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Rashbam Scholarship in Perpetual Motion MORDECHAI Z. COHEN Elazar Touitou. Exegesis in Perpetuai Motion: Studied m the Pentateuchal Commentary of Rabbi Samuel ben Mew [Hebrew]. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003. Pp. 283.
OVER THE PAST QUARTER CENTURY, Elazar Touitou has substantially enhanced our understanding of the hermeneutics of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam; c. 1080-1160), one of the greatest proponents of the peshal method in the Jewish tradition of biblical interpretation. Touitou's "writing have opened bold new directions in evaluating Rashbam within the context of Jewish learning and his surrounding Christian intellectual milieu. His many studies, augmented by new ones, have been brought together here by the author in an integrated and updated form that reflects the changing landscape of modern research of the northern French peshat school founded by Rashbam's grandfather, Rashi (1040-1105). While the form and substance of the original essays dominate this book, Touitou also addresses new matters raised by scholars of biblical interpretation such as G. Dahan, S. Japhet, JV1. Lockshm, A. Mondschein, R. Salters, and M. Sokolow, as "well as historians such as A. Grossman and I. M. Ta-Shma, thereby creating an academic dialogue that paints a multifaceted intellectual portrait of Rashbam enriched by a variety of perspectives. The result is an insightful analysis of this great French exegete and his role in developing the peshat method, making Exegesis in Perpetual Motion required reading for anyone interested in Jewish biblical interpretation m its cultural context.
The primary challenge for a reader of Rashbam - like other northern French pes hat exegetes - stems from his lack of clear statements of interpretive theory and principles, "which has contributed to the mystification of the very definition of peshat, rendered variously as Scripture's "literal meaning," "plain meaning," "original meaning," "contextual meaning," and more.1 A second, related challenge is to account for the origins of the French peshat method, "which emerged suddenly as a departure from the older type of rabbinic exegesis. After its seemingly spontaneous generation in Rashi's "work, this new mode of reading appears as a full-blown exegetical system in the "writings of his two great students, Joseph Kara (c. 1050-1130) and Rashbam. Exegesis in Perpetual Motion, divided into three major sections, illuminates these issues "with sensitivity to their historical...