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JOSEPH COHEN AND URIEL SIMON. The Foundation of Reverence and the Secret of the Torah by Abraham ibn Ezra: An Annotated Critical Edition. (Hebrew). Second revised and enlarged version. Mekorot u-Mehkharim 11. RamatGan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2007. Pp. 272.
SHLOMO SELA. The Book of Readonj by Abraham ibn Ezra: A Parallel HebrewEnglióh Critical Edäion of the Two Venions of the Text. Etudes sur le judaïsme médiéval 35. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Pp. viii + 398.
One of the most prolific Jewish writers of the Middle Ages was Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1 164), ' a man who produced works of biblical exegesis, poetry, philosophy (or perhaps theology), astronomy, and astrology. While scholars have long been interested in all his works, his exegetical writings have been surprisingly popular with Jewish readers even beyond the confines of academia, despite a whiff of heterodoxy in some of his commentaries. One reason for their popularity might be that Moses Nahmanides, a widely venerated rabbi of impeccable credentials, devoted so much attention in his own Torah commentary to ibn Ezra's earlier work that it is hard to read and understand Nahmanides' commentary without first reading ibn Ezra's. Or perhaps the popularity of ibn Ezra's commentaries was a result in part of the whim of the printers of the earliest rabbinic Bibles, who included ibn Ezra's commentary on the page of the biblical text, right opposite that of Rashi, the venerated exegete par excellence.
Ibn Ezra's nonexegetical works have never really been read much by educated Jews outside academia. Hardly anyone studies his works of philosophy. Contrast this with the fate of Moses Maimonides, whose works of halakhah and of philosophy (very different from each other) are both generally recognized as part of the canon of the educated Jew.
In the seventeenth century, the great philosopher Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza wrote glowingly about ibn Ezra's writings, but Spinoza, too, was interested exclusively in ibn Kzra's exegetical works, not in his works of philosophy. When Spinoza promoted a new understanding of the Bible as part of his vision of a world where organized religion would play a smaller role and human reason a larger one, he portrayed himself as a follower of ibn Ezra. Spinoza is often perceived as having "outed"...