הפירוש האנונימי לספר דברי הימים המיוחס לתלמיד של רס"ג: מקומו בתולדות פרשנות הפשט היהודית

In 1874, Raphael Kirchheim published an anonymous commentary on the Books of Chronicles under the title: Ein Commentar zur Chronik aus dem 10ten Jahrhundert. In his preface he suggested that the commentator was a student of Rav Saʿadiah Gaon. While various scholars agreed with Kirchheim, others just noted briefly that the commentator is Babylonian or North African, however none of them researched this thoroughly. In fact, this commentary has not yet been sufficiently examined. In the first part of the article, the writer supports the hypothesis that the commentator came from a country under Islamic rule in the 10th-11th centuries. In the second part he points out the similarities and connections between the commentary and the exegesis of Northern France, including obvious links between the commentary and Rashi's methodological statements. In the third part he shows that the commentary was familiar in Ashkenaz in the 12th and 13th centuries. The writer concludes that the commentator did indeed come from an Islamic country (Babylon or North Africa). However, the commentator wandered among different Jewish communities and wrote his commentary in Ashkenaz. This is the oldest surviving commentary from Ashkenaz and it provides us with some important details regarding the development of the Peshat exegesis in Northern France in those days, two generations before Rashi.