bears the name of Simeon ha-Darschan (שמעוני ילקוט); the other to the three poetical books, the name of Machir b. Todros (מכירי ילקוט). Abenezra the Spaniard, who wrote his Commentary on the Book of Job in Rome, 1175, delights in new bold ideas, and to enshroud himself in a mystifying nimbus. David Kimchi, who keeps best to the grammatical-historical course, has not expounded the book of Job; and a commentary on this book by his brother, Mose Kimchi, is not yet brought to light. The most important Jewish works on the book of Job are without doubt the Commentaries of Mose b. Nachman or Nahmanides (Ramban), born at Gerona 1194, and Levi b. Gerson, or Gersonides (Ralbag), born at Bagnols 1288. Both were talented thinkers; the former more of the Platonic, the latter of the Aristotelic type. Their Commentaries (taken up in the collective Rabbinical Commentaries), especially that of the latter, were widely circulated in the middle ages. They have both a philosophical bias.[1]
What is to be found in them that is serviceable on any point, may be pretty well determined from the compilation of Lyra. Nikolaus de Lyra, author of Postillae perpetuae in universa Biblia (completed 1330), possessed, for that age, an excellent knowledge of the original text, the necessity of which he acknowledged, and regarded the sensus literalis as basis of all other sensus. But, on the one hand, he was not independent of his Jewish predecessors; on the other, he was fettered by the servile unevangelical spirit of his age.
The bursting of this fetter was the dawn of a new day for exegesis. Luther, Brentius, and other reformers, by the depth of their religious experience, their aversion to the capriciousness of the system of allegorical interpretation and
- ↑ Other older commentaries bearing on the history of exposition, as Menahem b. Chelbo, Joseph Kara, Parchon, and others, are not yet known; also that of the Italian poet Immanuel, a friend of Dante, is still unprinted. The rabbinical commentaries contain only, in addition, the Commentary of Abraham Farisol of Avignon (about 1460).
