[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
In any case, it is doubtful that 12th C Parisian monks and masons would have access to Rashi’s commentaries, even by second-hand transmissions, and this was also an age of Talmud burnings, not learning, in Paris.
[/quote]
‘Rashi also influenced non-Jewish circles. His commentaries on the Bible circulated in many different communities especially his commentaries on the Pentateuch. In the 12thÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã?¢??17th centuries, Rashi’s influence spread from French and German provinces to Spain and the east. He had a tremendous influence on Christian scholars. The French monk Nicolas de Lyre of Manjacoria, who was known as the “ape of Rashi”,[27] was dependent on Rashi when writing the ‘Postillae Perpetuate’ on the Bible. He believed that Rashi’s commentaries were the “official repository of Rabbinical tradition”.[28] and significant to understanding the Bible. De Lyre also had great influence on Martin Luther. Rashi’s commentaries became significant to humanists at this time who studied grammar and exegesis. Christian Hebraists studied Rashi’s commentaries as important interpretations "authorized by the Synagogue…’
I kan youse wikepedea! 
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True. But I was thinking of a timeline with smh that would have made it unlikely that such scholarship would have been known to masons–illiterate, although well-travelled they may be–and insular monks.
So noting the use and misuse biblical scholarship, wiki “Nicolas de Lyre.”[/quote]
I have found the Comestor quote:
“He also chose a certain kind of serpent, as Bede says, which had the countenance of a virgin, because like favors like.” [In the Latin, “like applauds like.”]
Interestingly, the Bede exegesis to which Comestor alludes has never been found.
Dare I suggest that Comestor picked this up from Rashi, if Rashi indeed wrote anything more substantial about Lilith, and then, given the climate of France at the time (the Jews were expelled just a few years after Comestor died), decided to impute it to a famous Christian, rather than to a Jew?
Fantastical, yes. But then, see page 85:
I find this very interesting!
The conjecture is that there was indirect transmission of the teaching from Rashi to Comestor, whom you have introduced to me.
The reasons for dout are:
–Rashi comments only once, and briefly, on a “lilit” in Isaiah 34. Lilit was a nocturnal demon. Would he have had a different opinion in his extensive commentary on Talmud (unavailable to me at this time)? Jewbaca would know better, but my guess is “no!” Rashi’s commentary on Torah was written after the commentary on the Babylonian Talmud–and for young students and children!–so my guess is nothing of Rashi on the subject was given to Comestor.
–Rashi became know through his “grandchildren’s” generation, and generally through Spain and Provence, rather than through Worms and Rhineland as one might suppose.
So, although the conjecture is interesting, the proof is lacking.
The whole business of the “horned Moses.” Is also pretty funny. It was knwn by the late Middle Ages that the “karen” was a mistranslation of “horns” for “rays of light.” But Michaelangelo–who must have known better, by proximity to knowledeable sources–chose to put horns on Moses.
(Freud’s essay notwithstanding, I think Michaelangelo was having a joke at Julian’s expense.)