The Vilner Gaon as a biblical scholar (a reappraisal)

EN"Among the students of Jewish literature since the close of the Talmud, few have surpassed, or ever equalled, Elija of Vilna", wrote Jacob S. Raison more than eighty years ago, and in writing this he was, and still is, absolutely right. There is, indeed, no doubt that with the Vilner Gaon a new era began in the study of Miqra (Scripture), Mishnah, and Talmud. Sometimes it is even claimed that he revolutionized that study. Whether this is true or not, it remains a matter of fact that people not only in his generation admired him because of his great erudition, his undisputed and matchless scholarship in all realms of Jewish learning. According to Jisrael Jacob Dienstag's bibliographical essay on the Vilner Gaon, published already almost fifty years ago, but still the only comprehensive bibliography of his works we have, the Vilner Gaon seems to have commented on virtually all of the Hebrew Bible. Even if not all the commentaries to Biblical books may have survived, which he authored, or is supposed to have authored, or which are attributed to him, there is still a large number of them extant to prove the remarkable breadth and depth of his biblical scholarship. Nevertheless, as any attempt to review the Gaon's achievements in Jewish scholarship in general, so the attempt to review his contribution to the study of the Hebrew Bible, too, faces a fundamental problem, and that is the problem of authenticity and reliability of the texts which have come down to us as the works of the Vilner Gaon [p. 128].