An Early Technique of Aggadic Exegesis
Jeffrey H. Tigay
Nothing has been more characteristic of Jewish intellectual endeavor than the explication of Scripture. The typical expression of new ideas is not the systematic philosophical treatise but the Biblical commentary, showing that these ideas had been deposited, if not necessarily revealed, in the Biblical text long ago. Not only the midrashim and medival Bible commentaries, but even Philo's treatises, Maimonides' Guide, and the Kabbalists' Zohar took the form of Biblical exegesis.