  Spinoza singled out Ibn Ezra for being the first, as far as he knew, to question the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (Harris 1993, 130–132). This observation greatly enhanced Ibn Ezra’s stature as an exegete, especially among Christians. Ibn Ezra’s emphasis on peshat, the “natural” interpretation of the Bible founded on philology and free of rabbinic interpretations, gained thereby considerable prestige. To be sure, Spinoza’s view of Ibn Ezra was not uniformly positive, and, for his part, Ibn Ezra makes it quite clear that his philological tools are not to be applied against tradition, but only where there is no tradition, and, especially, where no normative practices are at stake. However, as we have already seen, there have been wide fluctuations in the image of Ibn Ezra and the interpretation of his legacy.