By Mitchell First
Reviewing: “The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts,” 900-1270 By Mordechai Z. Cohen. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2020. English. Hardcover. 496 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0812252125.
Mordechai Cohen is a professor of Bible and Associate Dean at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University. He is a resident of Bergenfield and has authored this very profound and informative book.
The rule referred to in the title is: ein mikra yotze miydei peshuto—“a verse does not escape its plain meaning.” This is a statement found in the Talmud in only three places: Shabbat 63a, Yevamot 11b and Yevamot 24a. This book shows how this statement—perhaps, originally, not one of much significance in the minds of many Amoraim—came to be viewed as a significant one in later periods. But the late Geonim and early Rishonim—living in different geographical areas and under different outside influences—practiced “peshat” interpretation in different ways.
The book has eight chapters. Each chapter is devoted to an individual exegete or school. Here are the chapters: 1) Geonim and Karaites: Appropriating Methods of Quran Interpretation; 2) The Andalusian School: Linguistic and Literary Advances in the Muslim Orbit; 3) Rashi: Peshat Revolution in Northern France; 4) Quaran and Rashbam: Refining the Northern French Peshat Model; 5) The Byzantine Tradition: A Newly-Discovered Exegetical School; 6) Abraham Ibn Ezra: Transplanted Andalusian Peshat Model; 7) Maimonides: Peshat as the Basis of Halakhah; 8) Nachmanides: A New Model of Scriptural Multivalence. In each chapter, Cohen documents the “peshat” approach adopted by each exegete/school.
Cohen explains that scholarship has progressed much in modern times, in terms of revealing other Rishonim and in understanding how Muslims and Christians looked at Tanach. For example, we no longer have to oversimplify matters and view Rashi as a traditionalist clinging to midrash and Ibn Ezra as a radical revolutionary. Cohen writes (page 12): “Ibn Ezra actually was a traditionalist within his heritage, less radical than some earlier Andalusian exegetes. Rashi—on the other hand—was highly innovative within the milieu of Ashkenazic learning … ”
In 2021, Cohen authored another book, focusing solely on the background to Rashi: “Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution.” Here, he tries to understand the exegetical approach of Rashi within the context of the Christian intellectual climate of his time.
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There is an older scholarly view that there was a continuous peshat-derash dichotomy from antiquity to the modern era, i.e., that ancient Jews were always interested in plain sense interpretation as one approach to interpretation. But the modern view—which Cohen agrees with—is that this is probably not the case.
The modern view is that in ancient times, Jewish (and Christian) readers made the following assumptions when looking at biblical texts: 1) the texts are cryptic; 2) they are prophetic and are primarily intended to instruct (that is, while they may appear to be concerned with the past, they are eternally relevant and are addressed to the readers’ own present, saying “understand this” or “do this”; and 3) the texts are completely harmonious. (They also, of course, assumed the texts were divinely inspired/given.)
Cohen writes (page 4): “The rabbis were generally uninterested in the ‘plain sense’—the philological, literary analysis of Scripture in its historical setting. They mined the sacred text for eternal moral, religious, and halachic instruction. They read through Scripture—between its lines—scrutinizing words and turns of phrase, making connections between different formulations, in order to discover hints to miraculous events in the past that were meaningful for the future.” (By the “rabbis,” he, presumably, means most Tannaim and Amoraim.)
Cohen writes (page 14) that, thereafter, “we can trace multiple trajectories by which the peshat maxim that was originally quite marginal in the Talmud came to be construed … (by late Geonim and early Rishonim) as a justification for plain-sense exegesis.”
As an example of one trajectory, Cohen writes that in the Geonic period, Rav Saadiah—living in Baghdad—drew upon “a broad range of Arabic learning, including Quaranic hermeneutics, Mutazilite thought and Muslim jurisprudence” in establishing his approach of philological-contextual, rational Bible interpretation.
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A very useful categorization that Cohen offers is whether a given exegete considered peshat a “firm” or “strong” application (but not exclusively determinative), or one “stronger” or finally “absolutely strong.” This distinction helps us categorize our different Geonim and Rishonim. For example, for early pashtanim such as Rav Saadiah, the peshat interpretation was firm and strong, yet the ultimate determinant of meaning—at least with respect to biblical verses whose content played a role in halacha—was the meaning of the oral law. However, for later exegetes such as Rashbam, the peshat interpretation was even stronger, and peshat was considered of coequal value with midrash—even with respect to verses that addressed matters of halacha. This allowed a multivalent understanding of Scripture. A verse could “mean” its plain sense meaning, at the same time as its traditional, halachic meaning.
(But Rashbam admitted that for purposes of halacha, we have to follow the traditional meaning: “halacha uproots Scripture.” See Cohen, page 150—citing Rashbam’s comments at the beginning of Exodus, chapter 21—where Rashbam cites Sotah 16a. See also Amnon Bazak, “To This Very Day,” pages 389-90. The last word in this paragraph of Rashbam is probably “mikra,” not “mishnah.” See Torat Chayyim, number 2. So, of course, Rashbam wore tefillin (despite his interpretation of Exodus 13:9 as only a metaphoric instruction, when read on a plain sense level).
Finally, there are exegesis—like Ibn Ezra and Maimonides—who effectively interpret “ein mikra yotze miydei peshuto” as an “absolutely strong” rule. It was a rule that required the exegete to recognize peshat as the exclusive authority. We are all familiar with Ibn Ezra (and some of his many statements might take him out of this category.) So, I would like to focus on Cohen’s placement of Maimonides in this category.
Admittedly, Maimonides did not write running biblical commentaries. And his interpretations of passages in his “Guide to the Perplexed” often do not seem to be plain sense ones. But Cohen (page 140) focuses on the second principle in Maimonides’ Sefer Ha-Mitzvot. Here, Rambam demotes laws derived from midrashic principles to “derabbanan” status and states that only laws derived from “peshuto shel mikra” are “deorayta.” Cohen writes that this is a great innovation because “the rule of peshat” was never used this way in the Talmud. (Cohen devoted an entire book to Maimonides’ bible interpretation: “Opening the Gates of Interpretation,” 2011.)
Cohen concludes “the rule of peshat” with the position of Nachmanides. By his time (he died in 1270), peshat was firmly established as a mainstream approach. What Nachmanides did was legitimize three more approaches: 1) deriving “deorayta” laws from hermeneutical principles (what Maimonides had rejected), 2) typological interpretation (“remez”), and 3) mystical kabbalistic interpretation (“sod”). Cohen points out that this fourfold scheme is similar to a well-known “four senses” scheme in Christian interpretation and that it is likely that Nachmanides had some exposure to this scheme due to his disputations with Christians.
For those interested in fully understanding the biblical exegesis of our Rishonim (and that should be most of us!) Cohen’s comprehensive work is indispensable.
Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected].
