midrash

noun

1. A Rabbinic commentary on a text from the Hebrew Scripture.

   “In other stories of the midrashim, Adam, in penance for his fall, abstains from sexuality for 130 years, but he is not able to control his nocturnal emissions; in his dream state female spirits, the succubae, come and have intercourse with him, and with Adam's seed they give birth to demons.”

2. The Rabbinic technique or tradition of such exegesis.

   “Midrash was not a purely intellectual pursuit and study was never an end in itself: it had to inspire practical action in the world.”

3. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of Midrash.

   “You could call the Gospels a midrash on the Hebrew Bible, the lives of the saints a midrash on the Christ story, the Koran a midrash on all of the above.”

   “Northrop Frye called the novel “a kind of ‘midrash’ on the book of Job,” one that reimagines the opaque nature of divine justice as a labyrinthine modern bureaucracy.”