Thus, we
have been able to construct a grammar of Rashi, somewhat
rudimentary, but very advanced for the time.
Nevertheless, in this regard, a wide gap separates the
commentaries of Rashi and the works of the Spanish school of
exegetes, which shone with such lustre [luster sic] in that
epoch. Under the influence and stimulus of the Arabs, scientific
studies took an upward flight among the Jews of Moslem Spain.
The Midrash was abandoned to the preachers, while the scholars
cultivated the Hebrew language and literature with fruitful
results. In France, on the contrary, though rabbinical studies
were already flourishing, the same is not true of philological
studies, which were introduced into France only through the
influence of the Spaniards. French scholars soon came to know
the works, written in Hebrew, of Menahem ben Saruk and Dunash ben
Labrat,[91] and Rashi availed himself of them frequently, and not
always uncritically. Thus, like them, he distinguishes
triliteral, biliteral, and even uniliteral roots; but contrary to
them, he maintains that contracted and quiescent verbs are
triliteral and not biliteral. Unfortunately, he could have no
knowledge of the more important works of Hayyoudj, "father of
grammarians," and of Ibn Djanah, who carried the study of Hebrew
to a perfection surpassed only by the moderns;[92] for these
works were written in Arabic, and the translations into Hebrew,
made by the scholars of Southern France, did not appear until the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
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