The latest in Jacob Neusner's informative series on the theology and hermeneutics of Rabbinical Judaism, The Emergence of Judaism offers insight into the development of Judaism in antiquity. Based on the author's lectures, this volume focuses on the social setting of Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud, and the Bavli.

The Talmud - the Mishnah, a philosophical law code, and the Gemara, a dialectical commentary upon the Mishnah - works by translating principal modes of Western philosophy and science into the analysis of the rules of rationality governing the rules of humble, everyday reality. Science, in particular the method of hierarchical classification characteristic of natural history, supplies the method of making connections and drawing conclusions to the Mishnah, the law-code that forms the foundation-document of the Talmud, as Neusner demonstrated in his "Judaism as Philosophy. The Method and Message of the Mishnah," Here he proceeds to show how philosophy, specifically dialectical analysis, defines the logic of the Gemara and guides the writers of the Gemara's compositions and the compilers of its composites in their analysis and amplification of some of the topical presentations, or tractates, of the Mishnah.

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.

About the Author Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Product description

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