Abraham ben Isaac of Narbonne (Hebrew:ר׳ אַבְרָהָם בֶּן יִצְחָק מִנַרְבּוֹנָה)(c. 1080-85 – 1158) was aProvençal rabbi, also known asRaavad II, and author of thehalachic workHa-Eshkol (The Cluster).
His teacher wasMoses ben Joseph ben Merwan ha-Levi, during whose lifetime Abraham was appointed president (AvBeth Din) of the nine-member rabbinical board ofNarbonne, and was made principal of the rabbinical academy.Talmudists he taught there includedAbraham ben David III (who afterward became his son-in-law) andZerahiah ha-Levi. Abraham ben Isaac died at Narbonne in 1158.
Like most of theProvençal scholars, Raavad II was a diligent author, composing numerous commentaries upon theTalmud, all of which, however, have been lost with the exception of that upon the treatiseBaba Batra, of which a manuscript has been preserved inMunich. Numerous quotations from these commentaries are to be found in the writings ofZerahiah Gerondi,Nahmanides,Nissim Gerondi, and others. Many of his explanations of Talmudical passages are also repeated in hisresponsa which give his method of treatment. In Abraham's comments on the Talmud he seems to have takenRashi as his model; for they are marked by the same precision and clearness of exposition.
An idea of his Talmudic knowledge may be gathered from his bookHa-Eshkol.Benjamin Hirsch Auerbach published an 1867 edition of theEshkol in three volumes with commentary which is now known to be a forgery. Most scholars assume it is an intentional forgery by Auerbach. (HaNigleh SheBaNistar pg. 144 n. 203). However, Auerbach's edition is known to contain a wide variety of much later material.Shalom andHanoch Albeck published an separate edition from genuine manuscripts in 1935-1938. Albeck writes that the book is, in practice, mostly a redaction of theSefer haIttim ofJudah ben Barzillai.[1] In 1985 a "fourth volume" of Auerbach's edition was published byBernard Bergman, who had defended Auerbach's edition in a 1974 essay that makes clear that he did not then have access to any manuscript of either the Eshkol or Auerbach's commentary thereon. The fourth volume cites a book which had not yet been published at the time of Auerbach's death. Bergman, who was convicted of Medicaid fraud in 1976, never explained where he obtained the material for this "fourth volume."[2]
His depth and acumen, however, are shown to much better advantage in hisresponsa, quoted in the collectionTemim De'im[3] and in theSefer ha-Terumot ofSamuel Sardi. Otherresponsa sent toJoseph ben Ḥen (Graziano) ofBarcelona andMeshullam ben Jacob ofLunel are found in a manuscript belonging to Baron de Günzburg inSaint Petersburg. A collection of Raavad II's responsa preserved inYemen, the only manuscript of its kind, was published by R.Yosef Qafih in 1962.[4][5] As an acknowledged rabbinical authority and president of the rabbinical board, he was frequently called upon to give his decision on difficult questions: and his answers show that he was not only a lucid exegete, but also a logical thinker.
Though he lacked originality, Abraham's influence upon Talmudical study in Provence ought not to be underrated.Languedoc formed politically a connecting link betweenSpain and northernFrance; in like manner Jewish scholars played the rôle of intermediaries between the Jews of these countries. Abraham ben Isaac represented this function; he was the intermediary between the dialectics employed by thetosafists of France and the systematic science of the Spanish rabbis. The French-Italian codifiers –Aaron ha-Kohen of Lunel,Zedekiah ben Abraham, and many others – took Abraham'sHa-Eshkol for their model; and it was not until the appearance of theTur (byJacob ben Asher) thatHa-Eshkol lost its importance and sank into comparative oblivion. The school founded by Abraham ben Isaac, as exemplified inRABaD III and Zerahiah ha-Levi, was nevertheless the creator of a system of Talmudic criticism; and the method it employed was thetosafist dialectic modified and simplified by Spanish-Jewish logic.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906)."Abraham b. Isaac of Narbonne".The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. It has the following bibliography:
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