RT Article
T1 Fashioning the "Inner" (Bāṭin) in Baḥya ibn Paqūda’s Duties of the Hearts
JF Harvard theological review
VO 116
IS 4
SP 552
OP 574
A1 Mikhaʾelis, ʿOmer
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1860884741
AB In the seminal work, Direction to the Duties of the Hearts, Baḥya ibn Paqūda (flourished 11th century) aimed to reconstruct Jewish existence on the basis of a fundamental distinction between the "duties of the members" and the "duties of the hearts." Baḥya’s intent was to instigate a transition towards the internalization of Jewish religious life. This paradigm shift was to take place not only by the shaping of an ideational formation and a new set of distinctions that Baḥya aimed at integrating in Jewish life, but also through a reflective consideration of the state of the Jewish tradition, its transmission mechanisms, historical trajectory, and contemporaneous challenges. As I will demonstrate in this article, in order to realize this transformation, Baḥya utilized a distinction that cross-cuts his work: the distinction between ẓāhir ("external" or "manifest") and bāṭin ("inner" or "hidden"), that mostly indicates the relation between the manifest sphere of one’s actions and the activity that takes place only in one’s mental space. However, as I argue, this distinction is also applied by Baḥya to the expanse of Jewish "tradition," pertaining to what was disclosed in it and what was left unimparted, what was communicated and what was kept unsaid, what was remembered and what was neglected.
K1 Baḥya ibn Paqūda
K1 Duties of the Hearts
K1 bāṭin
K1 Hermeneutics
K1 Interiority
K1 Tradition
K1 ẓāhir
DO 10.1017/S0017816023000305