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The Midrash

In: Religion Topics

Submitted By jessicageweke
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The Midrash is known to be an ancient commentary on part of the Hebrew scriptures. I am not familiar with the concept of the Midrash other than it provides the people with a outsiders commentary on the scriptures rather than the idea and teachings itself within the Hebrew scriptures. Not only that, the Midrash points out and clarifies many things that you may have thought about or that the scriptures itself hint toward. In a huge way, the Midrash is almost a book of clarification for many. Its initial purpose was to help resolve problems and confusion with the biblical stories that goes beyond just what’s written on paper. It seems as though the Midrash has a significant meaning in the culture and the philosopher, R. Gamaliel, took part in writing an interesting and different take on the original text. The process of creating the Midrash was preformed with help from the rabbis. The commentary within the Midrash is basically all the interpretations the people came across and then the rabbis “filled in the gaps” through the assistance of the Torah. This books overall goal is to aid and provide us with answers to many questions we may have come across when reading the Hebrew scriptures. It has been said by many that the Torah does provide the Jewish culture with laws and rules however they are very broad. One of the Midrash’s purposes is to go into further detail on the rules and provide us with further clarification. After reading the Midrash Rabbah on the book of Genesis it really provided me with a sense of how the Midrash portrays a function for the culture. When reading section nine, it gave me a sense of ironies present in the Midrash how they kept stating things such as “I make peace, and create evil” or “I form the light, and create darkness.” Those statements caught me off guard and make you look more deeply into the text. It’s clear the philosopher

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