Midrash HaGadol

This important work, the largest of the midrashic collections, came to popular attention in the late 19th century through the efforts of Jacob Saphir, Solomon Schechter and David Zvi Hoffmann.

The existence of the Midrash HaGadol was first brought to the attention of Jewish scholarship by Jacob Saphir, who in his Even Sapir (1866) reports seeing a manuscript of the work in the possession of the Chief Rabbi of Yemen.

The first manuscript was brought from Yemen to Jerusalem and then to Berlin in 1878 by Mr Saphir, and this midrash subsequently became the subject of much scholarly attention.

Midrash HaGadol on Book of Numbers was published by S. Fisch in 1940 in a more accessible style than the previous efforts, which were principally arranged for a scholarly audience.

[11] While Fish offers possible explanations for how the work, if indeed authored by Abraham Maimonides in Egypt, came first to be "lost" and then to be rediscovered in Yemen, Strack & Stemberger (1991) find the attribution to Abraham Maimonides "only extremely weakly attested," and report that modern scholars almost uniformly attribute the work in its entirety to David bar Amram al-Adani.

In addition, the sourcebook used by Moses Gaster to compile his work, The exempla of the rabbis (Sefer Ma'asiyot), was known to the author of Midrash Ha-Gadol and made use of it.