Studies in Judaism
7 primary works • 77 total works
The purpose of this study is to identify the propositions of the principal Midrash-compilations of formative Judaism. Continuing with the theme of volume Seven, devoted to Sifra, Jacob Neusner proceeds to Sifre to Numbers and Sifre to Deuteronomy. It is, further, to place these propositions, where established, into a relationship with those that characterize the canon as a whole. This volume presents both what is in common to the animating theology of Rabbinic Judaism in all its documentary components and what is unique to Sifre to Numbers and Sifre to Deuteronomy, respectively.
The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.
In the first six centuries of the Common Era, the Rabbis of formative Judaism, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, consulted the ancient Israelite prophets for guidance on issues of theology, law, history, and literature. In this anthology, Jacob Neusner collects and arranges in documentary sequence the Rabbinic comments on verses in the biblical prophet Hosea.
Jacob Neusner describes, analyzes, and interprets the transformation of one system of the Israelite social order by a connected but autonomous successor-system. He characterizes the successive systems classifying the one as philosophical and the other as religious. He explains the categorical account of each and sets forth the outcome of a number of topical studies on the category-formations of Rabbinic Judaism with special attention to the social order: politics, philosophy, and economics. These systems emerged as [1] autonomous when viewed synchronically, [2] connected when seen diachronically, and [3] as a continuous construction when seen at the end of their formative age. In their successive stages of categorical autonomy, connection, and finally continuity, the three distinct systems may be classified, respectively, as philosophical, religious, and theological, each one taking over and revising the definitive categories of the former and framing its own fresh, generative categories as well. The formative history of Judaism is the story of the presentations and re-presentations of categorical structures. In method, it is the exegesis of taxonomy and taxic systems. Now, after more than two decades, Neusner has decided to review the initial statement. Since the book summarizes ten years of work, from 1980 to 1990, on the Rabbinic category formations of social science politics, philosophy, and economics in the setting of the law and theology of Rabbinic Judaism from the Mishnah through the Bavli, 200-600 C.E., it seemed well worth the effort to recapitulate the original work. The revised introduction explains the omission of theology in his category-formation philosophy-religion-theology; Neusner's account of the Bavli produced the decade after this title was completed did not make possible the continuous description of the unfolding of the Rabbinic system. The pattern that appealed to Neusner from philosophy to religion to theology has not yet come to a satisfactory account. In the twenty years
This anthology illustrates how Judaism's classical rabbis of the first seven centuries of the Common Era read the ancient Israelite scriptures. It presents, in particular, a selection of writings that show what happens to the five books of Moses at the hands of the Rabbinical sages of the formative age of Judaism. Each Midrash-compilation takes up a book of Scripture and systematically expounds the message that the Rabbis derive from that particular book. No statement by the rabbis of the meaning of a biblical book emerges as a mere paraphrase of the plain sense of Scripture itself. The compiler introduces the Rabbinic reading of the Five books of Moses, Genesis through Genesis Rabbah, Exodus through Mekhilta attributed to R. Ishmael, Leviticus through Leviticus Rabbah, Numbers through Sifre to Numbers, and Deuteronomy through Sifre to Deuteronomy. Genesis Rabbah shows how the rabbis found in the book of Genesis lessons of history realized in their own times. That approach to Scripture will not surprise Bible-believing Christians. Mekhilta attributed to R. Ishmael shows how the Ten Commandments are expounded in an inclusive spirit, so that the Commandments cover important aspects of everyday life. Leviticus Rabbah shows how the rabbis found in the laws of animal sacrifice lessons of both history and morality, once more an approach Christians will find congenial. The book of Numbers illustrates how the ancient rabbis read Scripture in such a way as to validate and justify rules that on the surface do not seem valid and just at all. In the case I have chosen, the treatment of the wife accused of infidelity, Numbers Chpater Five, the law of the Mishnah and the Tosefta affords to the accused wife rights that Scripture does not on the surface provide for her. We consider both the legal and the exegetical treatment of the topic, with its emphasis, for both norms of conduct and norms of conviction, upon God's justice. The book of Deuteronomy at Chapter Thirty-Two contains Moses's profound reflection on the me
Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism: Sixth Series
by Jacob Neusner
Published 25 October 2011
This collection of seven essays draws on work done in 2010. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaisms and deals with comparisons of Judaisms. The papers include two commentaries on the current state of the academic study of Judaism. 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.
Rabbinic theological language has made possible a vast range of discourse, on many subjects over long spans of recorded time and in diverse cultural settings. This theological dictionary defines the principal theological usages of Rabbinic Judaism as set forth in the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity, Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash-compilations. It systematically lays [1] the theological categories that are native to those writings; [2] cogent statements that can be made with them; [3] coherent propositions that those statements set forth and (within their own terms and framework) logically demonstrate as true and self-evident, both. Volume One of this dictionary covers vocabulary that permits the classification of religious knowledge and experience, and the organization and categorization of those data into intelligible and cogent sense-units. Volume Two shows how these classifications combine and recombine in sentences. We may deem these rules of theological discourse concerning religious experience to be the counterpart of syntax which words combine (or do not combine) with which other words, in what inflection or signaled relationship, and why. Volume Three shows how the theology accomplishes its goals of analysis, explanation, and anticipation in order to make sense of and impose meaning upon a subject. That marks the point at which constructive theology commences and systematic theology will find its language.
In this book the author, a recognized authority on Jewish life and thought, poses the question, 'How are we to think about the social and political setting for our religious and ethnic life as Jewish Americans and American Jews?' He gives his answer in six parts: I. What is at Stake in Debates on Zionism and Judaism? II. Zionism and Judaism in Theory III. A Zionist Theory of American Judaism IV. Zionism and Judaism in Practice V. American Jews and the State of Israel VI. The Failure of Nerve: Anti-Semitism and the Self-Ghettoization of 'Jewish Studies.' In Part II, the author states that 'Zionism, that is to say, the view that the Jews form a people, one people, and that the Jews constitute a political entity that deserves a state and a politics of its own, characterizes all Judaisms,' and he explains why.
Rabbinic Judaism affirms the Prophetic heritage and makes it its own. Indeed, the Rabbis of the formative age and canon of Rabbinic Judaism looked to Prophecy along with the Torah and the Writings to define and sustain their system. We may reasonably label the Judaic religious system portrayed in the Rabbinic canon as Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism that the Rabbis formed in response to the Prophetic imperatives. In this book, the author shows how the Rabbis found in Prophecy a source not of contradiction but of conciliation and doctrinal validation. Rabbi Neusner answers the question, what do we learn about the Rabbinic system from its encounter with the Prophetic books? The four principal building blocks of Rabbinic theology addressed here take up symbolism, eschatology, immanental theology, and theological systematics. The fifth, Halakhah, has been addressed in The Rabbis, the Law, and the Prophets. Here, Rabbi Neusner takes up these matters and shows how the Rabbis found in Prophecy support for their fundamental principles.
Implicit norms of law and theology governed in Rabbinic Judaism from the onset of its canon in the Mishnah (concluded at ca. 200) to its climax in the Talmud of Babylonia four centuries later. These norms of conviction and conception prevailed in a complete system, which was logically present, if not fully realized, from the very beginning of the canon. Norms of belief, not only behavior, governed in the canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism and defined its orthodoxy and its heterodoxy. This book proves that proposition by asking, what are the theological premises of the documents upon which the Rabbinic canon was built and do these premises cohere in a tight theological system? The Implicit Norms of Rabbinic Judaism answers this question by identifying the principles that had to govern in order for a given composition to be articulated or a particular composite to be assembled. Those premises at the foundations of the canonical documents prove not episodic, but coherent. The documents speak, so it is universally maintained, for the community of the Rabbinic sages that sponsored them. Hence the premises and presuppositions of a document represent the consensus of the Rabbinic sages: the implicit norms of attitude and action. Canonical orthodoxy and heresy come to definition in those norms. How individuals conformed, and what institutions functioned to enforce conformity, do not figure into this account. It suffices to show that orthodoxy and heresy constituted native categories of the Rabbinic system of thought inherent in principal documents of the canon.
The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.
This book expounds upon the Utopian vision of Rabbinic Judaism in its classical documents. Rabbinic Judaism carries forward, and itself forms, a massive Utopian enterprise, a design of an ideal condition for humanity. It carries forward the two matched Utopian projects of the Pentateuch_Eden, the Land of Israel_and on its own forms a system for an ideal social and metaphysical order. That is because the law of that Judaism set forth a plan for the construction of an ideal society in a perfect age. Over time, the Israelite community undertook to realize that plan in concrete ways: to build Utopia in the green and pleasant Land of Israel. So, normative Judaism assumes as its task to realize a Utopian vision. Its vision takes the form of law. Some of the law at the time of its presentation in the Mishnah in ca. 200 C.E. and successor documents of amplification could be realized. Some could not. But the whole of the law formed a statement of integrity. All the parts were essential to the system. By fulfilling the law, or Halakhah, the faithful Israelite would help realize in the here and now Utopia, an ideal world.
The Halakhah constitutes a coherent construction comprised by category-formations defined by topics purposively amplified. These category-formations everywhere pursue a cogent analytical program, addressing diverse subjects, treated systematically, a single set of questions of definition and analysis. Is Scripture the origin of the Halakhic system, which defines the norms of Judaism? At stake is not the starting point of discrete bits of legal data. At issue is the origin of the comprehensive structure comprised by the Halakhic category-formations, by these topics and no others. Scripture forms the natural starting point for any inquiry into the origins of Judaism. So it is quite natural to treat Scripture as the base-line and the Halakhic category-formations as the variable when seeking the origin of the system. But what happens when, as in this project, we treat the system as the base-line and Scripture as the variable? Then we see that the Halakhic system viewed as a coherent statement does not originate in Scripture. Important parts of that statement do, important parts do not. But the system viewed whole does not.
This work sets forth a theory of how Rabbinic Halakhic category-formations are articulated. One can now reconstruct the processes of thought that yield for the Halakhic category-formations, the hermeneutics that govern the selection of data for a given category-formation and determines how those data are to be interpreted. Not only so, but that theory encompasses three quite distinct sources for the definition and articulation of a given category-formation: Scripture, a hermeneutics generic to all Halakhic category-formations, and a hermeneutics particular to the category-formation at hand. Presented in the shank of this book are sample studies that show how the distinction between generic and particular hermeneutics for a Halakhic category-formation accounts for the character of the Halakhah as spelled out by the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Bavli, which is to say, the Halakhah in its initial and normative statement.
In theory and in practice, the Aggadah and the Halakhah work out the logic of a single generative conviction. It is that one - and only one - God is engaged in creating the world and sustaining a perfect world-order based on justice, and Israel shares in the task. But how, in fact, do the Halakhah and the Aggadah join together to make such a coherent statement and what distinctive tasks do each undertake? To find the answer, this study asks, what theological statement does the Aggadah make upon an urgent systemic question of Rabbinic Judaism, and what corresponding theological statement does the Halakhah frame in addressing that same urgent issue? After offering a general theoretical statement of how the two categories of writing define themselves, the book sets forth three exercises of comparison and contrast. The upshot is this: Rabbinic Judaism defines the practical norms in belief and behavior of the community that undertakes responsibility in that labor. For doctrine, the Aggadah explores the dialectic of that generative conviction and the logic inherent in it. For deed, the Halakhah focuses upon the consequent relationships, within the contemplated social order, generated by that same dialect.
After publishing a number of books in the history, literature, social thought, history of religion, and theology of formative Judaism, in the first six centuries C.E., Neusner explains the principal stages in the unfolding of his oeuvre. He introduces the documentary reading of the canonical components, one by one. He proceeds to the description, analysis, and interpretation of religious systems that comprise Rabbinic Judaism. He then sets forth the documentary history of the formation of Rabbinic Judaism in antiquity, its transformation from a philosophical to a religious system for Israel?s social order. From that diachronic perspective turns to the generative logic that transcends the diachronic narrative and imposes synchrony upon the whole. That marks a shift to a synchronic perspective, now spelling out the theological outcome of the entire venture: how the whole holds together in a coherent and logical way.
The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.
Religious Texts and Material Contexts
by James F. Strange and Jacob Neusner
Published 17 September 2001
No problem so vexes learning as how to balance the claims of the written record of humanity against the actualities of man's material detritus. Religious Texts and Material Contexts brings together scholars of the written record and those of the material realm beyond, especially those working in the academic study of religion. This book examines the relationship between archaeology and text-scholarship through religion featuring cases of archaeology supported and not supported by written evidence.
This anthology treats the following topics, providing access to the important Talmudic statements on them: Mythic Monotheism: Creation, the Nature of Man, the Fall; Torah; Israel and the Nations; 'You Shall Be Holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy;' Sin and Atonement; and Resurrection and Eternal Life. Each topic is broken up into its principal components and expounded and illustrated by primary sources in English translation.
While in contemporary culture we tend to resort to a single, if broadly defined, range of discourse for the results of systematic thought about public matters of the social order, this is not the case in Rabbinic Judaism. Judaism's authoritative documents set forth the entire structure of belief and system of behavior in two distinct modes of discourse, Halakhic and Aggadic, or broadly construed, statements of law and lore. Theology in Action shows how the Talmud of Babylonia (a.k.a., the Bavli) account of normative action sets forth in a dual discourse the single, coherent theology of Rabbinic Judaism.