Joseph Kimhi

Who was Joseph Kimhi?

Joseph Ḳimḥi was a medieval Jewish rabbi and biblical commentator. He was the father of Moses and David Kimhi, and the teacher of Rabbi Menachem Ben Simeon.

Grammarian, exegete, poet, and translator; born in southern Spain about 1105; died about 1170. Forced to leave his native country owing to the religious persecutions of the Almohades who invaded the Spanish Peninusla in 1146, he settled in Narbonne, Provence, where he spent the rest of his life. The Provence region of southern France, at a time when the local Jewish population was under the considerable influence of the neighboring Spanish-Jewish community to the South. He is known to have written commentaries on all the books of the Bible, though only fragments of his work have survived until today. The foundation of his work is a literal reading of the Hebrew text and its grammatical analysis, interspersed with contemporary philosophical musings. This reflects his opposition to a christological reading of the text, which highlights allegory. In fact, Kimhi participated in several public debates with Catholic clergy, in which he highlighted his own method of reading biblical texts. His opposition to the contemporary Christian reading can be found in his Book of the Covenant.