ISAAC ABRABANEL By Wolfe Macht, Waco
AS EXEGETE
The creative period has passed with David Kimhi (1 160-1235.) Grammatical and exegetical Jewish studies had attained a high devlop- ment. What Maimonides was in the field of Jewish Philosophy, David Kimhi was in the field of biblical Exeges and the Hebrew Language study. After him came the pilpulistic and mystical types of exegesis which as all will agree, was a retrogression from the simple and scientific method of the Spanish School of creative Jewish culture. Abrabanel, like Obadiah Sforno, followed the natural method of explaining Scripture, the Peshat, only now and then.
AS PHILOSOPHER
Also as philosopher Abrabanel belongs to the period of decline. The supremacy of reason, the cultivation of the intellect as the sole aim of man, the ultra-rational point of view was championed by Maimonides. Religion itself was subordinate to reason. If Maimonides accepts creation of matter it is because it is as valid as the Aristotelian view of the eternity of matter (letters to Hasdai Halevi, Vol. II).
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