Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism

Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This collection of five essays and two book reviews draws on a half-year of work, from mid-2008 to early 2009, written on topics of historical theology and the canon of Rabbinic Judaism.

Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism

Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of five essays and two book reviews draws on a half-year of work, from mid-2008 to early 2009, written on topics of historical theology and the canon of Rabbinic Judaism.

The Documentary History of Judaism and Its Recent Interpreters

The Documentary History of Judaism and Its Recent Interpreters PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761849785
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
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.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age PDF Author: William David Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521219297
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 766

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Book Description
Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

The Emergence of Judaism

The Emergence of Judaism PDF Author: Christine Elizabeth Hayes
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 0800697499
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This brief survey text tells the story of Judaism. Through the lens of modern biblical scholarship, Christine Elizabeth Hayes explores the shifting cultural contexts-the Babylonian exile, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine period, the rise of Christianity-that affected Jewish thought and practice, and laid the groundwork for the Talmudic era and its modern legacy. Thematic chapters explore the evolution of Judaism through its beginnings in biblical monotheism, the Second Temple Period in Palestine, the interaction of Hellenism and Judaism, the spread of rabbinic authority, and the essence of ethno-religious Jewish identity.

Judaism Defined

Judaism Defined PDF Author: Benjamin Edidin Scolnic
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761851178
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Scholars have questioned every aspect of the story of Mattathias in 1 Maccabees; the revisionist narrative turns Mattathias and his Maccabees from the heroes of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and idealistic fighters for religious freedom, into merely ambitious men who ruthlessly strove for power and usurped the high priesthood of Judaea. Dr. Benjamin Edidin Scolnic takes a fresh, unbiased approach to every element of the story: the incident at Mode n, Mattathias's priestly credentials and their implications for his beliefs, the meaning of personal ambition and the greater ambition to create the Jewish kingdom promised by the sacred biblical texts, the meaning of circumcision in his time, and the decision to fight on the Sabbath. Mattathias's actions of zealous violence, as controversial as they were in both his day and as they often are seen today, were primarily for the preservation of his religion and people. Dr. Scolnic asserts that it was Mattathias who defined Judaism and Jewishness for his time.

The Transformation of Judaism

The Transformation of Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761854401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Jacob Neusner describes, analyzes, and interprets the transformation of one system of the Israelite social order by a connected but autonomous successor-system. He characterizes the successive systems classifying the one as philosophical and the other as religious. He explains the categorical account of each and sets forth the outcome of a number of topical studies on the category-formations of Rabbinic Judaism with special attention to the social order: politics, philosophy, and economics. These systems emerged as [1] autonomous when viewed synchronically, [2] connected when seen diachronically, and [3] as a continuous construction when seen at the end of their formative age. In their successive stages of categorical autonomy, connection, and finally continuity, the three distinct systems may be classified, respectively, as philosophical, religious, and theological, each one taking over and revising the definitive categories of the former and framing its own fresh, generative categories as well. The formative history of Judaism is the story of the presentations and re-presentations of categorical structures. In method, it is the exegesis of taxonomy and taxic systems. Now, after more than two decades, Neusner has decided to review the initial statement. Since the book summarizes ten years of work, from 1980 to 1990, on the Rabbinic category formations of social science politics, philosophy, and economics in the setting of the law and theology of Rabbinic Judaism from the Mishnah through the Bavli, 200-600 C.E., it seemed well worth the effort to recapitulate the original work. The revised introduction explains the omission of theology in his category-formation philosophy-religion-theology; Neusner's account of the Bavli produced the decade after this title was completed did not make possible the continuous description of the unfolding of the Rabbinic system. The pattern that appealed to Neusner from philosophy to religion to theology has not yet come to a satisfactory account. In the twenty years of work on the third layer of the canon up to the Bavli, a series of monographs clarified the theological system that sustained Rabbinic Judaism.

Narrative and Document in the Rabbinic Canon

Narrative and Document in the Rabbinic Canon PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761852123
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
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.

From the Shtetl to the Lecture Hall

From the Shtetl to the Lecture Hall PDF Author: Luise Hirsch
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761859934
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Until the 19th century, women were regularly excluded from graduate education. When this convention changed, it was largely thanks to Jewish women from Russia. Raised to be strong and independent, the daughters of Jewish businesswomen were able to utilize this cultural capital to fight their way into the universities of Switzerland and Germany. They became trailblazers, ensuring regular admission for women who followed their example. This book tells the story of Russian and German Jews who became the first female professionals in modern history. It describes their childhoods—whether in Berlin or in a Russian shtetl—their schooling, and their experiences at German universities. A final chapter traces their careers as the first female professionals and details how they were tragically destroyed by the Nazis.

Rabbi Moses

Rabbi Moses PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761860924
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
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.

The Rabbis and the Prophets

The Rabbis and the Prophets PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761854371
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book shows how 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.