Yiftah's Daughter

T H E J E W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W , Vol. 95, No.
2 (Spring 2005) 228–256
Medieval Monasticism and the Evolution

of Jewish Interpretation to the Story of
Jephthah’s Daughter
J O S H UA B E R M A N
S T U DI E S I N T HE F IE L D of Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle

Ages over the last decade have attended to the ways in which Jewish
culture incorporated motifs, concepts, and symbols from the host culture
of Latin Christendom.1 In the visual arts, paintings of a Jewish child
being brought to his tutor resemble Madonna scenes of the period.2 In
ritual custom the Jewish tradition of teaching the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet to a child by writing them on a piece of cake with honey is seen
to evolve concomitantly with the rise of the prominence of the Eucharist.3
In social thought, Jewish writings of the period exhibit an interest in the
intentionality of marital intercourse that parallels developments within
Christian thought as well.4
My thanks to David Berger, Jeremy Cohen, Adam Ferziger, Edward Green-

stein, and Rimon Kasher, who read the manuscript and offered invaluable
comments, and to Uriel Simon and Miriam Goldstein for their extended consulta-
tions. An earlier version of this paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, 2003.
1. See full-length studies in Israel Jacob Yuval, ‘‘Two Nations in Your Womb’’:
Perceptions of Jews and Christians (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 2000); Ivan G. Marcus, Ritu-
als of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, Conn., 1996).
2. Evelyn M. Cohen, ‘‘The Teacher, the Father, and the Virgin Mary in the
Leipzig Mahzor,’’ Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies Division
D, vol. 2: Art, Folklore, and Music (Jerusalem, 1990), 71–76; see also Marc Michael
Epstein, ‘‘The Elephant and the Law: The Medieval Jewish Minority Adapts a
Christian Motif,’’ Art Bulletin 76 (1993): 465–78.
3. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 18–34; with regard to Passover rituals, see
Yuval, Two Nations, 219–66.
4. Jeremy Cohen, ‘‘Sexuality and Intentionality in Rabbinic Thought of the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,’’ Marriage and the Family in Halakha and Jewish
Thought, ed. M. A. Friedman (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1997), 155–72; Ephraim Kanar-
fogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages (Detroit, 1992), 70–72.
The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2005)

Copyright 䉷 2005 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:15 PS PAGE 228

MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM—BERMAN 229
While the most attention has been devoted to the field of custom, Jew-
ish literary creations of the period have also been seen to incorporate
Christian iconography. Ivan Marcus has noted that the Sefer Zekira, by
Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn, written in the third quarter of the twelfth cen-
tury, depicts a ritual attack upon Rabbi Jacob ben Meir of Ramerupt in
revenge for the Jews’ role in the crucifixion. In the narrative Rabbi
Jacob emerges as a Jewish Christ-figure enduring many of the physical
and verbal abuses suffered by Jesus at the hands of the Jews according
to Gospel sources.5
This study examines the history of interpretation of the story of the
daughter of Jephthah (Jgs 11.29–40) in Karaite, Rabbanite, and Chris-
tian sources. Its primary focus, though, is upon the dynamics through
which medieval rabbinic exegetes drew inspiration from a decidedly
Christian source—the institution of monasticism—and, in a break with
rabbinic exegetical tradition, reread the story of the Jephthah’s daughter
in a highly innovative manner.
With one voice, the midrashic exegetical tradition affirmed that Jeph-
thah’s vow was a commitment to sacrifice the first creature that greeted
him upon his victorious return from battle against the Ammonites (Jgs
11.31), and that even when that creature proved to be his own daughter,
Jephthah carried out his vow (11.39) and offered her as a sacrifice.6 Later
exegetes found it difficult to fathom how Jephthah could commit child
immolation and yet receive no explicit censure.7 Within the commentaries
5. Ivan G. Marcus, ‘‘Jews and Christians Imagining the Other in Medieval

Europe,’’ Prooftexts 15.3 (1995): 209–29; see also Jeremy Cohen, ‘‘The ‘Persecu-
tions of 1096’—From Martyrdom to Martyrology: The Sociocultural Context of
the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles’’ (Hebrew), Zion 59 (1994): 169–208; Marc Mi-
chael Epstein, Dreams of Subversion: Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (University
Park, Pa., 1997).
6. GenR 60.3; LevR 37.4, EcclR 10.15, Tanh.uma, Beh.ukotai 7. See similarly in
Josephus Jewish Antiquities 5.10, and in Philo, M. R. James, trans., The Biblical
Antiquities of Philo (London, 1917), 194.
7. The propensity of medieval exegetes to minimize the grievousness of Jeph-
thah’s actions here ought to be seen within the larger context of how rabbinic
exegetes related to the failings of Israel’s biblical leaders and heroes. A compre-
hensive study of the subject yet awaits us and to attempt one here would be
beyond the scope of the present study. Incisive local comments have been offered
by David Berger. See his ‘‘On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic
and Exegesis,’’ Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Tradi-
tions of Interpretation, ed. C. Thomas and M. Wyschogrod (New York, 1987),
49–62; D. Berger, ‘‘Solomon’s Wisdom in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the
Book of Kings,’’ Hazon Nahum: Studies Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm in Honor of
His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Y. Elman and J. S. Gurock (New York, 1997), 101–9.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:16 PS PAGE 229

230 JQR 95.2 (2005)
of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164)8 and R. David Qimh.i (c.1160–

c.1235), two of the leading rabbinic exegetes of their age, a different in-
terpretation of the vow was offered: were the first creature to greet him
be a person, then that person would indeed be dedicated to God not in
the form of a sacrifice but through a life of devotion to God through
seclusion.9 Uriel Simon has suggested that this interpretation reflects the
influence of medieval monasticism.10 Simon points to the remark of R.
David Qimh.i to Jgs 11.40 that in fulfilling the vow ‘‘she secluded herself
as do the ascetics enclosed in the cells’’ (µyçwrph µyçnah wmk tddwbtm htyh
µytbb µyrwgsh). Similarly, observed Simon, Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437–
1508) wrote concerning her life of solitude, ‘‘This is the basis from which
the Kingdom of Edom (i.e., the Church) derived the practice to establish
houses of seclusion for women, that they should enter and not leave at all
for their entire lives, nor see another person for the rest of their lives.’’
Simon notes that Gersonides (1288–1344) rounds out the list of medieval
rabbinic exegetes who were exposed to Latin Christendom and adopted
this non-sacrificial interpretation of the vow.
The observation of Simon and others that these readings reflect the
influence of monasticism in Latin Christendom is worthy of further elabo-
ration and revision. A more extensive understanding of monastic prac-
tices reveals these exegetes to be highly sensitive to the economic,
familial, social, institutional, and ceremonial contexts in which women
engaged the monastic life, and shows as well the imaginative, if anachro-
nistic, way the medieval exegetes read these insights into the story of
Jephthah’s daughter. Simon has correctly grouped these exegetes to-
gether as providing an alternative to the earlier, regnant, sacrificialist in-
terpretation. Yet when monastic practices across the Middle Ages are
surveyed, significant differences between these exegetes begin to appear
8. While we do not possess a commentary to Judges by Ibn Ezra, his position

is stated elsewhere in his writings. See his commentary to Dt 29.20, and in his
Sefer Ha-’Ibur (Lyck, 1874), p. 9a. Nahmanides offers the fullest presentation of
Ibn Ezra’s position on this story in his own commentary on Lev 27.29.
9. The relative merits of these two interpretations are not the focus of this
study but are discussed at length in David Marcus, Jephthah and His Vow (Lub-
bock, Tex., 1986), 13–27. The shorthand terms ‘‘sacrificialist’’ and ‘‘non-sacrifi-
cial’’ approaches to the story, employed throughout this study, originate with
Marcus.
10. Uriel Simon, ‘‘Peshat Exegesis of Biblical Historiography: Historicism,
Dogmatism, and Medievalism’’ (Hebrew), Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic
Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed. M. Cogan, B. L. Eichler, and J. H. Tigay
(Winona Lake, Ind., 1997), 197*–98*.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:17 PS PAGE 230

in bold relief: What were the obligations incumbent upon Jephthah’s

daughter as a result of the vow? What explanations are offered of the
need for her to observe celibacy? Who chose the site of her seclusion,
and who built her home there? What contact with the outside world was
permitted to her? Moreover, these rabbinic readings are further illumi-
nated when we examine the evolution of patristic and Christian scholastic
scholarship to this story and examine possible avenues of influence be-
tween rabbinic and Christian exegesis.
Most significant, however, is the need for a revision in our understand-
ing of the provenance of the non-sacrificial approach to the story of Jeph-
thah’s daughter. Both Simon and David Marcus, in the most thorough
study of Jephthah’s vow within the field of biblical studies, attribute the
non-sacrificial approach to R. Joseph Qimh.i (c.1105–c.1170, as quoted
by his son, R. David Qimh.i) and to Ibn Ezra.11 Yet Moses Zucker, in his
1959 study of R. Saadiah Gaon’s biblical exegesis, noted that the ap-
proach is already found in the writings of the early tenth-century Karaite
thinker, Yaqūb al-Qirqisānı̄, who lived and worked in northern Iraq.12
The attribution of the non-sacrificial approach to the story of Jephthah’s
daughter, then, cannot be ascribed solely to the influence of Latin monas-
ticism. In this study we will explore the ways in which exposure, influ-
ence, and creative imagination could cross polemical lines, between sects
as well as between faiths. The evolution of exegesis of the story of Jeph-
thah’s daughter from its Karaite beginnings, through the late Middle
Ages and across the medieval world, bears out Sarah Stroumsa’s conten-
tion that in the triangular marketplace where Muslims, Christians, and
Jews set up their doctrinal booths, arguments served as currency, quickly
changing hands.13 We will see that as the non-sacrificial approach to the
story changed hands, it became a currency that was continually reformed
and refashioned; each exegete created an altered vision of the terms of
Jephthah’s daughter’s fate—each in accordance with his own exegetical
needs and the socio-religious milieu in which he wrote.
11. Simon, ‘‘Peshat Exegesis,’’ *198; D. Marcus, Jephthah, 8.

12. Moses Zucker, Rav Saadya Gaon’s Translation of the Torah: Exegesis, Halakha,
and Polemics in R. Saadya’s Translation of the Pentateuch (Hebrew; New York, 1959),
108.
13. Sarah Stroumsa, ‘‘Jewish Polemics against Islam and Christianity in the
Light of Judaeo-Arabic Texts,’’ Judaeo-Arabic Studies: Proceedings of the Founding
Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Amsterdam,
1997), 241.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:18 PS PAGE 231

232 JQR 95.2 (2005)
TH E K ARA IT E O R IGI N S O F TH E AP PR OAC H

The earliest record of the non-sacrificial approach is found in the Code
of Karaite Law of Yaqūb al-Qirqisānı̄.14 He comes to a discussion of the
Jephthah narrative via a discourse on the laws of consecrating items to
God. For Qirqisānı̄, Jephthah’s vow was an enactment of scriptural law
(Lev 27.28): But all that a man owns, be it man or beast or land of his holding,
nothing that he has proscribed for the Lord may be sold or redeemed; every pro-
scribed thing is totally consecrated to the Lord. A man’s daughter could be
considered his property, reasoned Qirqisānı̄, and through his vow Jeph-
thah had consecrated his daughter for God. No benefit or enjoyment may
be derived from an item consecrated; a jug that is consecrated may no
longer be used for secular purposes. A consecrated sheep may not be
slaughtered and eaten outside of a sacral context. And so it was with
Jephthah’s daughter; no enjoyment—meaning, sexual pleasure—could
be derived from her. Qirqisānı̄ writes that her declaration that ‘‘I will
bewail my maidenhood’’ (Jgs 11.37) was a statement that ‘‘I have been
prevented from marriage or from knowing a man, since I have become a
holy thing and a thing sanctified unto God.’’15
In his study, Simon had maintained that the non-sacrificial interpreta-
tion of the story had its Jewish beginnings in the work of Ibn Ezra.
Qirqisānı̄’s interpretation predates that period, within Karaite writings.
Yet Simon had also conjectured that the impetus for this interpretation
reflected the influence of Christian monasticism. Is there evidence that
the earliest champions of the non-sacrificial interpretation, the Karaites,
had themselves come to this interpretation out of a familiarity with Chris-
tian monastic practice?
Qirqisānı̄’s casting of Jephthah’s daughter as celibate in a sacerdotal
sense may reflect familiarity with eremitical Christian norms. Cenobitic
houses were known to exist at this time as far east as the Fertile Cres-
cent.16 In his own works Qirqisānı̄ makes mention of contact with a
Christian ‘‘bishop’’ or deacon.17 He wrote an account of Jesus and the
14. Leon Nemoy, ed., Kitāb al-Anwār wal-Marāqib: Code of Karaite Law by Yaqūb
al-Qirqisānı̄, 4 vols. (Arabic; New York, 1939–45). On Qirqisānı̄ generally, see
Leon Nemoy, Karaite Anthology (New Haven, Conn., 1952), 42–44. On Qirqisānı̄
as biblical exegete, see Daniel Frank, ‘‘Karaite Exegesis,’’ Hebrew Bible / Old Testa-
ment: The History of Its Intepretation: Vol. I: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages, ed.
Magne Sæbø (Göttingen, 2000), 116–19. My thanks to Miriam Goldstein for her
generous assistance with the Karaite texts cited in this study.
15. Qirqisānı̄, Kitāb al-Anwār, 6.39.10 (Nemoy, Code, 3.672).
16. See Andrew Palmer, Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier (Cambridge,
1990).
17. Nemoy, Karaite Anthology, 43.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:18 PS PAGE 232

doctrines of Christianity in which he displays a familiarity with the New

Testament, Constantine, and contemporary Christian thinkers.18 Bruno
Chiesa has detected Christian influence in Qirqisānı̄’s commentary to
Genesis 1.19
In addition to the practice of celibacy, we may also note the presence
of another Christian motif within Qirqisānı̄’s interpretation of the story
of the daughter of Jephthah. Scripture states that it ‘‘became a custom in
Israel for the maidens of Israel to go every year, for four days in the year
and chant dirges for the daughter of Jephthah’’ (Jgs 11.39–40). Qirqi-
sānı̄ writes that ‘‘the daughters of Israel would go out to the place where she
was.’’20 Qirqisānı̄ seems to underscore more emphatically than the text
itself that Jephthah’s daughter lived an eremitical life, as a condition of
the vow. Byzantine monasticism at this time expressed itself in many
ways, ranging from cenobitic houses to a variety of semi-solitary arrange-
ments.21 Taken in total, we may say with certainty that Qirqisānı̄ was
familiar with Christian practice and may have had broad familiarity with
the idea of Christian monastics who in one form or another sought eremia
(solitude). This does not give us license, however, to conclude that the
non-sacrificial interpretation was born of this awareness. As we will see,
later exegetes were far more explicit in the debt they owed to the monas-
tic practices they saw around them, a phenomenon not found in Karaite
exegesis of this passage. It seems more plausible to assert that the Kara-
ites, like other later exegetes, couldn’t fathom the notion that Jephthah
had actually sacrificed his daughter. Their legal rendering of Lev 27.29,
which allowed a man to consecrate his daughter, opened before them
exegetical opportunities through which to understand the Jephthah story
in a less offensive fashion.
18. Qirqisānı̄, Kitāb al-Anwār, 1.8, translated in Bruno Chiesa and Wilfred
Lockwood, Yaqūb al-Qirqisānı̄ on Jewish Sects and Christianity (Frankfurt am Main,
1984), 135–39. See also Leon Nemoy, ‘‘The Attitude of the Early Karaites
towards Christianity,’’ Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his
Eightieth Birthday, ed. Saul Lieberman, 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1974) 2:697–714.
19. Bruno Chiesa, Creazione e caduta dell’uomo nell’esegesi giudeo-araba medievale
(Brescia, 1989), 61–65; 95–97; 198–99. For an overview of contact between Jews
and Christians under Islamic rule in the tenth and eleventh centuries, see Sarah
Stroumsa, ‘‘The Impact of Syriac Tradition on Early Judeo-Arabic Bible Exege-
sis,’’ ARAM 3 (1991): 93–95.
20. Qirqisānı̄, Kitāb al-Anwār, 6.39.10 (Nemoy, Code, 3:672).
21. Maria Roumnalou, ‘‘Hermits: Eastern Christian,’’ Encyclopedia of Monasti-
cism (Chicago, 2000), 1:582. By the tenth century, Sufi writers were openly ac-
knowledging their indebtedness to Christian hermits in the evolution of the Sufi
practice of khalwa, secluding oneself for God. See H. Landolt, ‘‘Khalwa,’’ Encyclo-
pedia of Islam (Leiden, 2002), 4:990.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:20 PS PAGE 233

234 JQR 95.2 (2005)
It would appear that by the tenth century, interpretation of the story

had emerged as a bone of contention between Karaites and Rabbanites,
and this from sources on each side of the debate. Qirqisānı̄ writes that
there are ‘‘some who have refused to respond to what we have said re-
garding the daughter of Jephthah, and opposed us on it, and claimed that
her father sacrificed her.’’22 Qirqisānı̄ may be referring to a rival group of
Karaites, as Karaism as a movement had not yet coalesced into a unified
sect, but it seems more likely that he refers here to the Rabbanite tradi-
tion, which, as we noted earlier, had spoken with one voice in favor of
the sacrificial interpretation of Jephthah’s vow.
The debate is echoed in Rabbanite sources as well. Some years ago
Moses Zucker published a Geniza fragment that records a list of ten
questions in the area of biblical exegesis that were posed to a learned
disciple of R. Saadiah Gaon for clarification.23 Zucker notes that the
questions all revolve around issues that preoccupied heretics of the gener-
ation and arguments that R. Saadiah Gaon strove mightily in his writings
to refute.24 The ninth question reads as follows:
What precisely did Jephthah do to his daughter in fulfillment of his

vow? Did he offer her as a sacrifice or did he give her (to the Lord)?
If he offered her as a sacrifice—how may this be, to engage in human
sacrifice?! And if he gave her (to the Lord, that is), then he effectively
prevented her from ever marrying. And yet we see that Hanna conse-
crated Samuel to the Lord . . . and nonetheless, he married and fa-
thered children . . . and where did [the daughters of Israel] go to chant
dirges for her, was this in her lifetime, or after her death?
The pressing nature of the question is made even more evident when we
note its place in the order of the ten questions posed. The questions are
ordered according to the biblical sequence of the passages they concern.
The first eight concern passages from the Pentateuch. The tenth and final
question addresses the nature of prophecy broadly. The account of Jeph-
thah’s daughter, raised in the ninth question, emerges as the sole scrip-
tural passage outside of the Pentateuch to have made the list. The
question raised may reflect the gaonic predilection to exonerate biblical
heroes, even at the expense of the simple meaning of the passage.25 Yet

23. Zucker, Rav Saadya Gaon, 92–115.
24. Zucker, Rav Saadya Gaon, 93.
25. See the discussion in Robert Brody, ‘‘The Geonim of Babylonia as Biblical
Exegetes,’’ Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, 1:84.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:20 PS PAGE 234

the fact that the story of Jephthah’s daughter is the only scriptural pas-
sage raised from the entire corpus of biblical literature outside of the
Pentateuch suggests that the passage had been the subject of vigorous
debate, in all likelihood because of the Karaite provenance of the non-
sacrificial approach.26
CR O S S IN G TH E S ECTA RIA N D IV ID E: ABR AH AM I BN EZR A’S
AD A PTAT IO N O F T H E K AR AI TE AP PR OAC H
The Geniza fragment published by Zucker, however, contains the an-
swers given to the first seven questions only, and thus we do not know
whether the Karaite interpretation was countenanced by the opinion of
this learned disciple of R. Saadiah Gaon.27 The earliest Rabbanite com-
mentary in our possession to adopt the non-sacrificial approach is that of
Abraham Ibn Ezra. Lacking any prior Rabbanite commentary that en-
dorses this position, we will proceed to analyze Ibn Ezra’s comments on
this story on the assumption that he was inspired in this regard by his
Karaite sources. Ibn Ezra cited Karaite sources more widely and more
explicitly than any other medieval Rabbanite exegete.28 Yet, to date, no
26. Note, in this context, the commentary of the late eleventh-century Spanish
exegete Judah Ibn Balaam on Jgs 11.37: ‘‘have no doubt that Jephthah killed
his daughter; anyone who maintains otherwise is simply arguing counter to the
explicit meaning of the verses. Such a claim is tantamount to overturning that
which is abundantly clear, and it is unthinkable to conceive of such an interpreta-
tion of Scripture.’’ The translation is my own, based on the Hebrew translation
from the Judeo-Arabic of Moshe Goshen-Gottstein found in Joseph Gad, Sefer
Asoro Maorot Hagdolim (Johannesberg, 1952), 42. Ibn Balaam was a vociferous
opponent of the Karaites and the vituperative tone of his comment here may well
reflect his feelings concerning the Karaite origins of the non-sacrificial interpreta-
tion.
27. It is curious to note, however, a feature that emerges in the rhetoric of the
fragment. Three of the seven questions posed for which we have answers are
asked in the form of, ‘‘Is the proper understanding of this passage A or B?’’ In
all three answers the position adopted is the B position. In the ninth question,
concerning Jephthah’s daughter, in which the question likewise takes this form,
the B position is the non-sacrificial approach. No conclusions may be drawn,
however, without better knowledge of the rhetorical conventions of the period
than we have at this time.
28. For a complete listing of Karaite writers attributed by Ibn Ezra in his
Pentateuch commentary, see Asher Weiser, Perushe ha-Torah le-Rabbenu Avraham
Ibn Ezra (Jerusalem, 1976), 59–71. On disputes concerning legal exegesis be-
tween Ibn Ezra and the Karaites, see P. R. Weis, ‘‘Ibn Ezra, the Karaites and the
Halakah’’ (Hebrew), Melilah 1 (1944): 35–53; Melilah 2 (1945): 121–34, Melilah
3–4 (1946): 188–203. On the attitude of Andalusian Rabbanites to Karaism at
this time, see D. J. Lasker, ‘‘Karaism in Twelfth-Century Spain,’’ Journal of Jewish
Thought and Philosophy 1 (1992): 179–95.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:22 PS PAGE 235

236 JQR 95.2 (2005)
comprehensive study has been executed that examines the guidelines em-
ployed by Ibn Ezra in his consultation with Karaite materials. This is due,
in large part, to the fact that it is clear that Ibn Ezra borrowed from
Karaite sources more often than the several dozen instances in which he
offers them attribution. The poles of his position, indeed, are clear. On
the contentious terrain of halakhic matters he eschews them scornfully.
On the more neutral plateau of philology he cites them often. The issue
of how Ibn Ezra utilized Karaite interpretations of non-legal passages is
less well understood. The passage at hand may well bring us to the limits
of Ibn Ezra’s flexibility in drawing from Karaite sources. The non-sacri-
ficial approach ran counter to every rabbinic statement on the story found
in talmudic and midrashic literature. But more significant, however, as
we will see, is that the Karaite approach to the story rested fully upon a
legal interpretation that ran counter to rabbinic law. In adapting the
Karaite position to the story, Ibn Ezra had to strip the argument of its
legal chaff and reformulate it in a manner that would not run counter to
rabbinic law.
Nowhere does Ibn Ezra cite Qirqisānı̄ by name and it is assumed that
he did not have access to his writings. By contrast, the most oft-cited
Karaite in his works is Japhet ben Eli, the first Jew to write a commen-
tary on the entire Bible, who lived in Jerusalem in the latter part of the
tenth century. Our analysis will proceed on the assumption, therefore,
that it was in the biblical commentary of Japhet ben Eli that Ibn Ezra
found the inspiration for his non-sacrificial approach to the story of Jeph-
thah’s daughter. In large measure, Japhet’s approach to the story mirrors
Qirqisānı̄’s. Jephthah’s vow was predicated upon the law of consecration
found in Lev 27.28. Like Qirqisānı̄, Japhet avers that being a consecrated
object, she could be enjoyed by no man, and hence would remain celi-
bate.29
The Karaite application of the law of consecration found in Lev 27.28
to Jephthah’s vow was one that Ibn Ezra would not have been able to
countenance. The Talmud explicitly rules that that verse does not allow
an individual to consecrate children of any age.30 Both Qirqisānı̄ and Ja-
phet in their respective writings toil at length to demonstrate the manner
in which Jephthah’s vow represented an enactment of this law of conse-
29. Unlike his Karaite predecessor, however, Japhet does not write that
Jephthah’s daughter lived in some form of eremitic life. Rather, he states that,
like all consecrated items, she was given over to a priest.
30. mArak 8.6; bArak 28a.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:22 PS PAGE 236

cration.31 In adapting their approach to the story, Ibn Ezra needed to

reject most of what they had written on the subject.
Reforming and reformulating what he had found in his Karaite
sources, Ibn Ezra made several innovations to the non-sacrificial ap-
proach to the story of Jephthah’s daughter:
The explanation of, and I will offer it as a burnt offering (Jgs 11.31) is ‘‘or
I will offer it as a burnt offering,’’ meaning that if the first creature that
emerges from the doors of my house be a man or a woman, then and it
will be to God, holy, set apart from the ways of the world to stand and
serve in the name of the Lord in prayer and in thanksgiving. Alternatively, if
that entity is appropriate for sacrifice, then I shall offer it as a burnt
offering. He made a house for his daughter outside of the city where
she secluded herself, and he provided her with sustenance all of the
rest of her days and no man knew her and his daughter remained per-
manently shut away.32
Our analysis begins with the first half of the passage in which two verses
referring to the Levites have been marshaled to depict the obligations
engendered by the vow. If a man or woman emerges, then, says Jeph-
thah, ‘‘and it will be to God.’’ Within the Torah the notion that a person or
a group of people will ‘‘be to God’’ is found only in reference to the
dedication of the Levites: ‘‘You shall set apart the Levites from among
the Israelites and the Levites shall be to me’’ (Nm 8.14). The second phrase
is likewise taken from a passage that refers to the Levites: ‘‘At that time
the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi . . . to stand before God and to serve him
and to bless in his name . . . that is why the Levites have received no heredi-
tary share along with their kinsmen’’ (Dt 10.8–9). Like the Levites, Jeph-
thah’s daughter has been segregated from the rest of society for the sake
of serving God. Eschewing the legal argument from the law of conse-
crated objects in Lev 27.28, Ibn Ezra instead implies that Jephthah
31. Japhet’s position on the story of Jepthah’s vow is found in his commen-
tary on Lev 27.28 (MS Russian National Library Yevr-Arab I.565 37b), and in
his commentary on Judges 11 (MS Saint Petersberg Branch of the Institute of
Oriental Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences A146, 58a–63b). My thanks to
the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the Hebrew University and
National Library, Jerusalem.
32. As presented by Nahmanides in his own commentary on Lev 27.29. See
further discussion in the following note.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:23 PS PAGE 237

238 JQR 95.2 (2005)
wished to make her into a pseudo-Levite, and hence marshals verses that
cast her as such.33
Yet no less significant here are the very terms of the vow; the nature
of the experience that she would endure in its fulfillment; and here Ibn
Ezra departs significantly from his predecessors. Recall that for the Kara-
ites the celibacy she was to endure emanated from her status as a conse-
crated object: ‘‘I have been prevented from marriage or from knowing a
man, since I have become a holy thing and a thing sanctified unto God,’’
in Qirqisānı̄’s words.34 Within Ibn Ezra’s casting of her experience, how-
ever, several new motifs emerge: in addition to remaining celibate, she is
to be set apart away from the ways of the world; her days are to be filled
with prayer and in thanksgiving of the Lord; her father, we now learn,
would build a house for her, where she was to live in permanent seclu-
sion, and where he would continue to provide for her. These motifs, I
suggest, are hardly mandated by a close reading of the text of Judges 11
and instead reflect an imaginative interpolation of a world to which Ibn
Ezra had had wide exposure: the world of Latin monasticism.
W O MEN ’S MO N AS T ICI S M IN T H E T W EL FT H AN D
TH I RT EEN TH CEN TU RI ES
In the year 1140, at the age of fifty-one, Ibn Ezra left his native Spain
and spent the rest of his life traveling among the countries of Latin Chris-
tendom, most notably Italy, France, and England. It was during this
33. Notice also that Ibn Ezra’s recasting of Jephthah’s daughter here also
borrows heavily from 2 Sam 20.3. A reading of the Ibn Ezra’s understanding
imbedded within the commentary of Nahmanides (Lev 27.29) leaves one with a
degree of uncertainty as to whether Nahmanides is faithfully quoting Ibn Ezra
or only paraphrasing him generally. Based upon the language used by Nahman-
ides to introduce Ibn Ezra’s position and the language he uses when turning to
his own opinion, strenuously against Ibn Ezra, Simon is of the opinion that the
lines quoted in the name of the Ibn Eza are not a paraphrase (personal communi-
cation). While there is no evidence that Nahmanides had Ibn Ezra’s commentary
to Judges (if one existed), Simon (‘‘Peshat Exegesis,’’ 198*) maintains that Nah-
manides may have had fragments of such a work or of another lost work that
contained this comment or may have received an indirect transmission of Ibn
Ezra’s comment on this passage. I would add to this the observation that the
description of Jephthah’s daughter in the passage attributed to Ibn Ezra includes
the phrase ‘‘and no man knew her,’’ taken verbatim from the depiction of Rebecca
in Gn 24.16. Japhet, in his commentary to Jgs 11.39 (MS Saint Petersberg A146,
63a), had also quoted this verse, which may signify that Ibn Ezra followed suit,
and that the attribution by Nahmanides to Ibn Ezra is faithful to the original.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:23 PS PAGE 238

period of his life that most of his works were written, including his com-
mentaries on the Bible.
Monastic life dates to the third century in Egypt and there is a consen-
sus that claustration had always been observed by nuns since the time of
Saint Jerome.35 The heyday of women’s monasticism in Europe, how-
ever, began around the millennium. In his study of women’s monasteries
in France and England, Bruce Venarde claims that the number of monas-
teries increased tenfold from the millennium through the year 1300.36 Be-
tween the years 1080 and 1170 alone the number quadrupled from one
hundred to over four hundred.37 By 1220 there were 525 and by the end
of the thirteenth century, 650.38 Vernarde asserts that, ‘‘by the end of the
thirteenth century nearly all the inhabitants of this great region were no
more than a day’s journey from a female monastic community and most
were closer than that.’’39 In all of France and England the rate of new
foundations was the greatest in the thirteenth century in the southern
French provinces of Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony.40 These data
suggest that the most intense period of women’s monastic growth—1080–
1170 by Venarde’s account—coincides with the lifetimes of Ibn Ezra and
R. Joseph Qimh.i, the first Rabbanite exegetes to adopt the non-sacrificial
approach to the story at hand.41
Yet beyond a quantitative measure of the phenomenon of women’s mo-
nasticism we ought also attend to its social milieu. What emerges from
the scholarship of women’s monasticism is that eligibility for the convent
was not simply the lot of the pious but of the well-to-do pious. The lofty
ideals of the monastic life were perforce proscribed by very earthly con-
35. Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession (Chicago, 1991), 3; Eliz-

abeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators
(Washington, D.C., 1997), 9.
36. Bruce L. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in
France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), 15.
37. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, 11.
39. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, 16. In a similar vein Johnson (Equal in Mo-
nastic, 158) writes that ‘‘all medieval people must have been aware of the presence
of houses of religious women and men scattered around the countryside and it
would have been almost impossible not to have had feelings about these ubiqui-
tous monastics.’’
41. Simon (‘‘Peshat Exegesis,’’ *198) maintains that the approach was trans-
mitted to R. Joseph Qimh.i by Ibn Ezra.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:23 PS PAGE 239

240 JQR 95.2 (2005)
siderations. A nunnery was only as strong as its financial support.42 Most

nuns were drawn from the aristocracy and when openings became avail-
able they were usually filled by relatives of the founders of the house or
of major donors.43
The question of how a woman became a nun and under what circum-
stances is no less important. Concerning warrior aristocracies such as
these,44 the notion that an individual, and a woman, chose a monastic pro-
fession is probably anachronistic.45 Individuals and particularly women
were viewed as being subsumed within the family as a whole. The most
common convention through which a woman entered a convent was
through oblation by the senior male member of her family. Verbs such as
‘‘bestowing,’’ ‘‘elevating,’’ ‘‘offering,’’ and ‘‘dedicating’’ are typical of the
formal vow of oblation.46 The language of a typical charter states that one
Alan, count of Brittany, founded a wealthy nunnery in Rennes, for his
sister Adele, its first abbess. The charter reads: ‘‘I offered to God my
sister, the most precious treasure I possess under the sun and moreover I
dedicated her according to her spiritual desire to perpetual virginity.’’47
While oblation was the prerogative of the senior male in the family, a
woman’s lack of autonomy did not necessarily imply that the decision was
against her will. Indeed, it was considered an honor to be admitted.48
And while women oblates could be wives, sisters, and widows, the most
common scenario was that in which one or both parents consecrated a
daughter to a life of monastic purity.49 This was true, it should be noted,
no matter the girl’s age. Even upon attaining majority at the age of twelve,
the age of consent, young women were still considered under the guard-
ianship of their senior male relative.50
42. See the opening chapter of Johnson’s work on the role of the secular
community (Equal in Monastic, 2–61) in garnering pledges and financial support
for the convent. See also Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, chap. 4, ‘‘Social and
Economic Contexts in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,’’ 89–132.
43. Mary Skinner, ‘‘Benedictine Life for Women in Central France: 850–1100:
A Feminist Revival,’’ Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women, ed. J. A. Nichols
and L. Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1984), 89, 96; Johnson, Equal in Mo-
nastic, 16. See Johnson, n. 14, for additional secondary sources.
45. Johnson, Equal in Monastic, 27.
46. Skinner, ‘‘Benedictine Life,’’ 97.
47. Cartulaire de Saint-Georges de Rennes, 9.218, no. 1, ca. 1028–30, trans-
lated and quoted in Johnson, Equal in Monastic, 26.
48. Skinner, ‘‘Benedictine Life,’’ 97.
49. Skinner, ‘‘Benedictine Life,’’ 97–99; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, 101.
50. Johnson, Equal in Monastic, 15.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:24 PS PAGE 240

Separated by a great chasm of time and location from the ancient Israe-
lite setting of the Jephthah narrative, we may see how a medieval rab-
binic exegete such as Ibn Ezra could, with ease, read many aspects of his
social milieu into the narrative of Judges 11. Here was the leading mem-
ber of the warrior aristocracy51 dedicating his daughter to the service of
God through a formalized vow of oblation. The daughter, while rueful
about the harshness of the decree, assumes her responsible role within
the family structure and accedes to the oblation: ‘‘ ‘Father’, she said, ‘you
have uttered a vow to the Lord; do to me as you have vowed, seeing that
the Lord has vindicated you against your enemies the Ammonites’ ’’ (Jgs
11.36).
Yet to interpret Ibn Ezra’s non-sacrificial approach against the back-
drop of the medieval women’s convents is insufficient. Ibn Ezra (as well
as later medieval exegetes) highlights one aspect of her ordeal that stands
in great opposition to what was the standard fare for women religious
who joined monastic orders. Jephthah’s daughter, Ibn Ezra wrote, was
to live in total seclusion and isolation. While claustration was a preemi-
nent feature of women’s monasticism in the Middle Ages, it was not the
individual nun who was cut off from society but the convent as a commu-
nity in isolation. Within the convent, however, women enjoyed rich bonds
of community that supplanted the loss of structure offered by the tradi-
tional nuclear family.52 To fully understand the cultural matrix out of
which Ibn Ezra’s non-sacrificial approach emerged we must examine the
role and place of a very particular personage on the landscape of women’s
monasticism who lived in total seclusion: the anchoress.
The most comprehensive study of anchorite life in the south of France
in the central Middle Ages has been that of Paulette L’Hermite-
Leclercq.53 Although the anchorite vocation was available to male and
female monastics alike, it was an overwhelmingly female phenomenon.54
The social dynamic of the anchorite life that she describes may best be
51. Jgs 11.1–11 documents that Jephthah had assumed leadership only on
the basis of his military prowess, now buttressed with the victory over the Ammo-
nites.
52. On the history of claustration for women monastics, see Makowski, Canon
Law.
53. Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses dans le sud-ouest de la
France,’’ La Femme dans la vie religieuse du Languedoc (xiiie–xive s), ed. E. Privat
(Paris, 1988), 281–99.
54. Leclerq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 282, 293; Johnson, Equal in Monastic, 148,
n. 137; E. A. Jones, ‘‘Hermits: Western Christian,’’ Encyclopedia of Monasticism,
1:584.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:26 PS PAGE 241

242 JQR 95.2 (2005)
understood in modern terms as similar to that of a person who embarks

upon a hunger strike. A lone individual undertakes the challenge of ex-
treme hardship for a cause. Yet the individual is hardly alone. Although
physically famished, the striker is socially nourished by the knowledge of
wide support encouraging his or her cause. The relationship is reciprocal.
The grassroots supporters of the cause spur the hunger striker to persist
in the ever more difficult undertaking. The heroic efforts of the hunger
striker, in turn, energize and motivate popular support for the sake of the
cause.
While the anchorite life was not a form of social protest, the social
dynamic here was much the same. The recluse lived a life of solitude
devoted to repetitive prayer on behalf of the community.55 In turn the
recluse was supported by the wider community, which provided for an
array of needs. Attendants were appointed who brought food, materials,
and fuel.56 The site of the reclusoir, or, anchorhold, dramatizes the ancho-
rite’s status. It was usually situated alongside the local parish church,
meaning that the recluse was situated at the heart of the city and hence
was, in solitude, a highly visible personality. Yet the anchorhold could
also be located at points of strategic significance for the defense of the
city such as the city gate or under a bridge. The efficacy of the recluse’s
prayers was thought to be beneficial for the city’s defense.57 In the south
of France the recluse was such an esteemed figure that by law both the
Church and the municipality were expected to contribute to the costs of
his or her upkeep, health, and funeral expenses.58 According to Leclercq,
recluses were to be found in the thirteenth century in the southwest of
France in all cities and boroughs, even of modest size. They first appear
in twelfth-century sources and become much more numerous in the thir-
teenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.59 The prominence of recluses
in southwestern France at this time is well illustrated by a statistic from
Montpellier. Of the ninety-four wills written in that city between 1200
and 1350, 54 percent mention a bequest to the local recluses.60
55. Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus and Recluses,’’ 288. See also Ann K. Warren, Anchorites
and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley, Calif., 1985), 3–7.
56. Warren, Anchorites, 15; Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 288.
57. Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 289; Jones, ‘‘Hermits: Western Christian,’’
1:585.
58. Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 291.
59. Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 284; see similarly, with regard to the
spread of the phenomenon in England, Warren, Anchorites, 36–37.
60. Kathryn L. Reyerson, ‘‘Changes in Testamentary Practices at Montpellier
on the Eve of Black Death,’’ Church History 47 (1978): 260.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:27 PS PAGE 242

A ubiquitous theme found in the archival sources pertaining to the

anchorite concerns the very earthly consideration of financing his or her
lofty endeavor. This consideration, already mentioned with regard to mo-
nastic houses generally, was particularly acute with regard to the ancho-
rite. Unlike a nun joining a convent, the anchorite was not entering into
an existing order. Who would pay for the land, materials, and manpower
necessary to construct the anchorhold? How would the recluse be sup-
ported? The demand by would-be anchorites surpassed the capacity of
the Church to fulfill it, in large part because of financial restrictions.61
Thus before a bishop could approve the candidacy of an anchorite, it was
his responsibility to ensure that the means were available to support the
endeavor. This was often possible only through an endowment of sub-
stantial means.62
It is with these pragmatic concerns in mind that we may return to Ibn
Ezra’s description of the fulfillment of the vow. Unlike the Karaites who
spawned the non-sacrificial approach, Ibn Ezra states that ‘‘[Jephthah]
made a house for his daughter outside of the city where she secluded
herself, and he provided her with sustenance all of the rest of her days.’’
The verses of Judges 11 say nothing of these issues; the image of the
fulfillment of the vow seems to reflect the socioreligious milieu in which
Ibn Ezra worked. The difference between the Karaites and Ibn Ezra on
this score is not of details alone, but of paradigm. For the Karaites, Jeph-
thah’s daughter was a consecrated object, essentially undifferentiated
from any other consecrated object that would fall within the law of conse-
crated items found in Lev 27.28. For Ibn Ezra, however, Jephthah’s
daughter emerges as a woman religious engaged in monastic vocation.
J EPH T H AH ’S DAU GH T E R AS A NC H O RIT E : TH E PR O LI FER ATI O N

AN D EX PAN S IO N O F T H E T H E ME IN Q I MH
. I AN D G ERS O N ID ES
The non-sacrificial interpretation was, in turn, adopted by R. David
Qimh.i (Provence, ca.1160–ca.1235), and by Gersonides (Orange, 1288–
1344) in their respective commentaries on Jgs 11.31–40. Many of the
anchorite motifs that we saw in Ibn Ezra are offered by these exegetes as
well. Both speak of her seclusion from society. Like Ibn Ezra, each speaks
of her fulfillment of the vow in terms of a vocation. Qimh.i may not have
had to travel out of his own city to witness women’s monasticism first-
hand: records indicate that a nunnery was already functioning in Nar-

62. Johnson, Equal in Monastic, 149; Warren, Anchorites, 41–52; Edward Cutts,
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages (London, 1902), 123.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:27 PS PAGE 243

244 JQR 95.2 (2005)
bonne in 1246.63 Qimh.i (11.31) describes Jephthah’s daughter as an

‘‘ascetic’’ and, again (11.39), as one who was ‘‘separated from society and
from the ways of the world’’ (µlw[h ykrdmw µdah ynbm hçwrp). Gersonides
likewise describes her monastic vocation. She would be ‘‘exclusively dedi-
cated to the service of the Lord, may He be blessed’’ (11.39).
It would seem that the pragmatic consideration of constructing an an-
chorhold was foremost in the minds of both Qimh.i and Gersonides, as
they both underscore the point that Jephthah would construct a cell for
her, in which to fulfill her vow. For Qimh.i, this emerges in an innovative
reading of the biblical text. The text of Jgs 11.39 states that after the
two-month stay, Jephthah ‘‘fulfilled through her his vow that he had
vowed’’ (rdn rça wrdn ta hl ç[yw). Sacrificialist interpretations of the story
maintain that he killed her, and that the construct va-yaas lah implies that
he did something to her. Yet in biblical Hebrew the root .y.ç.[ followed
by the preposition le- may mean to do something for, or on behalf of some-
one. Hence, Isaac asks Esau: ‘‘make for me (va-aseh-li) victuals in the
manner that I fancy’’ (Gn 27.7). Scripture writes of Ehud that, ‘‘he made
for himself (va-yaas lo) a double-edged sword’’ (Jgs 3.16). Here, then, the
grammatical possibility exists that the phrase in question implies not that
Jephthah performed an action upon his daughter but for, or on behalf of,
his daughter. Qimh.i seizes this possibility and comments on the phrase
‘‘he built for her (va-yaas lah) a cell, and inducted her into it.’’ Only the
second phrase implies what he did to her—he inducted her into the cell.
The first phrase, however, is something that he did for her—he built her
a cell. Within the medieval context, as we saw, the concern for how to
bring the anchorite’s wish to practical fruition was a very real one.
While Ibn Ezra may have been the first to incorporate anchorite motifs
into the story of Jephthah’s daughter, additional contributions are made
in this regard by Qimh.i and Gersonides. The first issue is a highly subtle
one and concerns the question of who would visit her for four days each
year, as indicated by Jgs 11.40. Scripture states as follows (11.37–40):
She further said to her father, ‘‘Let this be done for me: let me be for
two months, and I will go with my companions and lament upon the
hills and there bewail my maidenhood.’’(38) ‘‘Go,’’ he replied. He let
her go for two months, and she and her companions went and bewailed
her maidenhood upon the hills. (39) After two months time, she re-
turned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed. She had never
known a man. So it became a custom in Israel (40) for the maidens of
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:28 PS PAGE 244

Israel to go every year, for four days in the year, and chant dirges for
the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
Japhet ben Eli had commented that the maidens of Israel who would
visit Jephthah’s daughter consisted of her friends and family.64 Presum-
ably, Japhet felt that it was most plausible that those that would visit her
would be those closest to her. The mention of her ‘‘companions’’ in vv.
37–38, no doubt, also contributed to the identity of those who visited her
as her close friends and family.
For both Qimh.i and Gersonides, the four yearly visits were enshrined
in law. Each of them writes that a law was established throughout Israel
that the ‘‘daughters of Israel’’ would go to visit her, implying a significant
entourage of women, even those who had not known her previously. The
interpretation may reflect nothing more than a close reading of the text
of 11.40, which states the ‘‘daughters of Israel’’ went to chant dirges for
Jephthah’s daughter. But we may also conjecture that the socioreligious
climate in which these two exegetes lived and worked informed the man-
ner in which they construed the story. Just as the anchorites of thir-
teenth- and fourteenth-century France were well-esteemed figures in the
broader community, so too was Jephthah’s daughter perceived to be
someone with a calling on behalf of the community. The public status
accorded the anchoress could well be transposed upon the fate and role
played by Jephthah’s daughter within her own ‘‘cell’’ of seclusion.
An additional aspect of the anchorite experience that appears in these
commentaries is that of active enclosure. In her study of anchorite life in
southwestern France, Leclercq found that the anchorite’s entry into the
cell was preceded by an elaborate rite of enclosure which would conclude
with the door to the cell either being waxed, cemented, or otherwise
locked from the outside.65 This practice sheds light on comments made
by both Qimh.i and Gersonides. Qimh.i (on 11.40) describes her condi-
tions: ‘‘she secluded herself as do the ascetics who are enclosed (heb.
µyrwgs) in the cells.’’66 The comment is of great importance because it sug-
64. Japhet, Jgs 11.40 (MS Saint Petersberg A146, 63a).

65. Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 288; enclosure of one form or another was
the norm for anchorites throughout the Middle Ages. See Jones, ‘‘Hermits: West-
ern Christian,’’ 585.
66. The Hebrew here reads, µytbb µyrwgsh µyçwrph µyçnah wmk tddwbtm htyh. I
have translated the words µyçwrph µyçnah in a gender-neutral way, ‘‘ascetics’’.
While µyçna commonly means ‘‘men,’’ it is not uncommon for Qimh.i to use the
term to refer to ‘‘persons’’ generally (see his commentaries to Is 3.10, 13.20, 24.1,
57.14; Jer 51.27; Ez 24.11; Mal 3.16). While we earlier saw that the anchorite
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:28 PS PAGE 245

246 JQR 95.2 (2005)
gests that when Qimh.i obliquely compared Jephthah’s daughter to ‘‘the

enclosed ascetics,’’ their ubiquitous presence guaranteed that his reader-
ship knew to whom and to what he was referring: the anchorites who had
been actively enclosed in their cells, in the manner depicted by Leclercq.67
Whereas Qimh.i merely draws from the anchorite image of enclosure by
way of comparison, Gersonides (11.39) writes that this is precisely what
was done to her: Jephthah, following his daughter’s two-month stay, ‘‘en-
closed her’’ (hrygsh) within a cell. Even within a non-sacrificial interpreta-
tion of Judges 11, one could have understood that Jephthah’s daughter
simply went off to the forest to live a life of isolation. The term ‘‘and he
enclosed her’’ in Gersonides (hrygsh), following Qimh.i’s comparison to
the ‘‘ascetics who are enclosed (segurim) in the cells,’’ is clearly a graft of
the process of enclosure of the anchorite upon the text of Judges 11.
Finally, I would like to draw from the literature concerning anchorite
life to illuminate a comment made by Gersonides concerning the condi-
tions laid down in Jephthah’s vow. Alone among the non-sacrificial
medieval exegetes, Gersonides suggests that the vow contained two stipu-
lations, depending on gender. If the first person to greet him was male,
then he would be dedicated, explains Gersonides, to a life of service in
the Tabernacle, akin to a Levite or a priest. Not so, however, if the person
were a woman: ‘‘if the person were a woman, perforce she would need to
remain celibate. For if she had a husband she would not be able to dedi-
cate herself to the Lord, May He Be Blessed. Rather, she would need to
serve her husband, as is the fate of married women.’’68 The comment is
highly resonant of a composition written for three anchoresses in England
lifestyle was at all times a predominantly female phenomenon, it was not exclu-
sively so. Qimh.i apparently did not see the anchorite vocation as a uniquely fe-
male vocation and hence drew his readers’ attention to the broad phenomenon of
the anchorite life.
67. In his commentary on Gn 35.21, Qimh.i invokes eremitic images to de-
scribe Jacob’s permanent withdrawal ‘‘from women and from involvement with
the world in commitment to the service of the Lord,’’ following the incident be-
tween Reuven and Bilhah. My thanks to Robert Harris for bringing this source
to my attention.
68. The comment is in consonance with Gersonides’ view of women in mar-
riage expressed elsewhere. See his commentary on Gn 2.21. On Gersonides’ view
of women, see Menachem Kellner, ‘‘Philosophical Misogyny in Medieval Jewish
Philosophy—Gersonides v. Maimonides,’’ Joseph Baruch Sermoneta Memorial Vol-
ume, ed. A. Ravitzky (Jerusalem, 1998), 113–28. On the place of women in
medieval Jewish society, see Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish
Women in Europe in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 2001), and with regard to the role
of the woman in marriage, see particularly 23–62.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:28 PS PAGE 246

in 1215 entitled Hali Meidenhad. The purpose of the work is to convince

anchoresses that they made the right choice by depicting the extreme
discomfort and disadvantage of secular marriage. The image it gives of
domestic life is vivid and harsh: ‘‘The wife stands, her child screams, the
cat is at the flitch and the hound at the hide. Her cake is burning on the
stove and her calf is sucking all the milk up; the pot is running into the
fire and the churl is scolding.’’69 It is highly unlikely that Gersonides was
familiar with this work, composed in Old English. Yet both comments
stem from a shared medieval mind-set about the role of women in domes-
tic life and the slim opportunities it afforded for contemplative piety.
Our survey of the evolution of the non-sacrificial approach to the story
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries concludes with an examination
of the commentary on the Book of Judges by Aaron ben Joseph, a late
thirteenth-century Byzantine Karaite scholar.70 In much of his philosoph-
ical writings and biblical exegesis, he was open to Rabbanite learning,
and thus in his biblical commentaries we find extensive familiarity with
the writings of Rashi, Qimh.i, and Nahmanides. In his commentary to the
story of Jephthah’s vow, we can clearly see the influence of Qimh.i.
Qimh.i had opened his commentary to the story by citing his father, the
biblical exegete and grammarian R. Moses Qimh.i. The citation concerns
an innovative, if questionable, grammatical insight into the language of
the vow in Jgs 11.31 that does not appear in the earlier commentaries
on the verse, nor in any other thirteenth-century commentary thereafter.
Aaron ben Joseph opens his commentary on the story with this same
grammatical observation.71 Yet, while he had clearly consulted Qimh.i,
he does not offer the same anchorite picture as does Qimh.i. The only
characteristic that Aaron mentions concerning the enactment of the vow
is that she was to remain celibate. Put differently, Aaron reverts to the
image of Jephthah’s daughter found in previous Karaite literature. Now,
this may be out of allegiance to his Karaite predecessors, even as he felt
comfortable widely citing Rabbanite authorities. Yet we may also suggest
that the vow entailed celibacy alone, not out of fidelity to sectarian exe-
69. Translated in Robertson, ‘‘An Anchorhold,’’ 179. See also Henry C. Lea,
History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (5th ed.; London, 1932), 238;
Julia Bolton Holloway, Joan Bechtold, and Constance S. Wright, eds., Equally
in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages (New York, 1990), 168.
70. On Aaron ben Joseph as an exegete, see Daniel Frank, ‘‘Ibn Ezra and the
Karaite Exegetes Aaron ben Joseph and Aaron ben Elijah,’’ Abraham Ibn Ezra
and His Age: Proceedings of the International Symposium, ed. F. Dı́az Esteban (Ma-
drid, 1990), 99–107; Frank, ‘‘Karaite Exegesis,’’ 127.
71. Aaron ben Joseph, Mivh.ar Yesharim (Gozlow, 1835), Judges 2b.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:29 PS PAGE 247

248 JQR 95.2 (2005)
getical tradition, but indeed for the same reason that those earlier Karaite
exegetes maintained likewise: For Aaron, living in thirteenth-century By-
zantium, as for the Karaite exegetes who preceded him, the anchorite
image was not a living model that inhabited the socioreligious landscape
in which he lived and worked. He thus borrowed grammatical material
from Qimh.i that supported all versions of the non-sacrificial approach to
the story. But all of Qimh.i’s comments about enclosure, seclusion, Jeph-
thah building a house for her, etc., simply failed to speak to the socioreli-
gious reality in which he lived, and thus he reverted to the most basic
monastic motif and the one with the most secure basis in the text, that of
celibacy alone.
TH E REN AI S S AN CE REC AS TI NG O F JE PH TH A H’ S D AU GH TER I N

T HE CO M MEN TA RY O F D O N IS A AC A B ARB ANE L
A further anchorite interjection into the story of Judges 11 is seen in a

detail of Abarbanel’s depiction of the enactment of her solitude. Gerson-
ides had written that Jephthah’s daughter would have visual contact with
no one, man or women, save for the four days a year in which she would
receive visits from the daughters of Israel. The comment would seem to
accord well with the information provided by the text of Jgs 11.40. If the
daughters of Israel ‘‘went out,’’ then this would imply that, otherwise,
Jephthah’s daughter’s regular state of affairs was one of secluded isola-
tion. Conversely, it would stand to reason that visual contact was made
with those who visited her on those four yearly occasions.
Abarbanel, however, avers otherwise: ‘‘It would seem that she would
be prohibited from seeing even these women. Rather, [the daughters of
Israel] would go there, listen to her words, and would lament with her
over the condition of her seclusion.’’ While nothing in the text of Jgs
11.40 mandates this interpretation, it may be that Abarbanel’s comment
reflects common anchorite norms. The Ancrene Riwle, a thirteenth-century
handbook for English anchoresses, which was translated into Latin and
widely disseminated throughout Europe, severely proscribes visual con-
tact with the outside world. The recluse, it dictates, should have windows
for the anchoress to receive communion and to pass the items necessary
for her sustenance. Yet it cautions that other than when necessary, the
windows should be tightly shut. When opened, the window must have an
opaque curtain over it. In this regard it cautions anchoresses,
My dear sisters, be as little fond of your windows as possible. Let them

be small, those of the parlour smallest and narrowest. Have curtains
made . . . But my dear master, someone may say, ‘‘is it then so exces-
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:29 PS PAGE 248

sively evil to peep out?’’ Yes it is, dear sister, because of the evil which
comes of it. It is evil and excessively evil in any anchoress, and espe-
cially in the young.72
In his recent intellectual history of Abarbanel, Eric Lawee has called our
attention to the degree to which Abarbanel’s thought was influenced by
the Renaissance age in Italy in which he lived at the end of his life, and
in which he composed most of his works. Lawee has well documented
this with regard to Abarbanel’s penchant for historical thinking and criti-
cal reading in his exegetical method.73 Yet, as Lawee also states, Abarba-
nel’s exegetical tendencies were no doubt infused and informed by an
even broader range of Italian Renaissance and, especially, humanist
values.74
Abarbanel offers comments concerning preparations undertaken by
Jephthah’s daughter for the enactment of the vow that are distinct within
the corpus of medieval rabbinic commentary on the story and reflect pre-
cisely these types of humanist attitudes. Whereas scholastic traditions had
localized knowledge with the intellect, Italian Renaissance humanism
conceived of ‘‘knowledge’’ as a total experience of feelings that shaped
the will and stimulated the whole person to some active response. Knowl-
edge, thus conceived, was a subjective appropriation. Human perceptions
and responses were favored in the place of intellectual systems of
thought.75 Moreover, the studia humanitatis of the Italian Renaissance re-
vealed a new concern with individual human beings, and it was here that,
in Jakob Burkhardt’s formulation, man became conscious of himself, not
solely as a member of a family, people, or race, but as an individuated
spiritual being.76
This conceptual backdrop sheds light on Abarbanel’s comments con-
72. The Ancrene Riwle, trans. Mary B. Salu (Notre Dame, Ind., 1955), 21. Fur-
ther restrictions about receiving guests are found on 27–28. On the prohibition
for the anchoress to see the outside world, see Janet Grayson, Structure and Imag-
ery in the Ancrene Wisse (Hanover, N.H., 1974), 39–45; Warren, Anchorites, 31;
Elizabeth Robertson, ‘‘An Anchorhold of Her Own: Female Anchoritic Litera-
ture in Thirteenth Century England,’’ in Equally in God’s Image, 176.
73. Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and
Dialogue (Albany, N.Y., 2001), esp. 169–202.
74. Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 201–2.
75. William J. Bouwsma, ‘‘The Spirituality of Renaissance Humanism,’’ Chris-
tian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. J. Raitt (London, 1987),
238.
76. Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C.
Middlemore (London and New York, n.d.), 143.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:30 PS PAGE 249

250 JQR 95.2 (2005)
cerning the preparations undertaken by Jephthah’s daughter. Earlier

commentators, sacrificialists and non-sacrificialists alike, had elaborated
little upon what the text itself had stated concerning her request of a two-
month reprieve. The abeyance requested was, as the text says, for the
purpose of bewailing the fact that she would never know matrimonial
union. Abarbanel, however, expands upon the purpose of the stay:
This was because she was destined to remain in seclusion for the rest
of her life, never to come out again. She therefore requested two
months time, during which she would satiate her desire for freedom
and mobility, inasmuch as thereafter she would no longer be free or
mobile. This is the meaning of, ‘‘and I will bewail my maidenhood’’—
that she would never be able to marry. She also intended to choose the
site of her seclusion.
Abarbanel’s interpretation bears out humanist sensitivities. Abarbanel’s

attention to her desire to taste freedom, to experience, indeed, to ‘‘know,’’
that which will be denied her—freedom and mobility—reflects a human-
ist mind-set in which the feelings engendered by personal experience are
given a prominent value. His reading, further, may be seen to accord with
the language of the text itself. Jgs 11.38 reads, ‘‘Allow me two months,
and I will go and traverse the hills, and I will bewail my maidenhood, me
and my companions.’’ Earlier exegetes had interpreted the action, ‘‘I will
go and traverse the hills,’’ as designed to serve the one purpose: ‘‘and I
will bewail my maidenhood.’’ For Abarbanel, the traversal of the hills has
its own experiential purpose: to sense the freedom that she will no longer
be able to taste thereafter.
Qimh.i and Gersonides had written that Jephthah had built the cell of
enclosure for her and had inducted (or even enclosed her, as per Gerson-
ides) within it. The picture of Jephthah’s daughter that emerges from
their commentaries is one of passivity and obeisance. For the Karaites,
the denial to Jephthah’s daughter of any subjectivity was even more radi-
cal: she was essentially undifferentiated from any other consecrated
‘‘thing,’’ such as a jug or a head of sheep, to borrow Qirqisānı̄’s language.
Here, we once again see a humanist impulse in Abarbanel’s exegesis, the
elevation of the notion of the individual that is not necessarily immanent
in the text. Jephthah’s daughter is invested here with the power to deter-
mine where to establish her anchorhold. Indeed, in contrast with the ear-
lier exegetes, Abarbanel makes no comment regarding Jephthah’s own
role in the construction of the cell, nor of any act on his part of induction
or enclosure of his daughter.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:30 PS PAGE 250

We conclude our observations concerning the Renaissance recounting

of Jephthah’s daughter in Abarbanel’s commentary with a comparison
that he draws between Jephthah’s daughter and the monastic norms of
his day:
This is the basis from which the Kingdom of Edom (i.e., the Church)
derived the practice to establish houses of seclusion77 for women, that
they should enter and not leave at all for their entire lives, nor see
another person for the rest of their lives.
Recall that Qimh.i had compared Jephthah’s daughter to ‘‘the ascetics

enclosed in their cells,’’ and that we had noted his use of gender-neutral
language ‘‘ascetics’’ (µyçwrph µyçnah), which suggested that in his day and
locale the anchorite life was a vocation practiced by men and women
alike. In the present comment, however, it would appear that Abarbanel
construed anchorite life as a woman’s vocation. This difference between
Qimh.i and Abarbanel may be seen as an index of change in the nature of
the vocation over the two and half centuries that separated them. Accord-
ing to Leclerq’s study of anchoresses in Languedoc, there were always
more women recluses than men. Yet from their first appearance in the
beginning of the twelfth century, the number of anchoresses there multi-
plied, at an especially great rate in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.78
These figures could well explain why Qimh.i spoke in gender-neutral
terms about the phenomenon of the anchorite, even though he was doing
so to illuminate the case of Jephthah’s daughter—a female recluse. By
the late fifteenth century, however, Abarbanel could recognize the ancho-
rite life as a female vocation and hence conjecture a biblical precedent in
the figure of Jephthah’s daughter.
Abarbanel’s comment concerning the evolution of Church practice
seems an aside to his purported task of elucidating the text. Seen in an-
other light, however, it is a fine example of what Lawee had described as
Abarbanel’s penchant for historical thinking, for searching out the causal-
ity of events over time. Yet we may ask: was Abarbanel correct in his
assertion that the Church had seen in Jephthah’s daughter a model or a
precursor for the latter-day practice of sacerdotal seclusion? Our com-
77. Most modern editions of Abarbanel’s commentary have the transliterated

word ‘‘cloister’’ in parentheses following the term bate perishut, which I have trans-
lated in highly literal fashion, ‘‘houses of seclusion.’’ The word ‘‘cloister,’’ how-
ever, is absent from the first-edition printing of the commentary (Pisaro, 1512)
and is a later gloss to elucidate Abarbanel’s reference.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:31 PS PAGE 251

252 JQR 95.2 (2005)
ments thus far about the changing social climate in which the non-sacri-
ficial approach to the story was construed have ignored a crucial facet of
that milieu to which we now attend: How did Christian exegetes across
the ages interpret the story, and is it possible to trace lines of influence
here across the polemical divide?
CH R IS T IA N EX EGES IS AN D T H E N O N- S ACR IF ICI AL

A PPR O ACH T O J EPH T H AH ’S VO W
One would expect that the non-sacrificial approach to the story of Jeph-
thah’s daughter would have wide circulation within classical Christian
exegesis. While Elijah and Elisha are oft-cited models of the eremitic life
in early Christian exegesis, female models are hardly to be found. An
examination of the history of Christian exegesis, however, reveals that
the non-sacrificial approach to the story of Jephthah’s daughter enters
the discourse of Christian exegesis only in the fourteenth century, some
four centuries after it was first proposed in Karaite circles. Indeed, it is
absent from materials found in the Patrologia Latina, and is found neither
in the Glossa Ordinaria nor in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.
The most influential element that prevented the non-sacrificial ap-
proach from gaining currency in earlier eras was the very translation
rendered by Jerome of the language of the vow (Jgs 11.31). The creature
that would first meet Jephthah would, according to Jerome’s rendering,
be offered as ‘‘a burnt sacrifice to the Lord’’ (holocaustum offeram Domino).
The authority of the Vulgate was considered absolute from the patristic
through the monastic periods of exegesis. With the exception of some
voices that interpreted the phrase christologically, all Church commenta-
tors worked within the understanding that Jephthah had vowed to sacri-
fice his daughter and had in fact done so.
The sacrificialist understanding of the account was also theologically
convenient. Some commentators saw within Jephthah’s daughter a para-
digm of Christian virtue. Thus we find, for example, that Peter Abelard,
the twelfth-century theologian, composed a series of hymns to be recited
regularly by monastic nuns, one of which is a lament in tribute to Jeph-
thah’s daughter. One can well imagine that a Christian theologian famil-
iar with the non-sacrificial approach to the story of Jephthah’s daughter
might have composed a hymn for monastery recitation paying homage to
this ‘‘spiritual mother’’ of woman’s monasticism. The celebrated virtue of
the lament, however, is not monasticism but martyrdom and describes in
elaborate detail how Jephthah’s daughter took her own life in fulfillment
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:32 PS PAGE 252

of her father’s vow.79 Rabbinic exegetes had been embellishing the non-
sacrificial interpretation with monastic themes at least since the time of
Ibn Ezra. Yet because of Jerome’s Latin translation of 11.31 and the
theological agenda served by rendering Jephthah’s daughter a martyr,
the non-sacrificial interpretation emerged only as a latecomer within the
history of Christian interpretation of the story.
It was in the early fourteenth century with the influence of scholasti-
cism that trends in Christian exegesis would shift in a fashion that would
allow the penetration of the non-sacrificial approach. For one, the Vul-
gate no longer enjoyed universal authority as the sole authoritative trans-
lation of the Bible, nor the patristic fathers as its absolute interpreters.
Moreover, the Council of Vienne in 1311 ordered that ancient Hebrew
and Greek be taught, which meant that learned clergy members would
now be encouraged to access the Hebrew original of the Hebrew Bible.
It is no coincidence that the commentary of Nicholas de Lyra, rendered
in the 1320s and 1330s, reflected a greater mastery of Hebrew and of
Hebrew sources than any Christian commentary since Jerome.80 More
significantly for our purposes, however, de Lyra availed himself of a wide
range of rabbinic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and freely incorpo-
rated them into his own with great frequency and with attribution.81 His
commentary on the story of Jephthah’s daughter is no exception.82 He
cites the earlier Christian traditions that Jephthah had indeed sacrificed
his daughter. He then states that he saw in Hebrew sources various at-
tempts that are recorded in the midrash to find halakhic relief to annul
the vow. Immediately after his citation of the midrashic material he states
79. Petrus Abaelardus, Planctus Virginum Israelis Super Filia Jephtae Galaditae,
Patrologia Latina, vol. 178, col. 1819–1820. Other medieval writers saw Judith as
a scriptural forebear of the anchoress. See Grayson, Structure and Imagery, 61–64.
For a brief overview of medieval Christian exegetical attitudes toward Jephthah’s
vow prior to Nicholas de Lyra, see Debora Kuller Shuger, The Renaissance Bible:
Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity (Berkeley, Calif., 1994), 137, and 240, n. 46.
80. R. E. McNally, ‘‘Exegesis, Medieval,’’ New Catholic Encyclopedia (New
York, 1967), 5:712.
81. See Wolfgang Bunte, Rabbinische Traditionen bei Nikolaus von Lyra (Frank-
furt am Main, 1994); Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pitts-
burgh, Pa., 1963), particularly 138. On the state of Nicholas de Lyra scholarship
generally, see Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith, eds., Nicholas of Lyra: The
Sense of Scripture (Leiden, 2000).
82. Nicolaus de Lyra, Biblia Sacra cum glossis, interlineari et Ordinaria. Lugduni
1545, tomus II, fol. 47b–48a. My thanks to Joseph Hochbaum for his assistance
with this material.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:33 PS PAGE 253

254 JQR 95.2 (2005)
that the intimations of the text of Judges 11—that she died—reflect the
‘‘death to the world’’ that is the lot of the monastic.83
Fulfillment of the vow, he asserts, was in the form of dedication to the
service of God, through celibacy, prayer, fasts, and charitable acts. This
list of her obligations—more detailed than any found in Jewish exegesis
of the story—resembles a set of monastic vows, and no doubt de Lyra
envisaged Jephthah’s daughter embracing these vows much as would
monks and nuns of his own day.
Not enough is known about how de Lyra attained his knowledge of
Jewish sources. His extensive and sustained citation of Rashi in his own
commentary to the Pentateuch would suggest that he had a manuscript
of Rashi’s commentary directly available to him. It is possible, however,
that other materials were made available to him orally. He may have had
contact with learned Jews or other Church clergymen, who themselves
had engaged learned Jews. De Lyra does not explicitly attribute his non-
sacrificialist approach to a particular Jewish source. Nonetheless, the fact
that he contrasts the sacrificial approach of the patristic sources with
midrashic sources that chronicle attempts to annul the vow, and then
concludes with his non-sacrificial approach, suggests that this approach,
too, may well have stemmed from Jewish influence.
Moving forward in time and back across the polemical divide, there
may also be evidence that de Lyra’s interpretation shaped Abarbanel’s
comments to the episode. Abarbanel read Nicholas widely and routinely
hailed him as the greatest of Christian commentators.84 Recall that Abar-
banel stated that it was from the story of Jephthah’s daughter that the
Church derived the practice of strict claustration for women. It may be
that Abarbanel simply surmised that this was so, with no Christian source
to substantiate his claim. It may also be that Abarbanel had access to
other Christian writings, of which this writer is unaware. Yet considering
that we know that Abarbanel read de Lyra widely, it may be that he
construed de Lyra’s comparison of Jephthah’s daughter to monastic
women as an indication that the Church saw this episode as a scriptural
source for the institution of claustration. The lacuna in Nicholas’s ‘‘bibli-
ography’’ in his comments on this story again comes into play. Based
83. It should be noted, however, that he does not compare her to an eremitae,
a hermitess, or anchorite, but to the religiosi, those that live in a monastery.
84. See his commentary on Is 7.17 and Ez 4.6. Other examples are given in
Jacob Guttman, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren des Isaak Abravanel (Breslau,
1916), 46; Moshe Zevi Segal, Masoret u-bikoret (Jerusalem, 1957), 256. For more
on Abarbanel’s use of Christian sources, see Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel, 199–200 and
281, n. 152.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:34 PS PAGE 254

upon the structure of his argument and the lack of any Church exegetical
precedent, we contended that Nicholas’s adoption of the non-sacrificial
approach reflected rabbinic influence. Abarbanel, however, may have
read the passage differently. Whereas de Lyra attributed the midrashic
material, he cites no Jewish source for the non-sacrificial approach. Ab-
arbanel may have taken this to mean that Nicholas had reached this inter-
pretation independently or via Christian exegetical traditions.
Perhaps a stronger indication of Christian influence upon Abarbanel’s
exegesis here may be seen in his interpretation of Jgs 11.39. Scripture
states that Jephthah carried out his vow, ‘‘and she knew no man.’’ Rab-
binic writers who adopted the sacrificialist approach understood this to
be a statement of her condition: she had been sacrificed while yet a virgin.
Exegetes who had adopted the non-sacrificial approach understood the
statement as a consequence: because she was destined to a life of seclu-
sion, she would never have the opportunity to enjoy physical union with
a man. Both these positions understood the term ‘‘knowledge’’ here to
be carnal knowledge, a common meaning of ‘‘to know’’ in many biblical
passages. Abarbanel, however, offers a novel interpretation: ‘‘ ‘she knew
no man’—but rather remained in seclusion, and never again saw another
person for the rest of her life.’’ The interpretation is highly reminiscent of the
Vulgate translation here. The Vulgate translates Gn 4.1, ‘‘and Adam
knew his wife Eve,’’ as Adam vero cognivit uxorem suam Hevam. Similarly,
the biblical comment that David never had relations with his nurse, Abis-
hag, ‘‘and the king did not know her’’ (1 Kgs 1.4), is likewise rendered,
rex vero non cognivit eam. Here however, the Vulgate translates ‘‘and she
knew no man,’’ as quae ignorabat virum. The root ignoro is never used in
conjunction with sexual union, but implies that she was unaware, ‘‘had no
familiarity’’ with anyone.85
At the outset of this study we noted that research in the field of Jewish-
Christian relations in the Middle Ages has increasingly attended to the
ways in which Jewish culture incorporated motifs, concepts, and symbols
from the host culture of Latin Christendom. The incorporation of a Chris-
tian motif within the realm of rabbinic biblical exegesis, as we have seen
here, is noteworthy, for it is primarily through the interpretation of Scrip-
85. As mentioned, the Vulgate adopted a sacrificialist reading of the episode,

and thus the close reading of the verb ignoro here as ‘‘unfamiliar’’ is inconsistent
with the Vulgate’s own understanding of the account. While Abarbanel rejects
the Vulgate’s interpretation of the episode, we may still allow that he drew local
inspiration from the Vulgate’s rendering of the phrase, and co-opted it for the
sake of his non-sacrificial approach.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:35 PS PAGE 255

256 JQR 95.2 (2005)
ture that Jews and Christians engaged in counterpolemics.86 The incorpo-

ration of the monastic image to reinterpret the Jephthah narrative is also
noteworthy in light of the deep scorn registered in much medieval rab-
binic writing concerning clerical monasticism.87
Against the backdrop of the current state of research into the Jewish
adaptation of motifs, concepts, and symbols from the host culture of Latin
Christendom, the present study is significant in another respect as well.
Israel Yuval has stated that the incorporation of Christian motifs within
Jewish culture is generally felt to be a subconscious process.88 Yet, even
when an allusion suggests that its author was fully aware of the Christian
origin of a borrowed image, it is rare indeed that the author explicitly
shares the provenance of his allusion with his Jewish audience, as does
R. David Kimh.i in his comments on the story.
In short, the medieval history of interpretation of the Jephthah narra-
tive—Karaite, Rabbanite, and Christian—allows us to follow the creative
exchange of exegetical currency between the commentators of different
sects and of different faiths, from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west,
over the span of half a millennium.
86. Frank Talmage, ‘‘Provence Exegetes of the 12th and Early 13th Centu-
ries’’ (Hebrew), Jewish Bible Exegesis: An Introduction, ed. M. Greenberg (Jerusa-
lem, 1983), 87; from the same volume see F. Talmage, ‘‘Medieval Christian
Exegesis and Its Reciprocal Relationship with Jewish Exegesis’’ (Hebrew), Jew-
ish Bible Exegesis, 107; see also Avraham Grossman, ‘‘The Jewish-Christian Po-
lemic and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in Twelfth Century France’’ (Hebrew), Zion
51.1 (1985): 29–60.
87. See The Polemic of Nestor the Priest, trans. Daniel J. Lasker and Sarah
Stroumsa (Jerusalem, 1996), 19 and 79; Yehudah Rosenthal, ‘‘The Disputation
of Eliyahu Chayim of Genezzano with a Franciscan Monk’’ (Hebrew), Mehkarim
u-mekorot, ed. Y. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1967), 1:452; David Berger, The Jewish
Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of Niz.z.ahon Vetus (Phila-
delphia, 1979), 69–70 and 223; David Berger, ‘‘The Jewish Christian Debate in
the High Middle Ages,’’ Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict, ed.
J. Cohen (New York, 1991), 502; Berger, ‘‘On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles
in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature,’’ Facing the Cross: The Persecutions of 1096 in
History and Historiography, ed. Yom Tov Assis et al. (Jerusalem, 2000), 79; The
Book of the Covenant of Joseph Kimhi, trans. Frank Talmage (Toronto, 1972), 35.
See also Responsa of R. Joseph Colon (Mahari’’k), no. 160, and discussion in
Jeffrey Robert Woolf, ‘‘The Life and Responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon ben Solo-
mon Trabotto (Maharik)’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1991),
226–30; on ascetic trends among rabbinic figures in southern France at this time,
see Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic
Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, 2000), 43, n. 29, and 194, n. 10.
88. Yuval, Two Nations, 45.
................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:35 PS PAGE 256

Yiftah&#39;s Daughter

Cargado por

Información del documento

Descripción original:

Derechos de autor

Formatos disponibles

Compartir este documento

Compartir o incrustar documentos

Opciones para compartir

¿Le pareció útil este documento?

¿Este contenido es inapropiado?

Copyright:

Formatos disponibles

Yiftah&#39;s Daughter

Cargado por

Copyright:

Formatos disponibles

T H E J E W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W , Vol. 95, No.

2 (Spring 2005) 228–256

Medieval Monasticism and the Evolution

S T U DI E S I N T HE F IE L D of Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle

My thanks to David Berger, Jeremy Cohen, Adam Ferziger, Edward Green-

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2005)

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:15 PS PAGE 228

5. Ivan G. Marcus, ‘‘Jews and Christians Imagining the Other in Medieval

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:16 PS PAGE 229

of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164)8 and R. David Qimh.i (c.1160–

8. While we do not possess a commentary to Judges by Ibn Ezra, his position

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:17 PS PAGE 230

in bold relief: What were the obligations incumbent upon Jephthah’s

11. Simon, ‘‘Peshat Exegesis,’’ *198; D. Marcus, Jephthah, 8.

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:18 PS PAGE 231

TH E K ARA IT E O R IGI N S O F TH E AP PR OAC H

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:18 PS PAGE 232

doctrines of Christianity in which he displays a familiarity with the New

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:20 PS PAGE 233

It would appear that by the tenth century, interpretation of the story

What precisely did Jephthah do to his daughter in fulﬁllment of his

22. Qirqisānı̄, Kitāb al-Anwār, 6.39.8 (Nemoy, Code, 3:671).

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:20 PS PAGE 234

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:22 PS PAGE 235

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:22 PS PAGE 236

cration.31 In adapting their approach to the story, Ibn Ezra needed to

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:23 PS PAGE 237

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:23 PS PAGE 238

35. Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession (Chicago, 1991), 3; Eliz-

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:23 PS PAGE 239

siderations. A nunnery was only as strong as its ﬁnancial support.42 Most

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:24 PS PAGE 240

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:26 PS PAGE 241

understood in modern terms as similar to that of a person who embarks

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:27 PS PAGE 242

A ubiquitous theme found in the archival sources pertaining to the

J EPH T H AH ’S DAU GH T E R AS A NC H O RIT E : TH E PR O LI FER ATI O N

61. Leclercq, ‘‘Reclus et Recluses,’’ 288.

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:27 PS PAGE 243

bonne in 1246.63 Qimh.i (11.31) describes Jephthah’s daughter as an

63. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, 200.

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:28 PS PAGE 244

64. Japhet, Jgs 11.40 (MS Saint Petersberg A146, 63a).

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:28 PS PAGE 245

gests that when Qimh.i obliquely compared Jephthah’s daughter to ‘‘the

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:28 PS PAGE 246

in 1215 entitled Hali Meidenhad. The purpose of the work is to convince

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:29 PS PAGE 247

TH E REN AI S S AN CE REC AS TI NG O F JE PH TH A H’ S D AU GH TER I N

A further anchorite interjection into the story of Judges 11 is seen in a

My dear sisters, be as little fond of your windows as possible. Let them

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:29 PS PAGE 248

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:30 PS PAGE 249

cerning the preparations undertaken by Jephthah’s daughter. Earlier

Abarbanel’s interpretation bears out humanist sensitivities. Abarbanel’s

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:30 PS PAGE 250

We conclude our observations concerning the Renaissance recounting

Recall that Qimh.i had compared Jephthah’s daughter to ‘‘the ascetics

77. Most modern editions of Abarbanel’s commentary have the transliterated

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:31 PS PAGE 251

CH R IS T IA N EX EGES IS AN D T H E N O N- S ACR IF ICI AL

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:32 PS PAGE 252

................. 11110$ $CH2 01-07-05 07:49:33 PS PAGE 253

Yiftah's Daughter

Yiftah's Daughter