78 Benjamin D. Sommer
and dashes inserted into the old consonantal text of the Bible to represent vowels,
but even today most Hebrew texts are written mostly with consonants and with
only a few vowels; competent readers (nowadays, starting roughly in third grade)
fi gure out the vowels from context.
- On some implications of this tendency for Jewish conceptions of scripture,
especially in ways that diff erentiate Jewish theological readings from the read-
ings of modern Protestant canon critics such as Brevard Childs, see my comments
in “Th e Scroll of Isaiah as Jewish Scripture, or, Why Jews Don’t Read Books,” in
Society of Biblical Literature 1996 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996),
225 – 42. - Th e term appears only once in midrashic literature: Ta n h.uma (Buber) Va y -
yera’ §46 — but even there it refers not to a particular narrative unit but to what
happened to Isaac. - Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” 93.
- In this regard, people of our times, who are familiar with computers, hy-
pertexts, and databases, can understand the rabbinic conception of scripture much
more readily than people only a few decades ago could. - While writing could not accommodate the matrix, it is important to note
that memorization of a text (a nonphysical data-storage method) could do so, at
least to some extent. On the importance of memorization and orality in midrash
and its connection to midrash’s verse-centeredness, see Kugel, “Two Introductions
to Midrash,” 94 – 95. On the importance of orality/aurality in conceptions of scrip-
ture in many religious traditions, see Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? A
Comparative Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), index, 376, s.v. “Oral-aural,”
as well as William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture
in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). - Th is is, historically speaking, the correct pronoun.
- Similarly, whether as a result of scribal practice, printers’ conventions, or
the original midrashist’s discourse, it is oft en the case that a rabbinic text cites only
the fi rst few words of a verse, even though the relevant part of the verse appears
later, in the section not quoted. In the period in which midrashim were fi rst pro-
duced and transmitted, our contemporary system of chapters and verses did not
yet exist. Consequently, to refer to, say, Genesis 1:1 a scholar would say, “In the
beginning God created” — even if the crucial section for the point he was making
involved the words “the heavens and the earth” later in the verse. Th e point of the
citation was merely to let the audience know what verse was under consideration,
not to repeat the whole text. Th e rabbis seem to have assumed that their audience
knew the Bible more or less by heart, so that complete citation was not necessary.
To a modern reader who does not pause to look up the whole verse (and maybe,
just to be safe, the verse aft er it as well), midrashim oft en appear to be full of ran-
dom comments and non sequiturs. - Th e midrash presumes that prophecy necessarily involves prediction. Th is