Biblical Supercommentaries: Formation, Character and Function

ההרצאה תינתן בעברית

Not only are supercommentaries on the three main works of medieval Jewish biblical interpretation—the Torah commentaries of Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, and Ramban—abundant but they have, in some cases, proven to be extraordinarily popular. Yet with the main exception of important scholarly investigations of supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra, this vast body of Jewish biblical scholarship has remained largely neglected.

My lecture will explore various aspects of the supercommentary genre, exploring reasons for its genesis, aspects of its basic dynamics across the three supercommentary traditions (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Ramban), and raising larger questions that await further research. These include the following:

• What stimuli – religious, intellectual, cultural, technological – inspired authors, some of them leading scholars who were perfectly capable of composing independent compositions, to write supercommentarial works?
• Are such works a sign of decline within a tradition or possibly an expression of adaptability, creative continuity, or even religio-intellectual dynamism?
• For what “communities of readers” did supercommentators write?
• Did specific text-formats stimulate supercommentary?

Answers to such questions will throw light not only on the history of Jewish biblical interpretation but also on other scriptural interpretive traditions, like Quranic commentary, where the supercommentary genre was cultivated intensively.