a more healthy method of interpretation developed among the Jews
(b) Notarikon, which consisted in forming words by the combination of initial and terminal letters, or by regarding each letter of a word as the initial letter of other words; and
(c) Temoorah, denoting a method of evolving new meanings by an interchange of letters. For examples, cf. Farrar, p. 98ff.; Gilbert, p. 18ff.
5. THE SPANISH JEWS. From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, a more healthy method of interpretation developed among the Jews of Spain. When the exegesis of the Christian Church was at a low ebb, and the knowledge of Hebrew was almost lost, a few learned Jews on the Pyrenaean Peninsula restored the light to the candlestick. Some of their interpretations a egetes among them were Abr. Aben-Ezra, Sal. Izaak Jarchi, David Kimchi, Izaak Aberbanel, and Elias Levita. From these Jewish scholars, Nicolas de Lyra and Reuchlin received great aid.
QUESTIONS: How did Rabbinical Judaism conceive of the inspiration of the Bible? Why did the Jews ascribe unique significance to the Law? What did they teach about the origin of the Oral Law? How did it really originate, and of what did it consist? What is the Mishnah? the Gemara? the Talmud? How does the Jewish use of tradition compare with that of the Roman Catholics? What is the difference between an allegory and allegorical interpretation? What is the Massorah? How must we account for the Cabbalistic movement? Did the Jewish interpreters of the fifteenth Century affect the Reformation in any way?
LITERATURE: Diestal, Geschichte des Alten Testaments, pp. 6–14, 197–208; Ladd, The Doctrine of Sacred Scriptures, p. 691 ff.; Farrar, History of Interpretation, pp. 17–158; Gilbert, Interpretation of the Bible, pp. 1–57; Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, pp. 31–35.