INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

by Gordon Laird, June 1, 1998

For me, finding the works of Rabbis David Kimhi (Radak) and Rabbi Moses Kimhi (Remak) was to discover a wonderful treasure. Written some 350 years before the Reformation they speak with a remarkable clarity.

Radak was a very good teacher. He thought carefully about what he wrote to make sure he used the minimum number of words.

Radak used the peshat method of interpretation: the plain meaning of the biblical text as opposed to derash, the homiletic interpretation. He included, in his commentary on the Psalms and some of the prophetic books, comments which Christians call "anti-Christian polemics". Radak thought of them simply as thoughts which would assist Jews in their discussions with Christians: questions the Jews might ask the Christians to answer.

In the Reformation time the Christians received the opinions of Radak offering peshat meaning of the biblical text and could, if they so desired, ignore the part they found offensive. The two parts were quite separable in that Radak would go through the passage interpreting line by line and only when that process was over he would begin his presentation of his challenges for the Christians.

I started with Martin Luther and came soon to Rabbi David Kimhi. The process was more like this: Andreas Osiander (Reformer in Nuremburg) --» Ludwig Geiger (biographer of Reuchlin) --» Johannes Reuchlin --» David Kimhi.

I am convinced that Radak's writings, together with those of Remak, his brother, pervaded the study of the Hebrew language in the Reformation. The first two Hebrew grammars for Christians - Pellican's of 1504 and Reuchlin's of 1506 - were largely based on Radak's and Remak's grammars and lexicons. Their commentaries also were used in various ways by some of the Reformers.

Martin Luther was familiar with the Kimhis. He considered them the best of the Rabbis, presumably because of the spareness of their opinions and usefulness of their writings. Luther could be hostile to the opinions of many of the Rabbis, but that did not include the Kimhis.

What I am providing is a platform for study. I have attempted to determine how the writings of the Kimhis were transmitted through the period before printing, and how they emerged in the early Jewish printed books. I have also attempted to show where Christian interpreters and grammarians found the Kimhi sources, and when and how they attempted to translate these writings or interpret from them.

What I present here includes mainly the years 1500 to 1520. There is much more yet to come. For example, Eli Levita, a Jew, collaborated with Sebastian Münster, a Christian, in reproducing and interpreting many of the writings of Radak and Remak . Their collaborative works appears mostly in the 1520's and 1530's.

The First Rabbinic Bible (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1517) figures prominently in my work and my concern. When I began my study I was aware of only two copies of this rare Bible, but as my investigation progressed to date I have located twenty-two copies. In the first copy I touched with my own hands, in Munich, I discovered a special page of Radak's "anti-Christian polemics", gathered from his commentary on the Psalms, located between the end of the Psalms and the beginning of Proverbs. However this page appears in only one-half of the Bibles I have investigated. The page itself and its inclusion and exclusion are mysteries which defy simple explanations.

This page may explain how some Christian interpreters read Radak's "anti-Christian polemics" from the Psalms in the important period between 1518 and 1524.

I have kept the "footnotes" to a minimum and provided them on one page as "endnotes". A convenient way of dealing with any URL references is to use your Browser's BACK button when you are finished with the reference.

Writing this as an HTML document allows considerable flexibility to amplify points in the future and to continue the story into later decades and an expanding cast of Reformers.

Thank you for joining me in the Quest! It has been undertaken with all the passion and promise of Don Quixote. A quixotic venture, indeed!