Абен-Езра
Machine translation from the original · Show original
Aben Ezra, one of the most famous Jewish scholars of the 12th century, called Ebenar or Evenar by the scholastics, was born in Toledo (in Spain) in 1088 or 1092; died in 1167 in Calogorra, on the border between Navarre and Catalonia; moved out of Toledo in 1138, traveled through Africa, Egypt, Palestine, was in Baghdad and, perhaps, India; taught grammar and languages among Italian Jews from 1140–1155; visited France and London, and settled in Narbonne in 1160. He was a kind of poet, fully possessed of metrical technique, both in Hebrew and in Arabic; but he had no inspiration. As a philosopher, he belonged to the Neoplatonic school, although he lacked originality. But his commentaries on the Pentateuch (from 1152-1153), on Isaiah (1154-1155), on the Psalms, Daniel, etc., reveal a desire to develop a new method in which grammar and history played a much larger role than was previously given to them.