Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Concepts of Scripture in the School of Rashi 119

Robert A. Harris, “Rashi’s Introductions to His Biblical Commentaries,” in Shai Le-
Sara Japhet: Studies in the Bible, Its Exegesis and Its Language, ed. Moshe Bar-Asher
et al. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007).

3. I.e., the idea that the “Old Testament” pointed to the Christian messiah.
   See Anna Sapir Abulafi a, “Jewish Carnality in Twelft h-Century Renaissance
   Th ought,” in Christianity and Judaism, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford, UK: Blackwell,
   1992), 59 – 75.


4. See Rashi’s second comment on Gen. 22:2: Jerusalem is called “Moriah” be-
   cause “from there did Instruction go forth to Israel.” See also Targum Ps.- Jonathan
   to Isaiah 2:3.


5. Mishna Avot 1:1.


6. See Steven Fraade’s chapter 3 in this volume, on Oral Torah.


7. James L. Kugel, Th e Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New
   Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 103 – 4. See also Yaakov Elman, “Th e Rebirth
   of Omnisignifi cant Biblical Exegesis in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,”
   Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 2 (2003): 199n. 1, http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/
   2-2003/Elman.pdf.


8. Kugel, Idea of Biblical Poetry, 105.


9. Th e classic study is still that of Charles H. Haskins, Th e Renaissance of the
   Tw elft h Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927); see also Robert L.
   Benson and Giles Constable with Carole D. Lanham, eds., Renaissance and Renewal
   in the Twelft h Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, in association with
   the Medieval Academy of America, 1991), in particular, Nikolaus M. Häring’s essay
   “Commentary and Hermeneutics,” 173 – 200; Th omas J. Heff ernan and Th omas E.
   Burman, Scripture and Pluralism: Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds
   of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), in particular,
   Frans van Liere’s essay titled “Andrew of St. Victor, Jerome, and the Jews: Biblical
   Scholarship in the Twelft h-Century Renaissance,” 59 – 75; Brian Stock, Th e Implica-
   tions of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the 11th and 12th
   Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).


10. Robert A. Harris, Discerning Parallelism: A Study in Northern French Me-
    dieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004), 15 – 34.


11. For the development of Karaite biblical exegesis against the backdrop of
    Muslim intellectual and literary expression, see Meira Polliack’s chapter 6 in this
    volume and references there, as well as Daniel Frank, “Karaite Exegesis,” in Hebrew
    Bible/Old Testament: Th e History of Its Interpretation, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to
    the Middle Ages (until 1300), part 2, Th e Middle Ages, ed. Magne Saebo (Göttingen,
    Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).


12. See Avraham Grossman, “Th e School of Literal Exegesis in Northern
    France,” in Saebo, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, vol. 1, part 2, esp. 327 – 31.


13. On the former statement, see Sarah Kamin, Rashi ’s Exegetical Categoriza-
    tion in Respect to the Distinction between Peshat and Derash (Jerusalem: Magnes,