Azariah de' Rossi on Biblical Poetry

Azariah de' Rossi on Biblical PoetryAuthor(s): ADELE BERLINSource: Prooftexts, Vol. 12, No. 2 (MAY 1992), pp. 175-183Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20689333 .

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NOTES AND READINGS

Azariah de" Rossi on Biblical Poetry Most modern descriptions of biblical poetry revolve around two aspects:

meter and parallelism.1 The quest for meter has been a long one; it began in the Greco-Roman period and continues today with, as we shall note, widely diver

gent results. Parallelism is a relatively recent concern, generally said to begin in

1753 with the publication of Robert Lowth's De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum Praelectiones Academicae (Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews). Lowth himself, seeking support in authoritative precedent, quotes "the opinion of Azarias, a Jew Rabbi, not indeed a very ancient, but a very approved author/'2 whose work he met first

through the Latin translation of Johannes Buxtorf appended to Liber Cosri and

then read in the original Hebrew.3 It is from Lowth's reference that most biblical scholars know of Azariah de' Rossi, and because they know of him only from this

context, they tend to associate him with the beginning of the discovery of biblical

parallelism.4 Nothing could have been further from de' Rossi's mind; he saw

himself as standing at the end of a long quest for the discovery of biblical meter. The purpose of this paper is to examine more closely Azariah de' Rossi's

understanding of the structure of biblical poetry. His discussion of biblical poetry comes in the last chapter (chapter 60) of Me'or cenayim, a long historiographical work written in Hebrew and published in Mantua in 1573.5 Because most of Me*or

cenayim deals with historical and chronological matters, historians have tended to

ignore the discussion of poetry. And since most biblical scholars know the work

only indirectly, through translated excerpts,6 they have not paid it much mind,

except to note it for its antiquarian or esoteric interest. But de' Rossi's contribution to the understanding of biblical poetry is an important chapter in the history of

biblical interpretation and in the history of poetics, and deserves to be studied more carefully.

Azariah de' Rossi was both an insightful innovator and a traditionalist. There is no question that his description of the structure of biblical poetry was brilliant and novel in its time, and remains so. By the same token, his insight is better understood against the background of earlier works on the subject, and, as I shall

suggest, derives from those works in ways not previously noticed. In fact, de' Rossi himself sets his discussion in a historical context. He begins with a summary of the history of biblical poetics in ancient and medieval times, from both the

Jewish and non-Jewish world. By taking seriously the citing of these sources as

part of the development of de' Rossi's argument, we can better grasp both the

continuities and departures in de' Rossi's innovative approach. In addition to asking what de' Rossi said, it is also appropriate to ask why he

said it. Besides the information that he found in his sources, was there something PROOFTEXTS12 (1992): 175-183 O 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



176 NOTES AND READINGS

in his own life or times that led him to see biblical poetry as he did? Here, too, his own rhetoric, as well as historical knowledge of Renaissance Italy can provide some answers.

Descriptions of Biblical Meter

The meter of a poem is not immediately apparent from the poem itself. In other words, without some knowledge of the metrical rules being employed, it is often difficult to ascertain those rules simply by reading the poem.7 For example, a

person raised in the tradition of English poetry, or any modern western poetry, ignorant of medieval Hebrew metrical conventions, will have great difficulty in

analyzing the meter of a medieval Hebrew poem until the conventions of medi eval Hebrew metrics are pointed out. Medieval Hebrew poetry used quantitative meter, not accentual-syllabic as in English. The meter is based on the patterning of

long and short syllables. The length of a syllable is determined by the quantity of its vowel: long syllables contain a vowel and short syllables contain a mobile skwa,

hatef, or the conjunction u-. (The stress or accent of the words in actual pronuncia tion does not figure at all in the metrical system.)

Quantitative systems of meter, each defining quantity in its own way, were

employed in Greek, Latin, and medieval Arabic poetry. Through the influence of

Arabic, they were adopted into medieval Hebrew poetry. Thus, the norm in the classical and medieval worlds was quantitative meter. Scholars from these poetic traditions who searched for meter in the Bible naturally searched for the type of

meter with which they were farr?har?quantitative meter. (Modern biblical scholars, on their part, search for the type that they know best?syllabic and/or accentual meter.) The question, Does biblical poetry have meter? in ancient and medieval times meant, for the most part, Does biblical poetry have quantitative meter?

The question was answered by some in the affirmative and by some in the

negative. Josephus, for example, spoke of hexameter in the Song of the Sea

(Exodus 15), and Jerome found psalms having three or four measures and similar metrical arrangements in Proverbs, Lamentations, and elsewhere. On the other

hand, the famous medieval Hebrew poet and philosopher Judah Halevi cate

gorically denied the existence of (quantitative) meter in the Bible. Moses ibn Ezra admitted the presence of only the simplest of (Arabic) metrical structures, rajaz, in books of the Bible considered, for other reasons, to be poetic (Psalms, Proverbs, and Job). He thereby implicitly agreed with Halevi that biblical poetry lacked the authentic metrical structure of Ajabic qasidas and medieval Hebrew poems.8

Such disagreements on the presence or absence of meter are not solely the

products of honest scholarly differences of opinion or analytic techniques. They are influenced, to a degree not generally appreciated, by the investigator's need or desire to find or deny the presence of contemporary metrical systems in the ancient and authoritative text of the Bible. Was it essential to demonstrate that the

poetry of the Bible was every bit as good, or perhaps even better, than the best that

pagans like Pindar and Horace could produce? Or was it crucial to show that the Bible was different, and better off for that difference, from the newfangled imita tions of Arabic poetry that medieval Hebrew poets were purveying?



Prooftexts 177

Enter Azariah de' Rossi (ca. 1511-1578), a Renaissance Italian Jew. As a learned

Jew, de' Rossi was well acquainted with earlier Jewish views on biblical poetry. As a Renaissance scholar, he knew classical poetry and drew on Greco-Roman sources?in his case also the Jewish works from the Roman period, Philo and

Josephus, as well as the church fathers. To these were added the poetic norms of his own time and place. Most important, and most interesting, is the way he mediated among these conflicting sources. His work on biblical poetry is best understood in this light, for though he did produce what we consider a major new

insight into the structure of biblical poetry, this was not his purpose. He wanted, as Arthur Lesley has put it, "to rescue the Hebrew ancients and moderns from irreconcilable opposition. He wanted to remove the obvious impediments to

daiming, as other poets of his time claimed in European languages, that biblical

poetry provided the highest precedent for contemporary poetic practice."9 I would add that de' Rossi also seemed bent on defending the medieval Jewish position, most prominently advocated by Judah Hale vi, that biblical poetry lacked

(quantitative) meter, although this position is diametrically opposed to the classi cal view of poetry which de' Rossi partially espoused. In other words, de' Rossi wanted to defend the medieval Jewish position, accept the classical view, and

legitimize the Hebrew poetic practice of Renaissance Italy. These views scarcely seem amenable to harmonization, but harmonize them

de' Rossi did, through a most clever synthesis. The synthesis, I suggest, involved

taking the concept of Hnyan, "idea," from Halevi and marrying it to the concept of

meter?present in one form in the classical sources but altered in light of Italian

prosody. Thus, the seeds of de' Rossi's insight were present in his sources. His

genius is in the way he combined them to create a new way of looking at the structure of biblical poetry.

If we follow de' Rossi's argument, we may begin to discern his line of

thought. De' Rossi begins his discussion of biblical poetry by citing Judah Halevi and Don Isaac Abravanel, with whom he agrees that biblical poetry lacked

quantitative meter (of the medieval Hebrew type). He then cites the earlier views of classical authors?Ph?o, Josephus, Eusebius, and Jerome?who did find quan titative meter (of the classical type) in biblical poetry. Finally, he refers to Moses ibn Habib, who claimed to have found evidence, on an ancient tombstone inscrip tion, of extra-biblical metrical poetry in Hebrew from First Temple times. Sum

ming up these divers opinions, de' Rossi says:

Indeed, according to these sages [the classical sources and ibn Habib], our

holy tongue in its nature and usage from earliest days does not preclude poems with measure and meter [midda and sheqel]. . . . And [according to those same sages] some of these [metrical poems] were found in the Bible.

Nevertheless, I inquired of many contemporary sages whether they knew how to find and identify in them [biblical poems] any measure or meter, but no one could.

Herein lies the crux: biblical poetry ought to have meter (as all poetry does), and there are earlier authorities who have found meter in the Bible; but no one now is

quite able to analyze the metrical system.10 De' Rossi continues:

As my cares welled up within me to resolve these opinions and to discover

part of what is sought, my heart tells me that there are, without doubt,




measures and structures in the aforementioned biblical poems, but they are not dependent on the number of complete and incomplete syllables, as in the

poems common among us nowadays, for these are, in the words of The

Kuzari, practices of Arabic poetry, which represents a corruption of our

language. Rather, their structures and measures are in the number of ideas

[mispar ha'inyanim] and their parts, from subject to predicate and that which is

conjoined to them, in every clause and phrase that is written. There are cases in which a clause contains two measures and together with the second

[clause] attached to it there will be four [measures]. And there are cases

containing three and together with the second there will be six complete measures. An example of this is your-right-hand, O-Lord [Exod. 15:6]. This is one independent clause containing two units, or, one could say, two mea sures. Glorious in-power, which is similar to it [in the number of measures], is attached to it, and together they have four [measures].

Herein lies de' Rossi's contribution to the analysis of biblical poetry. But note that his primary motivation is "to resolve these opinions." De' Rossi wishes to resolve the differences in opinion between Halevi and Abravanel on the one hand and the classical authorities and ibn rjfebib on the other. He does so by means of a brilliant

synthesis that allows him to agree in part with both sides. De' Rossi, like the classical authorities, feels that there must be "measures and structures"?that is, meter?in biblical poetry. But he agrees with Halevi and Abravanel that the meter is not quantitative ("not dependent on the number of complete or incomplete syllables"). What, then, is the nature of biblical meter? It is based, concludes de'

Rossi, on "the number of ideas" in each "clause." The number of ideas in one clause is found to be the same as the number in the conjoined clause: generally 2-2 or 3-3.

This new concept of the "number of ideas" is revolutionary in that it shifts attention from phonetic units (syllables) to semantic units (ideas, which in most cases here are equivalent to words). It is not hard to see how this might lead to the

discovery of parallelism, which also has to do with analyzing the ideas of con

joined clauses?but in terms of their semantic or syntactic relationship, not just in terms of their number.11 But the discovery of parallelism was left for the future. De' Rossi did not perceive that phenomenon; he was interested in meter, and he found it in the way it is usually found?by counting something. The thing that he counted was "ideas."

Where did de' Rossi get the concept of "the number of ideas"? It was not a creatio ex nihilo, I maintain, but a combination of two concepts, "number" and

"ideas," each of which existed separately in de' Rossi's sources.

Number

Although quantitative Hebrew verse continued to be written in Renaissance

Italy, Italian Jewish poets also adopted the practice of writing Hebrew poems in

syllabic meter. This they borrowed from their Italian contemporaries (much as the

Spanish Jewish poets borrowed quantitative meter from their Arab contempor aries). Italian Renaissance poetry is syllabic; the meter is achieved by a set number of syllables per line (often ten or eleven) without regard to the length of the



Prooftexts 179

syllables. Thus a Renaissance Italian would have at his disposal the notion of

syllabic meter?meter based solely on the number of syllables?whereas to a medieval Spanish Hebrew poet Ilice Halevi this notion was inconceivable. To Halevi and his colleagues, "meter" meant quantitative meter, rendered in Hebrew

by mishqal (the "weight" of the syllables). But to de' Rossi, "meter" was a broader

concept which could be based on "number," mispar, without regard for quantity. In fact, there was a widespread notion, among Renaissance Jews and Chris

tians, that syllabic meter could be found in the Bible. Among the Jews who found

examples of it were Moses ibn Habib, Abraham Portaleone and, to a lesser extent, Samuel Archivolti.12 Christians, who were showing a renewed interest in Hebrew and in biblical poetry, sought, like the Jews, to legitimate their own poetic prac tices by finding them in the Bible. They were aided by the use, in ancient sources

(especially Jerome), of the Latin term numerus, which rendered Greek rhythmus and generally meant a loose rhythmic arrangement that did not conform exactly to quantitative meter.13 While this had not meant syllabic meter to the ancient

authors, it came to mean so to Renaissance Italians, based on their experience with Renaissance Italian poetry. It is but a small step from "numerus/number" to the "number of syllables." The penchant for finding syllabic meter where it was not intended is demonstrated by the Christian Hebraists' misunderstanding of the

inscription cited by ibn Habib; they interpreted it as being in syllabic meter while ibn Habib read it as quantitative meter.14 (Further evidence for the ease with

which one can substitute syllabic for quantitative meter isin the Hebrew poems of Immanuel of Rome, which were cleverly designed to scan equally well according to the rules of Italian syllabic verse and Judeo-Spanish quantitative verse.)

If, then, de' Rossi had found syllabic meter in the Bible, he would not have been alone. But he was honest enough to admit that even syllabic meter does not work when applied to biblical poetry. He then went beyond the Renaissance

concept of meter as the number of syllables. For de' Rossi, the meter of the Bible resided not in the number of syllables, but in the number of ideas.

Ideas [Hnyanim]

In de' Rossi's context, the term Hnyan would be rendered "idea, thought unit," but in medieval Hebrew it meant, among other things, "sense, meaning." It is the term used to translate Arabic ma'na, "theme" or "meaning as opposed to form." Although it is doubtful that de' Rossi knew the Arabic background of the

term, he must have been familiar with the term Hnyan from Hebrew writings, specifically Judah ibn Tibbon's translation of Judah Halevi's The Kuzari 2.72, to

which de' Rossi refers several times at crucial points in his argument. He cites Halevi in his initial definition of the structure of biblical poetry (see above, "When

my cares . . ."); then, after noting the exceptions to his definition and receiving approval from an honorable contemporary (Judah Provenzali, see below), de' Rossi begins a review of his argument with:

our inquiry thus far has established that the words of The Kuzari and Don Isaac [ Abravanel] which we cited at the beginning of this chapter... are the

words of true and discerning sages.

He goes on to say:




If you discern the true meaning of the aforecited words of The Kuzari, you will see that it touches on some of what we have written.

And near the end of the chapter, when de' Rossi returns to his main point (having dealt in the interim with Hebrew poetry in epitaphs), he again notes the correct ness of Halevi's statement.

The crucial citation from Halevi is The Kuzari 2:72, where Hnyanim is used twice: once to mean ''meaning'' and once to mean "signs."

m lyai? cnpuun www *???... unc?n ? .DTOV?n nm ... DToyn

In the remnant that remains of our language . .. subtle but profound signs [Hnyanim] are embedded to promote the understanding of the meaning [Hnyanim]-These are the [masoretic] accents.

Halevi is making the point that in biblical poetry meaning takes precedence over meter, and therefore meter, which disrupts the natural semantic and syntactic flow of the language, was renounced in favor of markers that indicate semantic/

syntactic units of meaning. These markers of meaning are the masoretic accents

(which were thought to have been, even by de' Rossi, part of the original biblical

text). In Halevi's view, the masoretic accents were a kind of substitute for meter.15 It would seem that de' Rossi borrowed the concept of Hnyan as the basic structur

ing element of biblical poetry but gave it a new twist. For de' Rossi it was not a

question of meaning vs. meter, as it was for Halevi, but meaning and meter. He

accepted Halevi's point that the building blocks of biblical poetry were ideas, not

quantitative meter; but he still maintained that some form of meter?that is, some countable element?must be present.16 De' Rossi's great innovation was in com

bining the two concepts: ideas can be counted, and when counted they produce a

regular, balanced pattern which equaled meter.

De' Rossi's discussion in his sixtieth chapter is structured much like the

discussions earlier in Me'or cenayim in that the author draws on traditional Jewish sources and classical sources (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and examines one in

light of the other. Why did he do this? What was his aim in writing Me'or 'enayim, a historiographie work of impressive erudition? This question has received some attention [Baron, Bonf?l, Lesley, Ruderman, Segal], but has not been fully resolved.17 Clearly, there are Humanist influences at work, and Arthur Lesley has

proposed the existence of a Jewish Humanist movement of which de' Rossi is a member in good standing. On the other hand, Robert Bonfil has argued per suasively that Me*or "enayim was intended as a defense of Judaism in the Counter Reformation period. He maintains that de' Rossi's purpose was "to formulate a

confidently straightforward and intellectually tenable position within the frame work of [the Christian ideological attack on Judaism]."18 The best defense of

Judaism, according to this line of thinking, would be one that brings truth to light through a critical examination of all the sources.

My reading of the sixtieth chapter supports both these interpretations, and, indeed, I do not perceive them as contradictory. De' Rossi had absorbed Renais sance ideas and values, and wanted to show that they were compatible with, and even anticipated by, earlier Jewish ideas. Such a program is found at many



Prooftexts 181

junctures in Jewish history, both before and after the Renaissance. Let us examine how de' Rossi managed this in regard to biblical poetry.

Why does de' Rossi cite numerous classical sources that hold that biblical

poetry had quantitative meter when he disagrees with that view? There is more

here, I think, than the de rigueur appeal to the Classics. It would seem that de' Rossi wanted very much for biblical poetry to have meter?to have the regular hexameters and such that classical poetry had. He was, after all, living in a time when classical literature was held up as the standard to be emulated. If he could not quite squeeze the Bible's foot into the shoe of the quantitative classical meters, he could at least find in the Bible a system that resembled classical poetry in some

aspect. It is no accident that de' Rossi speaks of "two measures," "four measures," etc.?that is, dimeter, tetrameter, etc. This is not the language of medieval Spanish Jewish meter; it is the language of classical meter. Moreover, like classical poetry, the Bible varies its meter, even within one poem.

Now do not be surprised by our statement that one poem can have different measures, for if you are familiar with the types of poetry of great poets of other nations, like Horace, Terence, and others, it will be dear to you that

they, too, do likewise.

But not only is biblical poetry in some way like classical poetry, it has the added virtue of having preceded it.

I presented my essay to him [Judah Provenzali] . . . and according to his words (he being a man who does not deceive), my explanation seemed correct to him. He also added on his own that instead of the statement that our modem [poets] borrowed suitable poetic techniques from the andents of other nations, we can give honor to our own tongue and people and say the

opposite: on the contrary, the andents of other nations had already borrowed from the andents of our nation.

This is a variation on the old argument that the poetic techniques and rhetorical tropes of Hebrew preceded those of other nations.19 De' Rossi seems

happy to accept it from Judah Provenzali and adds support from Maimonides and Abraham ben Shem Bibago.

At the same time that he is making biblical poetry into an older version of classical poetry, de' Rossi insists on five separate occasions that Judah Halevi, for whom the poetry of the Bible is unique, is basically correct. And, indeed, he is, for the Bible lacks quantitative meter, as Halevi (and Abravanel) insisted. Thus de' Rossi is able to align himself with previous Jewish scholarship and at the same time portray biblical poetry in a way that would appeal to a Renaissance audience.

Here, as elsewhere, Azariah de' Rossi shows his commitment both to rational

inquiry and to traditional positions. His distinctive blending of the two yielded a new perspective on biblical poetry. ADELE BERLIN Dept. of Hebrew and East Asian Languages and Literatures

University of Maryland




NOTES

1. See M. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, 1980), p. 32. O'Connor refers to this as the Standard Description and says: "The essential perception behind the Standard

Description is that Hebrew verse has two bases, one related to features of contiguous lines, the other, referred to lines in themselves_Few descriptions of Hebrew verse have ever

departed from this two-part structure. Lowth described the first base as parallelismus membrorum and the second he called meter, virtually all descriptions follow him in these

designations." 2. Robert Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (London, 1835 [1753]),

Lecture XIX. In his "Preliminary Dissertation," Lowth refers to him as "Rabbi Azarias, a learned Jew of the 16th century." The approval that Lowth grants him stems from Christian circles; the Italian Jewish community rejected de' Rossi's work and it was ignored by Jews until modern times.

3. There is a minor disagreement on this point. R. S. Cripps, in "Two British Inter

preters of the Old Testament: Robert Lowth (1710-1787) and Samuel Lee (1783-1852)/' Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester 35 (1953): 388-89, states that while in his lectures Lowth rendered into English Buxtorf's Latin translation of de' Rossi, in his "Prelimi nary Dissertation" he translated directly from the Hebrew. In The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven, 1981), p. 284, James L. Kugel states that Buxtorf's Latin is the basis for the translation in the "Frelin nary Dissertation" also. According to Lowth's footnote in the latter, he indeed utilized Buxtorf but emended it after checking the

original Hebrew. Lowth notes: "Suspecting, from some obscurities, that Buxtorf's transla

tion was not very accurate, I procured the original edition; and, having carefully examined it, I have corrected from it this account of the author's sentiments."

4. Lowth, of course, encourages this view, for he does not wish to appear totally innovative. He says that Rabbi Azarias "has treated of the ancient Hebrew versification

upon principles similar to those above proposed, and partly coincident with them." See Isaiah: A New Translation with a Preliminary Dissertation and Notes (London, 1848 [1778]), p. xxviii. Lowth is, however, fully aware of the differences between them. He observes: "I

agree therefore with Azarias in his general principle of a rhythmus of things [this refers to de' Rossi's "number of ideas," mispar haHnyanim]: but instead of considering terms, or

phrases, or senses, in single lines, as measures; detera?ning the nature and denomination of

the verse, as dimeter, trimeter, or tetrameter; I consider only that relation and proportion of

one verse to another, which arises from the correspondence of terms, and from the form of

construction; from whence results a rhythmus of proportions, and a harmony of sentences."

[Isaiah, pp. xxxv-xxxvi]. In other words, Azariah was speaking of meter, while Lowth was

speaking of parallelism. 5. The editio princeps is David Cassel, 1866 (reprinted Jerusalem, 1970). An English

translation is being prepared for the Yale Judaica Series by Joanna Weinberg. Most of chapter 60 is translated in my Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes (Bloomington &

Indianapolis, 1991). 6. For example, in Lowth's writings and Kugel, pp. 200-1. 7. See O'Connor, pp. 55-64, for a linguistic discussion of the perceptibility of meter. 8. A. S. Halkin, ed., Kit?b al-Muh?dara wal-Mudh?kara (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 46-47,

298-99. For a translation and discussion see my Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes. An excellent recent study on Judah Halevi and Moses ibn Ezra is Ross Brann, The Com

punctious Poet [reviewed in this issue of ProoftextsJ. 9. Arthur Lesley, "Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Analysis of Biblical Poetics," paper

read at the Colloque Poesie et Religion, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, April 19,1985. I thank Prof. Lesley for making available to me his unpublished manuscript and for numerous helpful comments.



Prooftexts 183

10. As noted by Arthur Lesley, ibid., a similar sentiment is expressed by Sir Philip Sidney in his "Apology for Poetry": "that it [Psalms] is fully written in meter, as all learned Hebricians agree, although the rules be not yet fully found." Lowth, toa thought that biblical poetry had meter, but he concentrated on its other component, parallelism.

11. See the remarks of Lowth quoted in note 4. 12. See my Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes. 13. See Kugel, pp. 233-40. It is interesting to note the afterlife of this term: Lowth

renders de' Rossi's mispar haHnyanim by "rhythmus of things"?a translation of Buxtorf's Latin "numero rerum."

14. See Kugel, pp. 236-37. Kugel notes that to these Christian Hebraists, Arabic-style meters did not look metrical, because they did not consist of Greek-style feet. This is another

example of the problem of perceiving meter.

15. Halevi's views of biblical poetry and of medieval Hebrew poetry, of which he was a master composer, are far too complex to be offered here. See Brann.

16. It should be remembered that Lowth, too, thought that biblical poetry had meter, in addition to parallelism. He concentrated on parallelism because he felt that the metrical

system was not retrievable. De' Rossi differs from Lowth in that Lowth thought that meter and parallelism were two separate features, while de' Rossi found meter in what we would

call parallelism. 17. Salo W. Baron, History and Jewish Historians (Philadelphia, 1964); Robert Bonfil,

"Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de' Rossi's Me'or cEnayim in the Cultural Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry," Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed .

Cooperman

(Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 23-48; Arthur Lesley, "Jewish Adaption of Humanist Con

cepts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy," Renaissance Rereadings: Intertext and Context, ed. M. C. Horowitz, A. J. Cruz, W. A. Furman (Urbana, 1988), pp. 51-66; David B. Ruderman, "The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought," Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. A. Rabil (Philadelphia, 1988) 1: 382-433; Lester A. Segal, Historical Conscious ness and Religious Tradition in Azariah de' Rossi's Me'or 'Einayim (Philadelphia, 1989).

18. Bonfil, p. 37. 19. It is part of a larger view that all knowledge is found first in the Bible and then

borrowed by other nations. See my Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes for further discussion as it related to poetry.



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Azariah de' Rossi on Biblical Poetry