ABSTRACT
The historical study of biblical exegesis, both Jewish and Christian, is a field in which generalisation is perilous, and any patterns that the investigator may discern he will, if he is wise, postulate but tentatively. In the first place, at the very least until the age of printing our evidence must be incomplete: scribes were not concerned to multiply copies of such of the works of their contemporaries or immediate predecessors as did not command a popular reception, and at the oral stage of transmission similar considerations render survival even more hazardous. Enough fragmentary commentaries and works rarely or uniquely preserved survive to remind us that many more must be deemed to have disappeared. Secondly, for both the Jewish exegete from post-tannaitic times onwards and for his Christian confrère from the Carolingian period, an authoritative tradition of interpretation loaded the scales heavily in favour of conservatism. Reform tends to proclaim itself a mere reversion to the authentic teaching of an earlier and purer form of traditional doctrine; innovation is liable to be dissembled, and the author of it prone to convince himself that there is no intrinsic difference between his own views and those of his predecessors, with the result that he may maintain their terminology whilst unavowedly attaching to it an altered signification. All pointers towards the latter process require fresh scrutiny in the case of each individual commentator, and we shall scarcely be justified in ascribing his exegesis to the effect of Zeitgeist—e.g. the impact on the Jewish biblical scholar of Christianity, Karaism, or Arabic philosophy—until we have compared his findings with his own terminological description of them. Some framework is, however, essential, for the plotting of such a study as this, and with the caveat just mentioned the conventional periods of Jewish historiography may provide it. On the present occasion our terminus ad quem will be the end of the amoraic age.
