Ikriti, Shemarja Ben-ellah

Ikriti, Shemarja ben-Ellah a Jewish philosopher and commentator, originally from Rome, flourished at Negroponte towards the close of the 13th and the opening of the 14th century. His father Eliah was a distinguished scholar of the island of Crete, whence he derived his name. Shemarja devoted his early years to the study of philosophical writings, but later he gave his time almost exclusively to the study of exegesis, as the result of which he translated and wrote commentaries on all the books of the 0. T., with the exception of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. His edition of Genesis, to which, according to his own statement, he devoted no less than twenty-five years, he dedicated, with other works of his, to king Robert of Naples (in 1328). The main object of writing these commentaries, which have never yet been published, was to reconcile the Rabbanites and Karaites. Himself a Rabbanite, he held that the Karaites were in the wrong to set aside altogether the Talmudical traditions; and the Rabbanites, he asserted, missed the mark also by not only assigning the first place to the Talmud, but by disregarding the Bible (comp. Ozar Nechmald,Vien. 1857, ii, 93). But, whatever his success may have been with the Rabbanites, he certainly failed to convince the Karaites, who read his works extensively, that the Talmudical Hagada contained a deep meaning unrevealed to the superficial student, or to persuade them that the Bible and Talmud both deserved a philosophical interpretation. Another aim which Shemarja is said to have had in writing his commentaries was the union of the followers of Maimonides (q.v.) with the old orthodox school. He also wrote a Logic, after the Greek style, and a Hebrew Grammar. See Grirtz, Gesch. d. Juden, 7, 318 sq.; Carmol.y in Jost's Annalen (1839), p. 69, 155; Dukes, Shir Shelomo (Hannov. 1858), 2, 4; Kitto, Cyclopaedia Bibl. Liter. 2, 377; Furst, Biblioth. Jude 1:3, 27 sq. (J. H.W.)