Menachem Mendel

Recently I read two interesting articles on related aspects of the Rashbam’s commentary on the Torah, and I thought that they raised some good questions that could be thought about over Shavuot. The first article is by Elazar Touitou in which he discussd the methodology of the Rashbam in his commentary on the Torah. One part of his very interesting article was his discussion of the Rashbam’s opinion regarding who wrote the Torah (“כותב התורה”). According to Touitou the Rashbam clearly differentiated between sections of the Torah which were written by God and those which were written by Moses (in a footnote he says that this question has nothing to do with the divinity of the Torah ['תורה מן השמים"], rather with its author and chronology of its composition). Touitou cites the comments of the Rashbam to a number of verses in which he describes how Moses was the author of these verses and not God (see the Rashbam to Gen. 1:1, 1:5, 1:27, 19:37, 36:24; his introduction to the Joseph story; Numbers 24:14). Touitou understands these comments of the Rashbam against the background of his, the Rashbam’s, opinion regarding the distinction between the legal and narrative portions of the Torah, the former being the word of God himself (“דבר ה’ עצמו”) and the narrative portions, and all of Deutermony as being written by Moses.

The second article is by Sara Japhet and discusses the tension between Rashbam’s committment to interpreting the Torah according to its “plain meaning” and midrash halachah. The four examples which Japhet discusses are: 1. The Hebrew slave (Exodus 21:2-6 and Lev. 25:39-41); 2. The Laws of Guards (שומרים) from Exodus 22:6-7, 9-12; 3. Tefillin (Exodus 13:16, 13:9; Deut. 6:8, 11:18); and 4. The Sabbath and the structure of the day (Gen. 1 and Exodus 20). Japhet shows how the Rashbam interpreted these texts according to their simple meaning (she has a discussion about the difficulty of defining what is “פשט”), even though this interpretation contradicted the accepted interpretation found in the midrash halachah. Japhet stresses how the Rashbam’s approach differed from other Biblical commentators such as Abraham ibn Ezra who in these instances rejected the simple meaning in favor of the accepted rabbinic interpretation. She sees Rashbam as maybe the only medieval commentator who completely drew a distinction between the plain meaning of the Torah and its legal interpretation.

Reading these two articles brought to mind the important writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel on the subject, both in his book God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism and his recently translated Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations (a translation of תורה מן השמים). In God in Search of Man Heschel says,

“Does the sanctity of the Bible depend on the amount of time that elapsed between the moment of revelation and the moment of committing its content to parchment? If God had wished that certain portions of the Pentateuch which were revealed to Moses be written down by Joshua, would that have detracted from its sanctity?…Is it proper to treat the divine dignity of the Bible as if it were a chronological problem (emphasis in the original), as if its authenticity could be verified by a notary public?” (257)

Heschel doesn’t answer all of our questions we may have as to the divinity of the Torah, nor regarding the tension between a critical study of the text and its divine status, yet he does say,

“The essence of our faith in the sanctity of the Bible is that its words contain that which God wants us to know and to fulfill. How these words were written down is not the fundamental problem. This is why the theme of Biblical criticism is not the theme of faith, just as the question of whether the lightning and thunder at Sinai were a natural phenomenon or not is irrelevent to our faith in revelation. The assumption of some commentators that the Decalogue was given on a rainy day does not affect our conception of the event.” (258)

Hag Sameah.

Update: I remembered that David Weiss Halivni writes about the Rashbam in a number of places and sees him as an important example of someone who was able to try and understand the simple meaning (“peshat“) while not seeing this as in potential conflict with the traditional halakhic system. Halivni writes about the Rashbam in his Midrash, Mishnah and Gemara and also in an essay, “An Unscientific Postscript” in The Seminary at 100. Also see this important article by Yeshayahu Maori and this one by Uriel Simon.

Sources:

1. Sara Japhet, “The Tension between Rabbinic Legal Midrash and the ‘Plain Meaning’ (Peshat) of the Biblical Text- An Unresolved Problem?: In the Wake of Rashbam’s Commentary on the Pentateuch”, in Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume, (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2004) 403-425.
2. Elazar Touitou, “Concerning the Methodology of R. Samuel b. Meir in His Commentary on the Pentateuch”, Tarbiz 48 (1979) 254-64 (Hebrew)

Posted on June 1st, 2006 under Uncategorized • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed