Though Moshe ha-Darshan was considered a rabbinical authority, he owes his reputation principally to the fact that together with
Tobiah ben Eliezer he was the most prominent representative of midrashic-symbolic
Bible exegesis (
derash) in the 11th century. His work on the
Bible, probably sometimes called
Yesod, and known only by quotations found mostly in
Rashi's Bible commentaries, which quote him 19 times, and twice in his Talmud commentary -
Ketubot 75b and
Niddah 19a), contained extracts from earlier
aggadic works as well as
midrashic explanations of his own. Probably the non-preservation of the work was due to an excess of the foreign element in its composition, causing it to be regarded with disfavor. Moreover, as has recently been ascertained by
A. Epstein, it was not a systematically arranged work, but merely a collection of notes made by Moses. For this reason, apparently, it did not have a fixed title, and therefore it is quoted under various names by different authors. The Midrash
Bereshit Rabbah Major or
Bereshit Rabbati, known through quotations by
Raymund Martin in his
Pugio Fidei, has many aggadot and
aggadic ideas which recall very strongly Moses ha-Darshan's teachings; it is claimed by
Zunz that the midrash was actually the work of Moses.
A. Epstein, however, is of the opinion that the final compiler of the midrash, certainly not Moses ha-Darshan, took from the
Yesod whatever he considered appropriate for his purpose, especially from Moses' midrashic interpretation of the
Genesis creation myth. In a similar way the
Yesod influenced the Midrash
Bamidbar Rabbah and the
Midrash Tadshe, which later, in a aggadic-symbolic manner, endeavors to show the parallelism between the world, mankind, and the
Tabernacle. Concerning the Midrash Tadshe, Epstein goes so far as to assume that Moses ha-Darshan was its author. Moses ha-Darshan explained some obscure expressions in certain
piyyuṭim. He is credited also with a midrash on the
Ten Commandments and with a "viddui". == His pupils ==