“Rabbi Kimchi est deus Rabinorum”:The Use of Radak’s Bible Commentary in Early Protestantism

The development of Christian Hebraism in the 16th century has been the focus of many scholars in recent years. As early as 1870, Ludwig Geiger emphasized in his groundbreaking monograph “The Study of the Hebrew Language in Germany” the outstanding significance of medieval Jewish grammatical works for early modern Protestant Hebraists. Mahalakh Schevile ha-Daʿat and the Sefer Mikhlol, which were composed during the 12th and 13th century by the Provençal Rabbis Moses and David Kimchi, served as the most widespread sources used by Protestant Hebraists. The first part of the Sefer Mikhlol, an introductory to Biblical Hebrew, was highly acclaimed by Sebastian Münster and others, while its second part, the Sefer ha-Shorashim, became the basis of Reuchlin’s and Sanctes Pagninus‘ dictionaries.

In contrast to the ongoing interest of studies in the influence of Hebrew medieval Grammar, the enormous impact of medieval Jewish Bible commentaries on early Protestant exegesis has thus far been ignored. In this paper I will investigate and attempt to uncover the substantial influence of David Kimchi´s commentaries in particular. It was Radak’s interpretations which were held in great esteem, as mirrored by the statements of Martin Luther, calling him deus Rabinorum, and Johannes Calvin, regarding him as the fidelissimus inter Rabbinos. Due to the invention of letterpress printing, Radak’s commentaries on the Former and Latter Prophets, and on the Book of Psalms, were widely disseminated among Christian scholars. As the Protestant reformer Paul Fagius noted, Radak was considered to be the most adequate interpreter of the literal and historical sense of the biblical text. Accordingly, his explanations on the Psalms and the Prophets seemed to be cited more frequently than those of Rashi and ibn Ezra, among others in Martin Bucer’s Sacrorum Psalmorum libri quinque and in the annotations of Sebastian Münster’s Biblia Hebraica.