Rationalism versus the Rashi/Rabbinic Axis
Rationalism versus the Rashi/Rabbinic Axis
Pseudo-Rabad’s book of strictures
The Book of Strictures, the work of an unknown late medieval rationalist, is the most concentrated assault on Rashi’s biblical scholarship in the annals of Jewish literature. In devoting himself to an often scornful assault on Rashi’s exegesis and ideas, focusing almost exclusively on those of midrashic provenance, the work’s author put himself at odds with powerful intellectual, halakhic, and educational currents pulling in the opposite direction, each buttressing the work’s growing reach and authority. Sefer hassagot occupies a significant place in the reception history of Rashi’s work, especially when viewed in terms of the hermeneutics of canonicity. The author’s literary vehicle is the stricture (hassagah), to which he often appends a corrective to Rashi’s interpretation. In so doing, he insistently contrasts an understanding of scripture grounded in canons of plain sense interpretation and scientific criteria of credibility with Rashi’s more fanciful midrashic methods and fantastical mentality.
Keywords: Rashi, Commentary, Torah, midrash, Book of Strictures, Rabad, pseudonymity
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