Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures

Studies in Honour of Daniel J. Lasker

Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, Shalom Sadik, Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, Shalom Sadik

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110702323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

In his academic career, that by now spans six decades, Daniel J. Lasker distinguished himself by the wide range of his scholarly interests. In the field of Jewish theology and philosophy he contributed significantly to the study of Rabbinic as well as Karaite authors. In the field of Jewish polemics his studies explore Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts, analyzing them in the context of their Christian and Muslim backgrounds. His contributions refer to a wide variety of authors who lived from the 9th century to the 18th century and beyond, in the Muslim East, in Muslin and Christian parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in west and east Europe.
This Festschrift for Daniel J. Lasker consists of four parts. The first highlights his academic career and scholarly achievements. In the three other parts, colleagues and students of Daniel J. Lasker offer their own findings and insights in topics strongly connected to his studies, namely, intersections of Jewish theology and Biblical exegesis with the Islamic and Christian cultures, as well as Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Christian relations. Thus, this wide-scoped and rich volume offers significant contributions to a variety of topics in Jewish Studies.

III Jewish and Anti-Jewish Polemic and Exegesis in the Christian World

Abraham bar Ḥiyya (d. ca. 1136) on “The Pure Soul”

Ehud Krinis

Introduction

Scholars, most vigorously José María Millás Vallicrosa, have revealed, examined, and highlighted Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s pioneering role as a mediator, or “cultural agent,” bringing Greco-Arabic sciences into the Hebrew and Latin cultures of Christian Europe.¹ It was Daniel J. Lasker who pointed out his additional pioneering role in transforming anti-Christian themes in the transition from Jewish polemics in Muslim lands to Jewish polemics in Christian lands.²

Among bar Ḥiyya’s writings, the treatise Megillat ha-Megalleh (“The Scroll of the Revealer”) holds a special place. Through this work, bar Ḥiyya influenced the Jewish genre of messianic speculation, a genre expressing the Jewish people’s messianic longings throughout history. The present article is devoted to examining the term “the pure soul” (ha-nešamah ha-ṭehorah) in Megillat ha-Megalleh. This term and its extension, “the pure living soul” (ha-nešamah ha-ḥayyah ha-ṭehorah), appears in only two rather short passages in the treatise.³

The contents of the two passages in which bar Ḥiyya deals with this term are complementary and form a single argument, which constitutes one of the work’s most intriguing notions.⁴ Consequently, it has drawn considerable attention from scholars engaging with Megillat ha-Megalleh.⁵ The significance that scholars attribute to these passages stems not only from their importance in the context of the debate about bar Ḥiyya’s own thought, but also from their similarity to sections in the Kuzari, the famous book by bar Ḥiyya’s contemporary Judah ha-Levi (d. 1141).⁶

Bar Ḥiyya’s statements about “the pure soul” raise blatant difficulties, whose resolution presents a challenge to readers. Some scholars have discussed, albeit partially, the complications in the way in which he presents the topic for discussion, although few of them have identified its inherent anti-Christian tone. In the light of previous scholarly efforts devoted to understanding the notion of “the pure soul” in Megillat ha-Megalleh, the present study seeks to propose a new direction in tackling the perplexing formulations of this notion. In addition, it seeks to present fresh insights regarding its provenance in Islamic culture and the specific Christian doctrine it aims to challenge.⁷ In this way, I hope to reinforce

Lasker’s assertion concerning bar Ḥiyya’s role as a mediator of non-scientific themes, including anti-Christian ones, from new angles.

“The Pure Soul” – Philosophical Aspects

I will now turn to my attempt at a new understanding of the notion under discussion here. In the following, I will try to demonstrate that bar Ḥiyya’s elaborations of the notion of “the pure soul” revolve around a peculiar interaction between philosophical elements taken from the doctrine of the soul that frequently occurred in the author’s period and an apocalyptic vision of history. To allow us to properly appreciate bar Ḥiyya’s originality in transposing philosophical terminology and assimilating it into an apocalyptic worldview, we must first understand these concepts and the philosophical school from which they arose. The notion under discussion is the theory of the three souls, or the three different forces that make up the human soul. This theory is one of the basic building blocks of the philosophical understanding of the soul. It appears in various versions in the writings of Plato and Aristotle and was adopted and developed in later Greek philosophy, which continued to promulgate Plato’s and Aristotle’s thought to the end of antiquity. The theory of the three souls, or the three forces of the soul, was transmitted by means of translations and adaptations to the Arabic culture of the Islamic period, during which time it was also absorbed by Jewish writers.⁸

Bar Ḥiyya introduces the main points of the three-soul doctrine in the third chapter of Megillat ha-Megalleh: he names the human being’s first soul “the appetitive desiring soul” (ha-nefeš ha-mitʾawwah ha-ṣomaḥat), corresponding to “the vegetative soul” (Ar. al-nafs al-nabātiyyah); he calls the second “the animal and living soul” (ha-nefeš ha-behemit ha-ḥayyah) as an equivalent of “the vital soul” or “the animal soul” (Ar. al-nafs al-ḥayawāniyyah); and he dubs the third

soul “the speaking and thinking soul” (ha-nefeš ha-dabranit ha-hogah) parallel to “the rational soul” (Ar. al-nafs al-nāṭiqah).⁹ The tripartite doctrine of the soul, which was well-known among Arabic writers,¹⁰ became particularly popular among Judeo-Arabic literature.¹¹ All of these writers agreed on the superior position of the rational soul, the soul or part of the soul that was unique to humankind, while the vital soul was shared with animals and the appetitive soul with both animals and plants.

Given this shared basis, we can distinguish between two different approaches. I call the first the holistic-hierarchic approach and the second the dichotomous-­hierarchic approach. In the holistic-hierarchic approach, the vegetative soul is the lowest soul; the vital soul is above it, and the rational soul is above both.¹² The holistic aspect of this approach is manifested in the fact that this tripartite structure of the human soul is viewed as a whole, in which each part plays a critical role in the full existence and functioning of the human being. The vegetative soul and the vital soul provide the superior rational soul with services that are critical for its existence in their shared setting; that is, the human body.¹³ By contrast, the dichotomous-hierarchic approach takes the supremacy of the rational soul to an extreme and views it as primary, to the point of blurring the distinction of the tripartite division and providing a dichotomous alternative: the rational soul on the one hand, and the vegetative and vital souls on the other. Instead of coordination and completion among the three parts, there is tension and conflict between the supreme rational soul and the two lower souls: the former is independent of the body and matter, unlike the latter. It is an eternal soul whose source is the upper spiritual world, and it is destined to return to its source in that

world when the fleeting time binding it to the other two souls ends along with the material body. Thinkers subscribing to this approach tend to present the two lower souls in a negative manner, identifying them with humankind’s passions and other inferior features. Because of this, labels such as “the appetitive soul” (ha-nefeš ha-mitʾawwah) for the vegetative soul and “the beastly soul” (ha-nefeš ha-behemit) for the vital soul are used, and these also appear in bar Ḥiyya’s writing.¹⁴ Nonetheless, we should bear in mind that the holistic and dichotomous approaches are different perspectives of the same philosophical view of the human soul and that they share the same conceptual foundation. Therefore, they are not always clearly distinguished from one another. At times, they are found alongside one another and mixed together in the works of the same writer.¹⁵ Nevertheless, the distinction between them is important and is particularly relevant to our attempt to examine bar Ḥiyya’s thought. Of the two approaches, the Neoplatonic imprint is more prominent in the dichotomous-hierarchic view.¹⁶ In the case of Arabic culture (including Judeo-Arabic culture), this Neoplatonic imprint at times intersects with the tendency toward asceticism (zuhd), which preaches a life that limits the influence of the two lower souls as much as possible and that helps the ratio...