Reading the Bible as Scripture
How have the Jews read the Bible?
Rabbinic Judaism and the Synagogue After the fall of Judah, the destruction of the Temple, and the Babylonian exile Jewish life and faith were centered in synagogues where rabbis read and taught the Torah.
The Rabbis and the Midrash
Upon the return to Jerusalem and the rededication of the second Temple, the institution of the synagogue continued. There developed an oral tradition which was based upon the teachings of the rabbis (midrash- "to seek out, investigate, inquire of").
Midrash ," refers to (1) the particular mode of scriptural interpretation practiced by the rabbis of the land of Israel and Babylonia in late antiquity, (2) any individual rabbinic interpretation ("a Midrash"), and (3) the corpus of edited literature composed of rabbinic scriptural interpretations.
1. Midrashic Hermeneutics. As a mode of scriptural interpretation Midrash is characterized by its dense overreading of the biblical......
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