JACOB ANATOLI AND MOSES IBN TIBBON: ON THE USE AND MISUSE OF LOGICAL ARGUMENTS IN INTERPRETING SCRIPTURE

In the 13^th century, Jacob Anatoli and Moses Ibn Tibbon translated a significant Aristotelian logical and scientific corpus in the form of Averroes’ Middle Commentaries from Arabic into Hebrew and also wrote a series of independent commentaries on the Bible. Despite their investment in these two realms of thought, Averroes and the Bible, there is surprisingly little overlap between them. The Biblical commentaries are clearly philosophical, but do not mention very much of the Averroes that their authors translated. One reason for this is that the commentaries are somewhat supplemental to the Averroes translations, and are intended to supply areas of thought not covered in those translations. Thus, for example, both discuss poetics in the context of Biblical poetry, such as Song of Songs and Psalm 45. Both accounts are clearly based on the Arabic tradition of reading Aristotle’s Poetics, but neither author made that work or any summary of it available in Hebrew. Instead, they turn to the Bible for poetic syllogisms, and especially poetic meaning, i.e., allegory. Their theories are developed and heavily influenced by Al-Fārābī and Averroes. Yet, by including them in works that are not purely philosophical, both Jacob Anatoli and Moses Ibn Tibbon maintain a separation between science and scientific syllogisms and the Bible, with its poetic, allegorical methods of argumentation.