Examination of Rabbinic Commentaries on Moses

It is called Ben son; it is otherwise and more frequently brought out as A BEN, or with an aspirated Beth as AFEN, and is used in the Arabic manner in the surnames of other families as well, which reveals that the names of Averroes and Avicenna are corrupted from אבן רשד & אבן סינא Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina. This word, so used, signifies not simply son, but son's son, that is, a grandson; and it is sometimes also marked with a single perpendicular line, which is not a final Nun, as everyone hitherto from Elias's Thishbi a dictionary of rabbinic terms has opined, but rather an Arabic Aliph the letter A, as I demonstrated long ago more fully in the appendix to DE I Orbi Saracen on the religion of the Saracens, p. 20. There lived before him, fifty years or thereabouts, a certain R. Mofche, who also called himself Aben-Ezra, the author of the book ערוגת הבושם Bed of Spices, said to be from Canticles 5:13, but I scarcely believe he was among the kinsmen of this Abraham. For our man was a Spaniard by nation, and lived for a long time in the city of Rhodos Rhodes, where he penned most of his commentaries, which their subscriptions attest. For example, that which is appended to the end of Daniel: נשלם ספר דניאל, במרחשון שנת ארבעת אלפים ותתקיו' בעיר רודוס. והודות לשם לבדו / שעזר ברוב חסדו את אברהם עבדו / הוא המחבר / הוא הסופר The book of Daniel is finished, in the month of Marcheschvan (i.e., October), in the year 4916, in the city of Rhodes. Thanks to the divine name alone, which helped with the abundance of His mercy Abraham His servant, the author and writer of this. He elaborated commentaries on the entire Scripture, which in my judgment are far to be preferred to the former ones, and are held in the glossed greater Bibles, placed for the most part in the outer margin. The renowned Buxtorf mentions on page 273 of his Bibliotheca Rabbinica a certain book אות נפש Sign of the Soul, which contains an elucidation on Aben-Ezra, which I have not yet seen. I also collect from his notes to Genesis 11:1 that he also wrote a grammar; for thus he writes there among other things: בספר הדקדוק באתי למה חסר דלת אחת In the book of grammar, I have explained why the Daleth of the word 'one' is missing