Midrash

Midrash is a genre of Jewish Biblical exegesis, including Talmudic texts, that uses the classical rabbinic mode of homiletical interpretation known as derash; the word itself means textual interpretation, study or exegesis, from a root verb meaning to seek or enquire. Midrashic works form a running commentary on specific passages of the Hebrew scripture, drawing out early interpretations of the Written and Oral Torah, and by extension the term can also refer to the interpretive method itself or, when capitalized, to a specific compilation of these rabbinic writings composed between roughly 400 and 1200 CE.