This book is a new Edition, amended and expanded, of the essay JEWS AND CHRISTIANS INTERPRET THE BIBLE originally published in 1992. The book is a collection of articles dealing with biblical commentary through the ages which centers mainly on the reciprocal relationship between the Jewish and Christian biblical commentary. These relationships are exposed as a rich and complex system of influence and controversy, which is manifested both explicitly and implicitly. The essays of the Jewish commentators, including Rashi, Rashbam, and R. Yosef Bechor Shor, are studied in light of the cultural world and reality of life at their time and as a response to that era, and the Christian commentary is examined through its complex and multi faceted relationship with the Jewish tradition and the Jewish Biblical Commentary.

Rashi was a biblical commentator and this book examines his interpretations while considering the considerations, trends and decisions behind them. The underlying question of the book is whether in Rashi's interpretive work there is a distinction between peshat and derash, as two distinct interpretive categories. The discussion is based on a careful examination of Rashi's interpretative terms and on the study of a large selection of his commentaries on the Bible.