Take Hold of the Robe of a Jew : Herbert of Bosham’s Christian Hebraism

This engaging, meticulously documented study explores the complex, sometimes conflicting motives of Christian hebraists. It locates Herbert of Bosham’s twelfth-century Psalms commentary at the nexus of the intellectual and social movements of his day, and elucidates the complex situations that contributed to Christians’ divergent perspectives on the Jews. Was the twelfth century a rare period of collaboration between Christian and Jewish exegetes, or did anti-Semitism originate in the texts of the era’s Christian polemicists? Modern scholars have been divided on these questions. This study of Herbert’s commentary, which relied on the Hebrew commentary of R. Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, articulates a more nuanced, integrated approach to medieval Jewish-Christian relations, and provides transcriptions from the unpublished manuscript.