Creating Fictional Worlds: __Peshaṭ__-Exegesis and Narrativity in Rashbam's Commentary on the Torah

Drawing on the literary and narrative patterns in Rashbam's Torah Commentary this book offers a comprehensive rereading of one of the first Northern French peshat-commentaries and shows Rashbam's fascinating struggle to compete with the nascent vernacular literature. 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 Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 The Northern French School of Biblical Exegesis: The Status Quaestionis in Modern Scholarship 2 Reevaluating Biblical Commentaries in Northern France 3 R. Samuel ben Meïr (Rashbam): His Torah Commentary and Its Transmission 4 The Torah and the Art of Narrative 5 Rashbam’s Commentaries between רומנץ and ‘Romance’ 6 Peshaṭ and Halakhah 7 The Old French Glosses and Rashbam’s Exegesis ‘According to the Ways of the World’ Conclusion: Rabbis, Knights, and the Excitement of Medieval Adolescence Appendix: Synopsis of the Old French Glosses in Rashbam’s Torah-Commentary Bibliography General Index Index of Names Index of References