Studies in Judaism
7 primary works • 77 total works
Volume Two
In How Not to Study Judaism, Examples and Counter-Examples, Jacob Neusner presents a collection of essays and book reviews that identify the wrong way of conducting the academic study of Judaism. Pointing readers toward the right way to pursue the academic study of Judaism, Nuesner's focus is on the study of the literature of Judaism and the culture of the Jewish community.
Volume 2
This research report answers the question, how and specifically in what passages do the distinct Rabbinic modes of discourse, Halakhah and Aggadah, intersect? How do they make a statement in common? Halakhah is given priority. Then where and how does Aggadah play a role in Halakhic discourse? What is at stake is the context of thought and expression established by systematic composites, compilations of many discrete facts in the service of a coherent argument. What is catalogued is the intersection of large aggregates of well-composed Aggadic data in a Halakhic composite or of Halakhic ones in an Aggadic setting. The upshot is simple. The Aggadic documents rarely introduce Halakhic materials in their exposition of Aggadic propositions, and the contrary is also the case. The exposition of the Halakhic components of the Halakhic documents, meaning, nearly the entirety of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi, and the greater part of the Bavli, only rarely requires Aggadic complements or supplements. Yet while the Aggadic documents rarely resort to Halakhic materials to make the case they wish to set forth, in some of the Rabbinic documents of the formative age the presentation of the Halakhah is accompanied by a massive Aggadic component. Why, and with what outcome? The answers to all of these questions are spelled out in this three-volume account of the data.
Volume 3
Viewed as ideal types, the Halakhah defines the norm, setting forth what is obligatory, the Aggadah, specifies what exceeds the norm and goes beyond the measure of the law. The striking differences of style and substance that differentiate the two categories of discourse present the question of how they intersect in a single coherent statement, a system that holds together its two distinct media of thought and expression. When we have in hand systematic data on how Aggadah contributes to the Halakhah, and where Halakhah serves the purposes of the Aggadah, we find possible the logical next step: where do the two intersect, and at what points do the respective complexes of category-formations stand autonomous of one another, and that leads to the question: how do Aggadah and Halakhah constitute a coherent religious structure and make in common a single systemic statement? Where, within the formative literature of Normative Judaism, they join together, what affect the one exercises upon the other, and how the whole - Rabbinic Judaism - exceeds and transcends the sum of the parts - the Halakhah, the Aggadah - is spelled out.
Volume 3
Texts Without Boundaries: Protocols of Non-Documentary Writing in the Rabbinic Canon
by Jacob Neusner
Published 30 July 2002
The Rabbinic compilations in the canon of Rabbinic Judaism, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, ca. 200-600 C.E., are comprised by two classifications of writing, [1] documentary and [2] non-documentary. Documentary writing conforms to a protocol paramount in, and particular to, a given text, non-documentary writing ignores the distinctive preferences of the compilation in which it appears.
Volume 3
New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism
by Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs
Published 21 September 1987
Continues the study of ancient Judaism by academic methods. This volume includes, by chapter descriptions: Galatians (1:1-5): Paul and Greco-Roman Rhetoric; Text as Interpretation: Paul and Ancient Readings of Paul; Translation and Exegetical Argumentation in the Targums to the Pentateuch; Topic, Rhetoric, Logic: Analysis of a Syllogistic Passage in the Yershalmi; System or Tradition? The Bavli and its Sources; and Literary Studies of Aggadic Narrative: A Bibliography. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
Volume 4
In this volume, Dr. Neusner explores the history of religious ideas and writings, focusing first on the idea of history, and second, on the conception of a foundation document comprising the Pentateuch and the Mishnah. He then moves on to an interpretation of the implications, for the history of Judaism, of the distinctive and particular character of an important document, Sifra, a sustained address to the book of Leviticus by sages of the fourth or fifth century. ^BContents:: Part I: The Idea of History in Formative Judaism; Part II: "The Constitution" of the Judaism of the Dual Torah; Part III: Ethics or Ontology in Formative Judaism; Part IV: From Text to Matrix in the Case of Sifra; Part V: The University as Locus for Studying the Formative Age of Judaism.
Book 172
This book concerns the definition of the category-formations of the Halakhah, which are defined by the Mishnah: why these, not others? The question breaks into two parts: why the particular method that is identified as the generative hermeneutics of the Halakhah, or law, of that Judaism? Second, can we account for the topics that the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Bavli would introduce into the system, beyond the repertoire at the foundations defined by the analytical-topical hermeneutics that defines the normative category-formations?
The documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity maintains that complete documents form the smallest whole building blocks of the Rabbinic system. These two volumes undertake a concrete exercise in the realization of the documentary hypothesis. It compares the rhetorical/formal and exegetical traits of two entire, kindred documents. Then, through a side by side chart, it compares each component of the two documents' treatment of the same extended segment of Scripture, Numbers 19. Whole documents are to be described and analyzed through a process of systematic description, comparison, and contrast. What makes the study fresh is that the author compares the two documents of the rabbinic canon that are most alike-the two Sifres on Numbers. What makes it surprising is the result: they have nothing in common. Each is autonomous, and except for the scriptural foundation systematically shared by both, neither intersects in an appreciable measure with the other. Volume One (Chapters One and Two) deals with forms. In Chapter One, the author surveys the forms of Sifre to Numbers and identifies and classifies the formal patterns that govern throughout. Then, with the formal and propositional program of Sifre to Numbers as a base, in Chapter Two he does the same with Sifre Zutta to Numbers. Volume Two (Chapters Three through Five) deals with exegesis and systematic comparison of whole segments of documents. Chapters Three and Four describe and compare the exegetical patterns of the base-documents, with special reference to the utilization of the verses of Scripture as foci of coherent discourse. In Chapter Five, the author compares the treatment of Huqqat, that is, a single passage of Scripture read by the two commentaries respectively.
Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism: Seventh Series
by Jacob Neusner
Published 20 December 2011
This collection of essays draws on work done in 2010-2011. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, and its theology. The reason for periodically collecting and publishing essays and reviews is to give them a second life, after they have served as lectures or as summaries of monographs or as free-standing articles or as expositions of Judaism in collections of comparative religions. This re-presentation serves a readership to whom the initial presentation in lectures or specialized journals or short-run monographs is inaccessible. Some of the essays furthermore provide a precis, for colleagues in kindred fields, of fully worked out monographs.
This is a work of practical theology, a book not about Judaism but of Judaism. Talmud Torah does two things. First, in its pages, which highlight representative sources of the Oral Torah of Judaism, readers study about studying the Torah, which Rabbinic Judaism put forth as the way to God's presence. Second, text by text, readers find that they study Torah everywhere, following the Torah that was set forth by the masters of the normative writings of Rabbinic Judaism. The focus throughout is on text-study, which makes possible both studying about the Torah and the concrete act of studying Torah.
The first group of essays in Judaism in Monologue and Dialogue raises issues concerning the religious tradition of Judaism: what is normative in ethics; what it means to "be religious" or practice Judaism in the context of the Judaism defined in its own native categories; and the interior life of Judaic religiosity. The second set of essays examines relationships between the communities of Judaism and those of Christianity.
Argues that the sole useful categories for the analysis of the Torah derive from the Torah, the canon of the religion under study in this book. The author investigates the categories that commonly serve for the description, analysis and interpretation of ancient Judaism and the principles that form those categories. He asserts that none of those categories constitute social constructs, thus violating the inner composition of the data they are employed to classify. The book concludes with a proposed principle of category formation: Judaism's canon. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
This collection of ten essays and five book reviews draws on three years of work, from late 2005 through mid-2008. It begins with two Halakhic essays, one on the category-formations of the Halakhah and how to account for the ones that we do not have but ought to have anticipated. The argument proceeds to another way of formulating the historical problem of the Talmud, its roots in Scripture. This is followed by an account of how the Halakhah actualizes the Torah's narrative. Also included are four essays on Classical Judaism and two literary studies, which show both old and new engagements. Five book reviews conclude the collection, one of them a review essay, covering Edward Kaplan's two volumes on Abraham J. Heschel.
The Prophets of Scripture are subverted by the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash. In the Rabbinic canon, the Prophets are represented as a miscellaneous mass of proof-texts, made up of one clause or sentence at a time. The Scripture's prophetic writings cited in clauses and phrases in the Rabbinic canon lose their integrity and cease to speak in fully coherent paragraphs and chapters. The same prophets, however, came to whole and coherent expression in other venues established by those same Rabbis. So the Rabbis of late antiquity took over writings from what they recognized as ancient times and of divine origin and they re-presented selections of those writings in accord with their own project's requirements, glossing clauses of the prophetic Scriptures but not whole, propositional discourses. This monograph shows how they did so. It portrays the formal patterns of the Rabbis' subversive glosses. Why impose the chaos of glosses on the orderly declaration of Scripture? It was to take possession of Scriptural prophecy that the Rabbinic authors imposed their characteristic forms and distinctive topics--the characteristic categories and tasks and propositions. The Rabbinic canonical writings took over, imparting upon the received heritage of Scripture and tradition whatever they chose to treat as authoritative. They did with these selected compositions whatever they wanted. They Rabbinized Scripture in full awareness of how in the process they recast Scripture's own forms and purposes. The Rabbis were perfectly capable of recapitulating prophetic writings as coherent statements. This they did in providing for lections for Sabbaths and festivals.
Raises the contemporary issue of intertextuality, while analyzing the canonical writings of Judaism. These writings provide an ideal example of the meaning and uses of the critical initiative represented by intertextuality. In this book, the author asks in reference to these texts, how one document relates to others, thus a community of texts. He agrees that the shared conventions of rhetoric, topic and logic validate an approach to the canonical texts that ignores all social dimensions, for intrinsic to the writings are formal points of intersection and connection. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
The Talmud is a confusing piece of writing. It begins no where and ends no where but it does not move in a circle. It is written in several languages and follows rules that in certain circumstances trigger the use of one language over others. Its components are diverse. To translating it requires elaborate complementary language. It cannot be translated verbatim into any language. So a translation is a commentary in the most decisive way. The Talmud, accordingly, cannot be merely read but only studied. It contains diverse programs of writing, some descriptive and some analytical. A large segment of the writing follows a clear pattern, but the document encompasses vast components of miscellaneous collections of bits and pieces, odds and ends. It is a mishmash and a mess. Yet it defines the program of study of the community of Judaism and governs the articulation of the norms and laws of Judaism, its theology and its hermeneutics, Above all else, the Talmud of Babylonia is comprised of contention and produces conflict and disagreement, with little effort at a resolution No wonder the Talmud confuses its audience. But that does not explain the power of the Talmud to define Judaism and shape its intellect. This book guides those puzzled by the Talmud and shows the system and order that animate the text.
This is the first volume of a set of anthologies that sets forth the statements of the formative canon of influential Rabbinic Judaism on three large topics: the calendar, the life cycle, and theology. Focusing on the seminal period of normative Judaism, the editor Jacob Neusner presents in three parts the teachings of Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, the first six centuries of the Common Era. The topical abstracts, which deal with the sacred calendar (volume one), events in the life cycle (volume two), and theological expositions (volume three), are presented in documentary sequence, from the Mishnah, ca. 200, through the Bavil or Talmud of Babylonia, ca. 600. This is the story told in abundant selections of Rabbinic classics of the age, the first centuries C.E., in which the two Talmuds and Midrash came to closure.
Volume V, Chapters 1 through 6
In separate multi-volume works, the project has presented form-analytical English translations of the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, outlined the Yerushalmi and the Bavli and compared these outlines. In this volume, the main points of the Halakhah of the topological expositions or tractates of the Mishnah-Tosefta-Bavli Hullin are set forth and the theological message of the tractate is laid out. The project yields a systematic account of the Halakhah in its documentary unfolding.
This book responds to a question that came to the author from Professor Maren Niehoff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: 'Have you written a simple introduction to your documentary theory and method, which can serve as a starting point for my students?' In this book are gathered eight of the more fundamental items of documentary theory and practice_three in theory, five in practice_for Professor Neihoff's students and anyone else who takes an interest in the formative history of Judaism. The documentary thesis of Rabbinic literature holds that the document_the Mishnah, Sifra, Lamentations, Rabbah, the Bavli, for example_forms the basic building block of the Rabbinic tradition. Excluded by that definition are sayings attributed to, and stories told about, named sages. These cannot serve in the reconstruction of the Rabbinic tradition, its literature, history, religion, and theology.
This book presents an inductive account, through systematic inquiry into data, of the hermeneutics of the principal documents of Rabbinic Judaism. It undertakes a hypothetical-logical reconstruction of the thought-processes that generated the category-formations of the Halakhah, that is, the exegesis of the hermeneutics of Halakhic exegesis. To do so, Neusner asks whether a determinate theory of interpretation guides the sages in their exposition of the topics, the category-formations, of Rabbinic Judaism in the documents that expound those formations. His answer is, a hermeneutics of comparison and contrast yielding a hierarchical classification of data governs the selection of data and the interpretation thereof for the entire corpus of category-formations of the Halakhah. Hence 'Halakhic hermeneutics' here bears the primary meaning, 'a hermeneutics of analogical-contrastive analysis.'