This classic six-volume set was the definitive twentieth-century compilation of hundreds of legends and parables from Ginzberg's lifetime of midrashic research. Originally published in 1909, the work is a vast overview of aggadah from all of classical rabbinic literature, as well as apocryphal, pseudopigraphical and even early Christian literature, with legends ranging from the creation of the world and the fall of Adam, through a huge collection of legends on Moses, and ending with the story of Esther and the Jews in Persia.

Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, 1873-1953, was a leading Talmudist and figurehead of the Conservative movement in the twentieth century.