ABSTRACT
RABBI SHELOMOH BEN YIÇḤAQ, commonly called by the Jews by juxtaposition of his initials RASHI, and by Christian exegetes of the Old Testament Rabbi Salomon, was born in 1040. In normal circumstances this present year would have seen elaborate commemorations of the nine hundreth anniversary of his birth by the Jews all over the globe, among whom he holds not only a place of honour second to none of their old teachers but is in fact a household word. For traditional education as well as traditional exegesis of the Old Testament has been bound up with the writings of Rashi since they were first copied and then printed unto our own day. And although his chief importance within Judaism consists in Rashi the commentator of the Talmud, his popularity among the masses of devout Jews derives from Rashi the interpreter of the Old Testament. Hundreds of manuscripts of his Commentary on the Old Testament are extant, and the first dated printed Hebrew book is this Commentary, published in 1475. As a Bible commentator Rashi found his way into Mediæval Christian exegesis, into the works of the Hebraists among the Humanists, and into the principal translations of the Old Testament into the Latin and the vernacular tongues in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
