Bøger af Jacob Neusner

Here is an answer to the question, what do we learn about the Rabbinic system from its encounter with the Prophetic books? This book analyzes the way in which Rabbinic Judaism in its formative canon received and made its own an important segment of the Israelite Scripture, the Halakhic or legal heritage of Prophecy. The author characterizes the traits of Rabbinic Judaism that come to the surface in that Judaism's engagement with the Halakhic writings of ancient Israelite literary prophecy: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. It proposses to discern the system and establish the coherence of the episodic Rabbinic exegesis of verses of Prophecy.

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.

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.

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?'

Facing a corpus of facts, the heirs of the "Mishnah" adopted analytical templates that transcended details and transformed the "Mishnah's" collection of topical expositions into a system of law. This book defines and classifies four analytical initiatives of the "Bavli".

This book explores the theological premises of the documents upon which the Rabbinic canon was built and asks whether these premises cohere in a tight theological system? The Implicit Norms of Rabbinic Judaism examines these documents and their premise and reveals that orthodoxy and heresy constituted native categories of the Rabbinic system of thought inherent.

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.

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.

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.

This book shows how 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 study of the inclusion of biographical narratives examines sage-stories, anecdotes about the life and deeds of Rabbinic sages, in components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism during the formative age. These documents, from the first six centuries C.E., are exclusive of the two Talmuds.

The collection commences with historical theological essays: one on the apologetics of Judaism, the other on its soteriology. The second set of essays deals with the canon of Rabbinic Judaism. The final essay is an effort at constructive theology. Two brief reviews complete the collection of six months of work.

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.

First published in 1991. This is Volume XI, Part II of a set of twenty volumes of essays and articles on the religion, history and literature on the origins of Judaism. This text looks at to the canon, or holy literature, of Judaism. That literature covers what is called ¿the Oral Torah.¿ To understand the concept of the Oral Torah, we have to return to the generative myth of the Judaism that has predominated. For that Judaism appeals to a theory of revelation in two media of formulation and transmission, written and oral, in books and in memory. The written Torah is the Pentateuch and encompasses the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel (the ¿Old Testament¿). The Oral Torah is ultimately contained in and written down as the Mishnah, expanded and amplified by Tosefta, and the two Talmuds, on the one side, and the Midrash-compilations that serve to explain the written Torah, on the other.

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This is the second 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 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 is an exercise in the systematic recourse to anachronism as a theological-exegetical mode of apologetics. Jacob Neusner surveys the presentation of the prophets by the rabbis, beginning with Moses.

This analysis of how the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash made Jeremiah one of their own shows how Rabbinic Judaism rehearses the Prophetic message. Jeremiah offered hope to renew the relation that was broken, and Yohanan ben Zakkai promised another mode of atonement, involving individual conviction, and conduct. Joining the two yields, the thesis of this book is: in the case of Jeremiah Rabbinic Judaism continues and recapitulates Prophetic Judaism. Prophet and Rabbi confront the same kind of crisis with the same theological outcome. The Prophetic response to and the Rabbinic reading of the event of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem- the certainty of God's pardon and love- intersect.The problem of this study of Rabbi Jeremiah is to describe precisely how the Rabbis of the formative canon in the case of Jeremiah naturalized to their system- thus Rabbinized- Prophecy. In taking over the heritage of ancient Israelite Prophecy and law, have the Rabbis subverted Prophecy's religious vision or adapted and adopted it, making that vision their own? By identifying the principal propositions of the Prophet and by examining both the Rabbinic reading of the Prophet and the Rabbinic theology of those same propositions, Neusner answers that question.

Deriving from details of legal expositions some of the Halakhah's theological propositions, this book aims to show how normative laws of conduct express the narrative monotheism of the Torah. An introductory overview of the Halakhic theological program, through topical expositions of law, compares Halakhic texts with Aggadic theological programs.

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 book surveys the treatment of war and peace in the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity: to what does Judaism refer when it speaks of war and peace in the context of the Hebrew words "milhamah" (war) and "shalom" (peace)?

This collection of seven insightful essays draws on research completed in 2010. The book systematically analyzes and compares Judaism and includes commentaries on the current state of the academic study of Judaism.

This book recapitulates chapters in The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (1999) and The Theology of the Halakhah (2001) to convey, as a single continuous narrative, the tale that the Halakhah and the Aggadah as theological constructions jointly tell.

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.

Rabbinic documents about David, progenitor of the Messiah, relay the scriptural narrative of David the king. But, he is also transformed into a sage by Rabbinic writings of late antiquity: the Mishnah, the Yerushalmi, and the Bavli. Consequently, the Rabbis' Messiah becomes a rabbi. Neusner explores this transformation in depth.