medieval exegesis & religious difference Commentary, Confict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean edited by ryan szpiech Bordering Religions: Concepts, Conficts, and Conversations Bordering Concepts, Conf icts, Religions and Conversations series editors Kathryn Kueny, Karen Pechilis, and James T. Robinson 5553-58498_ch00_4P.indd53-58498_ch00_4P.indd iiiiii 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM MEDIEVAL EXEGESIS AND RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE Commentary, Confl ict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean edited by ryan szpiech Fordham University Press New York 2015 5553-58498_ch00_4P.indd53-58498_ch00_4P.indd v 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM Copyright © 2015 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. 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Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1 First edition 5553-58498_ch00_4P.indd53-58498_ch00_4P.indd vivi 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM for María Rosa Menocal (1953–2012) and Ángel Sáenz- Badillos (1940–2013) In Memoriam 5553-58498_ch00_4P.indd53-58498_ch00_4P.indd viivii 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM CONTENTS Ac know ledg ments xi Note on Transliteration and References xiii Introduction Ryan Szpiech 1 I Strategies of Reading on the Borders of Islam 1 T e Father of Many Nations: Abraham in al- Andalus Sarah Stroumsa 29 2 Ibn al- Maḥrūmah’s Notes on Ibn Kammūnah’s Examination of the T ree Religions: T e Issue of the Abrogation of Mosaic Law Sidney Griffith 40 3 Al- Biqāʿī Seen through Reuchlin: Ref ections on the Islamic Relationship with the Bible Walid Saleh 58 II Dominicans and Their Disputations 4 Two Dominicans, a Lost Manuscript, and Medieval Christian T ought on Islam Thomas E. Burman 71 5 T e Anti- Muslim Discourse of Alfonso Buenhombre Antoni Biosca i Bas 87 6 Reconstructing Medieval Jewish– Christian Disputations Ursula Ragacs 101 5553-58498_ch00_4P.indd53-58498_ch00_4P.indd ixix 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM x Contents III Authority and Scripture between Jewish and Christian Readers 7 Reconstructing T irteenth- Century Jewish– Christian Polemic: From Paris 1240 to Barcelona 1263 and Back Again Harvey J. Hames 115 8 A Christianized Sephardic Critique of Rashi’s Peshaṭ in Pablo de Santa María’s Additiones ad Postillam Nicolai de Lyra Yosi Yisraeli 128 9 Jewish and Christian Interpretations in Arragel’s Biblical Glosses Ángel Sáenz- Badillos 142 IV Exegesis and Gender: Vocabularies of Dif erence 10 Between Epic Entertainment and Polemical Exegesis: Jesus as Antihero in Toledot Yeshu Alexandra Cuffel 155 11 Sons of God, Daughters of Man, and the Formation of Human Society in Nahmanides’s Exegesis Nina Caputo 171 12 Late Medieval Readings of the Strange Woman in Proverbs Esperanza Alfonso 187 13 Exegesis as Autobiography: T e Case of Guillaume de Bourges Steven F. Kruger 200 Notes 217 Bibliography 287 List of Contributors 319 Index 323 5553-58498_ch00_4P.indd53-58498_ch00_4P.indd x 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM To see more from this text, visit http://fordhampress.com/index.php/subjects/ medieval-studies/medieva-exegesis-and- reigious-difference-cloth.html Introduction Ryan Szpiech In the third chapter of his anti- Muslim treatise Contra legem sarraceno- rum (Against the Law of the Saracens), written around 1300 af er his re- turn to Italy from Baghdad, Dominican Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (d. 1320) discusses the Muslim claim that Jews and Christians received a true revelation from God through Moses and Jesus, but then subsequently corrupted it. In order to argue against this accusation, Riccoldo turns to the Qurʾān itself: It says in the [Qurʾānic] chapter about Johah [Q. 10:94], “If you are in doubt concerning what we have revealed to you, ask those who have read the Book before you.” However, those who read the Book before the Sar- acens were the Christians and Jews, who received the Pentateuch and the Gospel, as Muḥammad himself sets out. Muḥammad, therefore, tells the Saracens to make enquiries from Christians and Jews concerning ambiguous matters. However, how is it that Muḥammad sent these people back to false testimonies, if he really was a genuine prophet, as they say?1 With these words, Riccoldo raises one of the central issues facing medi- eval Muslim, Christian, and Jewish writers alike in their confrontations with other religions—namely, how to evaluate the religious and legal sta- tus of foreign scriptures without undermining the validity or uniqueness of one’s own. Riccoldo is here attempting to af rm the integrity of the Bible against Muslim accusations of its corruption, and he is doing so by interpreting a passage that Muslims would consider valid and immutable as divine revelation. At the same time, however, this appeal forms part of Riccoldo’s attack on Islam, including an attack on the legitimacy of the Qurʾān itself. In such exegetical maneuverings, Riccoldo was caught 5553-58498_ch01_4P.indd53-58498_ch01_4P.indd 1 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM 2 Ryan Szpiech between af rming and denying the scriptures of the dif erent religious traditions about which he wrote. T is double gesture was not unique to Riccoldo, nor was it uncom- mon among his contemporary exegetes, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. In the Middle Ages, scriptural commentary constituted an es- sential aspect of the expression of belief in all three faiths, representing a multifaceted practice—at once social, devotional, intellectual, creative, and educational. At the same time, because it dealt with issues such as the nature of the canon, the limits of acceptable interpretation, and the meaning of salvation history from the perspective of faith, such commen- tary arose in the Middle Ages along the fault lines of interconfessional conf ict and polemical disputation between religious communities. T e establishment of a canon meant the deprecation of any rival one, and any interpretation or gloss that was accepted as authoritative also constituted an implicit rejection of the unorthodox and unknown. To read and in- terpret scriptures held to be authoritative only among one’s neighbors required a careful and of en subtle evaluation of the boundaries be- tween the familiar and the foreign. Within the multiconfessional world of the medieval Mediterranean, exegesis was always a double- valenced phenomenon that pressed against the boundaries between self ood and otherness, community and outsider. T e thirteen essays in this volume explore the double nature of scrip- tural commentary in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, considering ex- egesis in all three religions as both a praxis of communal faith and a tool for demarcating the boundaries between religious communities and their rivals and neighbors. Adopting a broad view of medieval exegesis as a discourse, or cluster of discourses, of cross- cultural and interreligious con- f ict, the essays included here focus particularly on the exegetical genre in the western and southern Mediterranean during the High and espe- cially the Late Middle Ages (roughly from the eleventh to the f f eenth centuries). T ese thought- provoking studies are based on a selection from papers read at the conference, “Medieval Exegesis: An Interfaith Discourse,” or- ga nized by this author in October 2011 at the University of Michigan. Bringing together scholars of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish exegesis from Spain, Austria, Italy, Israel, and across North America, this conference provided an intimate and productive setting to explore in depth the in- terplay of scriptural commentary, interreligious conf ict, and translation.2 T e variety of perspectives and topics represented by the conference 5553-58498_ch01_4P.indd53-58498_ch01_4P.indd 2 22/19/15/19/15 66:11:11 AAMM Introduction 3 participants— whose work is most of en discussed in specialized contexts focusing on only one exegetical tradition or one core text— opened the door to unexpected and exciting discussions about the commonalities and dif erences in medieval exegetical practices among readers from dif er- ent religions. It also underscored the importance of cross- cultural and interreligious comparison in the study of religious discourse in the me- dieval Mediterranean. While each of the essays included here incorpo- rates new research in its area of specialty, together they also convey an exciting sense of the possibilities of new discoveries and insights that only a comparative dialogue can bring. T e comparative perspective of the conference and the essays embod- ies the best intentions of the conference’s primary sponsor, the Eu ro pean Research Council, which provided funding through an ERC Starting Grant. T is grant supported a four- year research project (2008–12) led by Principal Investigator Esperanza Alfonso (Consejo Superior de Inves- tigaciones Científ cas), one of the contributors to this volume. T e proj- ect, entitled “Inteleg: T e Intellectual and Material Legacies of Late Medieval Sephardic Judaism. An Interdisciplinary Approach,” provided support for four public seminars and four academic conferences, all fo- cusing on the Bible and its place in the intellectual, religious, artistic, and polemical activity in the western Mediterranean during the Late Middle Ages.3 While the principle focus of the Inteleg project dealt with Jewish cultural production, the conferences and research projects of the indi- vidual team members aimed to situate the study of the Bible within Sephardic culture in a wider cultural and religious setting.