"Classical rabbinic law grew up in the shadow of the Roman empire, and must be understood in relationship to its legal legacy. Yet few, especially in the anglophone world, have mastered both corpuses the remarkable Boaz Cohen was one; an undisputed pioneer, he built bridges between the legal cultures of these great civilizations. The essays collected here are a treasure of insight and erudition for all students of rabbinics, provincial Roman history, and comparative law. For the classicist seeking to understand rabbinic writings or the scholar of Jewish law searching the Roman legal traditions, the barriers to access are high disciplinary, linguistic, and cultural. The studies that make up Jewish and Roman Law, here reissued, offer an accessible gateway to the complex labyrinth of legal sources for a new generation of classicists and rabbinicists, a rigorous if humbling training ground, and vital conceptual foundation from which to assess cultural contact, sympathy, and divergence. This two-volume set of essays by Boaz Cohen, late professor of law at the Jewish Theological Seminary and one of the leading talmudic scholars of his generation, was first published in 1966. The essays are accompanied here by a new introduction by Natalie B. Dohrmann of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania."

During the formative age of Judaism, the first seven centuries CE, the great rabbis thought deeply about beginnings in light of endings. They imposed upon their sequential reading of each passage the accumulated results of their reflection about all passages. Thus, they encompassed Scripture, so as to describe the world as God had intended it to be.This act of intellect resulted in two distinct, ahistorical media of thought and expression, the Halakhah, law, and Aggadah, lore. The author provides three systematic accounts of the Halakhic reading, and two Aggadic accounts. The Halakhic accounts cover [1] Work and Rest, [2] Ownership and Possession, Eden and the Land, and [3] Ownership and Possession in the Household. The Aggadic accounts pertain to [1] the Six Days of Creation, and [2] Adam and Eve.

Review This collection of papers from the Academy for Jewish Philosophy...is striking evidence to the fact that Jewish philosophy is alive and well....Read and enjoy!>>>> (Paul M. Van Buren Shofar) ...a welcome addition to the somewhat scanty corpus of contemporary Jewish philosophy.>>>> (Shofar) ...a welcome addition to the somewhat scanty corpus of contemporary Jewish philosophy. (Shofar) This collection of papers from the Academy for Jewish Philosophy...is striking evidence to the fact that Jewish philosophy is alive and well....Read and enjoy! (Paul M. Van Buren Shofar) Product Description This book brings together for the first time a collection of essays by some of the most distinguished contemporary Jewish philosophers on issues such as the nature of Jewish philosophy from the perspectives of general philosophy, classical Jewish philosophy and Jewish law, the role of reason and revelation as authority in Judaism, and the impact of contemporary philosophy of history and language on Judaism. The book is a living record of the revitalization of Jewish philosophy in the post-Holocaust world. Co-published with Studies in Judaism. About the Author Norbert M. Samuelson is Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University.