Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Middot

(Hebrew: “measure,” or “norms”), in Jewish hermeneutics or biblical interpretation, methods or principles used to explicate the meaning of biblical words or passages to meet the exigencies of new situations. Though the rules, or norms, were probably developing in early Hellenistic Judaism, the first known middot were compiled by Rabbi Hillel in the 1st century BC. Following