superstition, extravagantly absurd, and fantastically naive. Rashi believed that the Nile flooded its banks once every forty years; but Joinville, who lived two centuries later, and who was in Egypt, tells even more astonishing things than this about the marvellous [marvelous sic] river, which has its source in the terrestrial Paradise. Besides French, the only profane language Rashi knew was German. The explanations he gives according to the Greek, the Arabic, and the Persian, he obtains from secondary sources. Indeed, they are sometimes faulty, and they reveal the ignorance of the man who reproduced without comprehending them. No great interest attaches to the mention of his chronological mistakes and his confusion of historical facts. His astronomic knowledge is very slight, and resolves itself into what he borrowed from the Italian Sabbatai Donnolo, of Oria (about 950). But limited as his knowledge was to Biblical, Talmudic, and Rabbinical literature, it was for that reason all the greater in the province he had explored in its inmost recesses. This is shown by his numerous citations, the sureness of his touch, and his mastery of all the subjects of which he treats. Thanks to the citations, we can definitely ascertain what we might call his library. Needless to say, the first place was held by the Bible, which, as will be seen, he knew perfectly. He wrote commentaries upon the Bible almost in its entirety, besides frequently referring to it in his Talmudic commentaries. His favorite guide for the explanation of the Pentateuch is the Aramaic version by Onkelos. For the Prophets he used the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel.[34] He was entirely ignorant of the Apocryphal books. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, for instance, like the <I>Megillat Taanit,</I> or Roll of Fasts,[35] were known to him only through the citations of the Talmud. On the other hand Rashi was thoroughly conversant with the whole field of Talmudic literature-first of all the treatises on religious jurisprudence, the <I>Mishnah,</I>[36] <I>Tosefta,</I>[37] the Babylonian and, in part, the Palestinian <I>Gemara;</I>[36] then, the Halakic Midrashim, such as the <I>Mekilta,</I> the <I>Sifra,</I> the <I>Sifre,</I>[38] and Haggadic compilations, such as the <I>Rabbot,</I>[39] the Midrash on the Song of Songs, on Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, and Samuel, the <I>Pesikta,</I>[40] the <I>Tanhuma,</I>[41] and the <I>Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer.</I>[42]