Numbers Rabbah - Authorship

Authorship

Since the second part of Numbers Rabbah, additions excepted, is derived from the Tanchuma Midrashim, the question arises whether it and part 1 (sections 1–14) should be ascribed to one author. It is improbable that the author of the comparatively late commentary on the Torah portions Bamidbar and parashah Naso — supposing that the Midrash on these two is the work of a single author — should have deliberately rounded out this incomplete work with the Midrash Tanchuma. According to Epstein, some unknown author wrote the Midrash upon the Torah portion Bamidbar to complete the Sifre, which commences with Numbers 1:1, another then continued it with the commentary on Naso, and in order to complete the work for the remainder of Numbers, the commentary for the remaining Torah portions was drawn from Tanchuma. It must also be mentioned that a manuscript in the Paris National Library, dating from the year 1291, contains only the Torah portion Bamidbar, while the Munich manuscript dated 1418 covers only this and Naso.

Even the first part contains much that is taken from the Tanchuma, but, as Zunz wrote, "a copious stream of new Haggadah swallows the Midrash drawn from this source and entirely obscures the arrangement of the Yelamdenu." In the Torah portion Bamidbar, the outer framework of the original composition is still recognizable. There are five sections, containing five homilies or fragments, taken from the Tanchuma on Numbers 1:1, 2:1, 3:14, 3:40, and 4:17, which are expanded by some very discursive additions. As Tanchuma only addresses the first verses of each chapter, no doubt the author's intention was to supply homiletic commentary to the others. But in the section on Naso, which is more than three times the volume of that preceding, there are long passages that have no relation to the Tanchuma homilies, based as they are upon the Torah reading cycle, and commencing in Naso with Numbers 5:11. Sections 6, 7, 8, and 10, which, like the other lengthy sections in which the material derived from the Tanchuma are overwhelmed in a flood of new homiletic interpretations, show even more clearly the endeavor to supply homilies and continuous expositions for all sections of Naso. Zunz wrote: "Instead of the brief explanations or allegories of the ancients, instead of their uniform citation of authorities, we have here compilations from halakic and haggadic works, intermingled with artificial and often trivial applications of Scripture, and for many pages continuously we find no citation of any source whatever." The industry and skill of the unknown author of this fragmentary work was nonetheless remarkable. The author, for example in sections 13 and 14 on Numbers 7, gave a different interpretation to each one of the twelve passages enumerating the offerings of princes of the tribes — identical in all but the name of the prince in the Biblical text.