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Midrash Rabbah מדרש רבה
The great aggadic library of the Oral Torah — ten midrashim on the Torah and the five megillot, spanning eight centuries of composition but read as one shelf ever since the printers bound them together. Its earliest books preserve the sermons of the amoraim of Eretz Yisrael in their own Galilean Aramaic.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מדרש רבה
- Era
- amoraim
II. When
- Traditional
- aggadah of the amoraim of Eretz Yisrael and their heirs; opened, by tradition, by R' Oshaya
- Civil (computed)
- 4160–4930 AM · 400–1170 CE
- Academic
- components span c. 400–1200 CE (Bereishit Rabbah earliest, Bamidbar Rabbah latest); assembled as one collection only in print
- Duration
- ≈770 years
- Precision
- disputed
IV. What
- Language
- Galilean Aramaic and Hebrew
- Redaction
- Not one redaction but ten: each book is an independent midrash with its own date and method. The familiar single "Midrash Rabbah" is a printers' collection — the ten books were first bound as one corpus in the early printed editions (Constantinople 1512, Venice 1545).
- Structure
- Ten midrashim on the ten books read publicly in the synagogue year: the five books of the Torah (Bereishit, Shemot, Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devarim Rabbah) and the five megillot (Shir HaShirim, Ruth, Eichah, Kohelet, Esther Rabbah). Bereishit, Vayikra, and Eichah Rabbah are classical amoraic works; Shemot, Bamidbar, and Devarim Rabbah are medieval compilations in Tanchuma style.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Midrash Rabbah" is a composite: ten independent works unified only by the printed editions (Constantinople 1512 for the Torah books; the Venice 1545 edition established the full collection), with dates of composition ranging from the amoraic period to the 12th century. | reconstruction | ★★★★☆ | |
| Bereishit Rabbah is the oldest of the ten — a classical amoraic midrash of Eretz Yisrael, dated academically c. 400–450 CE, close in language and material to the Talmud Yerushalmi; tradition links it to R' Oshaya, with whose petichta ("R' Oshaya rabbah opened") the work begins. | rabbinic tradition reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |
|
| Vayikra Rabbah and Eichah Rabbah are likewise classical amoraic compositions (c. 5th c. CE), while Shemot Rabbah, Bamidbar Rabbah, and Devarim Rabbah are much later compilations — Bamidbar Rabbah's first part is generally dated to the 12th century — so the corpus cannot carry a single date.
The atlas keeps the ten books as one entity — the printed shelf — with the per-book dating recorded here rather than as ten more boxes on the rail.
|
reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |