Pentateuch as one of its earliest pioneers, although the passages that this position is based upon can lend themselves to less radical readings. Some Orthodox writers have recently argued that Ibn Ezra can be understood to have fully embraced the Orthodox Jewish creed that the entire Pentateuch was divinely dictated in a word-perfect manner to Moses[4]." As mentioned above, there are various verses used to show that Ibn Ezra believed in Post-Mosaic authorship. [4] refers to an article that interprets "The Canaanites Were Then in the Land" as being written by Moses. [4] at best partially addresses the issue of whether Ibn Ezra accepted Mosaic authorship. The article should list the alleged post mosaic verses, and then the traditional response. Alternatively, there should be a new article that addresses Ibn Ezra and Post Mosaic authrship as this is a very important issue. It seemed unbalanced that this article didn't list the several verses in Ibn Ezra's work that demonstrate post-mosaic authorship but it does quote a rebuttal on one verse. CreateW (talk) 13:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The above section on wikifiable source has much very good material whch can serve as a basis for a new article. There are other potential interpretations of Ibn Ezra. For example, it omitted the interpretation of Benedict Spinoze (see http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/relg/christiantheology/ATheologico-PoliticalTreatise/chap8.html). CreateW (talk) 12:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Request Edit - Public Domain Hebrew & CC-BY English Texts

Sefaria has a full 30 different texts written by Ibn Ezra (counting each book of Tanach, Second Version of Ibn Ezra on Esther, Yesod Mora, and The Sabbath Epistle) some of them in multiple languages.

Probably most relevant to the English speaking world are:

• original Hebrew and a complete English translation of The Sabbath Epistle, translated and annotated by Mordechai S. Goodman, published by Ktav, and released with a CC-BY license
• An English translation of Ibn Ezra on Leviticus and Deuteronomy, translated by Jay F. Shachter, originally published by Ktav, and now released with a CC-BY license

I believe that a links to these would fall under section 2 of WP:ELYES.

I have a COI (I work for Sefaria), and have discussed it on WikiProject:Judaism.

LevEliezer (talk) 19:41, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

 Implemented  Spintendo  ᔦᔭ  01:29, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Illogicality

I question this statement: "When Ibn Ezra moved to Córdoba as a young man, Halevi followed him. This trend continued when the two began their lives as wanderers in 1137. As they wandered both together and separately from one another for some three decades...": This cannot be right, since Halevi died in 1141. The source quoted does not make it clear. Nor is it clear (since the original contributor wrote a mistake) whether Ibn Ezra moved to Cordoba before Halevi or the other way round. The whole paragraph is dubious, since it isn't known if Halevi come from Tudela, according to the article on him. Kanjuzi (talk) 19:55, 10 November 2019 (UTC)