Concepts of Scripture in the School of Rashi 121scholarship, see Gilbert Dahan, “Genres, Forms and Various Methods in Christian
Exegesis of the Middle Ages,” in Saebo, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, vol. 1, part 2,
196 – 236; Rainer Berndt, “Th e School of St. Victor in Paris,” in ibid., 467 – 95.
- I have treated this text in Robert A. Harris, “Structure and Composition
in Isaiah 1 – 12: A Twelft h-Century Northern French Rabbinic Perspective,” in “A s
Th ose Who Are Taught ”: Th e Interpretation of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL, ed.
Claire Mathews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Litera-
ture, 2006). - See Ian Christopher Levy, “Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority
among Th ree Late Medieval Masters,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61:1 (2010):
40 – 68. - Th ese questions and others have recently been raised in Sara Japhet,
“Tension.” - Most of this commentary did not survive the Middle Ages; only his com-
ments on parts of two treatises are extant. - Famously reported by the 13th-century halakhist R. Mordecai b. Hillel Ash-
kenazi; see Harris, Discerning Parallelism, 25, n. 30. - See my articles, “Twelft h-Century Biblical Exegetes and the Invention of
Literature,” Commentaria 2 (2009): 311 – 29, and “Th e Reception of Ezekiel among
Twe l ft h-Century Northern French Rabbinic Exegetes,” in Aft er Ezekiel: Essays on
the Reception of a Diffi cult Prophet, ed. Andrew Mein and Paul M. Joyce (New York:
T&T Clark, 2011). - Among other ramifi cations, it ultimately led to the scholarly method of
critical inquiry, a crucial component of the university culture that consequently
developed throughout Europe. - See, e.g., Rashi’s interpretation of Exodus 23:2.
- Th e “Men of the Great Assembly” was a legendary group of 120 postbiblical
Jewish sages who were thought to bridge the gap between the last prophets and the
earliest rabbis. - See Eran Viezel, “Th e Formation of Some Biblical Books, According to
Rashi,” Journal of Th eological Studies 61:1 (2010): 29 – 31 and the scholarly discussion
cited there, 31, n. 29. - Again, see Harris, Discerning Parallelism, 28 – 30.
- See Ezekiel 24:24: “Th us shall Ezekiel be to you a sign; according to all
that he has done you shall do. When this comes, then you will know that I am the
Lord god.” - Respectively, these Hebrew terms may be translated literally as “scribes,”
“arrangers,” “writers,” and “masters of the book.” All of these terms, and others,
were employed by medieval exegetes to describe the actions of those anonymous
writers and compilers who were responsible for the biblical books as these came to
be passed on. Th e northern French exegetes were quite articulate in addressing the
role of the redactor, and there are far more examples of this than we can consider