Most Tender and Fairest of Women: a Study in the Transmission of Aggada

Abstract

Midrashic literature often employs the exegesis of a biblical text as the source for a story. When the story is coupled with a historic person, a legend is born. Since there are historic aspects to the legend, its historicity is sometimes uncritically accepted in its entirety. In most instances, however, the fictional content of a legend far exceeds its historical content. Some of these legends continue to flourish and evolve into baroque narratives often quite far removed from the original scriptural verse that precipitated their creation. Then, only a careful examination of the transmission history of the story can recapture its original exegetic context. Beginning with the assumption that some stories evolve from a simple exegesis to a full-blown narrative through the accretion of folk motifs and the fixed formulas of story tellers, one may order the versions of a given legend according to their development.

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