Ibn Ezra, a Maimonidean Authority: the Evidence of the Early Ibn Ezra Supercommentaries

CHAPTER FOUR

IBN EZRA, A MAIMONIDEAN AUTHORITY: THE EVIDENCE OF THE EARLY IBN EZRA SUPERCOMMENTARIES

Tamás Visi*

Supercommentaries on Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Pentateuch formed an important genre of post-Maimonidean philosophical literature. I will argue below that almost all of the extant Ibn Ezra supercommentaries that can be safely dated to the period from 1204 to 1348 were written by philosophers who can be described as “Maimonidean” and who had a stronger or looser connection to the Tibbonide school of Maimonideanism. This fact may seem awkward if we consider that Ibn Ezra is generally categorized today as a “Neoplatonic” thinker who disagreed with the “Aristotelian” Maimonides on a number of cardinal questions. Why did the followers of Maimonides embrace Ibn Ezra as an authority whose words had to be commented on instead of criticizing and rejecting (or ignoring) him as a representative of a different current of thought? To answer this question I will ﬁrst present some evidence concern- ing the “canonization” of Ibn Ezra by which I mean the process that resulted in establishing his commentary on the Pentateuch as an authoritative philosophical text within the Maimonidean tradition. Then I will describe some of the factors that may explain this development. In the appendix the reader can ﬁnd a general overview of the early Ibn Ezra supercommentaries, the source-material on which the present study is based.

* I would like to express my gratefulness to all the participants of the “Cultures of Maimonideanism” colloquium for critical comments and encouragement. Research leading to this article was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the Sixth European Community Framework Programme. 90 tamás visi

By early Ibn Ezra supercommentaries I refer to those Ibn Ezra supercommentaries that were written before the Black Death (1348/1349). Alexander Altmann and Uriel Simon (following in the footsteps of Heinrich Graetz) argued that after the Black Death a new interest in Ibn Ezra’s texts arose among medieval Jewish philosophers. Altmann coined the term “Ibn Ezra renaissance” to describe this phenomenon.1 However, these texts are deliberately excluded from the scope of the present study. I will discuss only those texts that were written before the “Ibn Ezra renaissance.”2 These supercommentaries represent the ear- lier phases of the Ibn Ezra reception and lack some of the important characteristics of the later material.3 The term “early Ibn Ezra supercommentaries” was coined by Uriel Simon as far as I know.4

Isadore Twersky has carefully considered the question whether Maimo- nides read Ibn Ezra’s biblical commentaries. Twersky has concluded that the answer is negative. Similar exegetical themes and solutions in Ibn Ezra’s biblical commentaries and Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed can be better explained with reference to their common cultural background than by a hypothetical direct connection between them.5 However, in a probably forged document, in Maimonides’ supposed “ethical will” to his son Abraham Maimonides, we read that the master recommended Ibn Ezra’s commentaries as basic reading:

1 Cf. Alexander Altmann, “Moses Narboni’s Epistle on Shiur Qomā,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 241. 2 On the supercommentaries written during the “Ibn Ezra renaissance,” see Dov Schwartz’s groundbreaking studies, especially Old Wine in a New Barrel: The Philosophy of a Fourteenth-Century Jewish Neo-Platonic Circle ( Jerusalem, 1996) [Hebrew]; “On the Philosophical Interpretation of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Commentaries,” Alei Sefer 18 (1996), pp. 114–171 [Hebrew]; and Amulets, Properties, and Rationalism in Medieval Jewish Thought (Ramat-Gan, 2004), pp. 67–93 [Hebrew]. 3 On the early Ibn Ezra supercommentaries in general see Tamás Visi, The Early Ibn Ezra Supercommentaries: A Chapter in Medieval Jewish Intellectual History (Ph.D. Thesis in Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, 2006). 4 Cf. Uriel Simon, “Interpreting the Interpreter: Supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra’s Commentaries,” in Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth Century Polymath, eds. Isadore Twersky and Jay M. Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), pp. 86–128. 5 Isadore Twersky, “Did Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra Inﬂuence Maimonides?” in Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth Century Jewish Polymath, pp. 21–48 [Hebrew section].