ADANI, DAVID BEN AMRAM. Midrash ha-Gadol. Book of Genesis only

(MIDRASH).

Yemen

Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries

Temanic Hebrew script, three different hands: ff. 1-4; 5-32; 33-154

Midrash ha-Gadol is a collection of a number of early midrashim assembled by R. David Adani, a thirteenth or fourteenth-century Yemenite sage. The work is invaluable to Judaic scholarship as it preserves sources otherwise lost, most notably the Mechilta de-Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. From the time Western scholars first became aware of the existence of the Midrash ha-Gadol in the late nineteenth century, they have not ceased to tease out early sources embedded therein. In this regard, R. David Tzvi Hoffman produced his Mechilta de-Rashbi (1905) and R. Menachem Mendel Kasher produced Ha-Rambam ve-ha-Mechilta de-Rashbi (1943). Our manuscript reaches only as far as the middle of Parshath Miketz (Margaliot ed., p. 695). It is also wanting between the first and second hands (end Introduction, beginning Parshath Bereishith), and second and third hands (end Parshath Bereishith, beginning Parshath Noach). See M. Margaliot, Midrash ha-Gadol -Bereshith (Jerusalem, 1947); EJ, Vol. II, col. 250; Vol. XI, cols. 1515-6