Thursday, November 17, 2011
Rashi and Ramban
Recently in Chumash we have strayed off the path and learned about Rashi and Ramban's different types of commentary. Rashi is more focused on the basic pshat understanding and looks for textual anomalys that he can clarify with a midrash. When he does not have a midrash based on the text, he looks in other places for an answer. The Ramban believes that the midrash's stories are truth and we must know them as fact so he looks for places in the text that can refer to midrash. Aside from all this, we learned in class that commentators like Rashi do not, in fact, have nivuah. So a question that I have been wondering is why they are in every chumash and are trusted opinions? Why are specific people's ideas given so much credibility? How do they have any factual basis if they are no more than educated guesses? And why in that case are we studying someone's unproven educated guesses? If anyone has an answer or opinion in this, please feel free to answer!
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I totally agree with Emma. I also find it thought-provoking that we totally accept what the commentators wrote as the truth. The reality is that many of them got their explanations from educated guesses and/about stories from the Midrash. I personally do not think that these interpretations should be accepted as the absolute truth. All of the commentators who get their interpretations of teh text from the Midrash should have their explanations regarded as fables: stories that might or might not be true but are meant to teach the audience something about life and religion. To add to that, I think that Rashi's interpretations of the text are more reliable because he went out of his way to find explanations to the text that are logical. This made his explanations seem a lot more likely to be true.
ReplyDeleteI just want to add a point of clarification. We indicated that Rashi is NOT a pashtan in a classic sense but rather was revolutionary in that he generally used midrashim that he deemed to be closest to a peshat explanation of the text. Ramban is not accepting all midrash as true but in this particular case, since he thinks the story of the Kivshan haesh is a historical truth, he is looking for textual support of a miracle. We will clarify these positions and the various perspectives of the meforshim again as we learn more meforshim inside but I just wanted to explain those two ideas.
ReplyDeleteI have also thought a lot about this idea. It seems strage to put our total trust into these opinions when for all we know they might not be true. At the same time I don't think that commentators like Rashi and Ramban are famous for giving good opinions, they are famous for giving very likely explanations for why or what is being told to us thourgh the Pasukim. They are also experts at analyzing the text and show us the deeper meanings to the seemingly simple words we read.
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