Hardcover, no dust jacket. Ex-library, stained cover.

Neusner, Jacob

Viewed as ideal types, the Halakhah defines the norm, setting forth what is obligatory, the Aggadah, specifies what exceeds the norm and goes beyond the measure of the law. The striking differences of style and substance that differentiate the two categories of discourse present the question of how they intersect in a single coherent statement, a system that holds together its two distinct media of thought and expression. When we have in hand systematic data on how Aggadah contributes to the Halakhah, and where Halakhah serves the purposes of the Aggadah, we find possible the logical next step: where do the two intersect, and at what points do the respective complexes of category-formations stand autonomous of one another, and that leads to the question: how do Aggadah and Halakhah constitute a coherent religious structure and make in common a single systemic statement? Where, within the formative literature of Normative Judaism, they join together, what affect the one exercises upon the other, and how the whole - Rabbinic Judaism - exceeds and transcends the sum of the parts - the Halakhah, the Aggadah - is spelled out.

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 précis, for colleagues in kindred fields, of fully worked out monographs.

Law Behind the Laws: The Bavli's Essencial Discourse

Book by Neusner, Jacob

Book by Neusner, Jacob

Neusner compares the literary and programmatic traits in the two texts, both structurally and in terms of rhetoric. The texts are sixth-century commentaries on the Mishnah tractate Avot .

Text: English (translation) Original Language: Hebrew

Teil 5

How does the inner logic of the Aggadah, its narrative and theology (whether systematic or merely episodic) match the deepest rationality of the Halakhah, its norms and foci and points of tension and remission of tension? The answer emerges from the comparison and contrast of the large, organizing aggregates of the Halakhah and of the Aggadah. The Halakhic and the Aggadic category formations are explained fully. In the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Bavli we have the best of all possible Halakhic category-formations for the purpose of defining the structure of Israel's inner life, the social order of the kingdom of priests and the holy people that God had in mind in bringing Israel into being. In the Rabbah-midrash compilations and their companions, we have the best of all possible Aggadic category formations for the purpose of narrating the working of the system of Israel's public life, the story of that kingdom of priests and holy people in history. These are presented in two distinct exercises, deductive and inductive. The dual discourse tells a continuous story.