PaRDeS

[Rose of Shushan]

I so agree with Sheep that those who are throwing around the word midrash so glibly are doing it to either feel more spiritual or enlightened.
The word midrash as used in the Bible merely means commentary.However in Judaism circles midrash is used as Sheep explained in her quote, to refer to a wide variety of already established jewish commentary literature.
It is really misleading in my eyes to refer to any commentary as midrash.If we mean commentary why not use the english word commentary??
If we mean classical jewish midrash then the word certainly applies.But to use the term so loosely as is done in messianic circles is to mix two things which shouldnt really have been mixed.
Some may argue that they can use the word midrash since it does mean commentary but then we could apply it to everything and just insert a hebrew equivalent into our writings or speech as we see fit.Imagine if everytime I used the word heart in english I used lev instead or everytime we came across the word love we would have to use the hebrew equivalent..it would just not make sense to ordinary english language speaking people with no knowledge of the hebrew language.
It would also be confusing with those who have no knowledge of whats in the jewish midrash to have it confused with christian commentaries.Very confusing to the rosh..err I mean head