Creating Fictional Worlds: Peshaṭ-Exegesis and Narrativity in Rashbam's Commentary on the Torah
Leiden: Brill, 2011. First edition. Hardcover. Octavo. xii, 319, (1)pp. Indices and 30 page bibliography. Text in English with some Hebrew (mostly in the footnotes). Pictorial green buckram with purple, chartreuse, and green spine bands, lettered in white. A fine as new copy.
R. Samuel ben Meir (b. 1085) wrote his Torah commentary at a point in time when the French masters of Bible collected their glossae, but he wrote it also at the point in time that we today consider to be the turning point in ‘lay literacy,’ when the Anglo-Norman aristocracy patronized the production of romances. In the first half of the 12th century, Northern France was a vibrant spot. It was an era in which composing, reading, and listening to narratives and stories intensified as a complex cultural phenomenon. This book presents the idea that Rashbam tried to compete with this new intellectual movement, claiming that the literary quality of the biblical texts was at least as good as that of the nascent courtly romances, or even on a par with one another. (Publisher)
Contents: Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter One The Northern French School of Biblical Exegesis: The Status Quaestionis in Modern Scholarship; 1. Jewish Life in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Northern France (Tsarfat); 2. The Emergence of Peshat-Exegesis in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Northern France; 3. Peshat-Exegesis as Anti-Christian Polemics?; 4. The Jews and the Langue d'Oïl; Chapter Two Reevaluating Biblical Commentaries in Northern France; 1. Bible Commentaries as Compilatory Literature?; 2. Rashi as a Hebrew Glossa Ordinaria?; 3. Glosses, Commentaries, and the Significance of the mise-en-page4. Rashbam's Commentaries as Glosses; Chapter Three R. Samuel ben Meïr (Rashbam): His Torah Commentary and Its Transmission; 1. Rashbam's Life and Works; 2. Traces of the Literary Transmission of Rashbam's Commentary on the Torah; 3. The Sitz im Leben of Rashbam's Torah Commentary; Chapter Four The Torah and the Art of Narrative; 1. The Arrangement of the Biblical Narrative; 1.1. The Creation Narrative as Moses' Literary Composition; 1.2. Only Those Things that One Can See: Narrative Exegesis versus Philosophical Speculations; 1.3. Literary Anticipation and Literary Bias: The Narratives of the Patriarchs1.4. Stylistic Devices; 2. 'Intentio auctoris': The Narrator and His Perspective; 2.1. History and Narrative; 2.2. 'Beyond the Jordan'; 2.3. The Psychology of the Biblical Author; 2.4. Author vs. Redactor?; 3. Fictional Dialogues in the Desert; 3.1. Moses' Refusal and the Awakening of a New Self-Awareness; 3.2. Moses' Reproof; 3.3. 'I, alone, should be distinguished': Interweaving Narratives and the Status of Moses; 4. Character Sketches in the Biblical Narratives: The Stories of the Patriarchs; 2. From Midrash to Romance: The 'Chaste' King of Cush3. Abimelech's Self-Restraint and the Honor of Sarah; 4. Hebrew Commentary Literature and the 'Knightly Aftermath'; Chapter Six Peshat and Halakhah; 1. Jewish Maskilim or Christian Adversaries: Rashbam and the Expertise of the Human World; 1.1. Introduction; 1.2. The Impurity of Animals and the Unambiguity of Divine Speech; 1.3. Bodily Purity and Figurative Speech; 1.4. Exceeding Denominational Boundaries: The Various Faces of 'Maskilim'; 2. The 'Ipssissima Verba Dei, ' the 'Redactor, ' and the Question of Peshat
Volume 25 of the Brill series, "Studies in Jewish History and Culture" (SJHC). Fine. Item #52202
ISBN: 9789004194564
Price: $150.00