Download or read book Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism Principal theological categories written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book How Not to Study Judaism Parables rabbinic narratives rabbis biographies rabbis disputes written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2004 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism Making connections and building constructions written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Narrative and Document in the Rabbinic Canon written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author states in his preface: For a thousand years, from its earliest documents of the second century to the High Middle Ages, Rabbinic Judaism preferred to compose and collect anecdotes, not to construct of them sustained and connected biographies. This is a study of the inclusion of biographical narratives about sages in some of the components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the formative age, the documents of the first six centuries C.E., exclusive of the two Talmuds. A sage here is defined as a man who embodies the Rabbinic system. A sage-story, then, is an anecdote about the life and deeds of a Rabbinic sage. A biographical narrative in general is the record of things done on a concrete and specific past-tense occasion by named individuals. The stories are not told as part of a sustained biographical account of those individuals' lives, birth to death. I am able in this way to correlate the unfolding of the authorized biography in the counterpart-Christian one. The documentary hypothesis yields the correlation between the advent of the Christian authorized biography and the advent of the sage-story in the later documents of the Rabbinic canon.
Download or read book Is Scripture the Origin of the Halakhah written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Studies in the Judicial Methodology of Rabbi David Ibn Abi Zimra written by Samuel Morell and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2004 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work investigates Rabbi David ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz), a leading 16th century rabbinic authority who assumed the role of rendering 'just' decisions, which were occasionally at the expense of conventional law. The author explores Radbaz's decision-making in terms of his insight into the broader purposes of codified law, sensitivity, and overall rationality.
Download or read book The Components of the Rabbinic Documents Mekhilta attributed to Rabbi Ishmael 3 pt written by Jacob Neusner and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Vitality of Rabbinic Imagination written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Documentary History of Judaism and Its Recent Interpreters written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The result for the history of Judaism of a documentary reading of the Rabbinic canonical sources illustrates the working of that hypothesis. It is the first major outcome of that hypothesis, but there are other implications, and a variety of new problems emerge from time to time as the work proceeds. In the recent past, Neusner has continued to explore special problems of the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon. At the same time, Neusner notes, others join in the discussion that have produced important and ambitious analyses of the thesis and its implications. Here, Neuser has collected some of the more ambitious ventures into the hypothesis and its current recapitulations. Neusner begins with the article written by Professor William Scott Green for the Encyclopaedia Judaica second edition, as Green places the documentary hypothesis into the context of Neusner's entire oeuvre. Neuser then reproduces what he regards as the single most successful venture of the documentary hypothesis, contrasting between the Mishnah's and the Talmuds' programs for the social order of Israel, the doctrines of economics, politics, and philosophy set forth in those documents, respectively. Then come the two foci of discourse: Halakhah or normative law and Aggadah or normative theology. Professors Bernard Jackson of the University of Manchester, England and Mayer Gruber of Ben Gurion University of the Negev treat the Halakhic program that Neusner has devised, and Kevin Edgecomb of the University of California, Berkeley, has produced a remarkable summary of the theological system Neusner discerns in the Aggadic documents. Neusner concludes with a review of a book by a critic of the documentary hypothesis.
Download or read book The Rabbis and the Prophets written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2010-12-22 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book First Steps in the Talmud written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Judaism in Monologue and Dialogue written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Talmud written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2005 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Talmud is important because it sets forth the law and theology of Judaism in its authoritative statement, continuing for centuries to attract commentators and forming the curriculum for the culture of Judaism. In these pages, important and representative compositions afford an encounter with this classic, ancient document in its own terms and framework, but in English translation. Examples include the following: Law: "An Eye for an Eye" Bavli Baba Qamma 8:1/83b-84b; "In the case of anything of which I am liable to take care, I am deemed to render possible whatever damage it may do" Bavli Baba Qamma 1:2/9b-11a; "He who steals food and feeds what he stole to his children, or left it to them Theology: "All Israel has a portion in the world to come" Bavli Sanhedrin 11:1-2/90a-92a; "When will the Messiah come?" Bavli Sanhedrin 11:1-2/96b-99a; "By that same measure by which a man metes out to others, with that measure do they mete out to him" Bavli Sotah 1:7-9/9b-14a Narratives: "The law concerning the usurping occupant: " Adapting to historical events, the destruction of the second Temple in particular Bavli Gittin 5:6/55B-57b; "My master in wisdom, and my disciple in accepting my rulings: " Resolving Conflict in the Law Bavli Rosh Hashanah 2:8-9/25A-25B
Download or read book How the Halakhah Unfolds written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2006 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In separate multi-volumed works, form-analytical English translations of the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli have been set forth. Outlines of the Yerushalmi and the Bavli have been brought about, and those outlines of the two Talmuds have been compared. In addition, for each subject the main points of the Halakhah of the topical expositions or tractates of the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Bavli have been set forth. The theological message of the respective tractates has been spelled out. Here, we follow a single tractate through the principal documents of formative Judaism as these have already presented them. How the academic commentaries, outlines and comparisons, and theological summaries yield a systematic account of the Halakhah in its documentary unfolding is thus fully exposed. Book jacket.
Download or read book Simon Peter s Denial and Jesus Commissioning Him as His Successor in John 21 15 19 written by Roger David Aus and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study uses early Jewish sources to analyze the significance of Day of Atonement and High Priest imagery in the narrative of Simon Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus. It then describes the influence of other early Jewish sources on Jesus’ commissioning his main disciple Simon Peter as his own successor in John 21:15-19. Aus relates this event to Moses’ commissioning his main disciple Joshua as his successor.
Download or read book Rabbi Moses written by Jacob Neusner and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exercise in the systematic recourse to anachronism as a theological-exegetical mode of apologetics. Specifically, Neusner demonstrates the capacity of the Rabbinic sages to read ideas attested in their own day as authoritative testaments to — to them — ancient times. Thus, Scripture was read as integral testimony to the contemporary scene. About a millennium — 750 B.C. E. to 350 C. E. — separates Scripture’s prophets from the later sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud. It is quite natural to recognize evidence for differences over a long period of time. Yet Judaism sees itself as a continuum and overcomes difference. The latecomers portray the ancients like themselves. “In our image, after our likeness” captures the current aspiration. The sages accommodated the later documents in their canon by finding the traits of their own time in the record of the remote past. They met the challenges to perfection that the sages brought about. Of what does the process of harmonization consist? To answer that question the author surveys the presentation of the prophets by the rabbis, beginning with Moses. To overcome the gap, Rabbinic sages turn Moses into a sage like themselves. The prophet performs wonders. The sage sets forth reasonable rulings. The conclusion expands on this account of matters to show the categorical solution that the sages adopted for themselves, and that is the happy outcome of the study.
