Volume 45, Number 7 · April 23, 1998
The Midrash Mishmash
By Frank Kermode
The Bible As It Was
by James L. Kugel
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 680 pp., $35.00
The interpretation of Scripture, as practiced by learned rabbis from the first century of the present era, is called midrash. Midrash concerned with the Law was called Midrash Halacha; the other kind, which dealt with nonlegal parts of the Bible, was called Midrash Haggadah. The terms are properly used only for rabbinical interpretation after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and the earliest extant examples date from the second century; but the haggadic way of interpreting had roots deeper in the past. Some scholars refer to these earlier interpretative practices as 'proto-midrash.'
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