EL-BALCHI, CHAVILA, so called after his native town Balchi (4:9z in Bactria, a cele brated rationalistic philosopher, commentator, and grammarian, who flourished about S80 A.D. He published a translation of the Pentateuch into Ara bic, with an elaborate commentary, which created as much excitement in the East as Voltaire's attacks upon the Bible created in Europe. And if we had not been convinced that the French infidel was ignorant of Hebrew and Arabic, we should have been tempted to believe that he copied the Jewish rationalist. El-Balchi's commentary has not as yet come to light, but Ibn Ezra, with other expositors, constantly quotes extracts from it, and refutes them in a most masterly manner.
El-Balchi's grand work, however, in which he intended to explain away all revelation, and to re duce the miracles of the Bible to mere poetical figures of speech and hyperboles, is The book of Animadversions (-mv, ItD), consisting of two hundred arguments against the inspiration of the Scriptures and revealed religion. This produc tion, too, is still hid in some libraries ; but copious quotations from it are dispersed through the biblical commentaries of the greatest Jewish philologians, who endeavour to refute them. We abstain from giving specimens from this work, because the argu ments which El-Balchi uses are exactly the same as those which the Deists of the 17th century ad vanced, and which are urged by the neologists and rationalists of the present clay. El-Balchi's works
rapidly circulated in Persia, Babylon, and Egypt, and became the favourite studies in the Jewish schools. Such was their fearful popularity, and such the baneful influence which they exercised over the minds of young students, that Saadia, Salomon ben Jerocham, Ibn Ezra, and the most distinguished Jewish commentators, were con strained formally to refute them. We dwell upon this point because the exegetical productions of these learned interpreters, abounding as they do with quotations from and allusions to El-Balchi and his associates, will sometimes hardly be under stood by the biblical student, sinless he bears in mind this rationalistic fraternity. By way of con tempt some writers, according to an Eastern con ceit, have transposed the letters D and D in the name and thus obtained the opprobrious nickname the dog. The identity of these names must be borne in mind by the student of Jewish exegesis.—C. D. G.