Glossa ordinaria and Glossa Hebraica: Midrash in Rashi and the Gloss

An assiduous interest in the plain sense of Scripture and shared interpretations of particular biblical passages can be observed in certain twelfth-century Jewish and Christian commentaries composed in northern France. While Hugh of Saint Victor and Rashbam engaged in independent endeavors to shed light on the sensus literalis and the peshat of Scripture, Andrew of Saint Victor attributed his knowledge of particular rabbinic interpretations to encounters with contemporary Jews. Yet points of convergence in Jewish and Christian exegesis can be observed even before the work of the Victorines and Rashi’s disciples. The purpose of this study is to examine the midrashic interpretations transmitted in northern France around the beginning of the twelfth century in both the Glossa Ordinaria and Rashi’s biblical commentaries. Interpretations are found in both corpora on occasions when their late-antique sources, such as Midrash Genesis Rabba and Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, themselves transmit similar insights. By analyzing an exposition found in both Rashi and the Gloss, the narrative of Abraham in the fiery furnace, this study seeks to clarify the nature and extent of this relationship. It thereby enables a more detailed understanding of the ways that midrash reached twelfth-century Jews and Christians and of how Rashi and the Gloss ensured the wide dissemination of these interpretations.