Among these copies are the ones made by Gershom,
by Joseph Tob Elem, and by Menahem of Joigny. The Jews were
almost the only persons versed in the Bible. I have mentioned
how much the Church feared the sight of the Bible in the hands of
the common people, and in clerical circles an absolutely
antiscientific spirit reigned in regard to these matters. It was
the triumph of symbolism, allegory, and docetism. All the less
likely, then, were they to know Hebrew. An exception was the
monk Sigebert de Gemblours, a teacher at Metz in the last quarter
of the eleventh century, who maintained relations with Jewish
scholars. He is said to have known Hebrew.
Rashi's thorough knowledge of Hebrew enabled him to depend upon
his memory for quoting the appropriate verses, and in all his
citations there is scarcely a mistake, natural though an error
would have been in quoting from memory. Distinguishing between
the Hebrew of the Bible and that of the Talmud, he sees in the
Hebrew of the Mishnah a transition between the two. Often, for
the purpose of explaining a word in the Bible, he has recourse to
Talmudic Hebrew or to the Aramaic. He pays careful attention to
the precise meaning of words and to distinctions among synonyms,
and he had perception for delicate shading in syntax and
vocabulary. Owing to this thorough knowledge of Hebrew he
readily obtained insight into the true sense of the text.
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