Examination of Rabbinic Commentaries on Moses

Prague refers to the scholar R. Abraham of Prague, R. Leo of Moravia, and many others, especially R. Elias Mizrachi (that is, the Easterner), in whose commentaries R. Salomon Luria wrote a third super-commentary. Even he, however, sometimes requires a clearer explanation; so much so that most of the Jews are rarely didactic. Furthermore, the authority of this Jarchæi Rashi is so great among the Rabbis that although they abound in the number of interpreters, they prefer this one alone to all others by far. This is not only because he is more ancient in time and among the first of those in the middle period, but because he labored in both the Bible and the Talmud, and frequently compares the one with the other. But if this matter were to be judged by my arbitration, I would award the palm to the following, Aben-Ezra, because he is not only more perspicuous, methodical, and much more elegant in style, and tenacious of the idioms of Scripture, but also more prudent, cautious, and sparing of nonsense. Whereas the former abstains less from fables, is more obscure, and sometimes stumbles in orthography, not dealing more mildly with Kimchi than our boys do with Priscian. I will note examples in their proper places. Beyond this erudition of his, the Jews also claim for him a singular sanctity of life and consider him a semi-prophet who could predict future events. For they say that when Godfrey of Bouillon, about to recover the Holy Land from the Saracens, asked him first about the fortune of the war, he replied these two things: that he would reign there for only three days, soon to be expelled, and that he would return home with only three horses; and that both happened just so. For when he brought back four horses in refutation of the oracle, the fourth one, at the very entrance near the gate, was crushed by the fatal fall of a certain heavy stone. But that this whole story is fabulous is clear from the consensus of the most approved historians, who all unanimously write that he reigned there for more than a year, and also in the same place ended his life.