The Book of Demonstration

Joseph Kimḥi

Mid-12th Century

In my youth, I perused their works, examined their words, and composed this book to demonstrate here the truth, with proofs, for all who understand candidly. And the ignorant among the nation should not say, “Who are you to shout at the king (1 Samuel 26:14) and who made you the one to prove contradictions in the profound insights of our teacher and sage R. Jacob [ben Meir; Rabbenu Tam], under whose wing we live among the nations?”

It is, in fact, truly as they say. I, too, knew that his hand was ascendant and his power and might multiplied, and that all the wise were privy to his mysteries. However, he did not touch on grammar and syntax to uncover their deepest clarity and coherence. And he did not touch on logic because it is of indifferent merit [see b. Bava Meẓi‘a 33a]. And I, who am sixty years old today, engage in the sciences day and night, and one who reviews his subject a hundred times is not the same as one who reviews it a hundred and one times. And also, since one should learn from books as well as from scribes, and thus I came and found and gained understanding in books and from the mouths of scribes, I answered my teachers with pleasing words. Behold, truth is greater than all the ancient sages, which they said in a popular parable: Once there was a sage who would often refute another, older sage. They asked him, “Are you not ashamed to refute someone older than you?” He answered them, “My truth is older than him.” And he said, “A philosopher [Aristotle] refuted Plato, chief of all the philosophers, saying, ‘We love both Plato and the truth, but the truth is dearer to us.’”¹ [ . . . ]

Our rabbis who were living in the various areas of France concentrated most of their efforts on the Talmud and sometimes on the Bible. And they were able to search and understand the hidden [treasures] of understanding. However, they did not [focus on] the use of language, and for that reason they did not master it. Some of the naïve members of our nation even said that the precise investigation of language is not wisdom. And their words resemble those of the ancient proverb that says that one who does not understand a craft derides it. The only books of grammar that reached them were the Maḥberet of Menaḥem [Ibn Sarūq] and the Responsa of Dunash [ben Labraṭ], and they chose to support the position of Menaḥem. [ . . . ] But correct words, ancient words, do not need support, because they stand on their own merit; Dunash and Menaḥem are not guilty if they strayed from the path of truth, because they did not know what it was. [ . . . ]

Be-sarim. Luxury is not for the fool, much less for a servant to rule over princes [be-sarim] (Proverbs 19:10).

Menaḥem wrote under the letter bet in his dictionary that the meaning of this word is in the sense of “bread and meat,” and A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh [besarim] (Proverbs 14:30), and R. Jacob [ben Meir; Rabbenu Tam] supported him.

But how can I support empty vanities and false solutions? For the plural form of bread, wine, and meat is nowhere found in the Bible. When it says two loaves of bread (1 Samuel 10:4) and five loaves of bread (1 Samuel 21:4), we neither find the form “breads” nor “wines.”

Although the sayings of our rabbis do contain the forms “breads” [y. Ḥagigah 3:8:3] and “wines” [t. Avodah Zarah 4:1], the language of the rabbis is different from the language of the Bible.

One must also understand in this way the poet who in his poem said “my spice-wines,” for he made two mistakes: first, he pluralized wine, and second, he joined it in the construct form with “my spiced.” [ . . . ]

Yefeh nof [fair of vista] (Psalms 48:3).

The meaning of this is not that proposed by Dunash, who derived it from ‘anaf [branch], but instead according to Menaḥem—and our rabbi, too, assents to him—and neither one provided an explanation. I said: know that the Creator divided his world into seven parts, which are called in the wisdom of the Arabs the seven aqālīm [climes]. The sages of the nations called them the seven klimas. The sages of the holy tongue called them the seven nofot [lit., vistas].

It is said that the air of every nof is different from the others. If one who was born in one climate enters a different climate, if he is healthy, he will become ill, and if he is ill, his illness will worsen because of the change in the air. However, this is not the case with regard to Israel and Jerusalem. If anyone came there from a different climate, if he was ill, he would become well there, and if he was healthy, his health would increase. That is why it says, “fair of vista [nof], joy of all the earth,” because there was joy there for all people coming from other climates. [ . . . ]

I saw in the work by our master and sage, the bulwark of wisdom and the adornment of enterprise, R. Jacob, that he invented things in order to inform mankind of the valor of verbs. Some of them cannot, however, be conjugated in this way. No man can conjugate them by force, but only by using the knowledge of how words work. At the beginning of his discussion he said, “Now if you examine le-vaker [to visit] and le-tsaḥer.” However, he should have tarried a little with the word le-tsaḥer, so as to show how nouns can be divided into two groups: first, nouns [that are made] from dividing verbs, and second, [nouns that are made] from combining verbs. [ . . . ] However, be wary lest you use them outside of the attested verb conjugations. [ . . . ] You must not allow your hand to construct a noun as your heart sees fit. [ . . . ] And [in general,] our rabbi did not decide to go to the city of nouns, to build combinations and to separate divisions. For instance, in the case of sus [horse] and bayit [house], no man has the authority to innovate and change and to say asus ‘al susi [I will horse on my horse] and abayt le-beyti [I will house to my house]. [ . . . ] For that reason, I marveled [in this case] where our rabbi found a verb from white [tsaḥar] wool (Ezekiel 27:18), when he said “Now if you examine le-vaker and le-tsaḥer.”