ENGLISH

Opening the Gates of Interpretation (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

By Mordechai Z. Cohen

Book information

Publisher
BRILL
Year
2011
ISBN
9004189327, 9789004189324
ISSN
0169-815X
LCC
BS1186 .C64 2011
Google Books ID
z8uhZwEACAAJ
Open Library ID
OL25185824M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (2727305 bytes)
Series
Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval
Pages
597\597
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2012-02-04 16:00:00

Description

The biblical hermeneutics of the illustrious philosopher-talmudist Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) has long been underappreciated, and viewed in isolation from the celebrated philological schools of plain sense (peshat) Jewish Bible exegesis. Aiming to redress this imbalance, this study identifies Maimonides substantial contributions to that interpretive movement, assessing its achievements in cultural context. Like others in the rationalist Geonic-Andalusian school, Maimonides understanding of Scripture was informed by Arabic learning. Drawing upon Greco-Arabic logic, poetics, politics, physics and metaphysics, as well as Muslim jurisprudence, he devised sophisticated new approaches to key issues that occupied other exegetes, including a variety of interpretive cruxes, the reconciliation of Scripture with reason, a legal hermeneutics for deriving halakhah (Jewish law) from Scripture, and the nature of interpretation itself.

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