Studies in Judaism
7 primary works • 77 total works
Noted scholar Jacob Neusner records skirmishes in an ongoing battle within the field of Judaic Studies between ethnic and academic scholars. On the one side, Neusner argues, ethnic scholars assume the interest in and importance of the Jewish and Judaic data and regard incremental erudition, whether or not formed for a purpose, as self-evidently interesting. On the other side, academic scholars address issues of humanistic learning and treat the Jewish or Judaic data as exemplary of broader issues in the humanities and social sciences. Taken together, the skirmishes constitute a widening gap between these two academies on the essential question of how to conduct scholarship about the Jews and Judaism. By bringing together book reviews and essays of debate, Professor Neusner addresses the works of colleagues and critics and presents as a whole a corpus of criticism. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
The main foci of this collection are the history of Judaism, with stress on its social doctrines and cultural traits, and the comparison of Judaism to its near-companion in time and intellect, Christianity. PART ONE: A summary of the three volumes of Social Teaching of Rabbinic Judaism. PART TWO: The history of religion depends for perspective and insight upon the comparative study of religions that sustain such comparison. Christianity, sharing Scriptures with Judaism, presents an obvious opportunity. PART THREE: An evaluation of the Talmud of Babylonia. PART FOUR: five book review-essays on recent, intellectually ambitious exercises in the study of ancient Judaism.
In this Neusner book, he seeks to discern the Talmud's forests from its trees. By "trees" is meant episodic and free-standing statements, facts out of any larger context. By "forests" is meant whole paragraphs and still larger constructions of thought made out of sentences that in context and in sequence cohere. Accordingly, the issue here is how the Talmud transforms isolated facts into cogent and coherent constructions: the forests formed by the Talmud's trees. What is at stake is simply stated: What ignores the program of the Bavli in its composition and in the formation of its composites belongs in other, different documents from the Bavli and we can reconstruct through an act of imagination in response to the characteristics of the secondary composites of the Bavli the traits of those other, different documents.
A theological system and structure form foundations of, and are realized in detail by, the Rabbinic Midrash. That system, comprised by active category formations, turns facts into knowledge and knowledge into propositions of a theological character. The structure embodies the paradigm that solves new problems. So, the Rabbinic Midrash exegesis pertaining to theological matters proves coherent. Rabbinic Midrash follows a cogent theological program and sets forth an orderly theological construction. This work defines the principal parts of the theological system that animated the Rabbinic sages encounter with Scripture as embodied in the Rabbinic Midrash; and shows how these parts form a theological system.
Jacob Neusner, a leading scholar of Judaism, offers a provocative statement on methodology in this history of religion. Neusner offers initial generalizations, or 'first principles,' seen as the histories of four periods of Judaism. Co-published with Studies in Judaism. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
Persia and Rome in Classical Judaism examines the representation of Rome and Persia (Iran) in the successive groups of documents that comprise the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity. Neusner considers how diverse documents of Rabbinic Judaism represent Rome and Iran and presents the way in which documentary differentiation affords perspective on the history of Judaism. Axial events of the age-the destruction of the second Temple in 70 and the defeat of the effort to restore it in 135, the transformation of the Roman Empire into a Christian state in the fourth century, the failure to rebuild the Temple when the opportunity arose in the reign of Emperor Julian, and the delegitimation of Israelite institutions in Byzantine Rome-allow us to examine in historical and political context the evidence of the formation of normative Judaism.
This sourcebook collects and classifies how Israelite Scripture was received and recast in the language community that produced the dual Torah of Judaism. It is well known that verses of prophecy figure as proof-texts in Rabbinic exegesis of scriptural narratives, but to what end, and with what larger concept in mind? With extensive translation and documentation, author Jacob Neusner uses the case of Jeremiah in the Rabbinic canon of the formative age to examine the Rabbinic document's response to the prophetic ones in terms of how they select, explain, and utilize the language of Scripture. The book also explores how one particular kind of ancient Israelite Scripture, the prophetic books, found a place in the new language community formed by the Rabbinic sages and documented in their canon from the Mishnah (ca. 200 C.E.), through the Talmud of Babylonia, a.k.a. the Bavli (ca. 600 C. E.).
Judaism's two native categories, narrative theology and law (also known as parable and praxis or Aggadah and Halakhah) form two distinct modes of discourse. The one expounds norms of attitude and belief, the other, norms of action and behavior. Each possesses its own modes of thought, topical program, and medium for expression. Joined together, they create a remarkably coherent statement. Any understanding of Rabbinic Judaism depends on a theory of how these two modes of thought and expression relate to form a single cogent system. In Praxis and Parable, author Jacob Neusner explores how that single topic "the morality and law of the animal kingdom" in the Rabbinic canon of the formative age, like all other ubiquitous topics encompassed in that canon, produces two distinct vocabularies of analysis. These distinct realms of thought and speech on the same subject yield two separate classifications of the order of nature and society. How these two mediums of expressions intersect and diverge in a single case permits the general characterization of the two Judaic modes of discourse. The general characterization of the interplay of Halakhah and Aggadah defines the interior dynamics of Rabbinic Judaism and forms the principal task of systemic analysis of that Judaism. In the Rabbinic manner, this book works from the case to the rule.
The main foci of this collection are theories of Rabbinic category-formation, on the one side, and literary-analytical problems, on the other. PART ONE: How a system such as animates the Rabbinic canon selects and organizes its data forms the key to understanding the cogency of the whole: what data register, what do not? PART TWO: The problems of literature now center on those compositions and even compositions of a given document that ignore the documentary protocol of the compilation in which they occur. PART THREE: The four ways in which an author of a composition for Rabbinic compilation could link sentence to sentence, thought to thought, to form a coherent statement thus the 'logics of coherent discourse.'
The Native Category-Formations of the Aggadah, Volume II, is an attempt to identify the category-formations that comprise the Aggadic, or theological-exegetical-narrative. Through an inquiry of the theological and exegetical components of the Aggadah, Neusner analyses how the authoritative documents of Rabbinic Judaism form a continuous statement.
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 prophets of Michael and Joel.
Over the past three decades, "Torah study," previously conducted exclusively by Judaic religious people as an act of worship of God, found itself in a new placeothe secular university. One result has been a lively debate over Torah study and the academic method. In this volume, Neusner explores the evolution of Torah study and the battles that have erupted between leaders of the new and older paradigms. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism, Eighth Series
by Jacob Neusner
Published 1 January 2010
This collection of essays draws on work done in 2011-2012. 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 book recapitulates chapters in two comprehensive accounts of the theology of Rabbinic Judaism, which deal with the two principal components of the native categories of the Rabbinic canon-Aggadah, lore, and Halakhah law. Jacob Neusner abbreviates some chapters in the two systematic accounts, The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (1999) and The Theology of the Halakhah (2001). In this book, Neusner supplies a precis of the principal theological topics that have occupied him for the past two decades. In this way, he gains an audience of colleagues with an interest in the theology of Rabbinic Judaism who are unlikely to read the long books with their elaborate repertoire of sources that set forth Neusner's principal results.
The systematic Theology of the Halakhah and its equally systematic companion for the Aggadah, The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God, tell a single, continuous story. Seen together, the two large and distinct realms of discourse portray one Judaism: an integrated world-view (Aggadah), way of life (Halakhah), and account of the social entity, Israel. All together, these represent Neusner's answer to the critical question of defining Rabbinic Judaism: how do the diverse, autonomous documents of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age coalesce, like the Mishnah, which transcends documentary limits and joins the Halakhah to the Aggadah in a single coherent formulation, and of what does that statement consist? In The Rabbinic System, he conveys, as a single continuous narrative, the tale that the Halakhah and the Aggadah as theological constructions jointly tell.
The systematic Theology of the Halakhah and its equally systematic companion for the Aggadah, The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God, tell a single, continuous story. Seen together, the two large and distinct realms of discourse portray one Judaism: an integrated world-view (Aggadah), way of life (Halakhah), and account of the social entity, Israel. All together, these represent Neusner's answer to the critical question of defining Rabbinic Judaism: how do the diverse, autonomous documents of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age coalesce, like the Mishnah, which transcends documentary limits and joins the Halakhah to the Aggadah in a single coherent formulation, and of what does that statement consist? In The Rabbinic System, he conveys, as a single continuous narrative, the tale that the Halakhah and the Aggadah as theological constructions jointly tell.
Provides a survey of stories of rabbinic literature from late antiquity and early medieval times that relates to the political condition of the Babylonian and Mesopotamian Jews. The author juxtaposes these stories, which record rabbinical opinion concerning the politics of each era, against the actual events. This volume represents an abbreviated treatment by the author of the topics originally covered in his History of the Jews in Babylonia, published by E.J. Brill. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.
How Important Was the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism?
by Jacob Neusner
Published 10 January 2006
The destruction of the First Temple (586 B.C.E.), destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.), and the defeat of the Bar Kokhba (132-135 C.E.) are discussed in great detail in the covenantal theology of the Torah and Scripture. In this new work, Jacob Neusner uses extensive textual evidence to explore the importance of the second temple's destruction and the aforementioned events in the creation of Rabbinic Judaism. Neusner ultimately proposes that the destruction of the second temple merely reinforced the existing theological system, which posed the following choice: keep the Torah and prosper, or rebel against the Torah and suffer God's wrath. This detailed analysis is an important new exploration into the foundations of Rabbinic Judaism.
Assessed against comparable documents of Scripture and the Qumran library, the Mishnah shows itself as a triumph of imagination. It exhibits remarkable capacity to think in new and astonishing ways about familiar things. This study compares the Mishnah to four biblical codes and two codes found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The comparison provides perspective upon the uniqueness of the Mishnah in its Israelite context of Scripture and tradition. Linked to Scripture and in dialogue with Scripture, the Mishnah struck out in new paths altogether from those set forth by Scripture's codes and those that imitated them. The capacity to think in fresh ways about the Scripture's own imperatives and their implications attests to the validity of Rabbinic imagination that reaches concrete expression in the Mishnah, a triumph of reconstruction and creative recapitulation.