Philosopher of Scripture

Tanhum b. Joseph ha-Yerushalmi (d. 1291, Fustat, Egypt) was a rigorous linguist and philologist, philosopher and mystic, and a biblical exegete of singular breadth. As well as providing us with an insight into the inner world of a profound and original thinker, his oeuvre sheds light on a Jewish historical and cultural milieu that remains relatively poorly understood: the Islamic East in the post-Maimonidean period. In A Philosopher of Scripture: The Exegesis and Thought of Tanhum ha-Yerushalmi, Raphael Dascalu presents the first detailed intellectual portrait of Tanhum ha-Yerushalmi. Tanhum emerges as a polymath with a clear intellectual program, an eclectic thinker who brought multiple traditions together in his search for the philosophical meaning of Scripture.