In the days of prophecy, indeed, in the months of old, when out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shined forth, we used to learn and know from the holy Torah all the sciences and truths of reason, including all that were humanly attained, for everything is either latent therein or plainly stated. What other peoples possessed of these sciences and truths was, by comparison with us, very little. . . . But after the indwelling Presence of God departed from our midst because of our many iniquities, when prophecy and insight ceased . . . we were no longer able to derive understanding of all scientific developments and attainments from the Torah's words; this condition, however, persists due to our own falling short, our failure to know the Torah in full perfection. Thus the matter has come to be in reverse; for if, after we have come to know all the sciences . . . we study the words of the Torah, then the eyes of our understanding open to the fact that the sciences are included in the Torah's words, and we wonder how we could have failed to realize this from the Torah itself to begin with. . . .

For when I studied the words of the Torah in the way now common among most people, I had no idea that the science of rhetoric or any part of it was included therein. But once I had studied and investigated rhetoric, searched for her as for hid treasures out of the treatises written by men of nations other than our own, and afterwards came back to see what is said of her in the Torah and the Holy Scriptures, then the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw that it is the Torah which was the giver.

 

DOCUMENT SOURCE