Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation by Ian Christopher Levy

Author:Ian Christopher Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History of Biblical Interpretation;Bible—Criticism (interpretation | etc.—History—Middle Ages [600–1500]);REL006400;REL108020;REL067080
ISBN: 9781493413010
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2018-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Andrew of St. Victor

Nowhere was the Victorine interest in the literal-historical sense of the text more insistently pursued than in the exegetical works of Andrew of St. Victor. More remarkable, however, was that Andrew’s pursuit of the literal sense, specifically with regard to Old Testament books, led this Augustinian canon into the world of rabbinic exegesis. Not since Jerome had a Christian exegete been so interested in Jewish interpretations of their own sacred texts. The modern scholar Michael Signer had located a concurrence in the exegetical methods being developed in the early twelfth century by the Victorines and the Jewish scholars of northern France. Both schools were seeking the so-called plain sense, which relied principally on reading passages in their broader biblical contexts and paying close attention to the sequence of the narrative. In fact, the interaction between the two communities seems to have spurred each one to make further advances in these methods. This closer attention to context and sequence also allowed each community to pursue readings of the text that were not necessarily governed by their respective interpretative traditions.60

The renowned Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, known as Rashi (1040–1105), had pioneered the aforementioned plain sense, or peshat, and thereby displaced the more fanciful method of midrash. Rashi’s successors, including his grandson Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam, then took up the peshat mantle, while Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency explored further literary analysis of the text, such as foreshadowing (prolepsis) and flashback (analepsis). As with the Victorines, there was among these twelfth-century Jewish exegetes a marked appreciation for the human contribution to the text, a recognition of the personal agency of the human author possessing his own authorial style.61

Agreeing with Jerome that one had to grasp the original language first, Andrew peppered his commentaries with references to the Hebrew language and Jewish exegetes. Andrew believed, therefore, that the Jewish community ought to be consulted for the correct reading of the Old Testament text, even if these Jews were regarded as lacking the true faith. Their lexical erudition made them indispensable resources for Christian exegetes.62 To that end, there are hints of oral communication between Andrew and the French rabbis in his use of Old French glosses that can also be found in Jewish biblical commentaries of the period. Andrew, for his part, would signal such vernacular glosses in his own commentaries with such phrases as “francorum lingua” or “gallorum lingua.”63

Andrew’s own degree of facility with the Hebrew language has been a source of much scholarly discussion, with the consensus being that he possessed only a limited grasp of Hebrew at best. The Jewish commentary tradition to which he appealed had not been translated into Latin, which makes it likely that he relied on direct conversations with French rabbis who could have distilled the material for him. What Andrew knew of Rashi, for instance, would have come by way of oral communication. As it is, therefore, Andrew’s chief written sources were the commentaries of Jerome and the recently produced Gloss from Laon.

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