Peshat

Known by the acronym Pardes, four approaches—peshat, the literal, remez, the philosophical-allegorical, derash, the midrashic-allegorical, and sod, the mystical—can be found not only in commentaries on the Song of Songs but also in a variety of musical settings.

The shift in biblical exegesis from homiletic readings to literary, contextual commentaries has its roots in Charlemagne’s 9th century Carolingian Revolution. It comes to the fore only in the 11th century with Rashi’s quasi-peshat commentary, soon followed by the peshat approach of R. Joseph Kara and Rashbam.

When Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, he says, “I am your brother, whom you sold into Egypt” (Gen 45:4). Tradition takes for granted that Joseph’s brothers were indeed the ones who sold him. However, as Rashbam and Shadal note, a straightforward peshat reading of events once Joseph is thrown into the pit reveals a different conclusion.

Rashi (Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac) wrote the most famous Jewish Bible commentary in history. Over 900 years later, scholars still argue about the nature of the commentary: Is it an attempt to explain peshat, the plain meaning of the biblical text, or is it an anthology of midrash?

Rashi interprets the opening verses of the creation story as describing God’s use of primordial substances to form the world. This idea appears in various forms in rabbinic literature but some of Rashi’s particular notions are only found in Plato’s Timaeus. Could this be one of Rashi’s sources?

For the first nine hundred years after the writing of the Mishnah in the early third century, Jews thought that laws about bailees or custodians (שומרים) in the Mishnah and in the Talmud corresponded closely to the plain meaning (peshat) of the Torah. But in the Middle Ages, Rashbam challenged that assumption, proposing an understanding of the Torah that contradicted Jewish law.

In 1305, the great Catalonian Sage, Rashba, tried to limit philosophic study and interpretation of Torah in Languedoc (southern France). In the process, he and went so far as to excommunicate one of the great scholars involved in such philosophical readings of Torah, Levi ben Avraham ben Hayyim of Villefranche-de-Conflent.

Abraham’s servant says that his master told him to take a wife for Isaac from his family, but Abraham said no such thing. Why does the servant say this and why did medieval pashtanim ignore this blatant discrepancy?

Finding gender equality in the Song of Songs without compromising God and meaning.

The Decalogue texts in Exodus and Deuteronomy have significant differences, a problem grappled with by the Talmudic sages and Medieval exegetes.

After the shocking death of Nadav and Avihu, Moses says to Aaron that this is what God meant when he said, “through those near to me I will sanctify Myself.”  Rashi, Rashbam, and Nahmanides struggle to understand the meaning of Moses’ message.

At stake is Ibn Ezra’s curse: “May your tongue stick to your palate… may your arm dry up and your right eye go blind.” 

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine” (Song 1:2). The Song of Songs opens with this sudden shift in person, an ungrammatical syntactic substitution called enallage. How common is this literary device, and why is it used?

Reading Shir HaShirim in Its Original Sense

A biblical metaphor was reinterpreted in light of a practice of wearing amulets for bodily protection.

A medieval non-traditional interpretation of arami oved avi and the push-back against it. 

The Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry. The Rabbis read it as an allegory of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Only in the Middle Ages, in Spain and Northern France, did scholars begin to pay attention to the plain (Peshat) meaning of the text. Some went as far as dropping the allegory altogether and treating it as love poetry, as it was originally intended.

Moses Mendelssohn’s Be’ur (1780-83) was the first Jewish translation of the Torah into standard German. Motivated by religious and cultural needs, Mendelssohn took advantage of the translation revolution already underway in eighteenth-century Germany—and also included many striking innovations.

The Torah describes a practice of declaring people cherem, which means that the person, and—in some cases—his family, would be annihilated, and his possessions donated to the Temple. The rabbis were unhappy with this law and used their homiletical approach to “obliterate” it.