Form
This extensive and important midrash, which forms a complete commentary on Genesis, and exemplifies all points of midrashic exegesis, is divided into sections. Proems head these sections. It is by these means distinguished from the tannaitic midrashim to the other books of the Torah, such as Mekilta, Sifra, and Sifre. Every chapter of the Genesis Rabba is headed by the first verse of the passage to be explained, and is introduced, with few exceptions, by one or more prefatory remarks starting from a verse taken from another Biblical passage as text — generally from the Writings or Ketuvim. By various explanations of these texts, a transition is effected to the exposition of the particular verse of Genesis heading the section. There are in the Genesis Rabba about 230 of these passages. About 70 are cited with the name of the Rabbi with whom they originated or whose explanation of the verse in question was used as an introduction to the section of Genesis Rabba.
Read more about this topic: Genesis Rabbah
Famous quotes containing the word form:
“At all events, as she, Ulster, cannot have the status quo, nothing remains for her but complete union or the most extreme form of Home Rule; that is, separation from both England and Ireland.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“In action, the English have the advantage enjoyed by free men always entitled to free discussion: of having a ready judgment on every question. We Germans, on the other hand, are always thinking. We think so much that we never form a judgment.”
—Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)