Study Of Midrash Research Articles

Recent Trends in the Study of Midrash and Rabbinic Narrative

The present article surveys some significant developments in scholarship on rabbinic midrash and narrative (aggadic) sources. The contemporary trends in the study of midrash can be traced back to the work of Jacob Neusner in the early 1970s. This article traces developments from that time, and does so by isolating trends in (1) literary analysis, (2) cultural studies, and (3) new historicism. A final section (4) looks at equally important developments concerning still unfinished business of producing critical editions of rabbinic texts.

Book Review: Current Trends in the Study of Midrash

Book Review: Current Trends in the Study of Midrash

Current Trends in the Study of Midrash. Edited by CAROL BAKHOS.

Current Trends in the Study of Midrash. Edited by CAROL BAKHOS.

Current Trends in the Study of Midrash.

Current Trends in the Study of Midrash.

Beyond the Verse: Midrash Aggadah as Interpretation of Biblical Narrative

The 1980s saw the introduction of postmodern literary theory into the field of rabbinic literature, in particular into the study of midrash, which began to be explored as anticipating or aligning with many of the claims of modern literary theorists. This new interest intersected oddly at times with the prevailing historicist mode of inquiry. For many scholars, the notion of textual indeterminacy supported the idea of the interpreter of the text as essentially an “eisegete,” who reads the text from his or her own historically embedded perspective, rather than as an exegete, who at least attempts to find out what the text “really means.” Thus, scholars who embraced this new perspective often rejected an inquiry into midrash as biblical interpretation in the classic sense of the word. “No one believes anymore,” someone pointed out to me after a session on midrash in a conference during the mid-1980’s, “that texts have meaning.”

Two Centuries of Midrash Study: A Survey of Some Standard Works on Rabbinic Midrash and its Methods

This paper offers an overview and discussion of some standard works about the study of midrash and its methods, starting with the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the 19th century. Isaac Heinemann was the first to present a more or less complete survey of midrashic method in his work Darkhe haAggadah (1949). But Heinemann himself already stood in a tradition of midrash study, initiated by Leopold Zunz in his seminal work Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden historisch entwickelt (1832). Two relatively recent works retrace the footsteps of Heinemann, i.e. Jonah Fraenkel’s, Darkhe haAggadah vehaMidrash (1991) and Daniel Boyarin’s, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (1990). In addition to these works, other relevant studies about the subject are discussed briefly.

Structure and Editing in the Homiletic Midrashim

Since Leopold Zunz's comments regarding the highly artistic form of the classic rabbinic homily, those involved in the critical study of midrash have concerned themselves with the structure of the derashah. Some nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars recognized that the individual pisqa'ot and parashiyyot of the homiletic midrashim contain a series of petiḥtot (sermonic proems), followed by interpretative comments upon the first few verses of the pericope texts. In addition, research into homiletic forms such as the peroration led other scholars closer to an understanding of the structural unity of the rabbinic homily.