From another point of view, also, the Midrash is a poetical literature. Its function as a species of popular homiletics made it necessary to appeal to the emotions. In its warm and living application of abstract truths to daily ends, in its responsive and hopeful intensification of the nearness of God to Israel, in its idealization of the past and future of the Jews, it employed the poet’s art in essence, though not in form. It will be seen later on that in another sense the Midrash is a poetical literature, using the lore of the folk, the parable, the proverb, the allegory, and the fable, and often using them in the language of poetry.
The oldest Midrash is the actual report of sermons and addresses of the Tannaite age: the latest is a medieval compilation from all extant sources. The works to which the name Midrash is applied are the Mechilta (to Exodus): the Sifra (to Leviticus); the Sifre (to Numbers and Deuter-
