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Volume 74 › Table of Contents › Article Abstract
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Midrash as Mnemonic
A New Approach to Rabbinic Exegesis
William W. Hallo, Yale University |
Midrash Aggada has many functions, not all purely exegetical, as when it links the eighteen mentions of the Tetragrammaton in Psalm 29 to the eighteen benedictions of the Amida. Starting with this psalm, and moving on to other examples in Midrash Tehillim and elsewhere, the mnemonic functions of midrashim are found to anticipate or replace other aids to memory not or not readily available to rabbinic exegetes, including concordances, dictionaries, masoretic glosses, and chronological frameworks (not to mention printed or written editions of the text). The role here suggested for midrash is thus one of helping to fix the text of scripture in memory. It is not intended to exclude any of the more traditional approaches to midrash, briefly reviewed in the introduction, which understand it as serving in one way or another to interpret that text.
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