Introduction / Professor Robert Harris
Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency1
Although it seems clear that Rabbi Eliezer commented on many, if not most, of the books in the biblical canon, only one manuscript, containing three exegetical works, is extant. This is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 625 (= Neubauer 1465) containing Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary on Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve so-called “Minor” Prophets. The commentaries in this manuscript were not identified until the nineteenth century; they were published at the end of the nineteenth century, and towards the beginning of the twentieth.2 Virtually the entire remainder of Rabbi Eliezer’s exegetical labors, including commentaries on the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, and the Five Scrolls, is presumed to be lost.
Regarding the biographical details of his life, we are faced with a paucity of information. Rabbi Eliezer does not, like many other medieval exegetes, refer to his father’s name, describe travels he undertook or contemporary events, or any role he may have played in his community; he only barely mentions the name of his teacher, Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam). Although Avraham Grossman has deduced from the commentaries that Rabbi Eliezer participated in the anti-Christian polemic of his generation, his argument rests on Rabbi Eliezer’s occasional polemical comments, and we cannot relate these to any particular disputation or discussion in which he may have taken part.3 Norman Golb has placed Rabbi Eliezer in the Norman city of Rouen “in the early fifties of the twelfth century.”4 However, even with these few additional details, the judgment of the Wissenschaft scholar, Samuel Poznanski, that “almost nothing is known (about Rabbi Eliezer)” is unfortunately as true today as when he wrote at the turn of the century.5
Moreover, the name of his place of residence, “Beaugency” — transliterated in Hebrew as בלגנצי (blgntsy), when attached to Rabbi Eliezer’s name — appears in manuscripts in such permutations as bagtsy, balgyytsy, bayytsy, and others. However, there is no doubt as to which town is being referred to. As Poznanski notes, the name of the Roman village Balgentiacum has undergone various permutations through the ages. Beaugency is located in northern France near Orleans, in the Loire river valley.
Regrettably, identifying Rabbi Eliezer as one who hailed from Beaugency does not enhance our information about him. Next to nothing is known about the Jewish community of Beaugency during the period of Jewish settlement in northern France until the expulsion of 1306. Authoritative studies of the history of northern French Jewry during this period barely mention a Jewish community in Beaugency, and often the only indicator is considered to be the association of the name of the town with Rabbi Eliezer’s name. In fact, it may well prove to be true that there never was much of a Jewish community in Beaugency, and that, since “Eliezer” was a common Jewish name, he was known as “the Rabbi Eliezer who was from Beaugency” to differentiate him from the others of that period who share the name. Thus we are left with no more than a sketchy portrait of Rabbi Eliezer, the man of Beaugency.
Regarding Rabbi Eliezer, the exegete of Beaugency, however, we are in a somewhat better situation. As a biblical commentator, Rabbi Eliezer is virtually unparalleled in the medieval Jewish world in the degree to which he pays attention to the literary or rhetorical qualities of biblical compositional technique. While this observation is easily demonstrable when considering the entire range of Rabbi Eliezer’s extant corpus of exegesis (the commentaries on Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets), in this book I have chosen to present Rabbi Eliezer’s commentaries on Amos and Jonah, complemented with a representive selection of his (understandably longer) commentaries on Isaiah and Ezekiel. In an effort to allow the reader to assay Rabbi Eliezer’s exegesis on an entire biblical book, I begin with his commentary on Amos, both for the brevity, and also for the importance, of this prophetic work. Moreover, as we shall see, in this commentary, Rabbi Eliezer displays great acuity both with respect to prophetic rhetoric as well as to the book’s compositional techniques, and so provides an excellent example of his exegetical approach and hermeneutic.
As stated above, the vast majority of Rabbi Eliezer’s oeuvre did not survive the exigencies (and ravages) of the Middle Ages; particularly, the loss of his commentaries on the Torah and Former Prophets has effectively denied readers a sustained opportunity to appraise Rabbi Eliezer’s method of interpreting legal and narrative texts (prophetic texts being primarily poetic in nature). Therefore I chose as well to translate his commentary on Jonah, the one predominantly narrative work contained in the surviving corpus, which allows the reader to determine if Rabbi Eliezer’s hermeneutic changes when dealing with this prominent type of biblical discourse.6 Additionally, Rabbi Eliezer’s focus on the book’s contextual exegesis enables him also to address issues of character analysis, and Jonah’s had traditionally been in need of some aid.7 For, according to the biblical narrative, not only does Jonah not obey God’s original command to go prophesy to the Ninevites (1:2–3) he apparently becomes distressed when God revokes the decree of destruction (3:10–4:1). However, Rabbi Eliezer claims that this is not the way the narrative should be understood. On the contrary, Rabbi Eliezer makes the case that the reader is privy to information effectively denied to the narrative’s central character. Unlike Jonah, the reader knows that the Ninevites do respond favorably to Jonah’s prophetic word, and that they repent of their evil ways.
Finally, since Rabbi Eliezer’s most prominent surviving works are his interpretations of Isaiah and Ezekiel, the present translation affords readers a glimpse into these important commentaries. Rabbi Eliezer wrote brief introductions to each of those books, and I have included both of these in this edition. While not complex compositions along the lines of those thirteenth century examples discussed by Alastair Minnis,8 Rabbi Eliezer’s introductions do provide a kind of early Jewish counterpoint to the prevailing Christian trends.9 With respect to the excerpts from Rabbi Eliezer’s commentaries on Isaiah and Ezekiel, I have sought to include both examples that are representative of his exegetical methodology, as well as some whose content are of particular interest. In particular, as was the case with the commentaries on Amos and Jonah, the exemplary nature of Rabbi Eliezer’s commentaries on Isaiah and Ezekiel are not to be found in the realm of theology or religious practice; rather, Rabbi Eliezer’s concerns are, in the main, literary. That is, he is most interested in enabling his reader to understand the substance and essential meaning of the biblical passage under review. To draw a contrast, whereas Christian exegetes might endeavor at great length to tease out the apocalyptic ramifications of the four beasts in Ezekiel 1, or where Jewish and Christian exegetes alike might seek to fully explain the metaphorical implications of God’s command to eat the scroll in Ezekiel 3, Rabbi Eliezer is much more interested in clarifiying biblical texts whose basic meaning is unclear, or to otherwise concern himself with compositional and structural literary concerns that would typically stand outside the purview of other medieval exegetes. Moreover, this clarification often takes the form of paraphrase: it is not at all the case that Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary is composed on the basis of “text/incipit followed by commentary,” but rather, particularly when he senses the text to be especially laconic and allusive, he composes a commentary that is essentially an expanded version of the Biblical text itself.
Although Rabbi Eliezer’s attention to rhetoric is extraordinary for a medieval Jewish exegete, it is clear he did not operate in a scholarly vacuum; several prominent exegetes preceded him whose work to some degree influenced his own. In fact, in considering the course of the northern French rabbinic peshat school of biblical exegesis, the so-called School of Rashi, Rabbi Eliezer falls, along with R. Yosef Bekhor Shor (Joseph of Orleans) at the very end of that school’s prominence. The commentaries of R. Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi) were, for all of the French commentators who followed him, including Rabbi Eliezer, highly influential. Moreover, the exegesis and methodology of Rashi’s grandson, Rashbam, made an especially important contribution to Rabbi Eliezer’s development as a biblical exegete. To a lesser extent, the commentaries of Rashi’s younger contemporary, R. Yosef Kara, likewise influenced Rabbi Eliezer. Finally, the traditions and literature (whether learned in traditional master-to-student instruction or from the reading of literary texts10) that were commonly available to northern French rabbis of the time was likewise available to Rabbi Eliezer; Targum, Talmud, midrash, and other rabbinic literature, while not finding expression to a high degree in his commentaries, are nevertheless referred to occasionally, and presumably formed the basis for Rabbi Eliezer’s own rabbinic education.11
In the footnotes to the present translation, I have endeavored to cite not only relevant contemporary bibliography and other types of information typically found in works of modern scholarship, but have sought also to incorporate a kind of “supercommentary” intended to demonstrate how to read the Bible through the vision of Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary. In my translation I tend towards a literal rendering, and have tried faithfully to represent the language of Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary, with a minimum of expansion. In general, I try not to “smooth” Rabbi Eliezer’s sometimes run-on sentences into better English. When I feel the need to express words or thoughts that Rabbi Eliezer seems to presume but does not state, I employ words or phrases in parenthesis, trying to keep these to a bare minimum. A classic case in point, repeated throughout the present volume, involves the citations of biblical verses. First, rabbinic exegetes presume that their students know the Bible by heart. This is not an exaggeration but is demonstrated throughout the entirety of medieval rabbinic exegesis both of the Bible and of the Talmud: typically, a rabbinic exegete cites only a very few words from a biblical verse, expecting that his student or reader will be able to complete the verse in his own mind. Therefore, the reader should not expect to find that Rabbi Eliezer cites entire verses, either as the incipit or in the course of his commentary; where I felt the need to reference more of the biblical text, for the sake of the contemporary reader, I placed additional words in parenthesis. Likewise, the reader should not expect to find the Bible consistently translated according to one or another modern translation (e.g., RSV or NJPS); rather, I have attempted to present an English translation of the Bible that most faithfully reflects the passage according to Rabbi Eliezer’s own interpretation.
Like most rabbinic exegetes of the Northern French School, Rabbi Eliezer occasionally employs Old French translations for difficult Biblical Hebrew words or phrases. In addition to Poznanski’s notes (ad. loc.), I have relied for my translations upon the following dictionaries and studies:
Banitt, Menahem, ed., ed. Le Glossare De Bale: Introduction, Corpus Glossariorum Biblicorum Hebraico-Gallicorum Medii Aevi, Tomus Primus. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, 1972.
(idem.). Le Glossare De Bale: Texte, Corpus Glossariorum Biblicorum Hebraico-Gallicorum Medii Aevi, Tomus Primus. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, 1972.
(idem.). Le Glossaire De Leipzig: Texte. Vol. I, Corpus Glossariorum Biblicorum Hebraico-Gallicorum Medii Aevi, Tomus Secundus. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1995.
Fudeman, Kirsten A. “The Old French Glosses in Joseph Kara’s Isaiah Commentary (Ms Lutzki 778).” Revue des études juives 165:1–2 (2006): 147–77.
Greimas, Algirdas Julien. Dictionnaire De L’ancien Français. Paris: Larousse, 1992.
Hindley, A., F. W. Langley, and B. J. Levy. Old French-English Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
One final note: This translation presents a commentary that is both reflected by, as well as reflected in, the exegetical trends of the twelfth century Christian scholarly community with which it is contemporary. Two generations ago Beryl Smalley pointed to exegetical methodologies and contents that were common to both Christian and Jewish medieval biblical scholarship. Today we are able to state unequivocally that during the twelfth century northern French Renaissance, Jews and Christians began to approach the interpretation of the Bible in strikingly similar ways, even as the content of the commentaries continued to express the different orientations of their respective faith traditions. Moreover, I refer here neither merely to the “smoking guns” of direct polemical address,12 nor to the occasional, similar interpretations that have led any number of modern researchers to look for direct influence.13 Of much greater importance is the similarity in outlook that twelfth century rabbis and churchmen share when engaging in the process of explicating a biblical text: Readers familiar with medieval Christian biblical exegesis will recognize that Rabbi Eliezer (like his northern French rabbinic forebearers) employs a hermeneutic that reflects the essential norms and practices of contemporary (especially Victorine) Christian glossators. This similarity is both of an intellectual as well as a technological nature.14 The latter is, perhaps, easier to understand: whereas Christian exegetes had long before adopted the ancient Greco-Roman tradition of glossing the works of classical and biblical authors (and whereas both Muslims and Jews in the Mediterranean world had done so, likewise, albeit in Arabic), European Jews had not adopted the commentary genre until the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.15 It is not often remarked how truly revolutionary the commentary form was to medieval European Jewry, and this leap in technology — writing literary, textual glosses, “on the page” and not in a separate work — greatly contributed to the new type of contextual reading advocated by twelfth century rabbinic masters.16 But even beyond the technological changes, the common intellectual and ideological approach to reading among twelfth century Jewish and Christian masters is often overlooked: because the contents of rabbinic and Christian exegesis is so remarkably (and expectedly) different, it is easy to miss that both the 12th century rabbinic pashtanim, or “advocates of contextual biblical reading,” and Christian scholars who practiced ad litteram methodologies, shared the goal of not necessarily overturning older traditional theologies, liturgies, and religious practices but of adding to them an essentially literary reading that expressed fidelity to what the ancient biblical text had meant in its own historical period.
Both Hugh of St. Victor and Rashbam, rough contemporaries and with whom we began this introduction, were pious scholars, steeped in the devotions of their respective faiths. And yet each sought to find a place at the table, as it were, for context as a key element to determine the meaning of a biblical passage — this not as a threat to religious faith or practice but as an enhancement of it.
Let us examine two brief examples. The first of these is an excerpt from Hugh’s Didascalicon (Book Six, Chapter 10):
There are certain places in Sacred Scripture where, although the meaning of the words is clear, there nevertheless seems to be no sense, either because of an unfamiliar mode of expression or because some detail of the text hinders the comprehension of the reader… perhaps you are unable to understand what the whole passage taken together signifies… Therefore, you think that the passage, whose literal meaning you cannot discern, must be understood in a strictly spiritual sense… See, you have interpreted the passage spiritually, but you do not understand what it might intend to say according to the letter. The Prophet, however, was also able to signify something with these words according to the letter.17
Again, observe that Hugh does not intend to negate the spiritual dimension of Sacred Scripture, but only wishes to advocate the contextual meaning that he thinks is all too often misunderstood. We had earlier discussed a similar passage from Rashbam’s commentary; let us now turn to another, where he not only advocates on behalf of reading in context but boldly acknowledges that this reading may utterly contradict received and authoritative religious tradition about biblical law:
Let knowers of wisdom know and understand that I have not come to explain halakhot,18 even though these are the essence of Torah, as I have explained in my Genesis commentary. For it is from the apparent superfluousness of Scripture that aggadot and halakhot are derived.19 Some of these can be found in the commentary of our Rabbi Solomon, my mother’s father (i.e., Rashi), may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing. But I have come to explain the contextual meaning of Scripture. And I will explain the laws and halakhot according to realia (lit. “the way of the world”). And (I will do this) even though the halakhot are the essence (of Judaism), as the Rabbis taught (b Sota 16a): “halakha uproots Scripture.”
Rashbam composes this passage as a kind of introduction to the legal portion of the Pentateuch (at Exodus 21:1), the very spot at which the Torah transitions from an essentially narrative document to a predominantly legal document. He thus chooses his ground carefully: at precisely the moment when a Jewish reader might think that reading according to the Bible’s ancient context would be a threat to rabbinic legal traditions about the practice of Judaism, Rashbam states unequivocally that the Torah can sustain a multivocalic reading, both conveying its original and contextual meaning as well as eternal religious truth.20 One immediately can see how similar Hugh and Rashbam are in intellectual outlook, even as they themselves might have been astonished at this notion.
As a principal student of Rashbam, Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency boldly continued the exegetical program of his master.21 By analogy, Andrew of St. Victor did so likewise with respect to Hugh’s prior teaching.22 Each of these two exegetes became the exemplars par excellence of Jewish and Christian contextual biblical exegesis in the mid-to-late-twelfth century. Having briefly introduced the reader to Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency’s exegetical methodology and set him within the context of 12th Century biblical exegesis, let us now turn to his commentaries, and read Scripture as he would have us read it.
Throughout this edition, I shall adhere to the following format: I shall present the incipit, any citation from the current verse, in bold face type; I will use italics to indicate any verse Rabbi Eliezer cited from other biblical books or different contexts from the book he is explicating; and for Rabbi Eliezer’s own interpretations, I will use regular typeface. Like virtually all modern editions of the Bible, I employ here the anachronistic chapter and verse distinctions that Stephen Langton introduced in the Parisian Bibles, even though rabbis did not typically use these until after the invention of printing. Finally, my general practice with respect both to Rabbi Eliezer’s incipits as well as to the verses he cites in support of his interpretations is to translate the Bible through Rabbi Eliezer’s eyes. Thus, the translation does not necessarily follow the insights of contemporary scholarship. Of course, when I do rely on modern translations, I designate these through their well-known sigla, e.g., NJPS stands for Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).
1. This section is rooted in the observations I first made in my dissertation, “The Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency,” dissertation, Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997.
2. Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary on Isaiah was published first: John W. Nutt, Commentaries on the Latter Prophets By R. Eliezer of Beaugency: Isaiah [Hebrew, with English introduction] (London, Paris and Frankfurt: Joseph Baer and Co., 1879). The commentaries on Ezekiel and the Twelve were published by Samuel Poznanski, Commentary on Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets By Eliezer of Beaugency [Hebrew] (Warsaw: Mikize Nirdamim, 1913). Poznanski’s lengthy introduction to his edition of Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary on Ezekiel and the Twelve (the editio princeps) is a monograph in its own right, and remains the starting point for all studies of eleventh to twelfth century northern French rabbinic exegesis of the Bible. These commentaries have now been included in the critical edition of the rabbinic Bible; begun in 1992 (with the Joshua-Judges volume), this edition is not yet complete, although nearly twenty volumes have been published. Although I have consulted the lone manuscript, the relevant volumes for the present translation are: Menachem Cohen, ed., Mikraot Gedolot ‘Haketer’: A Revised and Augmented Scientific Edition of ‘Mikraot Gedolot’ Based on the Aleppo Codex and Early Medieval Mss: Isaiah (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1996); Ezekiel was published in this series in 2000, and the Twelve in 2012.
3. See Avraham Grossman, “The School of Literal Exegesis in Northern France,” in Hebrew Bible/old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Volume I: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300). Part 2: The Middle Ages (Magne Saebo, ed. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 321–71 (363–66).
4. Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 319–24. To be sure, Golb wishes to locate virtually every known twelfth century northern French rabbi in Rouen, so some of his conclusions, at the very least, need to be taken with a healthy grain of salt.
5. Samuel Poznanski (1913), cxxv.
6. An additional boon of translating Rabbi Eliezer’s commentary on Jonah is related to the publication, also in the TEAMS Commentary Series, of Deborah Everhart’s translation of Haimo of Auxerre’s Commentary on Jonah: Deborah Everhart, Commentary on the Book of Jonah: Haimo of Auxerre (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications; Western Michigan University, 1993). Haimo, of course, is a ninth century Christian exegete — thus living approximately three centuries earlier than Rabbi Eliezer — who wrote according to a completely different poetics (Christian allegory). Nonetheless, despite their differences, it is useful to be able to present to the public (and in the same series) Christian and Jewish commentaries on the same text. To be sure, it is to be hoped that a wide selection of twelfth century Victorine and northern French rabbinic commentaries be studied in tandem and published in critical editions and translation, to enable even more fruitful comparative and contrastive studies. In addition to other volumes in the TEAMS Series, two impressive examples of this are: Frans Van Liere, Andrew of St. Victor: Commentary on Samuel and Kings: Introduction, Translation and Notes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); and a text I have already cited, Franklin T. Harkins and Frans van Liere, Interpretations of Scripture: Theory (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).
7. See Yvonne Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
8. A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
9. For a more extensive discussion, see Eric Lawee, “Introducing Scripture: The Accessus Ad Auctores in Hebrew Exegetical Literature From the Thirteenth Through the Fifteenth Centuries,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (J.D. McAuliffe, B.D. Walfish, and J.W. Goering, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 157–79.
10. See below.
11. For a concise presentation of the history of northern French rabbinic exegesis of the Bible, see Avraham Grossman, “The School of Literal Exegesis in Northern France” (2000); and Robert A. Harris, “Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Middle Ages: From Its Beginnings Through the Twelfth Century,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible (Richard Marsden and Ann Matter, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2012), 596–615.
12. In rabbinic circles, these would typically be introduced by the phrase תשובת המינים, teshuvat ha-minim (or תשובה למינים, teshuva la-minim); literally, “a response to the heretics.” Throughout twelfth century rabbinic exegesis of the Bible, this phrase — always and everywhere — refers to Jewish-Christian polemics. On the use of the term in medieval Jewish exegesis, see Michael Signer, “Consolation and Confrontation: Jewish and Christian Interpretation of the Prophetic Books,” in Scripture and Pluralism: Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Thomas J Heffernan and Thomas E Burman, eds. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005), 77–93 (91); Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Does Rashi’s Torah Commentary Respond to Christianity? A Comparison of Rashi With Rashbam and Bekhor Shor,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (J. Kugel, H. Najman, and J. Newman, eds., Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 449–72; and Ephraim Kanarfogel, “Trinitarian and Multiplicity Polemics in the Biblical Commentaries of Rashi, Rashbam and Bekhor Shor,” Gesher 7 (1979): 15–37. There is extensive research on this subject in modern Israeli scholarship.
13. See, e.g., Gilbert Dahan, “Les Interpretations Juives Dans Les Commentaires Du Pentateuque De Pierre La Chantre,” in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Studies in Church History: Subsidia 4, Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, eds., Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 131–56. A classic and extended examination of fourteenth century Christian exegesis (Nicholas de Lyra) that overlaps with prior Jewish interpretation (Rashi) is found in Herman Hailperin Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963). An additional striking example is found in Sarah Kamin and Avrom Saltman, Secundum Salomonem: A 13th Century Latin Commentary on the Song of Songs (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989).
14. I make this argument more fully in a recently written, though not yet published, article, entitled “From ‘Religious Truth-Seeking’ to Reading: The Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Emergence of Peshat and Ad Litteram as Methods of Accessing the Bible.” It is to be published in the conference volume from The Melton Coalition Conference In Jerusalem: The Oral and the Textual in Jewish Tradition and Jewish Education (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, December 28–30, 2014).
15. In particular, Karaite Jews (living a few centuries earlier and residing in areas of Muslim political, linguistic, and cultural dominance) had adopted the commentary genre in their biblical exegesis, and this had an influence on contemporary Rabbanite circles. In particular, see Daniel Frank, Search Scripture Well: Karaite Exegetes and the Origins of the Jewish Bible Commentary in the Islamic East (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004). Virtually all of this exegesis, however, Karaite and Rabbanite alike, was composed in Arabic, and therefore could have only an indirect influence on northern European Jews who did not know that language.
16. On the transition from oral to literary culture in medieval rabbinic culture, see Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
17. Harkins, and van Liere, Interpretations of Scripture: Theory (2012), 176.
18. I.e., matters pertaining to Jewish Law, as this may either pertain or not pertain to specific biblical legal verses.
19. Rashbam references here ancient and authoritative rabbinic narrative and legal traditions, respectively, that the Talmud and other rabbinic works call “Oral Torah.” The rabbis considered these to be as much a part of Divine Revelation as the “Written Torah,” i.e., the Bible.
20. For a discussion of this distinction between literary context and “religious truth seeking” in twelfth century northern French rabbinic culture, see Robert A. Harris, “Concepts of Scripture in the School of Rashi,” In Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction (Benjamin D. Sommer, ed., New York and London: New York University Press, 2012), 102–22.
21. In fact, Rabbi Eliezer was one of the few exegetes whose name has survived who consistently pursued Rashbam’s program of contextual exegesis to the exclusion of rabbinic traditions. See Ephraim Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 118–26.
22. See above, note 6.