This chapter examines current views concerning the alleged editing of the rabbinic texts of late antiquity. It highlights the author's 1986 article concerning the editing of rabbinic texts and discusses the possibilities of manuscript variations and variant readings of certain texts in different manuscripts. It suggests that there is no evidence of any significant recensional variation in any of the classic works of midrash, neither those included in the corpus of midrash halakhah nor those included in the corpus of midrash (...) aggadah. (shrink)

This chapter aims to define to state of investigation of research into rabbinic literature. It describes the most important approaches in research on the basis of which rabbinic literature has been and is being studied. These include the traditional halakhic approach, the exploitative-apologetic approach, and the thematic approach. This chapter concludes that the questioning of the redactional identity of the individual works of rabbinic literature inevitably also disavows the research approach to the work at the level of the final redaction.