The Commentary on Chronicles Attributed to Rashi

The commentary on Chronicles attributed to Rashi is an important commentary and milestone in Jewish exegesis that had never been the subject of thorough and systematic research. In fact, it has been one of the most neglected medieval commentaries. The objective of the book is to fill in this lacuna by examining all aspects of the commentary: the author’s sources and teachers, the nature of the commentary and its exegetical method, the author’s time and place and how he was influenced by his milieu, his linguistic glosses and literary ideas, his worldview, where the commentary fits into the peshat exegesis of the Middle Ages, and its influence on later commentaries on Chronicles.

The commentary composed in Germany, ca. 1155. Its anonymous author was strongly influenced by the Jewish exegetes of northern France, especially Rashi and R. Joseph Qara; but there are clear affinities and links to commentaries from other locales as well. The systematic description of the commentary has cast light on other commentaries, too—familiar and unfamiliar—and retrieved allusive details about a forgotten circle of sages whose initial portrait can now be drawn.