great severity those who explam these prophecies as re- ferring to the Messiah [see Ibn-Danan] :— r|03 1""'S:. (a silver cu])), or commentary on the miracles and other mysteries foimd in the I'entateuch, Prophets, and 11a- giographa. His principles of interpretation he laid down clearly in his commentary on the Proverbs above mentioned in these words : '■ The sacred Scrijitures must be explained according to their plain antl literal sense ; and a recondite meaning can as little be intro- duced into them as into Aristotle's writings on logic and natural history. Only where the literal meaning is not sufficient, and reason rejects it, a deeper sense must be resorted to. If we once attempt to allegorize a simple and intelligible passage, then we might just as well do it with the whole contents of the Bible." '• The logical division of sentences is the most indispensable and best auxiliary to llie right understanding of the Bible, and the criterion to the proper order of the words are the JIassora and the accents." It is evident from this extract that Ibn-Caspi anticipated the hermeneu- tical rules of modern criticism at a time when the school- men and the depositaries of Christian learning were engaged in hair-splitting and in allegorizing every fact of the Bible. It is greatly to be regretted that most of his exegetical works are left inipubUshed. See Gins- burg, in Kitto, Bibl. Cgclop. ii, 351 sq.; Griitz. Gesch. d. Juden, \ii, 361 sq. ; Kirchheim, Werblumer's Edition of Ibn-Caspi's Commenturij on Maimonides's More Xebo- chim (Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 1848), p. 10 sq. ; Leopold Dukes, in the Literaturb. des Orients, 1848 ; and Schnei- der, in Ersch u. Gruber's -1 llgem. EncijMo]). sec. ii, xxxi, 58 sq.
Ibn-Chajim, Aaron, a Jewish commentator, was born at Fez, Africa, about 1570. But little is known of his personal history. His works are, a Commentary on .Joshua (^'enice, 1608-9), from which a selection was made by Frankfurter (q. v.) in his great Rabbinic Bi- ble : — a commentary on Sifra (tradition of Leviticus), published under the title of The Oblation (f Aaron (V'enice, 1609-11) : — 7"/"' Rules of Aaron, a treatise on R. Ishmael's (q. ^'O thirteen rules for interpreting the O.-T. Scriptures (Yen. 1609, Dres. 1712). — Kitto, Bibl Cyclop, ii, 352.
Ibn-Danan, Saadia bex-]Maimon, a Jewish writer of some distinction, was Rabbi to the congregation at Granada previous to the cession of this country by the Moors to Ferdinand and Isabella, and the expatriation of the Jews. He was born in the first half of the 15th century, and flourished at Granada from 1460 to 1502. He was especially given to the study of the Talmud and history, and as a result of the former we have sev- eral works on the interpretation of the O.-T. Scriptures, and the elucidation of the language of the original. His exegetical works are, a Commentary on Isaiah liii, 13 (]\IS. Michael, 412), in which he takes ground against Ibn-Caspi (q. v.) : — a Hebrew Lexicon (wTitten in Ar- abic). This work, which he is thought to have com- pleted in 1468, also remains only in IMS. form, but an extract from it has been printed by Pinsker in his lA- laite Kadmonioth (\lenna, 1860), p. 74. His historical works are, A. short History of the Jeivs to the Bays of Moses Maimonides ("ilin nX3), which he originally in- tended for his own pupils, of whom he seems to have had a number. See Griitz, Geschichte d. Juden, viii, 345 sq. ; Edelmann, Chemda Genusa, Introd. p. xvii sq., and Text, p. 13 sq. ; Kitto, Bibl. Cyclop, ii, 352. (J. H. W.)
Ibn-Daud. See Chajug.
Ibn-Djanah. See Ibn-Gaxacii.
Ibnei'all (Heb. Yibneyah', n^IS"^, Jehovah will build him up ; Sept. 'lifSvad'), a son of Jeroham, -(vho, with other Benjamites, returned to Jerusalem after the Captivity (1 Chron. ix, 8). B.C. 536.
Ibn-Ezra. See Abex-Ezra.
Ibn-Ganach, Abulwalid Merwax or Jox.ui
IBN-GANACH n
D JAN AH (in Hebrew called Jonah), one of the most distinguished Jewish scholars of the Bliddle Ages, was born at Cordova about 995. WhUe yet a boy he evinced his fondness for Hebrew by \mting verses in that lan- guage, but as he continued in his studies he determined to devote his wliole life to the advancement of the He- brew as a philological study, and even abandoned the practice of medicine, which he had chosen as his pro- fession after his removal to Saragossa in 1015, whither he had been forced by the persecutions which the Jews of Cordova suffered at the hand of Al-Mostain Sulei- man since his occupation of that place in 1013. He soon acquired a proficiency which even in our day has not been excelled, and he deserves greater praise than any other Jewish scholar on account of the impulse he gave both to his contemporaries and to his immediate successors (among them the two Kimchis and Aben- Ezra), who have frequently acknowledged their obUga- tions to him. The thorough manner in which he con- ducted his investigations enabled him to accomplish much more than his illustrious predecessor Chajug (q. v.), and by his criticism of Chajug's works, in which he readily acknowledged all that v.-as meritorious, he fre- quently encountered the ardent followers of that great master, and became entangled in a number of controver- sies, which finally resulted beneficially to Hebrew phi- lology. He died about 1050. His first great Avork in linguistics is his Kitab el-Tanhieh ("book of inquiry"), written in Arabic (the native tongue in his day of that part of Spain), consisting of two great parts, the first, Kitdb el-Luma' ("book of variegated fields"), treating at length of Hebrew grammar, and the second, Kitdb el-Azi'd ("book of roots"), a Hebrew Dictionarj', which was afterwards translated into Hebrew by several Jew- ish scholars, but of which only the translations made by Ibn-Parchon and by Ibn-Tibbon are preserved. The original is at Oxford (MS. Ure, No. 456, 457), and was extensively used by Gesenius in his ThesavTus. Speci- mens of it which Gesenius gave in his Bicf. of the Ileb. Latiff. were translated by Dr. Robinson, and published in the A mo: Bib. Bepositon/, 1833, That part of this work which refers to Hebrew grammar was published by Kirchheim (Frankf. a. TNI. 185G, 8vo). " This gigan- tic work is the most important philological production in Jewish Uterature of the Middle Ages. The mas- tery of the science of the Hebrew language in all its delicate points which Ibn-Ganach therein displays, the lucid manner in which he explains every grammatical difficulty, and the sound exegetical rules which he therein propounds, have few parallels up to the present day. He was not only the creator of the Hebrew syn- tax, but almost brought it to perfection. He was the first who pointed out the ellipses and the transposition of letters, werds, and verses in the Hebrew Bible, and explained in a simple and natural manner more than two hundred obscure passages, Avhich had up to his time greatly perplexed all interpreters, by showing that the sacred writers used abnormal for normal expressions (compare il^pin ISO, ch. xxviii; Aben-Ezra's Com- mentcn-if on Baniel i, 1, and riinu ^SD, ed. Lippmann, p. 72, note). Though his faith in the inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures was absolute, yet he maintained that, being addressed to men, they are subject to the laws of language, and hence urged that the abnormal expressions and forms in the Bible are not to be ascribed to the ignorance of transcribers and punctuators, nor to wilful corruption, but are owing to the fact that the sa- cred writers, being human, paid the tribute of human- ity." But also in metaphysics Ibn-Ganach was no tjTo, and he speaks of Plato and Aristotle like one v,-ho had studied them diligently. He wrote a work on logic, Aristotelian in principle, and strenuously opposed the efforts of his contemporaries, especially Ibn-Gebirol, in their metaphysical investigations on the relation of God to the world, holding that these inquiries onh' en- dangered the belief in the Scriptures. See j\Iunk, No- tice sur A . M. Ibn-Djandh (Paris, 1851) ; Griitz, Gesch.