In the preceding pages, we have analysed only a limited selection of sources from the vast array of material preserved in talmudic and midrashic literature, in connection with relatively few themes. It may seem somewhat less than judicious, therefore, if on the basis of this, we would proceed to draw wide-ranging conclusions regarding the midrashic process as a whole. None the less, we would argue that the sources and the subjects we have chosen for analysis, are genuinely representative of that process, which we would describe in simple terms, as the authentication or ‘biblicisation’ of old traditions and the development of new ones, through the medium of a sophisticated apparatus for textual exposition.

As we observed at the outset of our discussions, some element of the plethora of aggadic traditions preserved in our extant literature, both rabbinic and non-rabbinic, must be of high antiquity, emanating from the same sources from which the biblical narratives themselves were derived. We could only demonstrate this with any degree of certainty in connection with rabbinic accounts of the Creation Drama and the mythical monsters, where we could actually observe the early rabbinic exegetes ‘biblicising’ ancient mythological material, connecting it with relevant or appropriate texts. In so doing, the rabbis of the talmudic period demonstrated a better awareness of the plain meaning of those texts than their counterparts in the middle ages.

As to the expansion and development of biblical narratives and personalities, the evidence is of course much more substantial, already in earliest apocryphal sources.