Here is an answer to the question, what do we learn about the Rabbinic system from its encounter with the Prophetic books? This book analyzes the way in which Rabbinic Judaism in its formative canon received and made its own an important segment of the Israelite Scripture, the Halakhic or legal heritage of Prophecy. The author characterizes the traits of Rabbinic Judaism that come to the surface in that Judaism's engagement with the Halakhic writings of ancient Israelite literary prophecy: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. It proposses to discern the system and...

This book expounds upon the Utopian vision of Rabbinic Judaism in its classical documents. Rabbinic Judaism carries forward, and itself forms, a massive Utopian enterprise, a design of an ideal condition for humanity. It carries forward the two matched Utopian projects of the Pentateuch_Eden, the Land of Israel_and on its own forms a system for an ideal social and metaphysical order. That is because the law of that Judaism set forth a plan for the construction of an ideal society in a perfect age. Over time, the Israelite community undertook to realize that plan in concrete ways: to build...

The authors seek to identify the recurrent tensions, the blatant points of emphasis, the recurring indications of conflict and polemic. Framing the issue of the disposition of the Scriptural heritage in broad terms, they describe what characterizes the Gospels and the Mishnah, the letters of Paul and the Tosefta. In other words, if they take whole and complete the writings of first and second century people claiming to form the contemporary embodiment of Scripture's Israel and ask what they all stress as a single point of insistence, the answer is self-evident. Nearly every Christianity and...

Do members of different religious traditions experience pain in different ways? Are suffering and human evil equally large problems in these traditions? How are people to deal with or overcome suffering? This volume offers answers to these and similar questions.

Women and Families provides a valuable historical introduction to contemporary claims -- as well as confusions -- about the role and status of women and families in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

This collection probes what five great world religions mean by the term sacred text through such questions as: How are 'sacred texts' related to authoritative teachings? and What sorts of claims do these traditional authorities hold for current believers and seekers?

This is the second volume of a set of anthologies that sets forth the statements of the formative canon of influential Rabbinic Judaism on three large topics: the calendar, the life cycle, and theology. Focusing on the seminal period of normative Judaism, the editor Jacob Neusner presents in three parts the teachings of Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, the first six centuries of the Common Era.

The current crisis in Palestine is only the most recent manifestation of Israel's historical significance to the Jewish people. Jacob Neusner examines the crucial role of the definition of Israel in the history of Judaic thought. He argues that Judaic sages have constructed various metaphoric images of Israel--as family, as chosen people, as a nation--in order to express changing theological concerns as the religion evolved. The history of the definition of Israel is revealed as the reflection of the history of Judaism itself. This is a bold and original interpretation of the way in which...

This title shows what happens when two prolific religious scholars sit dow and, together, read sacred texts of their different religions?