History provides one way of marking time. But there are others, and the Judaism of the dual Torah, set forth in the Rabbinic literature from the Mishnah through the Talmud of Babylonia, ca. 200-600 C.E., defines one such alternative. This book tells the story of how a historical way of thinking about past, present, and future, time and eternity, the here and now in relationship to the ages, « that is, Scripture's way of thinking » gave way to another mode of thought altogether. This other model Neusner calls a paradigm, because a pattern imposed meaning and order on things that happened. Paradigmatic modes of thought took the place of historical ones. Thinking through paradigms, with a conception of time that elides past and present and removes all barriers between them, in fact governs the reception of Scripture in Judaism until nearly our own time. Neusner here explains through the single case of Rabbinic Judaism, precisely how that other way of reading Scripture did its work, and why, for so many centuries, that reading of the heritage of ancient Israel governed. At stake are [1] a conception of time different from the historical one and [2] premises on how to take the measure of time that form a legitimate alternative to those that define the foundations of the historical way of measuring time. Fully exposed, those alternative premises may prove as logical and compelling as the historical ones. The approach follows the documentary history of ideas, and individual chapters describe the treatment of historical topics in the Mishnah, the Talmud of the Land of Israel (a.k.a., the Yerushalmi), Genesis Rabbah, that is, ca. 200, 400, and 450 CE, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, ca. 500 CE.

Book by Neusner, Jacob

Subtitled Essays on the formation of Judaism, dating sayings, method in the history of Judaism, the historical Jesus, publishing too much, and other current issues. Among the topics of the 18 essays are a phenomenological theory of the historical formation of normative Judaism, the conception of the Original Tradition, and the Mishnah in philosop

The changed situation of Western Jewry in the 19th-20th centuries caused Jews to revise their conceptions of Jewry as a community and of its place in the world. Six Judaic systems emerged. Discusses each one in detail. While the 19th-century trends (Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative) developed in response to the needs of integration with the non-Jewish world, the 20th-century Judaisms (Zionism, Jewish Socialism and Yiddishism, and the American Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption) were a response to aggressive antisemitism and to the crisis caused by the rapid social and economic restructuring of Central and Eastern Europe. The events of May-June 1967 in the Middle East brought about a new trend - Holocaust and Redemption Judaism, in the center of which are the Holocaust (mythicized and perceived as a metaphor for absolute evil) and the State of Israel (perceived as the redemption for the Holocaust). This Judaism contains a salvific myth and possesses all the traits of a religious system. The exposition is accompanied by excerpts from books and articles.

This groundbreaking work continues Jacob Neusner's multi-volume examination of the main texts of Judaism in its formative years. The first two parts of the project-'Judaism: The Evidence of the Yerushalmi'-examined the Mishnah and the Talmud of the Land of Israel and placed them in the social, intellectual, and religious contexts of their time. In 'Judaism and Scripture' Neusner moves from the study of ancient Judaism in society at large to an analysis of Rabbinic Judaism in relation to Scripture itself. Neusner accomplishes this both through close analysis and through the first English translation of the critical text of the Leviticus Rabbah. Tracing the relationship between the actual Book of Leviticus and its rabbinic commentary, Neusner asks how the rabbis who stand behind the text make use of Leviticus and how, through their comments on it, they make intelligible and comprehensible statements of their own. In answering these two questions Neusner shows, through a prime example, exactly how Scripture enters Judaism and how rabbis of the formative age of Judaism chose and taught the lessons they deemed critical to the life of Israel, the Jewish people.

"Abridgement and condensation of A life of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, ca. 1-80 C.E. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962)." Includes bibliographical references.

A paradigmatic conception of marking time differs so radically from our own that reading Scripture in the way in which, for nearly the whole of its reception, it has been read proves exceedingly difficult. Our conception of history forms a barrier between us and the understanding of time that defined the Judaic and the Christian encounter with ancient Israel. Judaism recast this corpus of historical thinking, substituting paradigm or pattern for narrative sequence, by redefining the received notion of time altogether. This transformation of ancient Israel's Scripture from history to paradigm defines the conception of history of Rabbinic Judaism calling into question the notion that Judaism possessed a conception of history at all.

Product Description The current crisis in Palestine is only the most recent manifestation of Israel's historical significance to the Jewish people. Jacob Neusner examines the crucial role of the definition of Israel in the history of Judaic thought. He argues that Judaic sages have constructed various metaphoric images of Israel--as family, as chosen people, as a nation--in order to express changing theological concerns as the religion evolved. The history of the definition of Israel is revealed as the reflection of the history of Judaism itself. This is a bold and original interpretation of the way in which Jews, as well as other peoples, define themselves. Book Description Jacob Neusner examines the crucial role of the definition of Israel in the history of Judaic thought.

This book is the first volume in Jacob Neusner's ground-breaking trilogy, "The Foundations of Judaism: Method, Teleology, Doctrine." This Part One - "Method" - offers the first systematic explanation of why the midrash collections - that is, books of rabbinical exegeses of Scripture - were written. Neusner investigates the circumstances in which the earliest midrash collections were organized around the Pentateuch, and explains both the purpose of the work and its historical context.

While the rabbinic literature is often seen as a collection of miscellaneous responses to questions arising from study of the Hebrew Bible and its application to contemporary life, Neusner sees a system behind and embodied in the various writings. He discusses the ways in which the divine thought, and the human thinking that sought faithfully to interpret it, actually came to expression and treats what he calls the grammar of the divine self-expression in order to help us see the theological structure that it implies. Then he shows how this implicit system is expressed in the rules for the life of the people that God has chosen as his own. --from publisher description.

Aphrahat (fl. ca. 300-350) was a member of a small community of Christians within a large and flourishing Jewish region. His work Demonstrations provide the earliest and one of the best accounts of the Judaism being practiced there with little rabbinical influence. Neusner translates those parts of the work that provide such information.

Book by Neusner, Jacob

Laws, or Halakhah, and narratives, or Aggadah, comprise the Torah. Halakhah, normative law, makes the same statement in terms of behavior that Aggadah, in its systematic and abstract mode, makes in terms of beliefs. The Halakhic theology focuses on the interior existence of Israelite. In this sourcebook, author Jacob Neusner derives from details of legal expositions some of the Halakhah's theological propositions, in order to show how normative laws of conduct express the narrative monotheism of the Torah. An introductory overview of the Halakhic theological program, seen through topical expositions of law, briefly compares Halakhic texts with Aggadic theological programs.