Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible

II. Writings on the Bible

II | Writings on the Bible 175 Prefatory Note to Selection 14. From Introduction to Commentary on Ecclesiastes In parallel with his German philosophical writings, aimed at a broad European audience, Mendelssohn composed Hebrew writings primarily aimed for Jewish consumption. In 1768 he completed a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which was published in 1770. Given his philosophical interests, it is not incidental that Mendelssohn chose to write a commentary on part of the biblical “wisdom literature.” In the introduction to his commentary (selection 14), Mendelssohn ­ presents an important discussion of Jewish exegesis, taking as his starting point the notion of four levels of biblical interpretation (the so-called PaRDeS) that had been current in Jewish thought since at least the thirteenth ­ century.1 Attentive to the Christian critique that rabbinic exegesis was illogical and arbitrary, Mendelssohn notes that none of the levels of interpretation “contradict the ways of the intellect and logic.” And drawing on the literary sensibility that he had honed in his German work on aesthetics, Mendelssohn interprets rabbinic exegesis as a method of careful literary analysis of the Bible. Source Selection 14. Excerpt from Introduction to Commentary on Ecclesiastes, JubA 14:148–51 (in Hebrew). 1. [The four levels of biblical interpretation designated by PaRDeS are peshat, derush, remez, and sod. See note 2.] ...