Midrash Temurah (
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
: מדרש תמורה) is one of the
smaller midrashim
A number of midrashim exist which are smaller in size, and generally later in date, than those dealt with in the articles Midrash Haggadah and Midrash Halakah.
Despite their late date, some of these works preserve material from the Apocrypha and P ...
, consisting of three chapters.
Contents
It develops the view that God in His wisdom and might has created all things on earth as contrasted pairs which mutually supplement each other. Life is known only as opposed to death, and death as opposed to life (comp. ''
Tao Te Ching
The ''Tao Te Ching'' () or ''Laozi'' is a Chinese classic text and foundational work of Taoism traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, though the text's authorship and date of composition and compilation are debated. The oldest excavated por ...
'', chap. 2); and, in like manner, if all were foolish or wise, or rich or poor, it would not be known that they were foolish or wise, or rich or poor. "Therefore God created man and woman, beauty and deformity, fire and water, iron and wood, light and darkness, heat and cold, food and famine, drink and thirst, walking and lameness, sight and blindness, hearing and deafness, sea and land, speech and dumbness, activity and repose, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, health and sickness," and the like.
In chapter 3, the antitheses given in
Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes ( ) is one of the Ketuvim ('Writings') of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word ...
3:1 etc. are enumerated and are paralleled with
Psalms
The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament.
The book is an anthology of B ...
136. Chapter 1 contains an interesting anthropological passage. Chapter 2 begins with pseudepigraphical interpretations ascribed by the midrash to
Rabbi Ishmael
Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha Nachmani (Hebrew: רבי ישמעאל בן אלישע), often known as Rabbi Yishmael and sometimes given the title "Ba'al HaBaraita" (Hebrew: בעל הברייתא, “Master of the Outside Teaching”), was a rabbi of ...
and
Rabbi Akiva
Akiva ben Joseph (Mishnaic Hebrew: ; – 28 September 135 CE), also known as Rabbi Akiva (), was a leading Jewish scholar and sage, a '' tanna'' of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second. Rabbi Akiva was a leadin ...
; the latter appear, consequently, as joint authors of the midrash.
According to
A. Jellinek, the work was composed in the first half of the 13th century, since it drew upon
Ibn Ezra and upon
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
's dialogue on the soul, even though it is cited by
Me'iri and
Abraham Abulafia
Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia () was the founder of the school of "Prophetic Kabbalah". He was born in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1240, and is assumed to have died sometime after 1291 following a stay on the small and windswept island of Comino (the smal ...
. It was first edited by
Azulai (Leghorn, 1786), being appended to the second part of his ''Shem ha-Gedolim''; and it has been reprinted by Jellinek.
[''B. H.'' i. 106-114]
References
Its bibliography:
*
Zunz, G. V. p. 118;
*Rab Pe'alim, pp. 123 et seq.;
*
A. Jellinek, B. H. i., pp. xx. et seq.
{{Authority control
Smaller midrashim