Midrasch Wasjoscha: Edition, Tradition, Interpretation.

• Author: Eliav, Yaron
• Position: Book review

Midrasch Wasjoscha: Edition, Tradition, Interpretation. By ELISABETH WIES-CAMPAGNER. Studia Judaica, vol. 49. Berlin: WALTER DE GRUYTER, 2009. Pp. viii + 517. [euro]121.45.

The phenomenon of Midrash is beautifully complex, abounds with possibilities. A Hebrew noun derived from a verb which originally meant to inquire, explore, investigate, or seek out (similar to the Greek word historia), Midrash includes a multifaceted, intellectual process of pondering and expanding the meaning of the biblical text as well as the development of literary traditions, both written and oral, that contain the products of this exegetical endeavor. The rabbis, a scholarly group active in Roman and then Byzantine Palestine in the first few centuries of the Common Era, coined the term Midrash and produced some of its most conspicuous texts. But the midrashic experience, even if not labeled as such, extends well beyond the realm of the rabbis. Its earliest seeds reach as far back as biblical books, such as Chronicles, which contemplated the meaning and reacted to the content of earlier books--Genesis, to name one of several examples. Later, in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, diverse and at times opposing Jewish groups--such as the Essenes in Qumran, who composed much of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the followers of Jesus who generated the traditions known as the Gospels--all partook in midrashic activity and used it as a tool to shape their distinct identities. In the centuries following the rabbis, Midrash travelled with Jewish communities as they settled in Arab and European lands across the medieval world. Jewish scholars of these later times (adopting the prestigious name of their predecessors and also calling themselves rabbis) continued to create Midrash either by collecting and reconfiguring earlier texts or by developing new ones. Midrash remains a lively phenomenon in modern Jewish circles as well.

Since the rise of the academic study of Judaism in the nineteenth century, Midrash has received continuous attention, to the extent that today it encompasses a subfield of its own. Right from the start, modern scholars identified the production of critical editions for the midrashic texts as a top priority. Naturally, at first they mainly concentrated on the core of the midrashic corpus, the classical texts produced by the rabbis of the Roman-Byzantine eras. But the most recent generation has widened our field of interest to seriously investigate also the...