Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher רבינו בחיי בן אשר
commentator on the Torah in four senses
Rabbi Bachya ben Asher (d. c. 1340) was a preacher and dayan in Saragossa and a student of the Rashba. His commentary on the Torah, finished in 1291, is built on a rule he announces in the introduction: every passage is treated derech ha-peshat—by the plain sense, derech ha-midrash—by the sages' exposition, derech ha-sechel—by reason, and derech ha-kabbalah—by the hidden teaching.
That arrangement made the book a standard for very different readers: whoever seeks a plain explanation finds it on the first level, whoever seeks Kabbalah on the fourth, and both are reading one book. Through it many generations first met the language of the Zohar without opening the Zohar itself.
The sources give no exact years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman and the lists of Seder haDorot.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Rabbeinu Bachya, Commentary on the Torah, introduction — the four ways of exposition
Scholarship
- Reference literature: years of life — the years of birth and death by the agreed count of the reference literature; where the source says «about», it is marked as such
Basis: documents and evidence.