Rashi’s Revolutionary Commentary Deviates from Midrash, Why?

The commentary of Rashi (Troyes, 1040/1–1105)^[1] has long been so integral to Torah study that many Jewish readers can’t imagine studying the Bible without it. When first introduced, however, it was revolutionary—as attested by Rashi’s grandson Rashbam (R. Solomon ben Meir, ca. 1080–ca. 1160).

^{רשב"ם בראשית לז:ב} והראשונים מתוך חסידותם נתעסקו לנטות אחרי הדרשות שהן עיקר, ומתוך כך לא הורגלו בעומק פשוטו של מקרא...

^{Rashbam Gen 37:2} The early generations, due to their piety, tended to delve into the derashot, since they are fundamental (‘iqqar), and therefore they were not accustomed to the deep peshat of Scripture.

וגם רבנו שלמה אבי אמי מאיר עיני גולה שפירש תורה נביאים וכתובים נתן לב לפרש פשוטו של מקרא.

Now our Master, Rabbi Solomon (=Rashi), the father of my mother, luminary of the Diaspora, who interpreted the Torah, Prophets and Writings, endeavored to interpret the peshat of Scripture.^[2]

Rashi himself states his intention to depart from rabbinic midrashic tradition and focus on peshuto shel miqra (“the plain sense of Scripture”):

^{רש"י על בראשית ג:ח} יש מדרשי אגדה רבים, וכבר סדרום רבותינו על מכונם בבראשית רבה ושאר מדרשות.

^{Rashi, Gen 3:8} There are many midrashic aggadot, and our Sages have already arranged them in their appropriate place in Genesis Rabbah and in other Midrashim.

ואני לא באתי אלא לפשוטו של מקרא ולאגדה המיישבת דברי המקרא ושמועו^[3] דבור על אפניו.

But I have come only to convey peshuto shel miqra and the aggadah that “settles” (meyashevet)^[4] the words of Scripture and its literal sense (shemu‘o), “[each] in its place” (Prov 25:11).

Rashi makes similar statements throughout his commentaries,^[5] at times invoking the talmudic maxim that: אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו “a biblical verse does not leave the realm (lit. hands) of its peshat.”^[6] Actually marginal in the Talmud,^[7] Rashi transforms the maxim into an exegetical touchstone, indicating his self-perception as a pashtan, a practitioner of peshat.

Rashi as Darshan Who Takes Peshat Into Consideration

Nevertheless, Rashi actually seems to be a darshan, a practitioner of derash, as most of his comments are drawn from midrashic sources.^[8] Traditional supercommentaries on Rashi since the fifteenth century have explained the tension between his claim to be peshat and his reliance on midrash by proposing that when Rashi perceived a weakness (“difficulty”) in the literal reading, he turned to midrash to rectify it.

When Rashi says he will cite “the aggadah that ‘settles’ (meyashevet) the words of Scripture” he means to say that the words, taken literally, are not “settled” properly; i.e., something is missing or remains perplexing. The midrash is thus needed to “settle,” or make sense of them. Nehama Leibowitz (1905–1997) developed this approach with great sophistication by arguing that many of Rashi’s “midrashic” interpretations respond to nuances of the biblical text and can thus be regarded as peshat.^[9]

In contrast, Sarah Kamin (1938–1989) of Hebrew University offered what to my mind is a more cogent understanding of Rashi: he never intended to compose a pure peshat commentary. When saying, “I have come only to convey peshuto shel miqra, and the aggadah that settles the words of Scripture,” Rashi expressed two distinct goals: (1) to explicate the peshat; and (2) go beyond the peshat to offer selected midrashic interpretations that “settle the words of Scripture,” i.e., that conform to the language and sequence of the text.^[10] Accordingly, Rashi used midrashic interpretations in his commentary, but did so critically—accepting some while rejecting others, and, in some cases, adjusting midrashic readings to better fit the text of the verses.

Why does Kamin’s understanding seem more fitting? Because, in most cases, Rashi seems independently motivated to apply the midrashic reading—even in verses where the simple literal sense poses no particular “difficulty.” Of course, in many cases Rashi did use the midrash to resolve a problem—the point is that this is not his only reason for applying a midrashic reading.

For readers accustomed to later peshat interpreters of Tanakh, such as Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Radak and Nahmanides, it seems natural to ask, “Why did Rashi use a midrashic reading rather than sticking to the peshat?” That’s why the idea emerged that there is some “problem” with the peshat. It’s as though Rashi needed a “heter” (“permission,” i.e., justification) to apply the midrash. But we must not forget that in Rashi’s time and place the norm was to interpret the Bible midrashically.^[11] And so, in Rashi’s environment there was no need to justify a midrashic reading; it was the norm. If anything, Rashi had to justify his application of the peshat standard, as he does regularly in his commentaries.

Apologizing for When Only Peshat Works: An Example

An excellent example that demonstrates this order of preferences in Rashi’s thinking is his commentary on Exodus 6:2–9. After offering his own interpretation of these verses, Rashi records a midrashic reading, with the following disclaimer:

^{רש"י שמות ו:ט} ואין המדרש מתיישב אחר המקרא מפני כמה דברים.

^{Rashi Exodus 6:9} But this midrashic exposition is not ‘settled’ upon the verse for several reasons.

He notes, firstly, that it does not correspond to the language of the biblical text; furthermore, the midrashic reading is acontextual; as Rashi remarks:

ועוד, היאך הסמיכה נמשכת בדברים שהוא סומך לכאן?

“How does the sequence follow (ha-semikhah nismekhet) in the words with which it continues?”

Rashi concludes:

לכך אני אומר: יתיישב המקרא על פשוטו דבור על אופניו (משלי כה:יא), והדרשה תדרש, שנאמר: הלא כה דברי כאש וכפטיש יפוצץ סלע (ירמיהו כג:כט) – מתחלק לכמה ניצוצות.

Therefore, I say: Let the verse be settled (yityashev ha-miqra) according to its peshat, though the midrashic reading can be expounded as such (ha-derashah tiddaresh), as it is said: “Behold, my word is like fire – declares the Lord – and like a hammer that shatters rock” (Jeremiah 23:29) – it splits into many sparks.

For Rashi, this verse can be “settled,” i.e., interpreted properly within its context, only “according to its peshat,” as he had done.^[12]

Here we see clearly that Rashi was not citing the midrash to resolve any particular “difficulty” in the verse. After all, this is a midrash that he does not incorporate into his reading of the Torah. Rather, it would seem that his audience expected Rashi to cite this well-known midrashic reading—which prompted his “apology” for not using it. The need to “settle” the language of Scripture is not his justification for using the midrash (as per Leibowitz), which actually needs no justification. Rather, it is Rashi’s criterion for selecting the appropriate midrashic interpretation.

Why did Rashi use midrashic interpretation? Because this was the traditional Jewish reading of Scripture—to which he subscribed absolutely. This included midrashic lessons the Rabbis appended to the narratives of the Torah, the halakhot derived from its legal sections, the reading of the Psalms as supplications relevant to the Jewish people in the future (and not simply the individual prayers of King David), and the allegorical reading of the Song of Songs as the love between God and Israel. Such readings were not prompted by some “problem” in the text; rather, the rabbinic sage of Troyes incorporated them into his commentary because they were essential to the Jewish reading of Scripture in his view.

What Inspired Rashi’s Exegetical Revolution?

In Rashi’s day, there was no need to justify midrashic readings. His apologia is for endowing peshat with independent significance and for using it as a yardstick for selecting midrashic interpretations. But now we must ask the opposite question: Why did Rashi see fit to privilege peshat in this new way? In the words of Eleazar Touitou (1929–2010), a scholar of medieval biblical exegesis from Bar Ilan University:

What happened at the end of the 11^th century which stimulated the change in the educational curriculum of Franco-German Jewry? What… new needs… [did] Rashi’s commentary… meet… that were not satisfied by the existing curriculum?^[13]

Several suggestions have been proffered:

Talmud Commentary—Rashi’s intensive activity as a Talmud commentator—from his early training in the Rhineland yeshivot—accustomed him to engage in plain-sense, philological-contextual analysis, and this motivated him to apply a similar method to the Bible.^[14]

Andalusian philology—Rashi was inspired by the philological method advanced in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) by Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash Ibn Labrat, whose lexicographic works (written in Hebrew) he cites regularly. Some scholars have conjectured that Rashi was also aware of later, more developed Andalusian philological exegetical works by authors such as Jonah Ibn Janah, Moses Ibn Chiquitilla, and Judah Ibn Bal‘am. However, those are written in Arabic and never mentioned by Rashi or anyone in his circle. That theory therefore seems unlikely to me.^[15]

Byzantine commentaries—Rashi was influenced by early Byzantine commentaries, written in Hebrew evidently in the tenth century—but only recently discovered—which manifest a philological exegetical method.^[16] Again, the problem is that neither Rashi nor any of his students mention such Byzantine commentaries.

It is clear that the biblical lexicographic works of Dunash and Menahem, as well as his rabbinic teachers of Talmud in the Rhineland yeshivot, equipped Rashi with the tools of philological analysis that he applies in his Bible commentaries. But that still does not explain why Rashi chose to depart from the traditional midrashic way of reading the Bible.

In other words, even if Rashi had the philological means, what was his motive to engage in peshat exegesis and use it as a new yardstick for selecting midrashic interpretation critically? To answer this question, I believe we must turn to developments in Rashi’s own time and place—his Christian intellectual milieu in eleventh-century northern France.

It is well-known that Rashi sometimes responded to specific Christian interpretations of scripture with a Jewish alternative,^[17] but what I am suggesting here is that the impetus for his novel exegetical program in general is rooted in wider intellectual-cultural trends among his Christian neighbors.

Latin School of Literal-Historical Interpretation

The British medievalist Beryl Smalley (1905–1984) charted the increasing valuation of the “literal” or “historical” sense of Scripture that emerged as part of the renewed interest in grammar, rhetoric, and logic in the cathedral schools of Western Europe in what has been called the “twelfth-century renaissance.”^[18]

Smalley highlighted the interpretive theory and practice of Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141), who emphasized that the “literal” or “historical” sense must be the “foundation” for all sound interpretation of Scripture. In her opinion, this marked the beginnings of the “scientific study” of the Bible historically and philologically, a process that reached fuller definition in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) and Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1349).

By contrast, prior Christian interpretation largely ignored the literal sense and focused on the Bible’s “mysterious” or “spiritual” senses, relating to Christ and the Church, prompting medieval readers to “not look at the text, but through it.” Spiritual exposition, as characterized by Smalley, “generally consists of pious meditations or religious teaching for which the text is used merely as a convenient starting-point.”^[19]

In the 1980s, Eleazer Touitou, followed by Sarah Kamin, argued that these developments in Christian learning motivated Rashi’s decision to make peshat central in his interpretive agenda.^[20] It would be convenient to imagine Rashi wielding the sword of peshat in battle against Christian exegesis. Two obvious problems, however, challenge this theory.

1. Not a Peshat Commentary

Rashi is not a consistent pashtan like Abraham Ibn Ezra, who also criticized Christian Bible interpretation, which he deemed דרך חושך ואפלה “a path of darkness and gloom”:

^{אבן עזרא הקדמה לפירוש התורה, שיטה אחרת} האומרים כי כל התורה חידות ומשלים.... גם מספר השבטים, רמז למנין התלמידים השטים. וכל אלה דברי תהו...

^{Ibn Ezra, Introduction to Torah, Alternative Version} They say that the entire Torah is made up of riddles and allegories… also the twelve tribes prefigure the twelve apostles (lit. “students,” i.e., of Jesus). But all of these [interpretations] are absolute nonsense…

והאמת לפרש כל מצוה ודבר ומלה כאשר הם כתובים, אם המה אל הדעת קרובים.

Rather, the correct approach is to interpret every [biblical] precept, utterance, and word literally—as long as they are reasonable (lit. “close to reason”).^[21]

Ibn Ezra’s answer to the Christian threat was clear: adhering to “the way of peshat” (derekh ha-peshat) he could undercut “mysterious” Christological readings, much as he often sidestepped midrashic interpretation.^[22] Rashi, however, could not resort to this response since he himself often engaged in midrashic interpretation to draw moral, theological and halakhic inferences, in addition to “actualizing” the biblical text, that is, interpret it as being directly relevant to the predicament of the Jewish people of his time.^[23]

2. Not the Right Time Period

Rashi died in 1105 before the twelfth-century developments charted by Smalley, and thus could not have been influenced by them. The Hebrew University intellectual historian Avraham Grossman (1936–2024) therefore rejects the hypothesis of Christian influence:

Though this theory is most interesting, Touitou did not bring any convincing 11^th century sources to support it…. In vain we seek explicit references to the renaissance [in Latin learning] in Rashi’s Bible commentary, though it is possible that there were certain such influences that are not mentioned explicitly.^[24]

To be sure, neither Kamin nor Touitou make the claim that Rashi was influenced by Hugh of St Victor or his contemporaries; rather, they speculated that the intellectual environment that fostered the new Christian interest in the literal sense was shared by Jewish interpreters. Given what they had access to four decades ago, Touitou and Kamin were inevitably guided by what Stephen Jaeger, in his study of eleventh century Latin learning, called “the logic of looking for something where there is light even when you have lost it in the dark.”^[25]

In other words, they intuited that Rashi’s enterprise was connected to Latin scholastic developments in his time but were unable to point to a specific author whose works could be seen as analogous or otherwise having inspired the Sage of Troyes to revolutionize Bible interpretation in the Ashkenazic world.

We can, however, now identify a relevant figure of 11^th century Latin Bible interpretation who could be that “missing link”: Saint Bruno the Carthusian (1030–1101),^[26] whose innovative and influential exegetical work has been a focus of studies by Andrew Kraebel and Constant Mews since 2009.^[27]

Saint Bruno the Carthusian

Originally from Cologne, Bruno came to study at the Cathedral School at Rheims (about 66 miles from Troyes) in his youth. From the mid-1050s till around 1080 he served as Master of the Rheims Cathedral School, where he achieved renown as a teacher of grammatica (i.e., reading and interpreting the classical poets) and the Psalms. After leaving Rheims, he went on to establish the Carthusian monastic order, and accordingly came to be known as Saint Bruno the Carthusian.

Bruno composed a substantial commentary on Psalms,^[28] the most commented-on book of the Bible in medieval Latin Christendom (akin to the Torah for Jews), as it was believed to be a prophetic book dealing primarily with Christ and the Church.^[29] Traditional patristic commentaries extracted this meaning of the Psalms exclusively through allegorical or “mystical” (“mysterious”) interpretation.

Bruno, however, innovatively employed a “grammatical” method in his Psalms commentary that harnesses the language arts of Classical learning applied to secular poetry. This method was referred to as enarratio poetarum (“interpreting the poets”), to discover the intentions of the biblical authors.^[30]

Bruno at times takes note of the literal sense and suggests novel interpretations not attested in earlier Christian Psalms commentaries; but that is not his focus. Rather, he selected among the patristic commentaries those most suited to the language and sequence of the verses.

Like the classical rabbinic midrash, Church Fathers like Augustine and Cassiodorus, in their influential Psalms commentaries, tended to gloss each verse of a given psalm in isolation. Bruno, by contrast, applied what Kraebel has called a “coherent, poetic hermeneutic” in which the consecutive verses of individual psalms fit together and are explained in light of each other, as one would interpret secular poetry according to the discipline of grammatica.^[31] He thus incorporated traditional Christological interpretations selectively, occasionally noting those patristic readings that do not meet his exegetical standards,^[32] much as Rashi criticized midrashic interpretations that do not adhere to the language and sequence of Scripture.^[33]

The parallels between Rashi and Bruno are compelling. Neither Rashi nor Bruno aimed to interpret Scripture according to the literal sense / peshat exclusively. Rather, they worked with the traditional assumption they were taught that Scripture conveys deeper prophetic meanings relevant to their respective religious communities—as expounded by the Rabbis and the Church Fathers.

At the same time, both Rashi and Bruno were innovative in using the tools of philological and literary analysis, which Bruno associated with Latin grammatica and Rashi termed peshuto shel miqra (using this talmudic concept in a new, more systematic way) to establish a rational yardstick by which to select the most fitting traditional interpretations—whether of the Rabbis or the Church Fathers.

“Influence” on Rashi?

Is it reasonable to suggest that Bruno, the Cathedral Master of Rheims, actually made an impact on the interpretive thought of Rashi, his younger contemporary in nearby Troyes? To reach a conclusion of this matter, there are two separate questions we must answer: (1) Could Rashi have had access to Bruno’s teachings? (2) Would he have reason to draw upon Bruno’s interpretive methods?

1. Access

Rashi almost certainly could not read Latin. And yet, it is reasonable to assume that he conversed with Christians about the Bible in their shared vernacular Old French, which he uses extensively in his writings. Among those Christians could well have been students of Bruno.

Evidence of Bruno’s influence can be adduced from the mortuary roll composed upon his death in 1101 with almost 180 entries by former students and other devotees across northwestern Europe.^[34] Among them are praises of Bruno’s virtues as “the teacher of many grammarians,” “learned psalmist, most clear and sophistic” who “embodied the knowledge and prudence of the liberal arts… [and was the] supreme teacher of the Church of Rheims, most clear in the Psalter and in other sciences.”^[35]

Three entries are from the environs of Troyes—one from Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Troyes itself, another from the nearby Benedictine monastery at Montier la-Celle, and a third from the nearby Benedictine monastery of Saint-Pierre at Montiéramey.^[36] Eleventh-century Troyes—the old part of the modern city—can be traversed on foot in about 10 minutes. It’s thus quite conceivable that Rashi would have regularly encountered students of Bruno in and around his hometown, and that, through conversations with them, could have learned about Bruno’s novel grammatical interpretive methods.

Indeed, evidence of Rashi’s conversations with Christians about Bible interpretation can be adduced from a note by one of his students, perhaps Shemaiah, who records Rashi being “pleased” by a Christian who offered him a particular insight on why Ezekiel is referred to as בן אדם “son of man.”

^{רש"י יחזקאל ב:א [בהגהה]} מין אחד הטעים כן לרבינו והנאהו.

^{Rashi Ezek 2:1 [in a gloss]} A certain sectarian (=Christian) explained it thus to our teacher and he was pleased with it.^[37]

It would seem plausible, therefore, that Rashi kept abreast of trends in Christian interpretation of the Bible.

2. Motive

But would the rabbinic master of Troyes actually have sought to emulate the exegetical methods of the Cathedral Master of Rheims? While the note that Rashi was pleased with interpretation of a verse in Ezekiel is remarkable, it is exceptional. Generally speaking, Rashi utterly rejected the very essence of Christian Bible interpretation. Christians, including Bruno, interpreted the Old Testament as a prophecy about Christ and the Church, which was obviously anathema to Rashi. As Avraham Grossman has noted, Rashi’s opinion about the Christian reading of the Bible is expressed clearly in his commentary on Proverbs:

^{משלי ב:יא} מְזִמָּה תִּשְׁמֹר עָלֶיךָ תְּבוּנָה תִנְצְרֶכָּה. ^ב:יב לְהַצִּילְךָ מִדֶּרֶךְ רָע מֵאִישׁ מְדַבֵּר תַּהְפֻּכוֹת... ^ב:טז לְהַצִּילְךָ מֵאִשָּׁה זָרָה מִנָּכְרִיָּה אֲמָרֶיהָ הֶחֱלִיקָה.

^{Prov 2:11} Foresight will protect you, and discernment will guard you. ^2:12 It will save you from the way of evil men, from a man who speaks perverse things… ^2:16 It will save you from a foreign woman, from the alien woman whose talk is smooth.

Glossing the “evil men” who “speak perverse things,” Rashi comments:

^{רש"י משלי ב:יב} הם המינים המסיתים את ישראל לעבודה זרה ומהפכים את התורה לרעה.

Those are the Christians, who entice the Jews to idolatry, and distort (or: pervert) the words of Torah into evil.

As for the “foreign woman,” Rashi comments:

^{רש"י משלי ב:טז} ... כנסיא של עבודה זרה, היא המינות... שהיא פריקת עול כל המצות.

^{Rashi Prov 2:16} the assembly (or: Church) of idolatry, i.e., heresy (i.e., Christianity)… which entails casting off the yoke of all the commandments.^[38]

Generally speaking, Rashi regarded the Christian reading as a distortion or perversion of the Bible. He says this explicitly in his gloss on the word minim (“heretics”) in the Talmud:

^{רש"י ראש השנה יז.} "המינין"—תלמידי ישו הנוצרי אשר הפכו דברי אלהים חיים לרעה.

^{Rashi Rosh Hashanah 17a} Minim are the students of Jesus the Nazarene, who distorted (הפכו) the words of the living God into evil.

Yet more telling is a related comment by Rashi on the term minut (“heresy”):

^{רש"י ברכות יב:} "מינות"—אותם תלמידי ישו הנוצרי ההופכים טעמי התורה למדרש טעות ואליל.

^{Rashi Berakhot 12b} Those students of Jesus the Nazarene who distort the meanings of the Torah into erroneous and useless midrash.^[39]

Indeed, Rashi at times explicitly critiques the Christological reading of the Bible.^[40] So, how could we think that he would have turned to Bruno—or any other Christian exegete—as a legitimate source of interpretive inspiration?

But in fact, it is these and similar polemical comments by Rashi that should make us consider a different way that Bruno’s method could have impacted Rashi’s interpretive thought. As Grossman has argued forcefully,^[41] Rashi sensed that the Jewish community in his day was spiritually vulnerable to Christian missionizing efforts, which he took it upon himself to thwart in his commentaries.^[42]

The Threat of Bruno’s Cogent Readings

Bruno’s Christological readings, given their respect for the sequence of the biblical text, would have been difficult to dismiss simply as “erroneous and useless midrash.” Indeed, they would have posed a new threat to a Jewish community of learning armed only with the traditional midrashic method of reading Scripture.

After all, many rabbinic interpretations, whether they be halakhic interpretations that read talmudic law into Scripture, or midrashim that “actualize” the Bible to refer to later Jewish experiences are also far-fetched—perhaps not less than the Christological reading of the Psalms about the life of Christ, and Song of Songs as the marriage of Christ and the Church.

This could explain why Rashi devised a new interpretive methodology: he critically selected and reworked midrashic interpretations that “settle” the language and sequence of Scripture. In this way, Rashi sought to establish the unique cogency of the Jewish reading of the Bible, whether it be halakhah in the Torah, the Psalms as prayers of the Jewish people in exile, or the reading of Song of Songs as a love story between God and Israel, all of which he aims to anchor in his analysis of “the peshat of Scripture.”^[43]