David Kimchi

David ben Josef Kimchi (also David Qimchi ), also known by the acronym Radak (born 1160 in Narbonne ; died 1235 there ), was a Jewish grammarian and exegete .

He was the son of Rabbi Joseph Kimchi , studied with his brother Moses Kimchi and participated in public affairs in his hometown of Narbonne. Between 1205 and 1218 he was involved in a conviction of various people from Barcelona who dishonored the memory of Rashi . During the Maimonides dispute he made a trip to Toledo in 1232 to win the support of the followers of Yehuda ibn Al-Fakar for Maimonides . He was unable to achieve his goal due to an outbreak of illness, but his defense of Maimonides and his followers and Ibn Al-Fakar's criticism of kimchi have been preserved in the correspondence between the two.

His first work was a philological treatise on the Hebrew language called Michlol ("entirety, wholeness"), divided into a grammatical part, which appeared in Constantinople in 1532, and a lexicon, which around 1470 as Sefer ha-Shoraschim ("Book of Roots ") has been published. His most important contribution to Hebrew grammar is in presenting the material and popularizing the innovations of his father and brother. The Michlol has been criticized as unconventional by many scholars, but has found support, including in the writings of Elijah Levita , and thanks to this work, most of the comparable works of Kimchi's predecessors have been forgotten. Christian Hebraists such as Johannes Reuchlin and Sebastian Münster also relied on the philological work of David Kimchi.

Much of the material from the Michlol appeared summarized in Et Sofer ("pen of the writer "), a manual for copyists of the Bible. Above all, questions like Qere and Ketiv , i.e. H. Differences between the text read and the written text in the Masoretic text of the Torah . Kimchi began his exegetical activity with a commentary on Books 1 and 2 of the Chronicles . Later he also wrote explanations for Genesis , all the prophets and the Book of Psalms .

Kimchi was well read in philosophical and scientific literature and was heavily influenced by the rationalism of Abraham ibn Esra and Maimonides. He often used philosophical allusions as an aid to exegesis as well as to the general dissemination of religious studies. He did not develop his own philosophical theories, but rather leaned on Maimonides in most cases.

literature

• Paul Gerhard Aring :  David Kimchi. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 1483-1484.
• Encyclopedia Judaica . Vol. 10, pp. 1001-1004.

Web links

• S. Talabardon:  Qimchi. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.