- sible to ascertain the name of its author or its exact age.
From the French expressions, however, occurring in it, and from its style and appearance, it is evident that this commentary was written by a French Jew in at least the twelfth or thirteenth century. The handwriting is peculiarly bad, and very much effaced; but the valuable remarks it contains, both on the verbal difficulties and poetical figures of this book, would amply repay any Hebrew scholar for publishing it, and would be a boon to Biblical and Hebrew literature.
1350. So numerous and diverse were the interpretations of this Song in the middle of the fourteenth century, that R. Isaac Sehula, having been solicited by his friends to comment upon it, consulted the existing expositions, but finding himself so confused by their conflicting theories, as some explained it literally, others referred it to the union of the body with the soul, others again expounded it according to the Medrash, and others again affirmed, that it represents the union of the active with the passive intellect, he felt it necessary to reject them all, and advanced a new theory, viz., that this book represents the love of the people of Israel to their God.[1]
1360-1730. For a space of about four hundred years, the battle-field was simultaneously occupied by all the parties who strenuously defended those different views. Thus, the commentary Shear Jashub, which was printed together with that of Saadias and Caspe, and Meier Arma, who was born in Saragossa about the year 1475, and whose commentary is
- ↑ From a MS. in the possession of the Bodleian. Oppenheim Collection, No. 261.
