Isaac ben Judah Abravanel

Spanish theologian and statesman

• Born: 1437
• Birthplace: Lisbon, Portugal
• Died: November 1, 1508
• Place of death: Venice, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)

Abravanel’s biblical commentaries addressed religious and philosophical questions in order to strengthen the faith of Spanish Jews, a faith that was especially tried and tested during the crisis of confidence following the expulsion of Jews from Spain, ordered in 1492.

Early Life

The family of Isaac ben Judah Abravanel (ee-sah-AHK behn jew-dah ahb-rah-vah-NEHL) claimed direct descent from Israel’s King David and asserted that they had arrived in Spain before the Romans. Isaac Abravanel’s grandfather fled Spain for Portugal around 1400 to escape pressures to convert to Christianity.

Young Isaac received an extensive education; he mastered Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian, and he read widely in Latin philosophical literature. Isaac also explored the works of Christian medieval Scholastics and church fathers. He also studied medicine and astrology.

Abravanel married in his early twenties and by the 1470’s was active in the family business, which assisted King Afonso V of Portugal and members of the nobility in their monetary affairs. He became especially close to the duke of Bragança. When newly crowned king John II, Afonso V’s son, attacked the powerful aristocracy and arrested the duke, Abravanel feared for his life and fled to Spain on May 31, 1483. Two years later, he was sentenced to death in absentia on charges of treasonable conspiracy against the king.

Life’s Work

In Spain, Abravanel began exhibiting a pattern of seclusion following political disappointments, and he indulged himself in cycles of intensive literary activity. During the months between October, 1483, and March, 1484, he wrote four volumes of biblical commentary, totaling some 400,000 words. Commenting on Joshua, Judges, and Samuel biblical books full of descriptions of the failures and successes of human leaders Abravanel drew from his experience to present his own ideas on history and politics.

Abravanel started writing religious and philosophical tracts while still active in business in Lisbon. Ateret Zequenim (mid-1460’s; crown of the ancients) discussed the concept of God and the meaning of prophecy, rejecting rationalist Aristotelian philosophy and insisting on the primacy of faith over reason. Abravanel also began a critical commentary on Moses Maimonides’ Dalālat al-Hā՚rīn (1190; The Guide of the Perplexed, 1881-1185), respectfully rejecting Maimonides’ rationalistic approach to Judaism . He would work on this project from time to time during the rest of his life, but at his death, it remained unfinished.

Abravanel planned a series of commentaries on the books of the Bible, covering the Pentateuch, the historical books, and the prophets. His exegesis clarified aspects of the Scriptures, reassuring Jews that God’s promises to them were still valid. Abravanel insisted on a literal reading of the sacred text, while also using allegorical interpretations. When Genesis said God created heaven and earth, Abravanel maintained that God created the universe out of nothing, and he rejected views accommodating the Greek concept that matter had always existed. Abravanel also asserted that the Bible contained hidden meanings. He accepted the esoteric belief that the six days of creation predicted the world would last six thousand years, and the seventh day of rest forecast that God would finish his work at the seventh millennium, bringing the universe to an end.

Familiar with the writings of Christian commentators, Abravanel considered, and at times accepted, their biblical interpretations. Along with Christian theologians, he viewed the expulsion from Paradise as a truly catastrophic event in the history of humanity. He could not, however, accept the concept of an original sin afflicting all humankind a sin exculpated only by belief in the sacrifice of Christ.

Abravanel saw history as depicting the degeneration of Israel and humanity. Israel had rebelled against the government established by Moses; by asking for a king instead of remaining loyal to the Lord as king, it suffered in consequence. Jewish political ideas in the Middle Ages favored monarchy the rule of King David was idealized as the best of historical times. In contrast, Abravanel, who had known royalty firsthand, believed kingship abominable and referred to kings as malignant plagues. He viewed hereditary monarchs, whether absolute or limited rulers, as dangerous; it was best to have neither type of royalty.

Subjects, nevertheless, had no right to rebel, because no one could become king unless God had first willed it. Israel, whose ruler was God, did not need a king. Abravanel cited the Italian republics as evidence that states could be ruled effectively by temporary, nonhereditary leaders. Abravanel did not favor democracies or republics; his ideal was the government he believed Moses had instituted a theocracy, with a prophet as its head, assisted by a sanhedrin (a supreme council and tribunal) of priests and Levites.

When King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain appointed Abravanel to the post of tax farmer in 1484, his writing stopped. Successful financially, he also became a leader of Spanish Jewry. Despite his own negative view of monarchical government, Abravanel was shocked when the king and queen ordered the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. He took his family to Italy because only the Kingdom of Naples was willing to accept Jewish refugees. In his first year at Naples, he completed a commentary on the two books of Kings, a record of a period of national disaster and exile from Israel paralleling the Jewish expulsion from Spain.

Abravanel provided financial advice to the king of Naples and accompanied him into exile when the French invaded Naples in 1495. By February, 1496, he was in Monopoli, a town on the Adriatic coast controlled by the Venetian navy, where he remained, writing commentaries and religious treatises for more than seven productive years.

In 1497 and 1498, Abravanel wrote three messianic tracts predicting the imminent coming of the Messiah. He hoped to strengthen the faith of his coreligionists as they reeled under the shock of expulsion from Spain and pressures to convert to Christianity. Abravanel listed twenty-two criteria that the Messiah must fulfill, arguing that Jesus failed to meet that standard. Nevertheless, the present crisis indicated to Abravanel that the age of the Messiah was approaching.

Abravanel found clues to the date of redemption in the symbolic language of the book of Daniel. His interpretation stated that deliverance from exile would begin in 1503, exactly 1,435 years after the destruction of the Second Temple. He found confirmation of his expectation in a rabbinic legend that the soul of Adam was infused in the fourth hour of the sixth day. Following the allegorical interpretation that each day predicted one thousand years, Abravanel calculated that the fourth “hour” would last from 1490 to 1573. If the Messiah did not arrive in 1503, he would surely make his appearance by 1573. Abravanel foresaw a series of cataclysmic conflicts between Christianity and Islam that would prepare the way for the triumphant return of Israel to Jerusalem.

In 1503, Abravanel moved to Venice to live with his son Joseph, a physician. The Venetian government consulted Abravanel for advice regarding trade negotiations with Portugal. While in Venice, Abravanel completed his commentaries on the prophets and the Pentateuch. In 1505, three of his books, which had previously circulated as manuscripts, appeared in print in Constantinople.

When Abravanel died in 1508, his body was taken to Padua for interment because Venice forbade the burial of Jews within its precincts.

Significance

The mystical, antirationalist center of Abravanel’s writings marked him as being of the Middle Ages rather than of the Renaissance. Yet no Jewish writer was read more widely by both Christians and Jews during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Theologians and Bible critics from various Christian denominations studied his works, translated them into Latin, and discussed his arguments.

Critics found Abravanel’s biblical commentary intriguing, in part because, more than any other Jewish religious thinker, he cited and discussed Christian interpretations of the Bible. Christian theologians strove to refute Abravanel’s denial that Jesus was the Messiah, an assertion striking at the heart of Christianity.

Abravanel thought the world too rotten to be saved and that it must be destroyed. He assured his coreligionists that soon this destruction would happen.

He was the forerunner of the many messianic movements that agitated Jews during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as one false Messiah after another aroused hope that redemption was finally at hand. During the optimistic eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Abravanel was ignored and largely forgotten. The disasters of the twentieth century revived interest in his response to an earlier traumatic era and led to significant scholarly attention.

Bibliography

Borodowski, Alfredo Fabio. Isaac Abravanel on Miracles, Creation, Prophecy, and Evil: The Tension Between Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Biblical Commentary. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Asserts that Abravanel read the Bible seeking answers to questions about the meaning of existence and the possibility and purpose of miracles.

Feldman, Seymour. Philosophy in a Time of Crisis: Don Isaac Abravanel, Defender of the Faith. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. A systematic analysis of Abravanel’s defense of the main philosophical and theological beliefs of Judaism, examined partly as a response to the expulsion of Jews from Spain.

Lawee, Eric. Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Focuses on Abravanel’s biblical commentaries and Messianic works.

Netanyahu, Benzion. Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher. 3d ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972. This standard scholarly biography recounts Abravanel’s life and examines his ideas and influence.