ABSTRACT
Genesis Rabbah presents the first complete and systematic rabbinic-Judaic commentary on the book of Genesis. Genesis Rabbah presents a deeply religious view of Israel’s historical and salvific life, in much the same way that the Mishnah provides a profoundly philosophical view of Israel’s everyday and sanctified existence. Just as the main themes of the Mishnah evoke the consideration of issues of being and becoming, the potential and the actual, mixtures and blends, and other problems of physics, all in the interest of philosophical analysis, so Genesis Rabbah presents its cogent and coherent agenda as well. That program of inquiry concerns the way in which, in the book of Genesis, God set forth to Moses the entire scope and meaning of Israel’s history among the nations and salvation at the end of days—that religious view to which we made reference. In a few words we may restate the conviction of the framers of the document: “We now know what will be then, just as Jacob had told his sons, just as Moses had told the tribes, because everything exists under the aspect of a timeless will, God’s will, and all things express one thing, God’s program and plan. Our task as Israel is to accept, endure, submit, and celebrate.” So, as I said, in the Mishnah, we take up the philosophy of what we now call Judaism, and, in the polemical and pointed statements of the exegete-compositors of Genesis Rabbah, we confront the theology of history of that same Judaism.
