Although Nahmanides is a towering figure in the history of Talmudic study, his greatest direct impact on the masses of Jews probably came through his wide-ranging and enormously influential commentary on the Pentateuch, which was to become one of the first printed Hebrew books. Nahmanides was persuaded that all knowledge could be found in the Torah, and his efforts to explicate the text touched upon all the areas of his intellectual interest. He was, first of all, deeply concerned with the plain meaning of the text. This concern went beyond questions of philology and syntax; Nahmanides was extraordinarily interested in the structure and order of biblical narrative, which he perceived, despite an apparent rabbinic statement to the contrary, as carefully chronological. The commentary contains nuanced and richly textured observations about the morality, motivations, and personalities of biblical characters; Nahmanides did not hesitate, for example, to question the moral legitimacy of Abraham's apologia to Abimelech that Sarah was indeed his half sister (Gn.
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