Product Description The rabbis of late antiquity produced a score of exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures of Ancient Israel («the Old Testament»), in which they took various approaches to the study and interpretation of what they called «the written Torah». These exegesis, called collectively «Midrash», form an important part of «the oral Torah», that is, the tradition of Sinai formulated and transmitted for memorization and ultimately written down by the ancient sages in the first six centuries A.D. These three volumes present large selections of the Midrash-documents of ancient Judaism, in the translation of Jacob Neusner, who has now translated into English nearly all of the Rabbinic literature of late antiquity. The selections are organized by type, so that readers see the various ways in which, in form and in intellectual program, the documents of Midrash-compilation were formulated and set forth. In this way, the vast body of biblical exegesis put forth by Judaism in its formative age is made available to the contemporary reader. About the Author The Author: Jacob Neusner is one of the leading scholars of ancient Judaism in the world today. He received more than fourteen honorary degrees and medals from US and European universities. He is Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, England. In addition he has been Martin Buber Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Frankfurt and Research Professor in the Research Institute of Abo Akademi in Finland.