| The midrash Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer is a rabbinic composition of fifty-four chapters that has influenced Scriptural exposition since the medieval era, and provides a variety of traditional and innovative interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, which are frequently organized according to the progress of scriptural narrative or order of scriptural verses. Nonetheless, the content and expression of PRE singles out the work as an anomaly in rabbinic literature. The work fluctuates in literary organization and thematic focus, and appears to exemplify several genres of literature simultaneously. Consequently, the work has challenged generations of scholars to examine a single question: What sort of rabbinic work is PRE?;My analysis situates PRE as 'rabbinic literature' in terms of the work's discourse within the context of the rabbinic tradition, and seeks to define PRE within the history of rabbinic interpretation through the work's contact with and participation in the transmission of authoritative discourse and traditions. In this dissertation, I argue that the expositors' introduction of multifaceted connections and representations within scripture, with reference to classical rabbinic discourse, represents the work's 'development' of amoraic rabbinic interpretation. My account argues that PRE's similarities with classical rabbinic literature represents the work's engagement in the authoritative language of rabbinic literature as a context and substance of discourse, yet the methods employed represent an 'intensification' within the rabbinic tradition of exposition. Consequently, I argue that the 'development' of rabbinic exposition that occurs within PRE is present in the expositors' organization of scriptural and rabbinic materials within the parameters of the work's representation of scripture, and in the subsequent advancement of a 'dense' expository language. |
