Examination of Rabbinic Commentaries on Moses

אחת One/Once in the book Dikduk treatise on grammatical subtleties, I explained why the Daleth the letter D of the word f. אחת one is missing (which ought to have been formed fully as אחדת, from the masculine אחד); but I think it either perished, or perhaps that star hid itself upon the rising of the sun, as it were, of Kimchi's David Kimchi, a medieval grammarian most absolute Michlol his major grammatical work. Elias Levita a Jewish grammarian and lexicographer also mentions in Schifr. Luch. Sefer Ha-Bahur, a grammar book, folio Ayn. 1. b., a certain book entitled מאזנים Scales, which R. Aben-Ezra composed. But that third one, in the four-part work called Arba turim the Four Rows, a legal code, concerning which see above page 98, is not by this author, as one might suspect from the title אבן העזר Eben Ha-Ezer, literally Stone of Help, but by R. Jacob bar Ascher, who published it not quite three hundred years ago, and thus nearly two hundred years after him. For our Esra flourished nearly five hundred years ago, around the year of our Lord 1150; which, besides the postscript cited above, is also evident from that [postscript] with which he concluded the Twelve Minor Prophets: פירשתיו אני המחבר אברהם בן מאיר בן עזרא הספרדי / שנת ארבעת אלפים ותשע מאות ושבע עשרה בראש חד טבת בעיר רודוס I, the author, Abraham son of Meir, son of Esra, the Spaniard, have explained this. In the year 4917 (which corresponds to the Christian year 1157) around the new moon of the month of Tebeth (which corresponds roughly to our December) in the city of Rhodes. Although the Jews place this Esra after Jarchi Rashi, they nevertheless value him so highly that they call him by way of eminence החכם the Sage, just as we name Aristotle "the Philosopher" and Virgil "the Poet" absolutely. He earned that honor by his distinguished and varied erudition; for he was not only versed in sacred things like the others, but also practiced in all philosophy, especially mathematics, as is apparent even from those things alone which I borrowed from him concerning the stars Kimah the Pleiades and Kefil Orion in Astroscopia the author's work on astronomy, p. 44. Here, the Jews otherwise fail, and are profoundly ignorant of philosophy; which is not the least cause of their amazement and obstinacy. For I would certainly hope they might be more tractable,