Derekh Eretz Rabbah (Hebrew: דרך ארץ רבה; abbreviated DER) is one of the minor tractates (מסכתות קטנות) of the Talmud.
It is clear that Section 1 cannot, in view of its halakhic content, belong with the rest of the treatise, which deals exclusively with morals and customs.
Elijah of Vilna was therefore undoubtedly right in assigning this section to the treatise Kallah, which precedes DER, and deals entirely with marriage and the rules connected with it.
The whole section is merely a later compilation, although some of its passages cannot be traced back to the Talmudim and the Midrashim, as, for instance, the interesting parody on the hermeneutic rule of "kal ve-chomer".
[5] Section 3 seems to have been in ancient times the beginning of DER,[6] for which reason the old writers called the whole treatise "Perek ben Azzai."
Sections 4-11 are not only similar in content (in that both set forth rules of behavior for different walks of life, and illustrate their meaning by examples from history,) but their whole arrangement and composition also show the hand of the same author.
Among the 16 authorities quoted in the part which has been designated above as the treatise DER proper, none lived later than Judah haNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah.
It is even highly probable that the treatise was based on the older collection, and that the work of the later editors consisted merely in the addition to the old rules of illustrations from the Bible and from history.
This teaching was amplified by a later editor, who added: "This rule of behavior is taught out of the mouth of God Himself, who stood at the gate of paradise and called to Adam, 'Where are you?
Only after much beseeching would the man forgive him; and on the same day Simon pronounced these words in the schoolhouse: "Be always pliable as the reed, and not hard as the cedar.
The Gemara, which is quoted by Isaac Aboab I in Menorat ha-Ma'or, is printed in the Vilna Edition Shas.