Abraham ibn Ezra

One of the most famous commentators was Abraham ibn Ezra (1089 to 1164), a close friend of Judah ha-Levi, who used Arabic grammatical science to reason out the Bible's contextual meaning. Also a poet, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, he is remembered chiefly for his commentary, the first in the Islamic world scripted in Hebrew rather than Arabic. He sought a compromise between those relying on midrash and those trying to understand the Bible by reason alone; some of his suggestions, such as that the second half of Isaiah was written after the exile, anticipate modern biblical scholarship.1

The study of the Bible also saw much innovation in the Middle Ages, and again al-Andalus was a major center. The running commentary on the biblical text arose, many examples still appearing in the traditional Jewish printed Bible called the Mikraot Gedolot ('big Scriptures'). Two modes of interpretation stand out: derash, which seeks to go beyond the explicit sense and draw out latent senses suggested by grammar, diction or spelling; and peshat, the plain sense, which tries to understand the text in its literary and linguistic context.2

Commentators made great advances in understanding the peshat with the grammatical and philological tools they learned from Muslim scholars, who developed those fields through study of the Qur'an. Relying on peshat also helped against rival readings, such as those of Christian theologians, since its principles were shared across religions, unlike the more figurative Jewish midrash or Christological readings.3