ECLECTICISM AND THE STUDY OF R. BAHYA BEN ASHER: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF JUDAIC STUDIES

This study narrates the historical background of the scholarly literature previously dedicated to the thirteenth-century Iberian commentator and kabbalist, R. Bahya ben Asher. These scholarly inquiries participate in various judgmental attitudes which are typical of nineteenth-century Jewish historians, particularly those who were active in Germany, according to which Bahya’s eclecticism compromises his creativity, originality and the internal cohesion of his writings. The first part of the article reviews the polemics against eclecticism that arouse in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. These polemics were based upon a particular bias that presumed an incompatibility between eclecticism and systematic thinking. The second and main part of the article offers a careful reading of previous scholarship dedicated to Bahya by the founding fathers of Jewish studies, collectively known as Wissenschaft des Judentums. As the study uncovers through a close reading of their comments on the subject, the Early Modern polemics against eclecticism helped construct the negative scholarly attitudes toward Bahya’s eclecticism. The article then traces the later reception of these scholarly contributions and accounts for further treatments of this topic in more recent scholarship about Kabbalah, conducted in Israel in the twentieth century.