Judaism as Philosophy: Method and Message of the Mishnah - Softcover

Neusner, Jacob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801861608 ISBN 13: 9780801861604

Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Neusner Professor Jacob

Über diesen Titel

Reseña del editor

"The book is carefully organized and provides a clear, well-structured, and lucid expression of its theses." -- Dr. Marvin Fox, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

The Mishnah is the first canonical writing of Judaism after the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel (the Old Testament) and the foundation of the two Talmuds and of all Judaism thereafter. According to eminent religion scholar Jacob Neusner, the key to understanding the Mishnah is to read it as philosophy, in accord with the generally accepted understanding of philosophy in its time and place. In Judaism as Philosophy, Neusner studies a large sample of evidence, meticulously translated and carefully explained, and identifies the philosophical side of the Mishnah's system, method, and message alike.

The philosophical tradition in which the Mishnah takes its place, Neusner explains, utilizes the Aristotelian method of hierarchical classification to demonstrate the proposition (important to Middle Platonism and profoundly expressed by Plotinus) that many things really form a single thing: many species, a single genus; many genera, an encompassing, well-crafted and cogent whole. Through the systematic and orderly hierarchical classification of the things of nature, the framers of the Mishnah illustrate the ultimate unity of all being emanating from the One on high. Arguing that the document's writers chose a legal form for a philosophical proposition, this book completely changes a centuries-old way of reading the Mishnah. Judaism emerges as a sustained demonstration of the unity of all being under one God.

"What is the next phase in this ongoing history of the formation of Judaism in the classical period[?]... The analysis of the philosophical character of the Mishnah places into perspective what I believe to be the character of the first phase, and therefore points toward the development of the second and third phases, of the Judaism of the Dual Torah. The entire characterization of the first phase of the Judaism of the Dual Torah, that is, the system attested by the Mishnah in particular, rests upon the results of this book and its two companions, on economics and politics respectively."--from the Preface

Biografía del autor

Jacob Neusner holds joint appointments as Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and professor of religion at Bard College. He is the author of The Transformation of Judaism: From Philosophy to Religion, also available from Johns Hopkins.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0801861608
• ISBN 13: 9780801861604
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 319