The Cluster of Henna: On Exegesis

Judah Hadassi

Eshkol ha-kofer (The Cluster of Henna), Introduction (selections)

1148/9

I have approached this to scrutinize, search, and gather them into Eshkōl ha-kōfer, so that it be for us my witness and a crown, as a sachet of myrrh (Song of Songs 1:13), so that we not be a disgrace or a shame. According to God’s gracious hand upon me, I added more than I found in a book. I am recounting them according to the exactitude of the…

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These passages from The Cluster of Henna address the question of how, methodologically, Jews should interpret scripture. Exegetical principles can be found in rabbinic literature, but medieval Jewish scholars attempted to reflect systematically on scriptural hermeneutics, especially in the context of religious polemic. Scriptural interpretation became one of the touchstones of Rabbanite-Karaite debate. Karaites frequently incorporated at least some of the rabbinic methods found in midrash, to which they added other approaches they deemed reasonable, as Judah Hadassi does here, giving the fifteenth and thirtieth methods (out of eighty) of biblical interpretation. His application of logic to scriptural exegesis reflects developments of earlier generations of Jewish and non-Jewish thinking.

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Related Guide

Early Medieval Bible Translations and Commentaries

8th to 12th Century

Creator Bio

Judah Hadassi

12th Century

Judah ben Elijah Hadassi, known as ha-avel (the mourner, as in a mourner for the destruction of Zion), was a Byzantine Karaite scholar and leader. He lived in Constantinople. Little is known about Hadassi’s life. His most important work was The Cluster of Henna (Eshkol ha-kofer), a treatise dedicated to Karaite law and theology. Eshkol ha-kofer follows a unique arrangement, built on multiple acrostics and rhyme schemes. Hadassi polemicizes at length against Christians and Rabbanites and displays deep knowledge of earlier Karaite literature. This work also contains a list of ten cardinal beliefs. Hadassi was influential among later Byzantine Karaites, and his poetry appears in some Karaite prayer books. Among other works, Hadassi wrote Iggeret ha-teshuvah, a digest of an eleventh-century Judeo-Arabic work on the Karaite laws of consanguinity by Yeshu‘a ben Judah.

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