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The Editorial Nature of the Yalkut Shimoni. An Exploratory Study of the Quotations of Bereshit Rabbah XXII,8-10 in the Yalkut Shimoni

Scientific summary of Phd project

 

The aim of this research is to explore the editorial nature of the Yalkut Shimoni, a midrashic anthology often dated from the XIII century. While some controversies remain regarding the actual datation of the Yalkut, most scholars date it from the XIII century, but some favour an earlier XI century datation. The Midrashim quoted by the Yalkut Shimoni belong to more then 50 classical midrashic collections, that is literary works containing the hermeneutical rabbinic readings of biblical verses reflecting the interpretative stance and posture of the rabbis (while a proper definition of Midrash is still the subject of lengthy and scholarly controversies between scholars such as Kugel, Neusner, Boyarin, Stern and many others, we have referred here to the terminology and concepts used by James Kugel, ‘Two Introductions to Midrash’, in Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick, eds., Midrash and Literature, 1986, P.91)

 

While the precise identity of the author/complier of the Yalkut (known in the front page of the second edition - Venise 1566 - as Shimon Hadarshan, chief of the preachers from Frankfurt) is unknown, even less seems to be known about the editorial nature of the work. Was the compiler merely quoting as faithfully as possible the midrasnhic texts available to him in order to create an extensive and exhaustive summa of rabbinic teachings on all the biblical books, showing no discernement and no active editorial intentions? Or, was he rather an editor (or even an author) carefully crafting and editing the  versions of the Midrashim at his disposal, subtly amending the texts, following an editorial line of his own, maybe dictated by the theological, literary or social context of his time ? The question we therefore aim at exploring can be coined in simple terms: How does the complier/author of the Yalkut Shimoni quotes his sources? 

 

In order to pursue this goal, it must already be noted that by referring to « how the complier/author of the Yalkut Shimoni quotes his sources », we do not intend to focus on the structural editorial nature of this anthology, meaning the internal logic of the ordering and choosing of the Midrashim quoted. Indeed, some fairly recent important researches (Elisabeth Hollender, ‘Compositional Features of the Yalqut Simoni on Esther’, notes for the EAJS Congress in Amsterdam, 2002; Ulrich Berzback, ‘Through the Looking Glass of the Yalqut and What Can Be Found There Concerning Seder Eliyahu Zuta’, in Frankfurter Judaistsche Beiträge, 36, 2010, p. 15-29;; Amos Geulah, ‘The Riddle of the List of the Moscow Manuscript: An Invitation to the Making Room of the Yalkut Simoni on the Torah’, in Tarbitz, 17, 2001, p. 430-464 and ‘Studies in Midrash Yelamdenu: A Renewed Inquiry into the Know Scriptural Passage from Yalkut Shimoni on the Torah and its Source’, in Tarbitz, 74, 2, 2005) have already offered some indication as to the real anthological nature of the work, collecting with no editorial censorship all the midrasnhic material available. Over the last 150 years, lots of attention was devoted to the identify of the complier/author of the Yalkut and to its possible datation (see the various relevant works of Zunz, A. Epstein, Gaster and Rapoport).  Since the mid-70, the attention has focused on the « sources of the Yalkut Shimoni », culminating with the publication of a complete edition of the Yalkut, referencing the sources used and to the ordering and inner logic of the remazim, that is the reference numbers added by the author/compiler in the margin of the text (D. Hyman, Shiloni and Lerer), However, to our knowledge, no work has yet been done on the textual nature of the editorial work of the complier/author of the Yalkut, concentrating on on the very precise wording of the texts quoted, looking for the ways the complier/author copied and quoted his sources. 

 

In order to achieve this goal, we will concentrate on a limited and precisely defined passage from Midrash Genesis Rabbah XX, 7-9 (corresponding to the commentaries to Genesis 4, 8-10) dealing with the murder of Abel by Cain. The choice of this midrasnhic section, apart from its thematic interest (the first account of human violence) is motivated by some methodological considerations. In particular, the existence of a complete critical edition of Midrash Genesis Rabbah (Albeck’s edition of Bereshit Rabbah, Jerusalem, 1965) will enable us to have at our disposal all the variant readings of the midrashim, including all previous printed editions as well as manuscripts. While it is not possible to know what manuscript (or indeed manuscripts) of Midrash Genesis Rabbah stood before the compiler/author of the Yalkut, the critical edition at our disposal will offer us a vision of all the variants textual readings available at the time of the compilation of the Yalkut anthology. In addition, the selected midrashic passage possesses a unity of its own, both as a literary and as thematic unit. It is a very carefully crafted section of the Midrash, concise in its wording, displaying many of the hermeneutical tools of midrasnhic interpretation. With such a precise, powerful and refine passage, we will aim at comparing the variant readings of the text from Genesis Rabbah with their equivalent quotations in Yalkut Shimoni. 

 

At this stage, one additional complication must be mentioned. It is a well established fact that the textual transmission of the Yalkut Shimoni is chaotic (as already established by Betzalel Landoy, editor of the Warsaw edition of the Yalkut Shimoni, 1878). The variant readings of the Yalkut can vary to such an extent that it is difficult to evoke and to refer precisely to the « text of the Yalkut ». Faced with this difficulty, we will focus our attention to three earliest available texts at our disposal: The Oxford manuscript (1307, and only manuscript containing the selected passage from Genesis Rabbah), the Salonica edition (1521) and the Venise edition (1566). While the consultation of these three texts of the Yalkut could not provide us with the « original » urtext written by the compiler/editor of the Yalkut, it will nevertheless enable us to reasonably define and understand how the compiler/author of the Yalkut quoted his sources from Genesis Rabbah XX, 7-9. 

 

By comparing in such a manner the text of Genesis Rabbah with its rendition in the Yalkut, we hope to be able to understand what could have been the editorial attitude of the compiler/author of the Yalkut in quoting midrashic texts. We will try to analyse the results of our findings in light of the historical, literary social and theological attitudes of XIII century Germany, believed to be the time and place of the creation of this anthology. 

Date:16 Jul 2015 →  28 May 2018
Keywords:Midrash, Bible
Disciplines:Theology and religious studies
Project type:PhD project