History of Biblical Exegesis in Medieval Ashkenaz

Catalog description

On the basis of published texts as well as manuscripts, this course will identify and locate historically a significant body of comments on the Torah that were produced by several Tosafists and other leading rabbinic figures in northern France and Germany during the late 12th and early 13th centuries. These comments consist (broadly speaking) of a combination of rabbinic and peshat exegesis, and are perhaps closest overall to the commentaries of Rashi and R. Yosef Bekhor Shor. The existence of this stratum of commentaries has implications for several other important issues and problems within the intellectual history of medieval Ashkenaz, e.g., why the northern French pashtanim of the 12th century appear to have had few Ashkenazic heirs if any, and how the development in the mid-13th century (and beyond) of the diverse compilatory commentaries known as the perushei Baalei ha-Tosafot al ha-Torah is to be understood.