Books in the Studies in Judaism series

Rabbinic documents about David, progenitor of the Messiah, relay the scriptural narrative of David the king. But, he is also transformed into a sage by Rabbinic writings of late antiquity: the Mishnah, the Yerushalmi, and the Bavli. Consequently, the Rabbis' Messiah becomes a rabbi. Neusner explores this transformation in depth.

This collection of essays draws on work done in 2010-2011. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, and its theology.

This book surveys the treatment of war and peace in the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity: to what does Judaism refer when it speaks of war and peace in the context of the Hebrew words "milhamah" (war) and "shalom" (peace)?

This collection of seven insightful essays draws on research completed in 2010. The book systematically analyzes and compares Judaism and includes commentaries on the current state of the academic study of Judaism.

Because the tragedy of the Armenians is not deemed, by consensus, a genocide, many have long sought to connect it to the single event that is most clearly associated with the word genocide-the Holocaust. This book attempts to make this comparison in several distinct ways.

This book recapitulates chapters in The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (1999) and The Theology of the Halakhah (2001) to convey, as a single continuous narrative, the tale that the Halakhah and the Aggadah as theological constructions jointly tell.

Neusner describes, analyzes, and interprets the transformation of one system of the Israelite social order by a connected but autonomous successor-system. He reviews the initial statements made in The Transformation of Judaism: From Philosophy to Religion. The book summarizes ten years of work, from 1980 to 1990.

This book uses rhetorical analysis to illuminate one of the most fascinating and complicated speeches by Saint Paul: 2 Cor 10-13. The careful crafting of his discourse based on Christological principles ultimately speaks for qualifying it as a self-praise speech (periautologia) with a pedagogical, not defensive, purpose.

This book examines the representation of Rome and Persia (Iran) in the successive groups of documents that comprise the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity.

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.

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?'

Known mainly because of the holiday of Hanukkah, the Maccabean era is a fascinating and significant period of history that is vital to our understanding of the formation of Judaism. This study evaluates Alcimus' heritage and loyalty to traditions in a much more positive manner. Alcimus, an ignored or denigrated figure in Jewish history, is restored as a leader who attempted to perpetuate his religion and his people.

Matthew 1-2 and the Virginal Conception examines early Palestinian and Hellenistic Jewish accounts of the birth of Israel's first redeemer, Moses. The author shows how these accounts provide the background of Mary's "virginal conception" of Jesus, Israel's final redeemer, in Matthew 1-2.

The destruction of the First Temple (586 B.C.E.), destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.), and the defeat of the Bar Kokhba (132-135 C.E.) are discussed in great detail in the covenantal theology of the Torah and Scripture. This books uses extensive textual evidence to explore the importance of the second temple's destruction and the aforementioned events in the creation of Rabbinic Judaism.

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.

This book explores the story of Mattathias in 1Maccabees and asserts that Mattathias defined Judaism and Jewishness for his time. Mattathias's actions of zealous violence, as controversial as they were viewed to be in both his day and today, were primarily for the preservation of his religion and people.

The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.

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.

This is the dramatic story of how the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a voluntary, humanitarian organization supported by American Jewry, made its entry into the isolated, poverty-stricken world.

A companion volume to Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism (UPA, 1987), this book seeks to address the central issues of human life and meaning in the post-Holocaust world. Though representing a variety of disciplines and religious backgrounds, the authors are united by a fundamental recognition that after the Holocaust, the entire enterprise of being human has been called into serious question. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.

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.