Three questions of formative Judaism : history, literature, and religion /
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| Author / Creator: | Neusner, Jacob, 1932-2016 |
|---|---|
| Imprint: | Boston : Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. |
| Description: | xxii, 264 p. ; 24 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/4808116 |
Table of Contents:
- Preface
- 1.. Settled Issues, Neglected Questions in the Study of Formative Judaism
- I.. Settled Issues: 1. From Judaism to Judaisms
- II.. Settled Issues: 2. From History to Religion
- III.. Neglected Questions: 1. Dating Documents
- IV.. Neglected Questions: 2. Exegesis of the Talmud of Babylonia (the Bavli)
- 2.. The Question of History
- I.. Defining the Historical Question of Rabbinic Judaism
- II.. An Interior Perspective: 1. The Scriptural Roots of Rabbinic Judaism
- III.. An Interior Perspective: 2. The Documentary History of Ideas
- IV.. An Interior Perspective: 3. The Predocumentary History of Systems of Ideas
- V. An Exterior Perspective: 1. The Relationship between the Ideas That People Hold and the Social World in Which They Live
- VI.. An Exterior Perspective: 2. The Extradocumentary Context of Ideas--Pagan
- VII.. An Exterior Perspective: 3. The Extradocumentary Context of Ideas--Christian
- VIII.. The Question of History: What Is Now at Stake?
- 3.. The Question of Literature
- I.. Defining the Literary Question of Rabbinic Judaism
- II.. The Documentary Starting Point: The Distinctive, Indicative Traits of Documents
- III.. The Documentary Context: Autonomy, Connection, Continuity
- A.. Autonomy: Description of the Text on Its Own
- B.. Connection: Analysis of the Text in Context through Comparison and Contrast with Intersecting Affines
- C.. Continuity: Interpretation of the Matrix That Forms of the Canonical Texts a Coherent Statement
- D.. Imagining the Rabbinic Canon: Toward a General Theory
- IV.. The Question of Literature: A. What Is at Stake in Establishing the Documentary Context? Learning How the Document Supplies Its Own Best Commentary
- A.. The Case of the Mishnah
- B.. The Topical Construction of the Mishnah as a Whole
- C.. The Division of Topics into Their Logical, Constituent Components
- D.. The Division of Paragraphs into Sentences
- E.. The Logic of Coherent Discourse: How Form Analysis Points to the Construction of Syllogisms, Yielding Cases Producing Rules
- F.. How the Document Produces Its Own Best Commentary
- V.. Nondocumentary Writing: Compositions and Composites of an Other-than-Documentary Venue
- A.. How to Identify Nondocumentary Writing: The Starting Point
- B.. Nondocumentary Writing: The Case of the Bavli
- C.. Freestanding Pericopes Framed without Any Regard to Documentary Requirements
- D.. The Hermeneutics of the Documentary Hypothesis
- VI.. The Question of Literature: B. What Is at Stake in Identifying Other-than-Documentary Writing and Its Traits? The Predocumentary History of Rabbinic Judaism
- VII.. The Question of Literature: C. Other-than-Documentary Writing: The Matter of Proportion and Purpose
- A.. Documentary, Nondocumentary, and Extradocumentary Writing: The Case of Genesis Rabbah
- 1.. Documentary Writing in Genesis Rabbah
- 2.. Nondocumentary Writing in Genesis Rabbah
- 3.. Extradocumentary Writing in Genesis Rabbah
- 4.. The Documentary Complex
- B.. Do Nondocumentary Compositions Matter?
- 1.. The Negligible Proportion of Freestanding Stories in Rabbinic Documents
- C.. Do Nondocumentary Compositions Matter?
- 2.. The Tangential Position, in Documentary Context, That Is Assigned to the Freestanding Composition
- VIII.. The Question of Literature: What Is Now at Stake?
- A.. A Fresh, Form-Analytical Exegesis of the Canonical Documents
- B.. The Predocumentary History of the Ideas Set Forth in the Canonical Documents
- C.. Validating the Documentary Reading of the Canon against the Nihilistic Denial That We Possess More than Compilations of Diverse Readings of This and That
- D.. Where to Begin?
- 1.. Defining Documents out of Diverse Manuscript Testimonies
- 2.. Contemporary Commentaries on Classic Documents
- 3.. The Predocumentary History of Ideas
- 4.. Where There Are No Models, Go, Define a Model--but Then Do the Work!
- 4.. The Question of Religion
- I.. Defining the Question of Religion for Rabbinic Judaism
- A.. The Religious Study of Religion in the Case of Rabbinic Judaism
- B.. The Religious Study of Religion: The Analytical Program
- C.. The Historical Study of Religion and the Religious Study of Religion: The Differences
- II.. An Interior Perspective: 1. The Category Formations of the System Viewed Whole--the Halakhah
- A.. Unrealized Theories of the Halakhic Category Formation
- 1.. The Mishnah's Anomalous Tractates
- 2.. The Mishnah's Anomalous Composites
- 3.. The Tosefta's Anomalous Composites
- 4.. The Yerushalmi's Anomalous Composites
- 5.. The Bavli's Anomalous Composites
- B.. The Four Plausible Theories of Category Formation and the One That Was Chosen
- 1.. Other Judaic Modes of Category Formation besides the Rabbinic Halakhic
- 2.. The Generative Logic of the Halakhic Mode of Category Formation
- 3.. The Self-Evidence of Analytical-Topical Category Formations Yielded by Hierarchical Classification: A Null Hypothesis
- C.. Testing the Null Hypothesis: The Expansion of the Halakhah--the Identification of New Topical or Analytical Category Formations
- 1.. The Mishnah's Anomalous Tractates
- 2.. The Mishnah's Anomalous Composites
- I.. New Topics
- II.. New Propositions or Analytical Principles
- 3.. The Tosefta's Anomalous Composites
- I.. New Topics
- II.. New Propositions or Analytical Principles
- 4.. The Yerushalmi's Anomalous Composites
- I.. New Topics
- II.. New Propositions or Analytical Principles
- 5.. The Bavli's Anomalous Composites
- I.. New Topics
- II.. New Propositions or Analytical Principles
- D.. The Rules of Choosing Topics
- 1.. The Children of Noah: Explaining the Categorical Anomaly
- E.. Why This, Not That? The Premises and Goals of the Halakhah in Its Category Formations
- III.. An Interior Perspective: 2. The Halakhic and Aggadic Category Formations in Comparison and Contrast
- A.. The Uses of the Aggadah by the Halakhah
- B.. An Illustrative Case: Aggadah in the Halakhah of Taanit, the Law of Fasting in Times of Crisis and of the Village Cohort That Participates in the Temple Cult
- 1.. Aggadic Compositions in Mishnah-Tosefta Taanit
- 2.. Aggadic Compositions in Yerushalmi Taanit
- 3.. Aggadic Compositions in Bavli Taanit
- 4.. The Aggadic Role in the Halakhic Discourse of Taanit
- C.. Aggadic and Halakhic Incompatibility in Category Formations
- IV.. An Exterior Perspective: The Comparative Study of Judaisms--the Category Formations of the Rabbinic System in Comparison and Contrast to Those of Other Judaic Systems
- A.. Defining "Israel" in Systemic Context
- B.. Israel in Rabbinic Judaism: The Two Stages in the Formation of the Judaism of the Dual Torah
- C.. Israel in the Mishnah and Companion Documents
- D.. Israel in the Second Phase in the Unfolding of Rabbinic Judaism: The Yerushalmi and Its Companions, the Rabbah-Midrash Compilations and the Bavli
- 1.. Rome as Brother
- 2.. Israel as Family
- E.. A Social Metaphor and a Field Theory of Society: Israel and the Social Contract--Comparing the Mishnah's and the Yerushalmi's Israel
- F.. Israel and the Social Rules of Judaisms
- 1.. The First Law: The shape and meaning imputed to the social component Israel will conform to the larger interests of the system and in detail express the system's main point. The case of Paul and Israel after the Spirit
- 2.. The Second Law: What an Israel is depends on who wants to know: Philosophers imagine a philosophical Israel, and politicians conceive a political Israel. The cases of Philo and of the library of Qumran
- 3.. The Third Law: The systemic importance of the category Israel depends on the generative problematic--the urgent question--of the system builders and not on their social circumstance. The place of Israel within the self-evidently true response offered by the system will prove congruent to the logic of the system--that alone. The cases of Paul, Philo, the library of Qumran, and the Rabbinic sages of the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash
- 4.. The Hypothesis: The system builders' social (including political) circumstance defines the generative problematic that imparts self-evidence to the systemically definitive logic, encompassing its social component. The cases of Paul, the library of Qumran, and the Rabbinic sages of the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash
- G.. Reprise of the Matter of Self-Evidence
- V.. The Question of Religion: What Is Now at Stake?
- Bibliography
