They wrote consecutive commentaries,
not notes; and they often failed to explain difficult words.
Rashi, on the contrary, always definitely determined the
meaning of the various terms.
He does this with a sure touch, and the precision of his
explanations is all the more remarkable as he did not know -
whatever one may say to the contrary - the Talmudic lexicon of
Nathan ben Jehiel, of Rome, which was not brought to a conclusion
until four years after Rashi's death. It is a favorite trick of
legend to establish relations between illustrious contemporaries,
especially when their activities were exercised in the same
field, and tradition has made Rashi the pupil of Nathan. The
idea of such a relationship, however, is purely fantastic, the
two rabbis probably not having ever known each other.[98]
Rashi carried the same spirit of exactness and precision into the
whole of this work - qualities indispensable but difficult of
attainment; for as A. Darmesteter well says:
Whoever has opened a page of the Talmud understands how
necessary is a commentary upon a text written in Aramaic and
treating of often unfamiliar questions in concise,
exasperatingly obscure dialectics. The language, too, is
obscure, and the lack of punctuation renders reading difficult
to novices. No mark separates question from answer,
digressions from parenthetical observations.
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