Rabbinic Midrash Research Articles

Sacro-Legal Exegesis of Vergil in Late Antiquity

This paper sheds new light on a mode of late antique Vergilian interpretation, according to which Aeneas, Dido, and other characters in the Aeneid observe the regulations of Roman ritual norms, even standing in for priests including the famous flamen and flaminica Dialis. I argue that this mode of interpretation, which I refer to as sacro-legal exegesis, was a productive endeavor in Late Antiquity, offering members of the pagan aristocracy a means for locating and formulating the practice of traditional Roman cult within the pages of the Aeneid. I close by offering some parallels to a mode of rabbinic midrash according to which the biblical patriarchs followed the commandments prior to the revelation at Sinai.

Sex and Sanctity in the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew : A Christian Bedtrick and Its Biblical Bedrock

Abstract: In the apocryphal Acts of Andrew , a familiar double plot of sex and mistaken identity features Maximilla, a recently converted wife, tricking her pagan husband, Aegeates, into bedding her masked maid in order to retain the purity of her own bed. In resorting to this stratagem of sexual deception, the heroine of this tale behaves in a manner that contemporary Christians would (and did) find scandalous and unacceptable. This article investigates how this unique, sanctified bedtrick mobilizes different traditions (both Greco-Roman and biblical), subverts the predominant model of the Christian wife, and constructs a peculiar, alternative ideal. The Christian bedtrick evokes mythical and novelistic patterns but presents its instigator as paradoxically chaste—the opposite of her depraved analogues in myth and novel. The text also evokes biblical bedtricks, but only to challenge the emphasis on survival through procreation at all cost that underpins most of the bedtricks in Genesis. The article argues, finally, that the bridal switch between Rachel and Leah in Genesis 29 provides the closest biblical parallel for Maximilla's strategy. The striking apocryphal bedtrick also bears intriguing similarities to two texts that clearly hark back to the bridal switch of Genesis 29: an ancient Jewish "novel" (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 12.154–236) and an exegetical vignette from rabbinic midrash ( Lamentations Rabbah proem 24) that employ "holy" bedtricks in the interests of individual or collective salvation.

Down by the Riverside: A Collusion of Mothers for Moses

Abstract: The story of Moses's birth and salvation entails a collusion between three female figures: his biological mother (a Hebrew slave), his sister, and his Egyptian adoptive mother, Pharaoh's daughter. Through a close reading of the biblical text, the author shows how mother and daughter deliberately place the reed basket (or "ark") where it might be found by Pharaoh's daughter; the princess then defies her father's decree not only by saving the infant but in adopting him and raising him within the palace precincts. While rabbinic midrash sees the Egyptian princess as exceptional, portraying her anachronistically as a model convert and renaming her Bityah (that is, Batyah, daughter of Yah, God), the author conjectures that this collusion between Hebrew slavewomen and Egyptian aristocracy to save the infant Hebrew boy may very well have been a prevalent phenomenon. The essay closes with an original midrashic retelling of the narrative that highlights the alliance between Moses's Egyptian/Hebrew mothers.

The Tabernacle as a Sacred Feminine Space: The Development of Mythical Images from Biblical Literature to Medieval Kabbalah

This article compares two biblical accounts: the description of the construction of the Tabernacle (Ex. 25–40), and its connection to the myth of Eve’s creation (Gen. 2). I aim to reveal the literary and symbolic links between “feminine” attributes in these two formative accounts, from their development in biblical literature to their appearances in rabbinic midrash and medieval Kabbalah. My reading seeks to combine gender, myth, and literary study, to explore how erotic images of the sacred were developed and proliferated over generations.

Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals

Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals

Constance M. Furey, et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 19: Midrash–Mourning

Constance M. Furey, et al., eds. <i>Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception</i>. Vol. 19: <i>Midrash–Mourning</i>

“No Sin to Limp”: Critique as Error in Geoffrey Hartman’s Essays on Midrash

Abstract This article argues that contemporary polemics against critical reading, understood as the enduring legacy of “theory” in the humanities, overlook the unusual and generative concept of critique formulated by one of the literary scholars most closely associated with “theory,” the German-born American literary critic Geoffrey Hartman. For Hartman, critique amounts to a thinking that exposes itself to the alterity of the future and thus risks being wrong. Engaging two of Hartman’s essays from the mid-1980s, “The Struggle for the Text” and “Meaning, Error, Text,” the article specifically argues that Hartman derives this concept of critique as thinking that risks error from rabbinic midrash. However, this does not mean that Hartman seeks to “do midrash” himself. To the contrary, what Hartman learns from midrash is that the very structure of linguistic repetition, citation, or imitation forecloses the possibility of absolute fidelity to tradition. In “The Struggle for the Text,” he demonstrates this lesson through subversive readings of Genesis 32 and a fragment from Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle; in “Meaning, Error, Text,” Hartman historicizes his hermeneutic in relation to Christian supersession and the Holocaust, claiming ethical and political significance for his “restitution” of midrash as a model of critique.

Exegesis and Politics Between East and West: Nachman Krochmal, Moses Mendelssohn, and Modern Jewish Thought

AbstractRecent scholarship on modern Jewish thought has sought to overcome the field’s Germanocentrism by recovering diverse visions of Jewish life across eastern and western Europe. While studies typically emphasize either striking differences or surprising affinities between these settings, I use the neglected eastern European philosopher Nachman Krochmal to highlight a strategy of creative appropriation and redirection—an eastern European strategy of breaking with German-Jewish philosophy precisely by deploying that tradition’s own resources. One of modern Jewish philosophy’s early episodes, I argue, is a politically charged engagement with biblical exegesis involving Krochmal and the German-Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn. Implicitly drawing on yet revising the treatment of biblical interpretation in Mendelssohn’s Hebrew writings, Krochmal seeks to retrieve what he sees as a vital element of Jewish politics: possessing neither a shared land nor military strength, he insists, Jews have long sustained their diasporic collective through hermeneutical endeavors such as rabbinic midrash, and they should continue to do so by launching a transnational project of historically sensitive exegesis. The resulting image of a transnational Jewish collective whose fate is separate from that of non-Jewish polities breaks with Mendelssohn’s political vision, pointing to an east-west dynamic of creative repurposing—an instance of an eastern European thinker drawing on a German-Jewish predecessor to develop a sharply contrasting philosophical vision.

The Virgin Mother Sarah: The Characterization of the Matriarch in Genesis Rabbah

Abstract This article analyzes the portrayal of the matriarch Sarah in the fifth-century Palestinian rabbinic midrash Genesis Rabbah. The midrash not only dedicates a large number of derashot to the matriarch, but it repeatedly depicts her as a model of personal and religious excellence. In order to understand this development, I turn my attention to the portrayal of Sarah in the works of Origen of Alexandria. Continuing New Testament themes, Origen presents her as the spiritual mother of Christianity and a prefiguration of Jesus’ mother Mary. Various textual and thematic parallels help demonstrate that the rabbis were both aware of this rhetoric and responded to it. Based on this, I conclude that the rabbis used their portrayal of Sarah to combat the Christian appropriation of the matriarch on the one hand, and to establish her as a Jewish alternative to the Virgin Mary on the other.

Schismataand ʾAgudot: The Prohibition against Creating Factions in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature

AbstractPaul opens his First Epistle to the Corinthians with the exhortation “Now I appeal to you, brothers [and sisters], … that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1:10). This plea is strikingly similar to a passage in Sifre Deuteronomy 96, where the wordslo titgodeduare interpreted as “Do not be made into gatherings/factions[ʾagudot]; rather, be all of you one gathering[ʾagudah].” Analyzing these sources in depth, this article argues that Paul was familiar with this early rabbinic midrash in an oral form. It also explores the possibility that Paul used another early rabbinic tradition on unity, which is found in theMekhilta de-miluʾimsection of the Sifra. If Paul indeed knew certain rabbinic oral traditions, then he was an independent interpreter of Scripture, who read Scripture in the original Hebrew. Further, even if Paul's audience consisted primarily of gentiles, the legal norms he sought to institute among them were based on Jewish traditions. Finally, Paul follows his exhortation againstschismatawith the names of specific groups in Corinth, which demonstrates that he understood the tannaitic tradition as a normative principle, meant to be applied to specific disagreements. If so, other first-century Jews also likely understoodlo titgodeduas a concrete halakhic prohibition.

Staging Rachel: Rabbinic Midrash, Theatrical Mime, and Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity

AbstractLamentations Rabbah Proem 24, a late ancient rabbinic midrash, is in many ways a unique text within the entire rabbinic corpus. It presents an extraordinary array of characters (including Abraham, Moses, the Torah, and even the alphabet) who are called upon to placate God, but fail. As their quest proves inconclusive, the biblical Rachel jumps into the fray to tell her story: how out of sisterly compassion she allowed Leah to take her own place in the conjugal bed on “her” wedding night. Disclosing to her sister the secretive “signs” she had shared with Jacob, Rachel crawled under the nuptial bed to respond to Jacob whenever he spoke. This scandalous autobiography transforms an apparent instance of illicit sex, the ideal material for theatrical stage mimes, into an act of martyrdom and sublime compassion. This article argues that the performance culture of the late ancient Mediterranean world provides the key for assessing this text’s originality. We begin with an analysis of the text, drawing attention to its theatrical qualities and its relationships with contemporary visual imagery (mosaics) and texts from outside the rabbinic milieu (Christian Apocrypha). We then examine the casting of midrashic Rachel as a response to both the mimic adulteress and the Christian martyr. Finally, we consider rabbinic familiarity with mime, particularly with its usefulness as a social mediator and agent of collective catharsis. It is precisely these aspects of mimic performance, we argue, that Rachel’s vignette appropriates in this fascinating rabbinic text.

The Qur’ān and the Bible: Text and Commentary

The Qur’ān and the Bible: Text and Commentary

Imagining the Temple in Rabbinic Stone: The Evolution of the ʾEven Shetiyah

The mythical ʾeven shetiyah, often translated as the “foundation stone,” marks the physical place where the Jerusalem temples once stood in the rabbinic imagination. In its earliest incarnation it identified the place where the ark of the covenant resided in Solomon's Temple. Over the centuries it absorbed cosmogonic and eventually eschatological meaning. In later post-talmudic rabbinic literature, it adopted another mythic trope—the seal on thetehom. I argue that these two separate narrative strands of a seal on thetehomunderthe Temple and ʾeven shetiyahinthe Temple became intertwined, but only in late (post-talmudic) rabbinic midrash. I trace this evolutionary trend and argue that while the early rabbis both innovated and reinvigorated older biblical and ancient Near Eastern cosmogonic motifs with their ʾeven shetiyah, the later rabbinic texts were influenced by Christian and Muslim competition for spiritual and earthly Jerusalem. The stone that started as a means for rabbinic self-authorization became a reassertion of God's control of history and protection of Israel and the world, but in the process displaced priestly authority.

Nahmanides’ typological interpretation of the encounter between Abram and Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18–20)

Many of Nahmanides’ typological interpretations are closely associated with rabbinic Midrash and with Rashi’s comments, themselves based on Midrash. An exceptional deviation from the interpretation of the Midrash and Rashi is found in Nahmanides’ typological commentary on the encounter between Abram and Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18–20). Nahmanides, like the Midrash and Rashi, explains the encounter as hinting to the future priestly services in the Temple. But while the Midrash and Rashi emphasize the bread and wine offerings of Melchizedek, these are omitted from Nahmanides’ commentary. The focus is shifted from Melchizedek’s actions and gifts to those of Abram. Thus Nahmanides’ interpretation offers an alternative typology to that of the rabbis and Rashi and he refrains from even mentioning their typological interpretation. The present article offers an explanation for this exception, in the light of anti-Christian polemic and the typological significance of Melchizedek and his offerings in the Christian interpretation.

A Woman Would Marry a Woman

AbstractThis article revisits the classic rabbinic midrash prohibiting marriages between women, found in Sifra or Torat Kohanim. The author proposes that the midrash be read as a construction of a parallel feminist science-fiction universe where lesbian marriages are commonplace and women are legal persons as well as active subjects. The complex interplay between the invisibility and visibility of lesbian sexual relations as well as the questioning of their existence and significance is examined in relation to their relative permissibility. Prohibition of lesbian marriages is linked to an acknowledgement of the substantive nature of sexual relations between women, while the denial of their existence is linked to permissive and dismissive positions. Maimonides’s ruling in his Mishneh Torah is analysed in view of his Talmudic influences, which are found to be competing with the radically divergent position found in Sifra, resulting in a position that both asserts and denies the significance of lesbian relationships.

Korah in the Midrash: The Hairless Heretic as Hero

Perhaps the least likely hero in the Bible is Korah, the Levite who challenges Moses’s leadership in Numbers 16 and whom later tradition regarded as an archvillain. This article examines how the rabbinic, Christian, and Islamic traditions appropriated this figure and turned him, if not into a full-fledged hero, then at least into a kind of trickster whose challenge to Moses reinforces the authority of Orthodox tradition. An example of this transmutation is the way rabbinic Midrash turns Korah into a kind of hyperlegalistic rabbi. He poses typical rabbinic questions to Moses that are intended to undermine the law, but by drawing limits around his questions the Midrash constructs the boundaries of rabbinic dissension. Another set of themes puts women at the center of the Korah story and also plays with Korah as bald: in these stories, sexuality and power are linked to hair. In patristic writings, Korah becomes the exemplar of a heretical bishop and is also made fabulously wealthy (a theme common also to Jewish and Muslim traditions). Korah’s wealth symbolizes the Israel of the flesh: this biblical villain now comes to stand for the Jewish people as a whole. In Muslim sources, he is also transmuted into “the enlightened one.”

Allegory as Embodiment: The Function of History in Origen's "Genesis Homily"

ABSTRACT Daniel Boyarin has recently characterized Origen's allegorical exegesis as a sort of disembodied history. Boyarin contrasts Origen's spiritual approach to the Scriptures with that of rabbinic midrash that, according to Boyarin, preserves the integrity of both history and bodies. In doing so, Boyarin has resurrected something of R. P. C. Hanson's classic critique of Origen's exegesis as disinterested in the actual events of history. Attempting to offer a corrective to Boyarin's characterization of the ramifications of Origen's interpretive practices, this article (1) demonstrates the way in which the last generation of scholarship has largely rejected Hanson's evaluation of Origen, making Boyarin's similar charge somewhat strange; (2) presents a reading of Origen's Genesis Homily 1 that shows how Origen's allegorical exegesis dramatically underscores the importance of history and bodies for his hearers; and (3) argues that Origen is concerned with history and bodies, just not in the way that scholars such as Hanson and Boyarin would like him to be.

Allegory as Embodiment: The Function of History in Origen's "Genesis Homily"

ABSTRACT Daniel Boyarin has recently characterized Origen's allegorical exegesis as a sort of disembodied history. Boyarin contrasts Origen's spiritual approach to the Scriptures with that of rabbinic midrash that, according to Boyarin, preserves the integrity of both history and bodies. In doing so, Boyarin has resurrected something of R. P. C. Hanson's classic critique of Origen's exegesis as disinterested in the actual events of history. Attempting to offer a corrective to Boyarin's characterization of the ramifications of Origen's interpretive practices, this article (1) demonstrates the way in which the last generation of scholarship has largely rejected Hanson's evaluation of Origen, making Boyarin's similar charge somewhat strange; (2) presents a reading of Origen's Genesis Homily 1 that shows how Origen's allegorical exegesis dramatically underscores the importance of history and bodies for his hearers; and (3) argues that Origen is concerned with history and bodies, just not in the way that scholars such as Hanson and Boyarin would like him to be.

Brer Rabbit and the Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem: The Double Voice in Literatures of Exile

Abstract The connection between Brer Rabbit and the story of the Jewish community after 70 CE is that both are recorded in literatures of exile. As a result, they share a significant quality—the double voice—deployed as one of many literary strategies for survival under oppression. Using passages from Brer Rabbit and Lamentations Rabba, this article focuses on riddles and trickster tales because they present an especially striking witness of the double voice as expounded within African-American literary theory. These genres appear in the folklore of most cultures, but their encoding enables a unique inversion of cultural meaning for subaltern and dispersed peoples, which gives the tales remarkable power to fashion and sustain identities, and to articulate the complexity of their experience. They absorb the imagery and language of the dominant culture, yet re-signify their meaning in the process of assimilation. Both elements of this voice—the adoption and the inversion—are essential representations of the authors or redactors. Separated by time, space, language, culture, and context, the tales of Brer Rabbit and the Palestinian rabbinic midrash speak to each other through this strategic polyphony.

Means and End(ing)s: Nomos Versus Narrative in Early Rabbinic Exegesis

Rabbinic literature shares a suggestive array of literary features with later Latin literary sources: commentary, fragmentation and quotation, and a granular attention to language. In this material narrative tends to be lost; classical source texts, such as Vergil, are fetishized, broken apart, and repurposed. In this essay I ask of one corpus--early rabbinic midrash (biblical commentary)--what is the origin and impact of its fragmented and finally incoherent narrative project? At the risk of over-simplifying, I will focus on the rabbis as a case study in the etiology of a more general phenomenon. I will argue that the fragmentation so typical of aggadic midrash is the result of the application of a specifically legal hermeneutic to nonlegal, specifically narrative, sources. As a result, rabbinic midrash beginning in the third century consistently undercuts its own narrative aims. Metaliterary, anthologized, pastiched, commentarial forms become standard in the late antique Roman repertoire, with rabbinic texts we can historicize and contextualize one such transformation, and in so doing center law, legal thinking and forms into literary genealogies.