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Jacob Neusner has--in over sixty scholarly works, fourteen textbooks, and thirteen collections of essays--laid the foundation and completed the structure for a new understanding of the history of Judaism. The present volume is the capstone effort to date in this endeavor. Neusner reconstructs and interprets the Mishnah's intellectual history, presenting a picture of the beginnings and first major expression of Judaism. What makes this account distinctively historical, writes Neusner in his Introduction, will be our sustained effort to relate the unfolding of the ideas of the Mishnah to the historical setting of the philosophers of the document, to compare context and concept, to ask about the interplay between idea and social, material reality. Neusner succeeds in this specific task and in the greater task of providing a work with methodological significance for the entire field of the history of religions.
"Ntroduction Steven J. Katz; 1. Social, political and economic life in the land of Israel, 70-c.235 Seth Schwartz; 2. The Diaspora from 66-c.235: (a) The Jews in Egypt and Cyrenaica, 66-c.235 Allen Kerkeslager; (b) Jews in Carthage and western north Africa, 70-c.235 Claudia Setzer; (c) The Jews in Asia Minor, 70-c.235 Paul Trebilco; (d) The Jews in Babylonia, 70-c.235 David Goldblatt; 3. The uprising in the Jewish Diaspora, 115-117 Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev; 4. The Bar Kochba Revolt, 132-135 Hanan Eshel; 5. The legal status of Jews in the Roman empire Amnon Linder; 6. Jewish art and architecture in the land of Israel, 70-c.235 Eric M. Meyers; 7. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple: its meani...
Contrary to the widespread view that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, Goodblatt argues that it can be found in the ancient world. He argues that concepts of nationalism compatible with contemporary social scientific theories can be documented in the ancient sources from the Mediterranean Rim by the middle of the last millennium BCE. In particular, the collective identity asserted by the Jews in antiquity fits contemporary definitions of nationalism. After the theoretical discussion in the opening chapter, the author examines several factors constitutive of ancient Jewish nationalism. He shows how this identity was socially constructed by such means as the mass dissemination of biblical literature, retention of the Hebrew language, and through the priestly caste. The author also discusses each of the names used to express Jewish national identity: Israel, Judah and Zion.
This volume brings together the latest scholarship on Jewish literary products and the ways in which they can be interpreted from three different perspectives. In part 1, contributors consider texts as literature, as cultural products, and as historical documents to demonstrate the many ways that early Jewish, rabbinic, and modern secular Jewish literary works make meaning and can be read meaningfully. Part 2 focuses on exegesis of specific biblical and rabbinic texts as well as medieval Jewish poetry. Part 3 examines medieval and early modern Jewish books as material objects and explores the history, functions, and reception of these material objects. Contributors include Javier del Barco, ...
For the past half-century, David Noel Freedman has had an enormous impact on the study of the Bible, both as an author and as an editor of the writings of others. As his colleagues note in their comments at the beginning of this volume, "You are quintessentially the man of the book. And perhaps what impresses us most is that your bibliography of hundreds of books is not limited to the extraordinary number of important books that you've written yourself. It also contains the books that you've edited for others. And we know what it means to have David Noel Freedman as one's editor. For every page of manuscript that the author sends you, you send back almost an equal number of pages of advice, criticism, corrections, and improvements. You can make a bad book good, and a good book better. And you can make its author a better scholar and a better writer." In this volume, his compatriots at the University of California, San Diego, contribute eight varied essays in celebration of his impact on them and in honor of his varied contributions to biblical studies.
This book examines the talmudic writings, politics, and ideology of Y.I. Halevy (1847-1914), one of the most influential representatives of the pre-war eastern European Orthodox Jewish community. It analyzes Halevy’s historical model of the formation of the Babylonian Talmud, which, he argued, was edited by an academy of rabbis beginning in the fourth century and ending by the sixth century. Halevy's model also served as a blueprint for the rabbinic council of Agudath Israel, the Orthodox political body in whose founding he played a leading role. Foreword by Jay M. Harris, Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University and the author of How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism, among other works.
Jeffrey L. Rubenstein continues his grand exploration of the ancient rabbinic tradition of the Talmudic sages, offering deep and complex analysis of eight stories from the Babylonian Talmud to reconstruct the cultural and religious world of the Babylonian rabbinic academy. Rubenstein combines a close textual and literary examination of each story with a careful comparison to earlier versions from other rabbinic compilations. This unique approach provides insight not only into the meaning and content of the current forms of the stories but also into how redactors reworked those earlier versions to address contemporary moral and religious issues. Rubenstein's analysis uncovers the literary met...
A new theory of the Talmud's formation based on comparison with late antique intellectual and material standards of book production.
Talya Fishman explores the impact of the textualization process in medieval Europe on the Babylonian Talmud's roles within Jewish culture.