This volume explores how the poetic technique of biblical metaphor was analyzed within the Jewish exegetical tradition that developed in Muslim Spain during the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry and was then transplanted to a Christian milieu. Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides applied concepts from Arabic poetics, hermeneutics and logic to define metaphor and interpret it within their philological-literary readings of Scripture. David Kimhi integrated their methodologies with the midrashic creativity and sensitivity to nuance typical of his native Provence to create a new literary interpretive system...

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,...

This volume in honour of Johannes van Oort, formerly University of Utrecht, presently Professor of Patristics and Gnosticism at the Universities of Nijmegen and Pretoria, and past-President of the International Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS), brings together a rich variety of studies on Augustine, Manichaeism, and other Gnostic currents, thus reflecting the honorand's research interests. The unique collection is divided into four sections: I. Studies in Augustine: Confessions, Sermons, Letters & De Haeresibus; Augustine on Grace & Pluralism; Augustinian 'Gnosis'; II. Studies in...

This comparative study traces Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural interpretation from antiquity to modernity, with special emphasis on the pivotal medieval period. It focuses on three areas: responses in the different faith traditions to tensions created by the need to transplant scriptures into new cultural and linguistic contexts; changing conceptions of the literal sense and its importance vis-a-vis non-literal senses, such as the figurative, spiritual, and midrashic; and ways in which classical rhetoric and poetics informed - or were resisted in - interpretation. Concentrating on...