Formative Judaism: History, Hermeneutics, Law, and Religion: Ten Recent Essays

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Global Academic Publishing, 2000 - 439 páginas
Formative Judaism, represented by the writing of the ancient Judaic sages from the first through the sixth centuries of the Common Era, defines the history of Judaism from late antiquity to our own times, because its principal documents govern the definition of the law and theology of Judaic religious systems before modern times and profoundly influence those that have taken shape since the eighteenth century. Those writings therefore form the one point to which all subsequent Judaisms refer back either as authoritative, for most Judaic systems, or as defining point for differentiation, for the schismatic (heretical) Judaic systems over that long period of time. The writings are the holy scriptures of ancient Israel together with the Mishniah, Tosefta, Talmud, and score of Midrash-compilations that authoritatively interpret those scriptures and that particular to Rabbinic Judaism

In a variety of scholarly projects, beginning in 1960 and continuing to the present, I have conducted studies of a historical, philosophical, theological, legal, and literary character of that Judaism. As these have accumulated, in many volumes, I have summarized the principal findings for colleagues in other fields in the study of Judaism, not to mention those in other fields besides the academic study of religion. From time to time I have collected the summaries—systematic essays that reprise a variety of monographs—and have published them. I mean in this way to engage in a process of haute vulgarisation for those whose interests intersect with mine but who focus on other subjects. Since in the nature of things colleagues cannot read the rather lengthy research reports that form the foundations for my systematic conclusions, these essays afford access to what I conceive to be the main points.

The present collection covers three general areas of learning: (1) history, (2) philosophy and hermeneutics, and (3) law and literature. At some few points, the essays overlap, e.g., chapters two and four, but in general they stand in isolation from one another.

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Contenido

HISTORY TIME AND PARADIGM IN SCRIPTURE AND IN JUDAISM
43
THEODICY IN JUDAISM
71
HOW JUDAISM READS THE BIBLE
113
THE MISHNAH IN THE CONTEXT OF NATURAL HISTORY
149
HOW THE TALMUD TEACHES ANALYTICAL
229
THE ANALOGICALCONTRASTIVE HERMENEUTICS OF THE HALAKHIC
255
THE CASE OF MISHNAH
311
THREE OF ADIN STEINSALTZS MISCONSTRUCTIONS OF THE TALMUD
363
Derechos de autor

Términos y frases comunes

Acerca del autor (2000)

Jacob Neusner was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 28, 1932. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard University in 1953. He studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he was ordained a Conservative rabbi and received a master's degree in Hebrew letters in 1960. He also received a doctorate in religion from Columbia University. He taught at Dartmouth College, Brown University, and the University of South Florida before joining the religion department at Bard College in 1994. He retired from there in 2014. He was a religious historian and one of the world's foremost scholars of Jewish rabbinical texts. He published more than 900 books during his lifetime including A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai; The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism; Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah; Strangers at Home: The 'Holocaust,' Zionism, and American Judaism; Translating the Classics of Judaism: In Theory and in Practice; Why There Never Was a 'Talmud of Caesarea': Saul Lieberman's Mistakes; and Judaism: An Introduction. He wrote The Bible and Us: A Priest and a Rabbi Read Scripture Together with Andrew M. Greeley and A Rabbi Talks with Jesus with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. He also edited and translated, with others, nearly the entirety of the Jewish rabbinical texts. He died on October 8, 2016 at the age of 84.

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