Fashioning the Inner (Bātin) in Bahya ibn Paqūda's Duties of the Hearts

In the seminal work, Direction to the Duties of the Hearts, Bahya ibn Paqūda (flourished 11th century) aimed to reconstruct Jewish existence on the basis of a fundamental distinction between the duties of the members and the duties of the hearts. Bahya's intent was to instigate a transition towards the internalization of Jewish religious life. This paradigm shift was to take place not only by the shaping of an ideational formation and a new set of distinctions that Bahya aimed at integrating in Jewish life, but also through a reflective consideration of the state of the Jewish tradition, its transmission mechanisms, historical trajectory, and contemporaneous challenges. As I will demonstrate in this article, in order to realize this transformation, Bahya utilized a distinction that cross-cuts his work: the distinction between zāhir (external or manifest) and bātin (inner or hidden), that mostly indicates the relation between the manifest sphere of one's actions and the activity that takes place only in one's mental space. However, as I argue, this distinction is also applied by Bahya to the expanse of Jewish tradition, pertaining to what was disclosed in it and what was left unimparted, what was communicated and what was kept unsaid, what was remembered and what was neglected.