Concepts of Scriptural Language in Midrash 65- A midrash (plural, midrashim) can be a particular interpretation of
a passage or verse that uses one or more of these methods. (“Let me
share with you a wonderful midrash on a verse from the Psalms that I
just heard.”) - A midrash can refer to an anthology that collects these interpreta-
tions. (“I just bought a nice edition of a midrash on Exodus.”)
Midrashim (in the second of these senses) are oft en found embedded in
the Talmuds (one of which was edited in the Land of Israel around 400 CE,
the other in Babylonia in the 500s and 600s). To be sure, neither Talmud
is a commentary on the Bible; they are rather sets of discussions on the
Mishna (the central text of rabbinic Judaism that lays out Jewish law in a
more-or-less systematic manner, which was edited in the mid-third cen-
tury CE). Nonetheless, the rabbis of the Talmud oft en strive to link the laws
found in the Mishna back to the Bible, and thus they engage in scriptural
interpretation or midrash in the course of their discussions. Further, they
not infrequently digress into passages that involve midrashic interpreta-
tion of biblical passages unrelated to a strictly legal issue. Midrashim are
also found in anthologies that collect rabbinic interpretations and homilies
on a biblical book, several biblical books, or cycles of liturgical readings.
Some of the earlier anthologies collect midrashim of the tanna’im, or rab-
bis from the period of the Mishna; these tannaitic anthologies, edited in
the mid-fi rst millennium, contain interpretation of both legal matter (He-
brew, halakhah) and of nonlegal matter (aggadah).4 (Th ere can be, and are,
aggadic interpretations of halakhic passages from the Bible; these aggadic
interpretations deduce moral, theological, or homiletic lessons from verses
dealing with ritual, civil, or criminal law.) Many post-tannaitic antholo-
gies also exist; edited in the last half of the fi rst millennium CE and into
the fi rst few centuries of the second millennium CE, they contain some
teachings that go back to the Mishnaic or tannaitic era, teachings of the
rabbis of the Talmud, and some early post-Talmudic teachings, and they
limit themselves to aggadah.5 When one refers to a book of midrash, it is
one of these tannaitic or post-tannaitic anthologies one has in mind. Th ese
anthologies are not quite commentaries on biblical books; rather, they are
collections that string together multiple interpretations of various verses,
oft en following the order of the biblical texts. But they typically include
varying or even contradictory interpretations of many scholars on a given
verse. Th ey may focus on a few verses, only to skip large blocks of material.
By the beginning of the second millennium, other methods of interpreting