{"id":1558,"date":"2026-11-13T02:21:52","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T02:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/david-kimhi-and-the-accurate-books\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T02:22:03","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T02:22:03","slug":"david-kimhi-and-the-accurate-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/david-kimhi-and-the-accurate-books\/","title":{"rendered":"David Kimhi and the Accurate Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At an advanced age, probably in 1232, David Kimhi left Narbonne for Spain. He travelled as a delegate of the communities of Lunel and Narbonne, and his aim was to persuade the Jews of Castile to stand by the writings of Moses Maimonides, then under attack from rabbis in France and Spain.1<\/a><\/sup> The man he most wanted to reach was Judah Alfakhar of Toledo, a physician said to have served King Ferdinand III and a figure of great influence in his city.2<\/a><\/sup> Kimhi never arrived. He fell ill at Avila, on the road, and could go no further.3<\/a><\/sup> Unable to continue, he wrote instead: \u201cO Judah, thy brethren offer thee homage from afar; thou art adorned with wisdom, greatness, and modesty.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter did not work. Alfakhar repelled the approach, and a second letter brought an emphatic reply condemning Maimonides\u2019 attempt to reconcile Aristotle with the Torah. The harshness with which Alfakhar treated the old scholar, the Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> notes, \u201caroused the outspoken disapproval even of his own friends.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> Frank Talmage, Kimhi\u2019s modern biographer, summed up the episode in one sentence: Kimhi showed his loyalty to Maimonides when, \u201cin his seventies, he journeyed across Languedoc and Spain to defend Maimonides\u2019 Guide of the Perplexed<\/em>.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey that failed at Avila was not his first into Spain in search of something. Kimhi had travelled, Talmage writes, \u201cconsiderable distances to consult reliable manuscripts such as the Sefer Yerushalmi in Saragossa and the Sefer Hilleli in Toledo.\u201d7<\/a><\/sup> The grammarian who would become the Hebrew teacher of half of Europe was also a reader of old books, someone who went to look at a famous codex because he wanted to know exactly how a word was written. This essay follows that side of him: the scholar of the Masorah, the student of manuscripts, and the author of the books through which the pointed Hebrew Bible was read for three centuries after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Family of Grammarians in Narbonne<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

David Kimhi was born in Narbonne around 1160 and died there around 1235, the youngest son of Joseph Kimhi.8<\/a><\/sup> His father and his elder brother Moses were, in Talmage\u2019s words, \u201cexiles from Almohad Spain to Narbonne,\u201d grammarians and exegetes \u201cheavily influenced by contemporary Hispano-Jewish rationalism.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> Narbonne had its own tradition of biblical study, reaching back to the eleventh-century scholar known as Moses the Preacher, and the elder Kimhis founded a school there whose best-known graduate was David.10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His father died while David was still a child, and he was brought up and taught by his brother Moses; later he supported himself by teaching Talmud to the young.11<\/a><\/sup> In Provence the family was known by a French name as well, and David signed or was called Maistre Petit<\/em>.12<\/a><\/sup> He often called his father and brother his teachers. Hermann Strack, writing for a Protestant encyclopedia in 1910, recorded that habit, and that Joseph Kimhi\u2019s grammar Sefer Zikkaron<\/em> had given \u201cfor the first time the division of the Hebrew vowels into five long ones and five short ones,\u201d and that Moses Kimhi\u2019s concise grammar became generally known in its own right.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name Kimhi invited puns. It was linked with qema\u1e25<\/em>, flour, and later generations applied to David the saying from the Mishnah, \u201cWithout flour, no Torah.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> A fourteenth-century manuscript of his commentary on the Prophets, then in the National Library in Madrid, points the name Qam\u1e25i<\/em>, which the Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> took to be the pronunciation used in Arabic-speaking lands.15<\/a><\/sup> Narbonne itself, in the encyclopaedia\u2019s reckoning, gave him a public role: between 1205 and 1218 he took part in judging several men from Barcelona who had dishonoured the memory of Rashi.16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An<\/picture>
Illustration: the road to Avila, where Kimhi fell ill around 1232 on his way to Toledo to defend Maimonides. An imagined scene, not a portrait.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gleaning After the Reapers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kimhi\u2019s first and most influential work was a single book in two parts, the Mikhlol<\/em>, the \u201cCompendium.\u201d The first part was a grammar of biblical Hebrew; the second, a dictionary arranged by roots. Later readers treated the dictionary as a separate work, the Sefer ha-Shorashim<\/em> or \u201cBook of Roots,\u201d and the name Mikhlol<\/em> came to mean the grammar alone.17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> explains what Kimhi was trying to do. The great grammars of Judah \u1e24ayyuj and Jonah ibn Jana\u1e25 were long and detailed; those of Abraham ibn Ezra and of Kimhi\u2019s own father and brother were short to the point of obscurity. The Mikhlol<\/em> was meant as \u201ca middle ground\u201d between them.18<\/a><\/sup> Its contribution lay above all in arrangement and in making the innovations of Joseph and Moses Kimhi widely known: the division of the vowels into five long and five short, the treatment of the nif\u02bfal<\/em> as the passive of the simple stem, the recognition of the dagesh lene<\/em>.19<\/a><\/sup> Kimhi called himself \u201ca gleaner after the reapers,\u201d but he made original observations too, among them a distinction between the consecutive vav<\/em> and the ordinary vav<\/em> of conjunction, and a willingness to accept post-biblical forms as legitimate Hebrew.20<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> put the achievement more bluntly. Kimhi was not original, but he could not be considered \u201ca mere compiler.\u201d He digested his material so thoroughly, and set it out with such clarity, that \u201cwhile he popularized the opinions of his illustrious forerunners, he at the same time made their works superfluous and helped to sink them into an oblivion from which they were not rescued until the nineteenth century.\u201d21<\/a><\/sup> The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> made the same point in fewer words: it was due to the Mikhlol<\/em> and the Shorashim<\/em> \u201cthat most of the works of his predecessors sank into oblivion.\u201d22<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dictionary shows him more independent than the grammar. It was based on Ibn Jana\u1e25, but it added fresh etymologies and comparisons with later Hebrew and Aramaic, referred constantly to the Masorah, and translated many words into the Proven\u00e7al that Kimhi spoke at home.23<\/a><\/sup> A modern reader opening the Shorashim<\/em> finds, among the Hebrew roots, the vernacular of thirteenth-century Languedoc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics and Defenders of the Grammar<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone admired the Mikhlol<\/em>. The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> lists a line of later scholars who criticised Kimhi for being \u201chighly unconventional as a grammarian\u201d: Joseph ibn Kaspi, Profiat Duran, David ben Solomon ibn Ya\u1e25ya and Abraham de Balmes.24<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> records the same attacks from Kaspi and Duran, and a defence by Elisha ben Abraham in his Magen David<\/em>, printed at Constantinople in 1517.25<\/a><\/sup> Other advocates followed: Solomon ibn Melekh in his Mikhlol Yofi<\/em>, and Elijah Levita, whose notes accompanied the Venice editions of the grammar in 1544\u201345 and of the dictionary in 1546.26<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The critics did not prevail. The very fact that later grammarians argued with Kimhi, rather than with \u1e24ayyuj or Ibn Jana\u1e25, shows how completely his books had replaced theirs. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> saw the cause in his gift for system: he possessed \u201cin a high degree the power of systematization and of popular exposition.\u201d27<\/a><\/sup> A grammar written for teachers in Narbonne became the standard reference of the Jewish schoolroom, and, as the next centuries would show, of the Christian university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Accurate Books of Toledo and Saragossa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The grammar and dictionary depended on knowing exactly what the biblical text said, and Kimhi took the question seriously enough to travel for it. Two of the model codices cited in medieval Masoretic notes appear in his writings. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>\u2019s survey of Bible manuscripts records that Kimhi, in his grammar, \u201con Num. x. 4 says that the Pentateuch of the Hillel Codex was extant in Toledo,\u201d and that he attested that another model book, the Codex Yerushalmi, had been for many years in Saragossa, where it was used extensively by the grammarian Ibn Jana\u1e25.28<\/a><\/sup> The Yerushalmi, the same article notes, \u201cis often quoted in the Masorah as exhibiting a different orthography from that of the Codex Hilleli.\u201d29<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hilleli was already a legend. Abraham Zacuto, writing his chronicle around 1500, gave it an ancient pedigree, a scribe named Hillel ben Moses ben Hillel, and a dramatic history: in 1197, during a siege of the kingdom of Le\u00f3n, \u201cthey removed thence the twenty-four sacred books.\u201d The codex, Zacuto wrote, \u201cwas exceedingly correct; and all other codices were revised after it.\u201d He had seen its volumes of the Former and Latter Prophets, brought by exiles to Portugal and sold in North Africa.30<\/a><\/sup> The date of six hundred years before is doubtful, but the reputation was real, and Kimhi\u2019s note is one of the earliest witnesses that the Pentateuch volume was in Toledo in his time.31<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kimhi was not the only one who went to Toledo to check a text. The scribe Israel ben Isaac of Toledo, whose Pentateuch of 1241 survives in the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, wrote in its colophon that he had checked his work against \u201cthe accurate copy known as Hilleli.\u201d32<\/a><\/sup> The Proven\u00e7al scholar Menahem ha-Meiri, born a few years after Kimhi\u2019s death, recorded that a respected rabbi, Samuel ha-Katan ben Jacob, had travelled from Germany to Toledo to commission a model codex with which to correct the Torah scrolls of Ashkenaz, and that the copyist chosen was \u201cIsrael ben Rabbi Isaac the Scribe.\u201d33<\/a><\/sup> Meiri\u2019s handbook for scribes is the subject of Kiryat Sefer<\/em> and the laws of writing a Torah scroll<\/a>. In the early thirteenth century Toledo was a place one went to for an accurate Bible, and Kimhi went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He used Masoretic books as well as codices. Christian David Ginsburg, editing the introduction of the sixteenth-century printer Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim, noted that the independent compilation of the Masorah known as Okhlah ve-Okhlah<\/em> was first quoted by that name \u201ctowards the end of the twelfth century, by David Kimchi,\u201d together with Ibn Aknin.34<\/a><\/sup> The grammarian of Narbonne thus stands near the beginning of the recorded history of one of the classic Masoretic handbooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Scribe\u2019s Pen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kimhi also wrote for scribes directly. His \u02bfEt Sofer<\/em>, \u201cThe Scribe\u2019s Pen,\u201d abridged material from the Mikhlol<\/em> into a manual for copyists of the Bible. The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> explains that it was \u201cnecessitated by widespread ignorance among scribes and the proliferation of biblical manuscript traditions in the 12th century,\u201d and that it treats in detail such problems as the qere<\/em> and ketiv<\/em> and the accents.35<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> describes it as containing \u201crules for the writing of Bible-rolls, Masoretic notes, and accents.\u201d36<\/a><\/sup> It was not printed until 1864.37<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commentaries show the same concern in passing. At the opening of his commentary on the second Psalm, Kimhi stops to discuss whether \u201cWhy do the nations rage\u201d begins a new psalm, as it does \u201cin all the more accurate books,\u201d or continues the first, as some talmudic sages held.38<\/a><\/sup> The appeal to \u201caccurate books\u201d is a reflex of the Masoretic world in which he worked, where the division of a text could be settled by consulting the best copies. Talmage\u2019s summary is that Kimhi\u2019s commentaries \u201cevince great interest in masoretic questions.\u201d39<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the Margins Differ from the Text<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most daring idea Kimhi contributed to the history of the Masorah concerns the qere<\/em> and ketiv<\/em>, the places where the consonants of the text are read aloud as a different word, with the word to be read noted in the margin. Rabbinic tradition, as Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim would insist three centuries later, treated many of these as a law given to Moses at Sinai.40<\/a><\/sup> Kimhi proposed a historical explanation instead, in the introduction to his commentary on the Former Prophets.41<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appears that these marginal and textual readings originated because the sacred books were lost and scattered about during the Babylonian captivity, and the sages who were skilled in the Scriptures were dead.<\/p>David Kimhi, introduction to the Former Prophets, trans. Christian D. Ginsburg42<\/a><\/sup><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In Ginsburg\u2019s translation, Kimhi went on: \u201cWhereupon the men of the Great Synagogue, who restored the law to its former state, found different readings in the books, and adopted those which the majority of copies had, because they, according to their opinion, exhibited the true readings. In some places they wrote down one word in the text but did not punctuate it, or noted it in the margin but omitted it from the text.\u201d43<\/a><\/sup> The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> paraphrases the theory in the same terms: the qere<\/em> and ketiv<\/em> \u201cdeveloped out of a confusion of readings in the time of the men of the Great Synagogue who, according to him, established the text.\u201d44<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theory reads the Masoretic margin as the trace of a collation. The men of the Great Assembly, faced with disagreeing copies, followed the majority where they could and recorded the alternatives where they could not. It is the method that the rabbinic story of the three scrolls in the Temple court attributes to the scribes of an earlier age, the subject of the counters of the Torah and the three scrolls of the Temple court<\/a>. Kimhi applied it to the whole system of marginal readings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea scandalised some of his successors. Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim, introducing the second rabbinic Bible printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice in 1524\u201325, quoted Kimhi in full and declared: \u201cWhat surprises me still more is, that so holy a man as Kimchi should also utter similar things.\u201d45<\/a><\/sup> He quoted as well the objections of Don Isaac Abravanel: if Ezra had been unsure which reading was right and put one in the margin and one in the text, why should readers \u201calways follow the Keri, and not the Kethiv,\u201d and why should the vowels always agree with the marginal reading?46<\/a><\/sup> Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim answered that the qere<\/em> and ketiv<\/em> were Mosaic, and argued that if they had been doubtful readings, the scribes would have treated them as they treated the three disputed readings of Tractate Soferim, by following the majority.47<\/a><\/sup> The debate between a historical and a revealed origin for the margins of the Bible, which still continues in modern scholarship, thus began with a paragraph by Kimhi and its rebuttal in the printed rabbinic Bible. That Bible\u2019s history is told in Daniel Bomberg\u2019s Venice press and the rabbinic Bibles<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Commentary in the Plain Sense<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kimhi\u2019s commentaries began, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, with Chronicles, a book few had explained. He wrote it at the request of a student of his father who wanted an exposition \u201cin accordance with the plain sense or derekh ha-peshat<\/em>\u201d instead of the homiletic commentaries then prevalent.48<\/a><\/sup> Genesis followed, then all the prophetic books and the Psalms.49<\/a><\/sup> His avowed aim, Talmage writes, was to follow Ibn Ezra and his own father and brother in establishing a pesha\u1e6d<\/em> \u201cbased on philological and contextual analysis,\u201d with particular attention to syntax within verses and the sequence of narrative.50<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He did not, however, throw out the midrash. Unlike his predecessors, the Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> observes, Kimhi \u201crelied heavily on rabbinic literature,\u201d distinguishing between interpretation that met his standards of plain sense and homiletical readings, \u201cmany of which he included nonetheless for added interest.\u201d51<\/a><\/sup> In the Encyclopedia of Religion<\/em> Talmage lists three reasons: some midrashim helped to explain the plain sense, some served as a foil, and some added \u201cinterest and liveliness to his text.\u201d52<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening of the Psalms commentary shows the method. Kimhi begins with grammar, explaining why the first word, ashre<\/em>, \u201cHappy,\u201d is always plural: a person is not called happy \u201cfor one good which is found in him,\u201d but for many.53<\/a><\/sup> Then he turns to meaning: the psalm describes \u201cthe law of man\u201d and the reward of the righteous, and David put it first because it is \u201cexceedingly important.\u201d54<\/a><\/sup> On the second psalm he refuses to invent a chronology: \u201cwe cannot explain the arrangement of the Psalms according to the historical order.\u201d55<\/a><\/sup> He then reads the psalm against a concrete moment in the books of Samuel: David composed it \u201cin the opening of his reign, when the nations were gathered against him,\u201d as when the Philistines heard that he had been anointed and came up to seek him; the raging of the nations is the noise of their gathering, and the word ragheshu<\/em>, he notes, has the sense of a great multitude, as the Targum\u2019s rendering of another verse confirms.56<\/a><\/sup> At the end he allows the reader a choice between two plain readings, of David or of the King Messiah.57<\/a><\/sup> On Psalm 22 he explains that in \u201ca tearing and roaring lion,\u201d the word lion<\/em> \u201clacks the kaph of comparison,\u201d citing parallels from the blessings of Jacob.58<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rationalism that drew him to Maimonides appears throughout. He generally explained miracles naturally, followed Maimonides on prophecy and providence, and wrote two \u201cesoteric\u201d commentaries, on the account of creation and on the chariot vision of Ezekiel, modelled on the Guide of the Perplexed<\/em>.59<\/a><\/sup> He went somewhat further than Maimonides in recognising that a gentile could be a prophet, and he suggested, independently, that an animal could come under individual providence when its actions helped or harmed a human being.60<\/a><\/sup> Such passages, intended to whet the appetite of the general reader for philosophy, drew censure from later authorities, beginning with Judah Alfakhar, the man to whom he wrote from Avila, and continuing with David ibn Abi Zimra and Jacob Emden. Yet Immanuel of Rome, himself given to allegory, found Kimhi not rationalist enough.61<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commentaries preserve something else of value to students of the text. Kimhi quoted the Aramaic Targumim constantly, and the Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> noted that these \u201cnumerous quotations\u201d furnish valuable material for a critical edition of the Targumim themselves.62<\/a><\/sup> A thirteenth-century commentator, reading the Bible with its Aramaic translation open beside it, became a witness to the text of that translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answers for the Christians<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Psalms commentary is also a work of controversy. Kimhi addressed Jewish readers who lived among Christians and were expected to answer Christian readings of their own Bible. At the end of his long discussion of Psalm 2, after taking apart the reading of \u201cThou art My son, this day have I begotten thee\u201d as a statement about Jesus, he writes: \u201cBehold I have taught you what to reply to them in this Psalm, and you can add of your own after the tenor of these words.\u201d63<\/a><\/sup> At the end of Psalm 22 he answers the Christian reading of \u201cMy God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?\u201d point by point, and concludes with an observation from his own world: the psalm speaks of all the kindreds of the nations, \u201cwhile, as you see, the Jews and the Mohammedans do not believe in him.\u201d64<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>\u2019s survey of the polemics shows how much of the argument was textual. Kimhi attacked some Christian interpretations by \u201cdemonstrating Christian \u2018corruption\u2019 of the text,\u201d among them Psalm 22:17 and Psalm 110:1, others by showing that a verse could not apply, and still others by their irrationality.65<\/a><\/sup> Much of this material came from his father\u2019s Sefer ha-Berit<\/em>.66<\/a><\/sup> Its fate shows its force. The polemical passages were cut by censors from later printings and survive in manuscript, and they were collected and printed separately as Teshuvot la-No\u1e93erim<\/em>, \u201cAnswers to the Christians,\u201d in Altdorf in 1644.67<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talmage saw a personal note in the commentaries as well. Kimhi\u2019s depiction of exile and redemption \u201cin terms of darkness and light,\u201d a theme he developed at length, \u201cwas prompted by his sensitivity to the tribulations of Israel brought about by internal division and external oppression.\u201d68<\/a><\/sup> The image is visible in his reading of Psalm 22, where the \u201chind of the morning\u201d is the congregation of Israel, whose name means brightness, \u201cand now she is in darkness in this exile, as if forgotten and abandoned.\u201d69<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Hundred Books at a Stroke<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kimhi died around 1235, but his books had a second life that he could not have imagined. In 1477, probably in Bologna, a group of Jewish printers finished an edition of the Psalms with his commentary. Ann Brener of the Library of Congress calls it \u201cthe first printed book with any portion of the Hebrew Bible.\u201d70<\/a><\/sup> The printers ended it with a six-line poem that she translates in full: \u201cOn completing the books set in typeface quire by quire, \/ One job and behold! three hundred books to admire: \/ Psalms with Kimhi\u2019s glosses shining like sapphires.\u201d71<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pun was old. The Hebrew for book, sefer<\/em>, and sapphire, sapir<\/em>, had been played on by the poets of Muslim Spain, and the printers carried the image from manuscript to type.72<\/a><\/sup> What was new was the number: three hundred copies at once. The poem\u2019s last lines express the hope that such books \u201cwill enable every generation to learn and acquire,\u201d a hope that Brener reads against the persecution of Spanish Jewry and the burning of Hebrew books in the same decades.73<\/a><\/sup> The first Hebrew Bible text ever printed came wrapped in Kimhi\u2019s commentary, as if the printers could not imagine the Psalms without him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other commentaries followed quickly. The Former Prophets with his commentary appeared at Guadalajara in 1482, the Latter Prophets at Soncino in 1485, and from 1516 all his commentaries except those on Chronicles and the Haftarot appeared, with various omissions, in every rabbinic Bible.74<\/a><\/sup> The Sefer ha-Shorashim<\/em> was printed in Italy before 1480, and the grammar in the sixteenth century, later with notes by Elijah Levita.75<\/a><\/sup> The rabbinic Bible, in its sixteenth-century form and in modern editions such as Miqraot Gedolot HaKeter<\/em><\/a>, set Kimhi beside Rashi<\/a> and Ibn Ezra on the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three<\/picture>
Illustration: a Hebrew press of the 1470s, after the Bologna Psalms of 1477, printed with Kimhi\u2019s commentary in three hundred copies. An imagined scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Teacher of Christian Hebraists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The same clarity that made Kimhi a schoolbook for Jews made him a textbook for Christians. The Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> states that his influence on the Christian Hebraists of the Renaissance \u201cwas profound\u201d: Johann Reuchlin\u2019s Rudimenta linguae Hebraicae<\/em> and his lexicon of 1506, and Santes Pagninus\u2019s Institutiones<\/em> of 1520 and Thesaurus<\/em> of 1529, \u201care basically reworkings of Kimhi,\u201d while Sebastian M\u00fcnster\u2019s writings \u201cbetray his influence heavily.\u201d76<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> agreed that Pagninus\u2019s books were \u201cessentially nothing else but elaborations\u201d of the Mikhlol<\/em>.77<\/a><\/sup> Strack added that a major German grammar of the 1880s, Eduard K\u00f6nig\u2019s, had been compiled \u201cin constant dependence upon Qimchi.\u201d78<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The influence reached the English Bible. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> claimed that the influence of his commentaries \u201cis evident on every page,\u201d citing Israel Abrahams; Talmage, more cautiously, called it \u201cunmistakable.\u201d79<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg, writing in Victorian England, summed him up in a footnote as a man who \u201cmay be regarded as the teacher of Hebrew of both Jews and Christians throughout Europe.\u201d80<\/a><\/sup> The scholar who could not reach Toledo in 1232 was read three centuries later by the translators of Christian Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flour for the Torah<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kimhi was not a Masorete in the strict sense. He did not point a codex or write a Masorah parva in its margins, so far as the sources show. But his work belongs to the history of the Masoretic text in at least three ways. He went to look at the model codices, the Hilleli in Toledo and the Yerushalmi in Saragossa, and recorded where they were.81<\/a><\/sup> He wrote a manual for scribes, because he believed that ignorant copyists and multiplying manuscript traditions endangered the text.82<\/a><\/sup> And he offered a historical account of the qere<\/em> and ketiv<\/em> that put the Masoretic margin into the history of the Bible, provoking a debate that the printed rabbinic Bible would carry across Europe.83<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His grammar and dictionary, meanwhile, made the pointed text readable. A Bible furnished with vowels and accents by the Masoretes needed a guide to its forms and roots, and for three centuries Jews and Christians alike used Kimhi\u2019s. The pun on his name, \u201cWithout flour, no Torah,\u201d was meant as praise of his learning.84<\/a><\/sup> It also describes his place in the transmission of the text: the plain, necessary food of every reader who opened a Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hub page on David Kimhi<\/a> sets him on the map of Provence beside Abraham ibn Ezra<\/a>, whose method he followed, and Rashi, whose memory he defended. Elsewhere in the journal, Christian David Ginsburg<\/a> traces the scholar who translated his argument about the margins, and the nakdanim<\/a> follows the pointers of northern Europe who were his contemporaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n
  1. Richard Gottheil, Caspar Levias, Joseph Jacobs and S. Levy, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), section \u201cDavid \u1e32im\u1e25i,\u201d at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>; \u201cKimhi, David,\u201d Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 10:1001\u20131004, reproduced by the Center for Online Judaic Studies at cojs.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  2. Meyer Kayserling, \u201cAlfakar,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  3. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  4. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cAlfakar\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  5. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cAlfakar\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  6. Frank Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d in Encyclopedia of Religion<\/em>, 2nd ed., ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2005), at encyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  7. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  8. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  9. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  10. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  11. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  12. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d; Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  13. Hermann L. Strack, \u201cKimchi,\u201d in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge<\/em>, vol. 6 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1910), at ccel.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  14. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d; Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  15. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  16. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  17. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d; Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  18. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  19. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  20. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  21. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  22. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  23. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  24. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  25. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  26. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d; Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  27. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  28. Emil G. Hirsch and Isaac Broyd\u00e9, \u201cBible Manuscripts,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), sections \u201cCodex Hilleli\u201d and \u201cCodex Yerushalmi,\u201d at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  29. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cBible Manuscripts\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  30. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cBible Manuscripts\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  31. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cBible Manuscripts\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  32. Sotheby\u2019s, Important Judaica<\/em>, New York, 2018, lot 213, \u201cAn Extremely Rare Medieval Torah Scroll from Spain,\u201d catalogue essay, at sothebys.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  33. Sotheby\u2019s 2018, lot 213. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  34. Jacob ben Chajim ibn Adonijah\u2019s Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible, Hebrew and English<\/em>, ed. and trans. Christian D. Ginsburg (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867), at archive.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  35. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  36. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  37. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  38. David Kimhi, commentary on Psalm 2, trans. R. G. Finch (London, 1919), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  39. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  40. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 42\u201343. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  41. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d; Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 43. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  42. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 43. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  43. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 43. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  44. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  45. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 43. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  46. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 42. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  47. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  48. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  49. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d; Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  50. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  51. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  52. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  53. David Kimhi, commentary on Psalm 1, in R. David Kimhi on the First Book of Psalms<\/em>, trans. R. G. Finch (London, 1919), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  54. Kimhi on Ps 1, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  55. Kimhi on Ps 2, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  56. Kimhi on Ps 2, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  57. Kimhi on Ps 2, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  58. David Kimhi, commentary on Psalm 22, trans. R. G. Finch (London, 1919), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  59. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d; Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  60. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  61. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  62. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  63. Kimhi on Ps 2, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  64. Kimhi on Ps 22, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  65. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  66. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  67. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d; Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>; Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  68. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  69. Kimhi on Ps 22, trans. Finch. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  70. Ann Brener, \u201cWords like Sapphires: 15th-Century Hebrew Books at the Library of Congress,\u201d 4 Corners of the World<\/em>, Library of Congress, 2021, at blogs.loc.gov<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  71. Brener, \u201cWords like Sapphires\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  72. Brener, \u201cWords like Sapphires\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  73. Brener, \u201cWords like Sapphires\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  74. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  75. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d; Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  76. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  77. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  78. Strack, \u201cKimchi\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  79. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d; Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  80. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 43 n. 14. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  81. Talmage, \u201cKim\u1e25i, David,\u201d ER<\/em>; Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cBible Manuscripts\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  82. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cKimhi, David\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  83. Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim\u2019s Introduction<\/em>, 43. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  84. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201c\u1e32im\u1e25i\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In his seventies David Kimhi set out from Narbonne to defend Maimonides and fell ill at Avila. Earlier journeys had taken him to the model codices of Toledo and Saragossa. His grammar, his manual for scribes and his theory of the qere and ketiv shaped how the pointed Bible was read for centuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}