Towards a Theoretical Model of Jewish-Christian Hermeneutics in Fifteenth-Century Biblical Scholarship

Based on developments in the field of medieval biblical studies, this paper will suggest a new model for assessing the distinct features of Iberian biblical scholarship in the 15^th century and its Judeo-Christian leanings. By the end of the 14^th century Christian biblical scholarship was torn between two competing hermeneutical models. The traditional one, going back to the 12^th century, kept a clear hierarchical distinction between two levels of meaning: a literal-historical sense and a spiritual-metaphorical sense. The later model, however, that gained much support during the 14^th century, blurred these basic distinctions by expanding the definition of the literal sense to include the metaphorical and figurative readings that were once considered spiritual. The result was that Christian scholars, who studied the grammar and historical meaning of the biblical text, were inclined to do so under the traditional model that strictly separated the senses. However, I will argue that the founders of the new Iberian biblical scholarship in the 15^th century, namely, Pablo de Santa Maria (c.1352-1435) and Alonso de Madrigal (c.1400-1455), took a new path. They both pursued the grammatical and historical meanings of the bible while provocatively using the second, integrative, hermeneutical model. Thus, they were able to produce all sorts of Judeo-Christian interplays between the historical/particularistic level of the biblical story and its universal promise for salvation through the Church, entrenching Jewish components into Christians reading of the bible.