Bereshit Rabbah

English

Rabbi Hoshaya the Great began: “I was with Him as an amon, a delight day after day…” (Proverbs 8:30) – amon means a child’s caretaker, amon means covered, amon means hidden, and some say amon means greatness. Amon means a child’s caretaker, as it says: “As a caretaker [omen] carries a nursing child” (Numbers 11:12). Amon means covered, as it says: “Those covered [ha’emunim] in scarlet…” (Lamentations 4:5). Amon means hidden, as it says: “He was omen Hadassa” (Esther 2:7). Amon means great, as it says: “Are you better than No Amon [which sits in the rivers]?” (Nahum 3:8), which we translate in Targum as: Are you better than the great city of Alexandria, which is located among the rivers? Another matter, amon means artisan [uman]. The Torah is saying: ‘I was the tool of craft of the Holy One blessed be He.’ The way of the world is that when a flesh-and-blood king builds a palace he does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather based on the knowledge of an artisan. And the artisan does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather, he has [plans on] sheets and tablets by which to ascertain how he should build its rooms, how he should build its doors. So too, the Holy One blessed be He looked in the Torah and created the world. The Torah says: “Bereshit God created” (Genesis 1:1), and reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: “The Lord made me at the beginning of [reshit] His way” (Proverbs 8:22).

The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · sefaria-midrash-rabbah

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 1:1 (Vilna numbering; Theodor–Albeck differs) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The opening of the whole midrash, and the rabbinic answer to this crux in its classic form. R. Hoshaya reads Proverbs 8:30, 'I was with him as an amon', through four homonyms and then a fifth: amon is uman, artisan. The Torah speaks: I was the tool of the craft of the Holy One. A king does not build a palace out of his own head but from an architect's sheets and tablets; so the Holy One looked into the Torah and created the world. And then the philological hinge on which everything turns — 'reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: The Lord made me reshit of his way' (Prov 8:22). Bereshit therefore means 'by means of the beginning', that is, by the Torah. On the Latin side Augustine, Bede, Bruno and Rupert prove that in principio means 'in Wisdom' from Ps 104:24 [Vg 103], 'you made all things in wisdom'; here the proof text is Prov 8:22 and the Wisdom is the Torah. The two benches share a chapter of Proverbs and a conclusion, and disagree about what the Wisdom is.

Threads

• ← echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  The same proof text put to the same use two sections later: 'The Lord made me reshit of his way' (Prov 8:22) makes the Torah the reshit in 1:1, and in 1:4 makes the Torah the first of the six things that preceded the world and settles its precedence over the Throne of Glory.
• ← echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  1:1 reads Prov 8:30's amon as uman, artisan; 1:8 counts the builder's six materials against Prov 8:22–23's six words of precedence. Both treat Proverbs 8 not as a proof text reached for but as the chapter that comments on Genesis 1:1.
• ← cites · Rashi
  Rashi reproduces the midrashic answer with its two proof texts — the Torah called reshit darko (Prov 8:22) and Israel called reshit tevu'ato (Jer 2:3) — and marks it as what 'our rabbis expounded', before setting his own plain sense against it.
• ← parallel · Augustine
  The identical inference on both benches. Augustine: in principio means in the Son, because Ps 104:24 says 'you have made all things in wisdom' and Wisdom is the Son. Bereshit Rabbah: bereshit means by the Torah, because Prov 8:22 says 'the Lord made me reshit of his way' and that speaker is the Torah. One move, one kind of proof text, two Wisdoms, and no contact in either direction.
• ← parallel · Chalcidius
  The same verse and the same conclusion, in Latin about 350 and in Galilee about 450, with nothing between them. R. Hoshaya reads reshit of Prov 8:22 — 'the Lord made me reshit of his way' — and makes the Torah the amon, the artisan's plan the King builds from. Chalcidius quotes the same verse at length and concludes praeeunte diuina sapientia coelum terramque factam, eandemque sapientiam diuinam esse uniuersitatis primordium: that heaven and earth were made with Wisdom going before, and that Wisdom is the primordium of the universe. Primordium and reshit are the same claim about the same word of the same verse. This is the contact K1's finding says existed at the head of the tradition, and it is on the page.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  One story, told twice, four hundred years and one language apart, and neither telling knows the other. Philo: a king founds a city, a trained architect draws the whole of it within himself first and carries an intelligible city in his soul, and only then builds in stone; so God conceived the types, made the intelligible world of them, and used it as the model for this one. Bereshit Rabbah 1:1: a king does not build a palace of his own head but from an amon, a craftsman's plan, and the Holy One looked into the Torah and created the world. Same king, same plan, same order of operations, and the whole difference is what is in the architect's hand. Philo puts the divine Reason there, which is not a person and has no text; the midrash puts the Torah there, which is a book. This crux's finding rests on the midrash's parable; this is where the parable comes from, or at least where it is older.