A genre is born: The genesis, dynamics, and role of Hebrew exegetical supercommentaries

This article offers orientation in a form of Jewish biblical scholarship that has received too little attention: commentaries on biblical commentaries, or "exegetical supercommentaries." In so doing, the article introduces a procession of scholars who undertook to explain one of the three classic commentaries on the Torah of Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Moses ben Nahman. These authors sometimes reflected on the nature of their chosen genre. Secondary writers though they were, they often evince a sense an autonomous interpretive sense. As participants in the Jewish commentary tradition, they directed readers to particular understandings of the classic commentaries, seeing in supercommentary a contribution to learning worthy of their intellectual energy and literary aspirations. With insights regarding the genre of supercommentaries in hand, conjoined with findings from the many local studies of supercommentaries that still await, scholars can begin to appreciate the place that exegetical supercommentaries occupy in the Jewish respublica litterarum.