Moses ha-Darshan

Moshe haDarshan (11th century) (Hebrew: משה הדרשן‎) was chief of the yeshiva of Narbonne, and perhaps the founder of Jewish exegetical studies in France. Along with Rashi, his writings are often cited as the first extant writings in Zarphatic, the Judæo-French language.

According to a manuscript in the possession of the Alliance Israélite Universelle containing those parts of Abraham Zacuto's Sefer Yuḥasin that are omitted in Samuel Shullam's edition, Moses was descended from a Narbonne family distinguished for its erudition, his great-grandfather, Abun, his grandfather, Moses ben Abun, and his father, Jacob ben Moses ben Abun (called "ha-Navi"), all having been presidents of the Narbonne yeshivah. Moses himself held this position, and after his death it was occupied by his brother Levi.

Though Moshe ha-Darshan was considered a rabbinical authority, he owes his reputation principally to the fact that together with Tobiah ben Eliezer he was the most prominent representative of midrashic-symbolic Bible exegesis (derash) in the 11th century. His work on the Bible, probably sometimes called Yesod, and known only by quotations found mostly in Rashi's commentaries (Rashi quotes him 19 times in his pirush Al HaTorah, and only twice in his pirush on Shas - once in Kesuvos 75b, and the other in Niddah 19a), contained extracts from earlier haggadic works as well as midrashic explanations of his own. Often the latter were not in harmony with the spirit of the rabbinical Midrash and even contained Christian theological conceptions.

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