Books by Jacob Neusner

This collection of ten essays and five book reviews draws on three years of work, from late 2005 through mid-2008. Included are Halakhic essays, essays on Classical Judaism, and two literary studies. Five book reviews conclude the collection, one of them a review essay, covering Edward Kaplan's two volumes on Abraham J. Heschel.

In Analytical Templates of the Yerushalmi, Jacob Neusner systematically defines and classifies the four analytical initiatives of the Bavli in its encounter with the Mishnah. Neusner questions whether the Yerushalmi yields a comparable repertoire of fixed patterns of analysis.

Illustrates how Judaism's classical rabbis of the first seven centuries of the Common Era read the ancient Israelite scriptures. This anthology presents a selection of writings that show what happens to the five books of Moses at the hands of the Rabbinical sages of the formative age of Judaism.

In the first six centuries of the Common Era, the Rabbis of formative Judaism, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, consulted the ancient Israelite prophets for guidance on issues of theology, law, history, and literature. In this anthology, Jacob Neusner collects and arranges in documentary sequence the Rabbinic comments on verses in the biblical prophet Hosea.

Collects how Israelite Scripture was received and recast in the language community that produced the dual Torah of Judaism. This book uses the case of Jeremiah in the Rabbinic canon of the formative age to examine the Rabbinic documents response to the prophetic ones in terms of how they select, explain, and utilize the language of Scripture.

This collection of eight essays draws on a half-year of work, the second six months of 2009. Neusner takes up three problems in the history of Religions, four essays on fundamental issues in form-history and the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon, and one theological essay.

Judaism in Monologue and Dialogue raises issues concerning the religious tradition of Judaism and the relationships between the communities of Judaism and those of Christianity.

Documents the entire structure of belief and system of behaviour in two distinct modes of discourse, Halakhic and Aggadic, or construed, statements of law and lore. This book shows how the Talmud of Babylonia account of normative action sets forth in a dual discourse the single, coherent theology.

In How Not to Study Judaism, Examples and Counter-Examples, Jacob Neusner presents a collection of essays and book reviews that identify the wrong way of conducting the academic study of Judaism. Pointing readers toward the right way to pursue the academic study of Judaism, Nuesner's focus is on the study of the literature of Judaism and the culture of the Jewish community.

"The Mishna", a six-part codification of oral rabbinic law, is the basis of the Talmud. It is one of the two holy books upon which Judaism has been constructed. This edition aims to provide as close to a literal translation as possible, following the syntax of Mishnaic Hebrew.

Genesis Rabbah is the commentary on the book of Genesis produced by the Rabbinic sages of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. It provides theJudaic reading of the book of Genesis in light of historical events of that critical period, when the Roman Emperor, Constantine, legalizedChristianity.

Neusner assembles anomalous compositions that occur in the Mishnah, Tosefta, four Tannaite Midrashim, and Genesis Rabbah, and he further tests the uniformity of the forms that govern in a familiar chapter of the Bavli, showing that some documents do not conform to the indicative rules of rhetoric, topic, and logic.

This study of the inclusion of biographical narratives examines sage-stories, anecdotes about the life and deeds of Rabbinic sages, in components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism during the formative age. These documents, from the first six centuries C.E., are exclusive of the two Talmuds.

Of the documents in the Rabbinic canon that reached closure in late antiquity, the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan A is different in its indicative traits from any other in the Rabbinic documents of its period. Neusner explains what is at stake for the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon.

This book seeks to discern how the Talmud transforms isolated facts into cogent and coherent constructions: the forests formed by the Talmud?s trees. Trees serve as facts out of any larger context, whereas "forests" mean whole paragraphs and larger constructions of though that is coherent in context and in sequence.

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 hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity maintains that complete documents form the smallest whole building blocks of the Rabbinic system. These two volumes compare the rhetorical/formal and exegetical traits of two entire, kindred documents. What makes it surprising is the result: they have nothing in common.

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 establish the coherence of the episodic Rabbinic exegesis of verses of Prophecy.

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 Utopia in the green and pleasant Land of Israel. So, normative Judaism assumes as its task to realize a Utopian vision. Its vision takes the form of law. Some of the law at the time of its presentation in the Mishnah in ca. 200 C.E. and successor documents of amplification could be realized. Some could not. But the whole of the law formed a statement of integrity. All the parts were essential to the system. By fulfilling the law, or Halakhah, the faithful Israelite would help realize in the here and now Utopia, an ideal world.

Rabbinic Judaism affirms the Prophetic heritage and makes it its own. Indeed, the Rabbis of the formative age and canon of Rabbinic Judaism looked to Prophecy along with the Torah and the Writings to define and sustain their system. We may reasonably label the Judaic religious system portrayed in the Rabbinic canon as Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism that the Rabbis formed in response to the Prophetic imperatives. In this book, the author shows how the Rabbis found in Prophecy a source not of contradiction but of conciliation and doctrinal validation. Rabbi Neusner answers the question, what do we learn about the Rabbinic system from its encounter with the Prophetic books? The four principal building blocks of Rabbinic theology addressed here take up symbolism, eschatology, immanental theology, and theological systematics. The fifth, Halakhah, has been addressed in The Rabbis, the Law, and the Prophets. Here, Rabbi Neusner takes up these matters and shows how the Rabbis found in Prophecy support for their fundamental principles.

This book responds to a question that came to the author from Professor Maren Niehoff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: 'Have you written a simple introduction to your documentary theory and method, which can serve as a starting point for my students?'

Facing a corpus of facts, the heirs of the "Mishnah" adopted analytical templates that transcended details and transformed the "Mishnah's" collection of topical expositions into a system of law. This book defines and classifies four analytical initiatives of the "Bavli".

This book explores the theological premises of the documents upon which the Rabbinic canon was built and asks whether these premises cohere in a tight theological system? The Implicit Norms of Rabbinic Judaism examines these documents and their premise and reveals that orthodoxy and heresy constituted native categories of the Rabbinic system of thought inherent.

Rabbinic theological language has made possible a vast range of discourse, on many subjects over long spans of recorded time and in diverse cultural settings.

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.

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.

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.

This study of the inclusion of biographical narratives examines sage-stories, anecdotes about the life and deeds of Rabbinic sages, in components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism during the formative age. These documents, from the first six centuries C.E., are exclusive of the two Talmuds.