Rule of Peshat

Mordechai Z. Cohen is Professor of Bible and Associate Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University. He is also author of Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides' Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of His Geonic-Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu and Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor: From Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides to David Kimhi.

• List of AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Geonim and Karaites: Appropriating Methods of Qur'an InterpretationChapter 2. The Andalusian School: Linguistic and Literary Advances in the Muslim OrbitChapter 3. Rashi: Peshat Revolution in Northern FranceChapter 4. Qara and Rashbam: Refining the Northern French Peshat ModelChapter 5. The Byzantine Tradition: A Newly Discovered Exegetical SchoolChapter 6. Abraham Ibn Ezra: Transplanted Andalusian Peshat ModelChapter 7. Maimonides: Peshat as the Basis of HalakhahChapter 8. Nahmanides: A New Model of Scriptural MultivalenceNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"Cohen'swide-ranging expertise encompasses Jewish exegesis from both Islamic and Christian milieus, and he engages meaningfully with Islamic and Christian hermeneutics themselves. Likewise, his ability to draw from earlier rabbinic literature provides the reader with critical context. Cohen's philologically and historically informed argument details the medieval Jewish appropriation of hermeneutical tools from competing religious traditions. His work challenges us to explore the theological anxieties occasioned by turning to other faith traditions for tools to interpret one's own sacred canon. Cohen offers a major contribution to the development of peshat and an invitation for future scholarship in hermeneutics and adjacent fields." (Speculum) "Cohen's proficient use of both prior research and the primary sources is simultaneously far-reaching in breadth and granular in detail...Cohen's insights are eye-opening, his examples clear and persuasive, and his conclusions leave no room for argument. For the scholar and lay person alike who mistakenly conceive of the Jewish tradition as self-contained and untouched by intellectual developments in the outside world, or for anyone interested in medieval Judaism, Cohen's book is required reading." (Medieval Encounters) "Cohen has made his point and made it well...[The] tug of war between peshat and nonpeshat interpretation, and the fluctuation in what peshat itself could mean, reflect a larger interpretive question: Does the precise formulation of Scripture matter, or (as Abraham Ibn Ezra asserted) did the Bible's human writers formulate God's ideas in language of their own? Cohen's book will leave readers with four centuries' worth of fascinating discussion of that question." (Review of Biblical Literature) "The Rule of 'Peshat' is an enormously useful and brilliantly insightful work whose time has certainly come. Mordechai Z. Cohen's important contribution to the study of medieval Jewish biblical exegesis reflects his unsurpassed expertise in this area." (Baruch J. Schwartz, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) "In this monumental study, Mordechai Z. Cohen reveals the theoretical complexities that attend the construction of peshat, the 'plain sense' or 'literal sense' of Jewish biblical hermeneutics. Cohen's erudite and wide-ranging analysis breaks down what has been viewed too easily as monolithic. Through his acute readings, peshat emerges as a multi-linguistic and cross-cultural tradition, as Jewish interpreters amalgamated influences from Christianity and Islam, from Byzantium and Western Asia, and from al-Andalus to northern France and the Rhineland." (Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania)