This dissertation studies parts of six medieval Jewish Torah commentaries in order to examine how they related to what we call Pentateuchal poetry. It examines their general approaches to Bible interpretation and their treatments of all Pentateuchal poems. It focusses on qualities we associate with poetry--parallelism, structure, metaphor, and syntax--and explores the extent to which they treated poems differently from prose. / The effort begins by defining Pentateuchal poetry and discussing a range of its presentations by various ancient writers. Subsequent chapters examine its treatment by Rabbi Saadia Gaon of Baghdad (882-942), Abraham Ibn Ezra of Spain (1089-1164), Samuel Ben Meir (1080-1160) and Joseph Bekhor Shor (12th century) of Northern France, David Kimhi of Provence (1160-1235), and Obadiah Sforno of Italy (1470-1550). / While all of these commentators wrote on the poetic passages, none differentiated systematically between Pentateuchal prose and poetry or treated them in substantially different ways. Samuel Ben Meir, Ibn Ezra, Bekhor Shor, and Kimhi did discuss some poetic features of these texts. The other two men were far less inclined to do so, but occasionally recognized some differences between prose and poetry and some phenomena unique to the latter.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.28842 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Meir, Amira |
| Contributors | Levy, B. B. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | Hebrew |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Jewish Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001450270, proquestno: NN05754, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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