Between Intellect and Intoxication: An Exploration of Tanḥum ha-Yerushalmi’s Commentary to the Book of Jonah

Tanhum b. Joseph Ha-Yerushalmi (d.1291) has drawn growing scholarly interest over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He has been rediscovered as a linguist, philologist, and exegete of the highest order. Not only does his considerable oeuvre provide us with a window into the intellectual life of its author, but it sheds light on a chapter of Jewish history which has only in recent years received the scholarly attention that it deserves: Egypt and the Levant in the post-Maimonidean period. To date, studies have overwhelmingly focused on Tanhum’s exoteric philological-linguistic (peshat) exegesis. While this represents the bulk of his interpretive output, it is only one of his modes of exegesis. In his commentaries to Jonah and Canticles, Tanhum presents extensive allegorical interpretations, in addition to his usual analysis of the literal sense of the text. This affords him the opportunity to explore themes of psychological, cosmological, and soteriological (salvational) significance. The present article revisits Tanhum’s commentary to Jonah, exploring central elements of his hermeneutics, his philosophical worldview, and his use of mystical terminology. Our commentator emerges as a fundamentally Peripatetic philosopher, and a Maimonidean exegete with regard to scriptural allegory; but also as an individual who was deeply conversant with Sufi discourse, and quite possibly a mystical practitioner. Tanhum’s commentary to Jonah allows us to encounter its author as a linguist and an allegorist, a philosopher and a mystic, and provides a window into the intellectual world of thirteenth century Egyptian and Levantine Jewry.