The Book of Gardens and Parks: On Exegesis

First. We must know that our prophet and master Moses was the one who wrote the Pentateuch, from its beginning in Genesis to its end. It was he who handed down to us all the accounts contained therein regarding the events from God’s creation of the world down to Moses’ own death, inasmuch as it is written: And Moses wrote this Law . . . (Deuteronomy 31:9). [ . . . ]

Second. Scripture as a whole is to be interpreted literally, except where literal interpretation may involve something objectionable or imply a contradiction. [ . . . ]

Third. The Hebrew language is the primordial tongue in which God addressed Adam and other prophets. Some people say that the Aramaic language is the primeval one, and one of the proofs of the falsity of this view and of the truth of the preceding statement is the fact that you will find in Scripture psalms and other passages built upon the order of the letters of the alphabet; e.g., the psalm beginning, Blessed are they that are upright in the way (Psalms 119:1), and other psalms; also the passage beginning, A valiant woman who can find? (Proverbs 31:10), and the Book of Lamentations. When all these passages are turned into another language their alphabetical arrangement is broken. This is a powerful proof of the baselessness of their claim, and a silencer for their insolence. Another proof of our view are the derivations of names which we find in Scripture, the first of which is the passage, And the Lord God formed Adam (Genesis 2:7), where Adam’s name is derived from the earth out of which he was created. Another instance is the verse, she shall be called Woman (Genesis 2:23), a name derived from man’s own name, since she was taken out of him. This is not so in Aramaic, since “man” in Aramaic is gaḇra, whereas “woman” is ‘itṯa [‘attēṯa], which cannot be derived from the former; he who disagrees with our view cannot avoid this fact. [ . . . ]

Fourth. Scripture addresses mankind in a manner accessible to their understanding and about matters familiar to them from their own experience; this is what the Rabbanites mean when they say, “The Law speaks with the tongue of men” [B. Berakhot 31b]. [ . . . ] This is comparable to our own procedure with animals and similar creatures, whose constitution is different from ours, whom we must govern and manage, to whom we must communicate our wishes, who do not know our speech, and whose sounds and utterances are not akin to ours. We therefore resort to signs, hints, and noises which make known our wishes, such as whistling, bleating, and various other sounds produced by movement of the vocal organs. Thus, we call ǧurr to an ass when we want him to start moving, and we call something else when we wish to make him stop. [ . . . ]

Fifth. Scripture does not recount a false statement in an unqualified way, but either designates it as false or else expressly attributes it to its author, and in doing so, brands it as a lie. [ . . . ]

Sixth. Where Scripture quotes the words of persons professing other faiths, who are not of the children of Israel, does it do so in the same language in which the words were spoken, or were they spoken originally in another tongue and turned by Scripture into its own language by way of translation? Some say that whenever Scripture recounts a speech or address made by certain persons, without specifying the original language, it quotes it as it was delivered, in Hebrew; otherwise Scripture specifies that it was spoken in another language. [ . . . ]

Those who oppose this view say that while it is true in some instances it is not so always; rather, Scripture occasionally does narrate in its own tongue something which was told originally in another language without clearly saying so. Thus we see Scripture quoting in its own tongue copious sayings of persons of other nations, yet we perforce know that these persons spoke in their native languages. . . . Such, for example, is the biblical story of Pharaoh saying: Who is the Lord that I should hearken unto his voice? (Exodus 5:2); or King Hiram’s words in his letter to King Solomon: My servants shall bring them down from the Lebanon to the sea . . . (1 Kings 5:23). [ . . . ] An even stronger proof is the conversation between David and Goliath, at which there was no one else present. Is it possible that all these persons, notwithstanding the variety of their descent and tongues, should have spoken all these words in Hebrew? This is impossible; rather each one of them must have spoken in his own tongue, but his speech was recounted in the language of Scripture.

To this the holders of the former opinion reply, What evidence is there to make it impossible, seeing that Hebrew is the primordial language, as explained above? [ . . . ]

There are, however, some passages in Scripture which appear to refute it; e.g., the words of Joseph’s brethren: But we are guilty concerning our brother . . . (Genesis 42:21), followed by: And they did not know that Joseph understood them, for the interpreter was acting between them, meaning that they spoke in the tongue which they understood, i.e., undoubtedly Hebrew, but they did not know that Joseph also understood it, i.e., they did not know that he understood Hebrew, since he and they had been conversing through an interpreter. We learn from this that they spoke to Joseph in Hebrew, while he addressed them in another tongue, i.e., in Egyptian, which he had learned during his long sojourn in Egypt, and that the interpreter translated from one to the other; and yet Scripture recounts the whole conversation in the Hebrew language.