The Major Manuscripts of Genesis R abbah

Michael Sokoloff

Introduction

The invention of printing with movable type in the latter half of the fifteenth
century was the death knell for Hebrew manuscripts. While only a few Hebrew
books were printed during the Incunabula Period before 1500,1 the sixteenth
century witnessed the printing of editions of the entire spectrum of classical Jew-
ish literature, from the Bible to the Talmuds and their commentaries, especially
by the famous printer, Daniel Bomberg, in Venice.2 As a result of this activity,
there was an extreme devaluation of Hebrew manuscripts by the Jews who
owned them. After all, if one could now purchase a printed and easily citable
version of the entire Babylonian Talmud with the commentaries of both Rashi
and the Tosafot for a reasonable price, a partial manuscript with only one or a
few tractates was much less useful. The result of this shift was similar to what
happened in our own day to the typewriter with the advent of computerized
word processing, viz. manuscripts were now seen as being valueless and were to
be discarded to the dustbin of history. Thus was born what scholars now call the
‫״‬Italian Genizah,” remnants of Hebrew manuscripts sold in the sixteenth cen-
tury by their Italian Jewish owners to bookbinders to be cut up for their leather
pages and utilized in bookbindings instead of for their now seemingly unneeded
texts. As has been shown by the discoveries in these bindings over the last few
years, however, much important material can be recovered from these fragments,
though most likely much more has been forever lost.3
The history of printed Hebrew rabbinic texts from the sixteenth through
the nineteenth centuries is, in general, well known. After the printing of the
editio princeps of a work from a manuscript, new editions were reprinted from
previous ones by printers who generally praised their new editions as having
been corrected from the mistakes of their predecessors and as having additional
commentaries to explain the difficult texts. As a result of this process, by the

1 On Hebrew incunabula in general, see Michael Berenbaum, and Fred Skolnik, ed., Encyclo-
paedia Judaica, Second Edition (22 vols.; Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007) [=EJ], 9.757-768.
2 See Abraham M. Haberman, Printer Daniel Bomberg and the 'L ist o f Books Published by
Elis Press [Hebrew] (Safed: Ha-Museon le-Omanut Ha-Defus, 1978).
3 See Abraham David and Joseph Tabory, ed., The Italian Genizah, A Collection o f Essays
[Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Orhot, 1998).
24 Michael Sokoloff

nineteenth century, the propensity of printers and editors to correct what they
felt were errors in the work of their predecessors as well as deliberate emenda­
tions introduced into the texts by various commentators led to vulgar editions
that were often far-removed from the original printed text.
With the rise of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the nineteenth century, scholars
began to realize the defects of the vulgar editions that were then in use. This trend
was most visible with regard to the various midrashic works. The most indus­
trious practitioner of the new methodology was undoubtedly Solomon Buber,
who is famous for his many editions of midrashim, some of which have not been
replaced to the present day.45While his work - which was based on manuscripts -
was a great advance over what was available at the time, by today’s standards, it
leaves much to be desired. To mention just one outstanding negative feature: in
his notes, Buber did not differentiate the textual variants that he utilized from
his explanations in a separate critical apparatus. All of them were mingled to­
gether in a commentary to the eclectic text of his edition. While some of Buber’s
achievements were certainly spectacular - one especially recalls his publication
of Pesiqta o f Rav Kahana5 - they were only one first step in the direction that a
modern edition of a midrash had to go.
In 1893, Julius Theodor,6 a graduate of the Breslau Rabbinic Seminary and a
rabbi in various cities in Germany, began publishing a long article dealing with
many issues of Genesis Rabbah in the Monatsschrift fü r die Geschichte und
Wissenschaft des Judentums.7 The purpose of the first part of the article was to
present the results of his preparatory work prior to the publication of a critical
edition of this midrash. The following is an English rendition of the beginning
of his article:
The midrashim also have their luck. The Pesiqta, Tanhuma, and M idrash Tehillim have
found their Buber, and many smaller midrashim have been printed from manuscripts.
O n ly for Genesis R abbah , w hich is a basic text for the entire midrashic literature, has no
critical edition as yet been achieved. H aving been occupied w ith study o f this midrash
for a long time, only in the summer o f 1890 did I have the opportunity to see on the spot
the manuscripts of the midrash in London, O xford, and Paris and to be able to study
them. I was lucky to find in C odex Add. 27169 of the British M useum an exceptionally
important manuscript that w ill form the basis for the projected preparation o f (an edition
of) Genesis R a b b a h .8

4 O n Buber and his scientific work, see: EJ 2.236; H .L . Strack and Günter Stemberger,
Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 293 {Pesiqta o f R av
Kahana), 303 {Tanhuma)‫ ר‬etc.
5 See Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 293.
6 On Theodor, see: EJ 15.1099.
7 See Julius Theodor, ‫״‬Der Midrasch Bereschit Rabba,” M G W J37 (1893): 169-173,206-213,
452-458; M GW J 38 (1894): 9-26, 436-440; M GW J 39 (1895): 106-110, 241-247, 289-295,
337-343, 385-390, 433-441, 481-491.
8 It may be added here that the BM manuscript is complete only for the first 94 chapters of
the midrash (on this see infra). It also contains Leviticus Rabbah, which was used by Margulies
 The Major Manuscripts of Genesis Rabbah 25

After these introductory remarks, Theodor gives a list of the various manuscripts
that he intended to use for his projected critical edition, and a short description
of the British Museum (BM Add. 27169) manuscript. Most of the rest of the
article was devoted to a study of the citations of Genesis Rabbah in the Avpiklo ‫ל‬
the medieval rabbinic dictionary of Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome, with an
analysis of them: Theodor showed in his article that the readings of the Arukh
were close to those in the BM manuscript, and thus he decided to utilize this
manuscript as the basis for his projected critical edition. Relative to the printed
editions, it seemed to be the most accurate manuscript available.
In 1912, Theodor began to publish his new critical edition and commentary of
Genesis Rabbah in fascicles,9 and prior his death in 1923, he prepared the critical
apparatus and commentary through the end of chapter 86.10 As was the usual
method in classical philology, the text was presented critically with indication
of editorial intrusions, and a separate apparatus gave variant readings from the
other manuscripts and the editio princeps. His excellent and detailed Hebrew
commentary, which contained translations of the Aramaic texts, citations from
parallel texts, explanations of Greek and Latin loanwords, and extensive digres-
sions, was, however, composed in a very concise manner and printed in a very
small font, all of which makes its use difficult for the reader.
After Theodor’s death, the remainder of the edition was completed by Cha-
noch Albeck (1890-1972), who also wrote a long and detailed introduction and
compiled various useful indices to the work.*11 Without a doubt, in spite of its
defects, the Theodor-Albeck edition of Genesis Rabbah still remains the best
edition of any aggadic midrash ever published.
Theodor’s decision to base his edition on the BM manuscript was partially
based on the fact that it was a nearly complete manuscript for Genesis Rabbah.
Moreover, as he had shown in his aforementioned article, it was certainly a
great improvement on the text of the midrash as it had been previously known
from the printed editions. From the article, we know that Theodor was aware
of the existence of MS Vat. 30 from a communication from Abraham Berliner,
albeit containing some false information, and he utilized it in the variants to his
edition.12 The fact that MS Vat. 30 was an incomplete manuscript, however, was

as the basis of his critical edition of this midrash. See Mordecai Margulies, Midrash Wayyikra
Rabbahy Volume 5: Introduction, Supplements and Indices [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ministry of
Education and Culture of Israel, 1960), xxxiv-xxxiv.
9 See Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, Bereschit rabba: m it kritischem Apparat und
Kommentar (3 vols.; Berlin: Itzkowski, 1912-1936).
10 See the note in ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1059: ‫ עד כאן נמצא בכ״י המחבר ז״ל‬.
11 See Chanoch Albeck, Einleitung und Register zum Bereschit Rabbay Second Printing (Je-
rusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965).
12 This manuscript was first described in Stephen Evodius and Joseph Simeon Assemani,
Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae Codicum Manuscriptorum Catalogus, Volume 1: Codices
Ebraicos et Samaritanos (Rome, 1756; repr. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1926). See now, Benjamin
26 Michael Sokoloff

apparently a strong factor that deterred Theodor from utilizing it as his main
text. He decided, instead, to use it as a supplement to the BM manuscript.

The Breakthrough

Following Theodor’s death, Albeck completed the critical edition. Even though
Albeck was already aware of the superiority of MS Vat. 30,*13 he nevertheless
continued to relegate MS Vat. 30 to the variae lectionis for those chapters for
which the British Museum manuscript was available.14
In the late 1940’s, Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher (1909-1971) began his research
on the Jewish Aramaic dialect of Palestine of the Byzantine period, generally
known at the time as ‫ ״‬Galilean Aramaic” and now referred to as Jewish Palestin-
ian Aramaic QPA).15 In a seminal article published serially in the journal Tarbiz
between 1950-52,16 and later translated into English and annotated by the pres-
ent writer, Kutscher set out to delineate objective criteria by which to judge the
accuracy and authenticity of a particular manuscript of a rabbinic composition
on the basis of linguistic criteria. He asserted that in order to avoid circular argu-
mentation one should seek criteria that are external to the text under discussion.
In this case, since MS Vat. 30 is written in both Rabbinic Hebrew17 and JPA, and
at the time no epigraphic remains of Rabbinic Hebrew were known, Kutscher
proposed to judge the manuscript linguistically by its Aramaic content. There
were several reasons for this:
1. JPA is attested independently of the late manuscript tradition from epi-
graphic material stemming mainly from Aramaic inscriptions from synagogues,
tombstones, etc., for which there is no question of textual transmission.
2. There are two related Palestinian Aramaic dialects, viz. Samaritan and
Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA), which are contemporary with JPA, and
comparison of grammatical and lexical forms in a particular JPA manuscript with

Richler, ed., H ebrew Manuscripts in the ‫־‬Vatican Library, Catalogue (Vatican City: Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, 2008), 19-20.
13 See Albeck, Einleitung, 17: ‫ הקובץ הזה עולה בגירסותיו הישרות על כל שאר הכ״י‬.
14 Until the end of ch. 94. On chs. 95-100, see infra.
15 The form of this dialect’s name derives from the fact that all of its surviving literary remains
were composed in the Galilee. From the distribution of the epigraphic material in this dialect
found throughout all of Eretz Israel, from Qasrin in the north to Ein Gedi, Gaza, and even Soar
in the south, however, it is clear that it was spoken in all of Eretz Israel and not just in Galilee.
16 Conveniently available separately as Mehqarim b a -’Aram it ha-Gelilit (Jerusalem, 1952);
reprinted in Ezekiel Y. Kutscher, H ebrew and Aramaic Studies [Hebrew] (ed. Z. Ben-Hayyim
et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977), 169-226. The present writer translated and annotated this work.
See Ezekiel Y. Kutscher, Studies in Galilean Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University 1976).
17 More specifically, Rabbinic Hebrew of the amoraic period. On this dialect, see Michael
Sokoloff, “The Hebrew of Bereshit Rabba according to Ms. Vat. Ebr. 30” [Hebrew], Leshonenu
33 (1969): 25-42,135-149, 270-279.
 The Major Manuscripts of Genesis Rahhah 27

them can demonstrate the accuracy of an Aramaic text.18 As a corollary, Kutscher

concluded that if the Aramaic portions of a rabbinic text were accurately trans-
mitted by scribes, then this was most likely the case also for its Hebrew portions.
3. Kutscher also suggested comparing the IciiigUcigc of the complete or nearly
complete mostly western medieval European manuscripts to the much earlier
Genizah fragments, which - though small in quantity - were less likely to have
been corrupted by later copyists because of their antiquity and because they
originated in the east, where copyists were often also scholars and did not tend
to emend manuscripts as much.
On the basis of these principles, Kutscher showed conclusively that MS Vat. 30
was what he termed a ‫״‬reliable text‫( ״‬Jav teqst), and that next to the epigraphic
and Genizah material was the most accurate source available for recovering JPA.
As mentioned, he also concluded that one could now safely assume that if its
Aramaic portions were accurate, the same could be said for its Hebrew portions.
In 1956, Umberto Cassuto ,s catalog of the first 115 Hebrew manuscripts in
the Vatican Library was posthumously published.19 Cassuto (1883-1951) appar-
ently began to work on the catalog after he left Florence when he assumed the
position of Professor of Semitic Languages at the University of Rome in 1933. In
1938, after being dismissed from his post by the Fascist government, he received
refugee status in Vatican City, where he continued to work on the catalog until
1939, when he moved to Palestine to become a professor of Bible at the Hebrew
LIniversity. As far as Genesis Rabbah was concerned, the manuscript work that
Cassuto managed to do at the Vatican Library proved to be invaluable:
1. In his description of MS Vat. 30, Cassuto showed that the manuscript was
written by three different scribes.
2. A previously ‫״‬unknown‫ ״‬manuscript of Genesis Rabbah - MS Vat. 60 -
came to light.
In 1965, when I was an MA student at the Hebrew University, Kutscher sug-
gested that I take as my thesis topic a description of the Rabbinic Hebrew of the
amoraic period on the basis of MS Vat. 30. The Hebrew Language Academy had
recently begun its Historical Dictionary Project, and one of its first major objec-

18 When Kutscher wrote his study, there were no modern dictionaries either for Jewish Pal-
estinian Aramaic or Samaritan Aramaic, and the dictionary for Christian Palestinian Aramaic
was long out of date. The situation has greatly improved with the appearance of Abraham Tal, A
Dictionary o f Samaritan Aramaic (Leiden: Brill 2000), Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary o f Jewish
Palestinian Aramaic (2nd ed.; Ramat Gan & Baltimore: Bar Ilan University & Johns Hopkins
University, 2002), and idem, A Dictionary o f Christian Palestinian Aramaic (Peeters: Louvain,
2014). While there are now modern grammars of both Samaritan Aramaic and Christian Pales-
tinian Aramaic (see Rudolph Macuch, Gramm atik des samaritanischen Aramäisch [Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1982], Christa Müller-Kessler, Gramm atik des christlich-palästinisch-Aramäischen
[Hildesheim: Olms, 1991]), for Jewish Palestinian Aramaic we must Still rely on Gustav Dalman,
Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch (2nd ed.; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905).
19 See Umberto Cassuto, Codices Vaticani hehraici: Codices 1-115 (Vatican City: Vatican
Library, 1956).
28 Michael Sokoloff

tives was the digitalization of important manuscripts of rabbinic texts to serve as

a linguistic base for the future dictionary. On the basis of Kutscher’s conclusions,
MS Vat. 30 was chosen to serve as the textual basis for Genesis Rabbah, and the
present writer was volunteered to prepare it for input.20 My research on the
Hebrew of the manuscript resulted in an article that I published in Leshonenu in
1969.21 One of my conclusions relevant to the present discussion followed from
Cassuto’s description of the manuscript, viz. that MS Vat. 30 was copied by three
different scribes from two different manuscript sources.
More specifically, the analysis showed that Scribe no. 2 had utilized a Vor-
läge that was linguistically later than that used by Scribes nos. 1 and 3. In the
latter, the Aramaic had been corrupted by Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (JBA),
a phenomenon well-known from most other editions of Palestinian composi-
tions containing JPA such as the Palestinian Talmud, which were printed from
generally late manuscript sources. This result solved several problems that had
perplexed Kutscher - who was unaware of the composite nature of the manu-
script - in Studies in Galilean Aramaic concerning the accuracy of the MS Vat.
30 as a whole with regard to several serious corruptions from JBA in the manu-
script. The present writer’s study showed that these corruptions were all in the
sections copied by the second scribe. The resulting conclusion showed that MS
Vat. 301’3 was indeed a ‫״‬reliable text” even though MS Vat. 302 was not.22
Some additional manuscript material of Genesis Rabbah was already known
in the 1960’s, but it had not as yet been properly utilized or appreciated. Thus,
Theodor had employed several Genizah fragments of Genesis Rabbah that had
been acquired by the Bodleian Library, and these were indicated in his appa-
ratus by the siglum T.23 Other Genizah fragments of Genesis Rabbah in the
Taylor-Schechter Collection, which had been identified as the upper-writing of
CPA palimpsests, were published by the Scottish sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and
Margaret Dunlop Gibson in 1900.24 More importantly, there was an additional
manuscript in the Vatican Library of Genesis Rabbah containing the first 94
chapters, viz. MS Vat. 60. Kutscher knew of this manuscript from a personal
communication he had with Cassuto, but aside from a brief mention of it in
Studies in Galilean Aramaic, he was unable to employ it in his work.25

20 As a result of this work, I received a computer printout of the manuscript as well as a

non-contextual concordance of the Hebrew words in it, both of which were helpful in my
later work.
21 See supra, n. 17.
22 The present writer also prepared a facsimile edition of MS Vat. 30 with an introduction
and index. See Michael Sokoloff, Midrash Bereshit Rahha (Ms. Vat. Ehr. 30), Facsimile Edition
with an Introduction and Notes [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Makor, 1971).
23 See ed. Theodor-Albeck, 309.
24 See Agnes S. Lewis and Margaret D. Gibson, Palestinian Syriac Texts from Palimpsest
Fragments (London: C.J. Clay, 1900).
25 See Studies in Galilean Aramaic, 12.
 The Major Manuscripts of Genesis Rahhah 29

In 1967, the present writer began to work on the Genizah manuscripts of

Genesis Rabbah in the framework of his doctoral dissertation. At the time, aside
from the catalog of Neubauer and Cowley of the Bodleian collection,26 there were
only a few hand-written lists of several Genizah collections27‫ ־‬Fortunately, the
Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the Jewish National and Uni-
versity Library had already amassed a large collection of microfilms containing
Genizah manuscripts from the major collections. By poring over these microfilms
and from several references garnered from the literature, the present writer was
able to identify over 60 pages of fragments of Genesis Rabbah belonging to twelve
different manuscripts from the Genizah.28 By rare good fortune, the largest man-
uscript by far, designated MS 2, also happened to be the most important of all.
Like many Genizah texts, this manuscript was reconstructed from pages scattered
among a large number of libraries in England, United States, and Russia.29
MS 2 belongs to a large group of Genizah manuscripts that are palimpsests,
in this case the lower writing being CPA.30 The above-mentioned MS Tof the
Theodor-Albeck edition turned out to belong to this manuscript. While pale-
ographers cannot give a definite date for this manuscript, the fact that the CPA
underwriting belongs to the early period of this dialect, dated between the fifth
and eighth centuries, points to these overwritten texts as being most likely earlier
than the tenth century. In a co-written article, Joseph Yahalom and I suggested
that MS 2 - along with many other palimpsest manuscripts from the Cairo
Genizah that are written over texts in various eastern church languages (Greek,
CPA, Syriac, Georgian) - originated in Christian monasteries that were overrun
by the Muslims in the seventh century and were then sold as writing material in

26 See Arthur E. Cowley and Adolph Neubauer, Catalogue o f the H ebrew Manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library (2 vols.; Cambridge: Clarendon, 1886-1906). The fragments from the Cairo
Genizah are listed in the second volume.
27 The most extensive was that of Ernest J. Worman, a copy of which was available in the
Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in the Israel National Library in Jerusalem. On
Worman and his work, see Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found
World o f the Cairo Geniza (N ew York: Schocken, 2011), 126-132.
28 See Michael Sokoloff, The Geniza Fragments o f Bereshit Rabba [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The
Israel Academy of Sciences, 1982).
29 As a curiosity, it may be pointed out that the Russian fragment in the Antonin Collection
in St. Petersburg - which directly continues a fragment in the Taylor-Schechter collection and is
directly followed by a fragment in the collection of University of Pennsylvania Museum - was
identified by P. Kahle in the 1930’s when he went to the library to study biblical manuscripts.
See Paul Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, Second Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959), 205. Fortunately,
in light of the political situation between Israel and Russia following the Six Day War, there was
a photograph of the fragment in Jerusalem.
30 On palimpsests from the Cairo Genizah, see Hoffman and Cole, Sacred Trash, 96-112.
For a list, see Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, ‫״‬Christian Palimpsests from the Cairo
Geniza,” Revue d'histoire des textes 8 (1978): 109-132. Early interest in these texts focused
on the under-writing, which contained various biblical and Christian texts in languages of the
Eastern Church.
 30 Michael Sokoloff

the suqs of Fostat. They were bought there by local Jews as writing material and
eventually found their way into the Cairo Genizah.
O n investigation, it became clear that there was a direct relationship between
MS 2 and MS Vat. 30, A detailed analysis showed, however, that this was the case
only with regard to the sections copied by the scribes of MS V1,3, but not with
regard to the portions copied by the scribe of MS V2.31 Additionally, a detailed
analysis of the orthography and of many linguistic features of MS 2 showed that
even the scribes of MS V1’3 consistently "modernized” the text of their Vorlage
in order to update it, i. e. to make it comply more with Biblical Hebrew con-
vendons than with those of Rabbinic Hebrew, although there are practically no
Babylonianizing influences. The conclusion is that MS 2 from the Genizah is the
earliest and most important manuscript of Genesis Rabbah to have come down
to us, though unfortunately remnants of only 21 pages of it have survived, and
that MS V1’3 is the most important of all of the subsequent medieval manuscripts.
As was previously mentioned, the Assemani catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts
in the Vatican of 1756 had already listed another manuscript of Genesis Rabbah
in addition to MS Vat. 30, viz. MS Vat. 60.32 For reasons that remain unclear,
both Theodor and Albeck were unaware of its existence.33 As part of this writer’s
doctoral dissertation at the Hebrew University,341 investigated this manuscript in
depth.35 The following is a short description of it: the manuscript is missing one
page at its beginning, but is complete until the end of chapter 94, where the scribe
appended the following laconic note: 10 3hayah yoter mi-zeh. nishtayyer mi-menu
me-'at: "There was no more of it. Only a little has survived.”36

31 This was proven by means of the common inexplicable errors found in both manuscripts
as well as from a case where the scribe of MS Vat. 30 jumped from the middle of a line in MS 2
to the middle of the following line in this manuscript. When the sections of MS Vat. 30 written
by the second scribe were compared with MS 2, however, it became clear, based on the major
differences between them, that they could not have been copied from MS 2. For details, see
Sokoloff, Geniza Fragments, 25-50.
32 See Richler, H ebrew Manuscripts, 42-43.
33 Thus, between 1893, when Theodor began to publish his extensive aforementioned article
on the variant readings of Genesis Rabbah, and 1936, when the edition was completed, no one
seems to have informed either of the editors of the existence of this manuscript, already known
since the middle of the eighteenth century. The first fascicle of Genesis Rabbah appeared 16
years later in 1906, and the entire edition was completed 30 years later in 1936, but during all of
this time there was no mention of this manuscript.
34 See Michael Sokoloff, ‫״‬The Geniza Fragments of Midrash Genesis Rabba and MS Vat. Ebr.
of Genesis Rabba‫[ ״‬Hebrew] (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1971).
35 The material of MS Vat. 60 in the doctoral dissertation was reworked and translated into
English and was to be published as an introduction to a facsimile edition of the manuscript in
the series Early H ebrew Manuscripts in Facsimile in Copenhagen in 1981. See Sokoloff, Geniza
Fragments, 54. The publisher went bankrupt, however, and the book was never published. A
facsimile edition with no elaborative information was previously published in Midrash Bereshit
Rabba, Codex ‫־‬Vatican 60 (Jerusalem: Makor, 1970).
36 This may indicate that the scribe knew of the existence of other manuscripts of Genesis
Rabbah with 100 chapters, though his Vorlage contained only 94.
 The Major Manuscripts of Genesis Rahhah 31

The fact that the complete text of MS Vat. 60 lacks chapters 95-100 is quite
important. Chapters 95-97 of the original amoraic midrash are known only from
MS Vat. 30, while chapters 98-100 are found only in MS Vat. 30 and the editio
princeps?7 In these other manuscripts of Genesis Kabbah, the last six chapters
were completed from later compositions such as Midrash Tanhuma. Since these
chapters cover the final two pericopes of Genesis,3738 this may point to the pos-
sibility that a midrashic compilation to this section of Genesis may have once
circulated separately.39
In their critical edition of Genesis Kabbah, Theodor and Albeck employed
nine manuscripts of the midrash itself, the editio princeps, and testimonia from
parallels and early writers. In addition, we now have fragments from an addi-
tional twelve manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah. What, then, is the place of
MS Vat. 60 in the scheme of the manuscripts, and what new textual information
does it present to us?40
Its textual tradition may be summarized as follows:
1. MS Vat. 60 contains many new readings not found in any of the previously
known manuscripts or in the editio princeps.
2. MS Vat. 60 contains a large number of passages that do not appear in either
MS Vat. 30 or the other manuscripts of Genesis Rabbah, but which are found in
a generally corrupt form in a mixed textual group of late manuscripts of Genesis
Rabbah.
3. There are a large number of cases where MS Vat. 60 differs from all of the
known manuscripts of Genesis Rabbah but presents a textual version which
agrees in substance with that found in parallel passages from the following
midrashim: Leviticus Rabbah, Pesiqta o f Rav Kahana, Song o f Songs Rabbah,
Ecclesiastes Rabbah, Pesiqta Rabbati, and Midrash Shem uelf1
4. The previous statement holds true, however, only for the first part of the
manuscript.42 In its second part, MS Vat. 60 agrees, in general, with the textual

37 They are also missing in all of the other manuscripts of Genesis Rabbah and are not cited
by the early rabbinic authorities, including the Arukh, who apparently only knew the first 94
chapters.
38 They correspond to the Pentateuch division of ‫ פרשת ויחי‬.
39 On the ending of Genesis Rabbah, see Marc Hirshman s article in this volume.
40 The following summary is based on the conclusions reached in the writer’s unpublished
dissertation.
41 While the present writer concluded on the basis of this material that MS Vat. 60 belongs to
a textual tradition separate from all the other manuscripts, and that these parallels in the other
midrashim come from the same textual tradition, Kahana has argued against this. According
to him, a Vorlage of MS Vat. 60 abbreviated these parallels with the terms ‫גרש‬, ‫ ״‬continuation,”
or ‫כוליה עניינא‬, ‫ ״‬all of the material,” - a well-known device found in MS 2 and MS Vat. 301’3 -
which were completed in Bereshit Rabba from these parallels by a‫ ׳‬later scribe. See Menahem
Kahana, ‫״‬The Relationship between Ms. Vat. 60 of Bereshit Rabba to its Parallels” [Hebrew],
Teuda 11 (1996): 17-60.
42 Until ch. 63.
32 Michael Sokoloff

tradition of MS Vat. 30 and the BM manuscript. In this part, MS Vat. 60 never

agrees with the parallel passages in the above-mentioned midrashim when they
differ from the tradition of these manuscripts.
Thus, although MS Vat. 60 was copied in its entirety by one scribe, the man-
uscript is in effect a combination of two original partial manuscripts belonging
to two variant textual traditions.43

Conclusions

From the above discussion concerning the manuscripts of Genesis Rabbah, the
following conclusions can be drawn:
1. While the Theodor-Albeck edition was a great advance over the previous
printed editions, the basic manuscript chosen for the edition, BM Add. 27169,
was linguistically and textually corrupt. Theodor chose it as his basic text most
likely because it was the best of the complete manuscripts available to him.
2. The best extensive manuscript from both a textual and linguistic point of
view, MS Vat. 30 was relegated to the variae lectionis, where its readings were
either frequently incorrectly copied or skipped in the critical edition. Addition-
ally, the editors of the midrash had no knowledge of the complex nature of the
manuscript.
3. The second best extensive manuscript, MS Vat. 60, was completely un-
known to the editors.
4. Aside from a few pages of one manuscript, none of the extensive early ma-
terial from the Cairo Genizah was known to the editors, even though some of
the Genizah material is invaluable for those interested in using the best extant
text of Genesis Rabbah.
Clearly, the time has come to prepare a new critical edition of Genesis Rabbah
on the basis of all of the known textual data. In the meantime, scholars who study
Genesis Rabbah or use the midrash in their research should make sure to consult
MS Vat. 30 and MS Vat. 60 as well as the relevant Genizah fragments to ensure
that they are using the best available text.

43 Whether this was the work of the scribe of MS Vat. 60 or one of his predecessors cannot
be determined.