| Title: | The Relationship between the Torah Commentaries Composed by R. Abraham Ibn Ezra in France and the Significance of this Relationship for the Biographical Chronology of the Commentator |
| Author(s): | Itamar Kislev |
| Affiliation: | |
| Year: 2009 | Volume: 60 | Issue: 2 | 282-297 pp. |
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| Keywords: | Biblical literature | Book of Genesis | Book of Exodus | commentary | Middle Ages | Ibn Ezra, Abraham | biography | chronology |
| Abstract: | R. Abraham Ibn Ezra composed in France his ‘second recension’ (תרחא הטיש) to Genesis and his ‘long commentary’ to Exodus, and most scholars believe that these are parts of a single recension. This belief caused a contradiction among details of Ibn Ezra’s biography and led to the accepted solution that Ibn Ezra was born in 4849 AM (1089 CE) and died in 4924 AM (1164 CE). The clarification of the distinctive character and structure of the second recension to Genesis and the long commentary to Exodus has demonstrated that they cannot be considered parts of a single commentary. This enables us to reconstruct chronological / biographical details about Ibn Ezra and to conclude that there is no reason to reject the manuscripts’ evidence that Ibn Ezra died in 4927 AM (1167 CE) when he was 75. Therefore, we can determine the lifespan of Ibn Ezra as 4852–4927 AM (1091/2–1167 CE). |
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