Genesis Rabbah
Bereshit Rabbah
Genesis rewards verse-by-verse, even word-by-word, homiletical excavation, and the accumulated interpretive tradition built up around it over generations of sages deserves to be preserved as a text in its own right, not treated merely as background to the Mishnah's law.
- verse-by-verse narrative midrash on Genesis
- aggadic exegesis as a project parallel to legal Talmudic reasoning
- filling narrative gaps the biblical text leaves open
- the literary template for later midrashic collections
The earliest and most extensive of the classical aggadic (narrative, non-legal) midrash collections, working systematically through the book of Genesis verse by verse and gathering generations of rabbinic homiletical interpretation, parable, and legend around it. Compiled in the Galilee in roughly the same period and milieu that produced the Jerusalem Talmud, it represents a parallel rabbinic literary project focused on scriptural narrative rather than legal reasoning, filling in character motivation, resolving apparent narrative gaps, and drawing moral and theological lessons from small textual details the plain narrative leaves unexplained. It established the basic literary form, verse-anchored homiletical commentary attributed to named sages, that later midrashic collections on other biblical books would continue to follow.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…