Judaism is an ancient religion, practiced through most of recorded history and having profound influence on both Christianity and Islam. It is a modern religion, too, still transforming the lives of many people. In this book, Jacob Neusner brings together these two aspects of the study of Judaism. He describes how Judaism is practiced in a particular time and place--America today--and surveys how Judaism took shape as people responded to political and religious crises. Neusner provides a wealth of primary texts in addition to his own analysis.
Judaism is an ancient religion, practiced through most of recorded history and having profound influence on both Christianity and Islam. It is a mo...
Assessed against comparable documents of Scripture and the Qumran library, the Mishnah shows itself as a triumph of imagination. It exhibits remarkable capacity to think in new and astonishing ways about familiar things. This study compares the Mishnah to four biblical codes and two codes found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The comparison provides perspective upon the uniqueness of the Mishnah in its Israelite context of Scripture and tradition. Linked to Scripture and in dialogue with Scripture, the Mishnah struck out in new paths altogether from those set forth by Scripture's codes and those...
Assessed against comparable documents of Scripture and the Qumran library, the Mishnah shows itself as a triumph of imagination. It exhibits remarkabl...
While in contemporary culture we tend to resort to a single, if broadly defined, range of discourse for the results of systematic thought about public matters of the social order, this is not the case in Rabbinic Judaism. Judaism's authoritative documents set forth the entire structure of belief and system of behavior in two distinct modes of discourse, Halakhic and Aggadic, or broadly construed, statements of law and lore. Theology in Action shows how the Talmud of Babylonia (a.k.a., the Bavli) account of normative action sets forth in a dual discourse the single, coherent theology of...
While in contemporary culture we tend to resort to a single, if broadly defined, range of discourse for the results of systematic thought about public...
This collection of essays draws on work done in 2011¬-2012. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, and its theology. The reason for periodically collecting and publishing essays and reviews is to give them a second life, after they have served as lectures or as summaries of monographs or as free-standing articles or as expositions of Judaism in collections of comparative religions. This re-presentation serves a readership to whom the initial presentation in lectures or specialized journals or short-run monographs is inaccessible. Some of the...
This collection of essays draws on work done in 2011¬-2012. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, a...
The basis of this collection of essays is the reading of a common topic from different perspectives. The contributors compare and contrast not only positions, but also methods of learning. They examine theories of just war in diverse cultural contexts and their disciplinary settings.
The basis of this collection of essays is the reading of a common topic from different perspectives. The contributors compare and contrast not only po...
"The Mishnah is the crown jewel of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age," so says the distinguished author of this book. Initiated in the aftermath of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and developed and amplified over the next five centuries, the Mishnah is the product of an age of calamity giving birth to a renewed search for recovery. As such, it speaks to every age, but to none more particularly and clearly than to our own which has witnessed the destruction wrought by the Shoah and the return to the land of Israel.
Nevertheless, the Mishnah does not explicitly address the...
"The Mishnah is the crown jewel of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age," so says the distinguished author of this book. Initiated in the aftermat...
The Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. This ethical dictum is a part of most of the world's religions and has been considered by numerous religious figures and philosophers over the centuries. This new collection contains specially commissioned essays which take a fresh look at this guiding principle from a comparative perspective. Participants examine the formulation and significance of the Golden Rule in the world's major religions by applying four questions to the tradition they consider: What does it say? What does it mean? How does it work? How does it...
The Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. This ethical dictum is a part of most of the world's religions and has been c...
The Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. This ethical dictum is a part of most of the world's religions and has been considered by numerous religious figures and philosophers over the centuries. This new collection contains specially commissioned essays which take a fresh look at this guiding principle from a comparative perspective. Participants examine the formulation and significance of the Golden Rule in the world's major religions by applying four questions to the tradition they consider: What does it say? What does it mean? How does it work? How does it matter?...
The Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. This ethical dictum is a part of most of the world's religions and has been consider...
The authors of the studies on the Mishnah collected in the present volumes represent the best of contemporary scholarship on that document. In the past thirty years, the Mishnah seen as a document on its own terms has taken its place as a principal focus in the academic study of religion and of Judaism. Many university scholars have participated in the contemporary revolution in the description, analysis, and interpretation of the Mishnah. Nearly all the publishing scholars of the academy (as distinct from the yeshiva or rabbinical seminary) who are now at work are represented in this...
The authors of the studies on the Mishnah collected in the present volumes represent the best of contemporary scholarship on that document. In the pas...
Jacob Neusner has published more than 1000 books and articles, scholarly and academic, popular and journalistic, and is one of the most published humanities scholars in the world. Over a period of fifty years he has made significant, insightful and challenging contributions to the study of Rabbinic Judaism, particularly in the disciplines covered in the three volumes which make up Neusner on Judaism: the study of history (volume 1), literature (volume 2), and religion and theology (volume 3). These unique volumes of selective writings by Jacob Neusner, with new introductions by the author,...
Jacob Neusner has published more than 1000 books and articles, scholarly and academic, popular and journalistic, and is one of the most published huma...