If one were to recognize different scholars as the appropriate interpretive authority, one would have a different sense of the authority of a text. Moses had attained the most advanced possible spiritual state and he had given the world the most advanced possible legal system. Furthermore, the text he gave was, in its direct emanation from the Godhead, divine but, in its language and concepts, it was the work of Moses who was the best-prepared of intellects. Its origin was divine, but its formulation, the details of its language, its theology, and its legal implications, would certainly be disputed in the millenia after Moses. The Voice is re-sounded in the multiplicity of voices.
Text is, thus, always multivocal, plurisignificant.
Yet text always has authority and, while that authority varies with the spiritual, theological, communal, and political location of the reader, it is authority that provides intellectual, spiritual, and social coherence. Text is, thus, always also univocal, logocentric. Rashi's commentary is actually the first printed Hebrew book, appearing in 1475 in Reggio di Calabria, Italy. My thanks to my friend and colleague, Professor Michael Broyde, for this observation as well as for his sage advice on how best to prepare these texts for publication. My thanks, too, to my friend and colleague, Professor Michael Berger, for his very constructive comments to the various versions of this paper.