Bereshit Rabbah

English

The heretics once asked Rabbi Samlai: ‘How many deities created the world?’ He said to them: ‘Let you and I inquire into the early days.’ That is what is written: “For inquire now into the early days that were before you, from the day that God created [bara] man” (Deuteronomy 4:32) – “that [God] baru” is not written here, but rather, “that [God] bara.” They said to him: ‘What is this that is written: “In the beginning God [Elohim] created”?’ He said to them: “Baru Elohim” is not written here, but rather, “bara Elohim.” Rabbi Samlai said [moreover]: Everywhere you find a basis for a claim of the heretics, you find a refutation alongside it. They asked him further, saying to him: ‘What is this that is written: “Let us make Man in our image, in our likeness”?’ He said to them: ‘Read what is written thereafter: God created [vayivre’u] man in their image is not stated, but rather, “God created [vayivra] man in His image,”’ (Genesis 1:27). After they left, his students said to him: ‘Rabbi, those men you pushed off with a reed. What would you respond to us?’ He said to them: ‘In the past, Adam was created from earth and Eve was created from Adam. From now on, “In our image, in our likeness” – a man will not [produce offspring] without a woman, nor will a woman without a man, nor both of them without the Divine Presence.’

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

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 8:9 (Vilna numbering) · daat-br

Notes

⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. A disputation, reported as a disputation, on exactly the two verses this crux is built on. The minim ask R. Simlai how many divinities created the world; he answers from Deut 4:32, bara and not baru; they come back with Gen 1:1, and he gives the same answer — baru Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim, which is R. Yitzḥak's argument at Bereshit Rabbah 1:7 word for word (see `br-1-7`); they come back with na'aseh adam be-tzalmenu, and he sends them to the next verse, va-yivra and not va-yivre'u. Between the second and third exchange he states the rule the whole passage exists to illustrate: wherever you find an opening for the minim, you find the refutation beside it. Three things follow for this daf. The singular-verb argument that K1 and this crux both carry as a piece of grammar is here a polemical instrument aimed at named opponents. Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:26 are treated as one question, which is the reason this Gen 1:26 material belongs on a Gen 1:1–2 daf at all. And the disciples are not satisfied — those men you pushed off with a reed; what will you answer us? — so the midrash itself marks the grammatical answer as a debating move rather than an explanation, and gives the students a different one: that from now on the image needs a man, a woman and the Shekhinah. […] The passage continues in the printed English with two further exchanges, on Josh 22:22 and Josh 24:19, which are the same manoeuvre on other verses; they are outside the Hebrew segment as Daat prints it and are elided here.

Threads

• ← contests · Basil of Caesarea
  The same grammatical proof on both benches, aimed in opposite directions, and each aimed at the other's people. Basil: 'Non enim dixit ad imagines nostras, sicut et Scriptura testatur: Fecit Deus, inquit, hominem: non fecerunt' — God made the human, they did not make — used to show that the plural is of persons and not of makers. R. Simlai, asked by the minim how many divinities created the world: 'va-yivre'u Elohim et ha-adam be-tzalmeihem is not said, but va-yivra Elohim et ha-adam be-tzalmo.' One verse, one observation about the number of the verb, two disputations, and each bench is arguing with the other's readers.
• → echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  The same proof twice in the same compilation, once as exegesis and once as a disputation. R. Yitzḥak at 1:7 observes that the plural-looking Elohim takes singular verbs — not vaydaberu but vaydaber, not bare'u but bara — and concludes that no creature may say two authorities created the world. R. Simlai at 8:9 is asked by the minim how many divinities created the world and answers with the same verb: baru Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim. What 8:9 adds is the occasion. The grammatical observation this crux is built on is, in its own tradition, an answer given to opponents who had asked the question out loud.
• → echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  Two paragraphs, one anxiety, and they name it the same way: pitchon peh la-minim, an opening for the minim. At 8:8 Moses sees the opening while he is writing the verse and is told to write it anyway; at 8:9 the minim walk through it and are met at the door. R. Simlai's rule states the policy the earlier paragraph enacted — everywhere you find an opening for the minim, you find the refutation beside it — so that the danger and its answer are treated as a designed pair rather than as an accident to be explained away.
• ← echoes · Babylonian Talmud
  R. Simlai's rule become R. Yoḥanan's, with the disputation dropped and the list extended. In the midrash the rule is said between two exchanges and is illustrated by them; in the Bavli it is stated flat and followed by three verse-pairs, Gen 1:26 with 1:27, Gen 11:7 with 11:5, Gen 35:7 with 35:3. The verb hardens too: she'alu ha-minim, the minim asked, becomes kol makom she-pakru ha-minim, everywhere the minim broke loose.
• ← cites · Rashi
  Rashi ends the second comment with R. Simlai's answer verbatim in Hebrew — 'and the refutation of the minim he wrote beside it, va-yivra et ha-adam, and he did not write va-yivre'u' — and with it he takes over the midrash's whole posture: name the risk, keep the verse, point to the answer alongside. The one thing he does not take over is R. Simlai's caution. Where the midrash has the disciples object that the minim were pushed off with a reed, Rashi lets the grammatical answer stand as the answer.