"It's better to hear the rebuke of the wise than the song of fools" (Qoh 7:5)

"This volume contains selected proceedings of the Midrash Section sessions convened during the 2012-2014 meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. It is comprised of contributions by leading and emerging scholars that share a common focus on Rabbinic biblical interpretation as it intersects with a range of biblical texts and associated fields of study, including: Jewish legal literature; Hellenistic Judaism; post-biblical interpretation; biblical commentary; liturgical studies; and, cultural studies. The contributions explore how the study of Midrash illuminates and informs an array of topics, such as: race and slavery in antiquity; myth and theology in biblical tradition; reason and rationalism in the Hebrew Bible; inner-biblical interpretation; and, literary and form analysis"--