European Journal of Jewish Studies 10 (2016) 201–222 brill.com/ejjs © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2�16 | doi 10.1163/1872471X-12341292 Isaac Arama’s “Nightmare:” Closing the Philosophical Exegetical Chapter Maimonides Opened James A. Diamond Abstract Isaac Arama (1420–1494), the most influential preacher in the generation of the expul- sion from Spain, attempted a balance between what he considered a foreign Greek body of rational knowledge on the one hand, and a supra-rational revealed knowledge native to Judaism’s prophetic tradition on the other. This article focuses on an aspect of his creative exegesis and in particular his engagement with Maimonides that was powerful enough, in addition to other historical factors of course, to close the chapter on Jewish philosophical exegesis which Maimonides spearheaded. Often, his own exegesis is pointedly constructed to subvert Maimonides’ own exegesis and thus offer an alterna- tive direction for biblical commentary that mediates between the rigor of philosophical reasoning, or the authority of the mind, and the existential faith commitment to revela- tion, or the authority of God. Keywords Isaac Arama – medieval – philosophy – Maimonides – exegesis Isaac Arama (1420–1494), an eminent fifteenth-century Spanish rabbi, who, like many of his colleagues, led a life of dislocation ending in expulsion, was distressed by the trend, most prominently advanced previously by Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), of reading the Hebrew Scriptures strictly philosophi- cally. In response, his own collection of sermons and biblical commentary, ʿAqedat Yitzḥaq [The Binding of Isaac], attempted a balance between what he considered a foreign Greek body of rational knowledge on the one hand, and a supra-rational revealed knowledge native to Judaism’s prophetic tra- dition on the other. According to one prominent scholar of the intellectual history of Jewish preaching, Arama was “the most influential preacher in the