South Florida studies in the history of Judaism ;

xi, 273 p. ; 23 cm

This work examines the entire corpus of authoritative documents of Rabbinic Judaism - from Mishnah, ca. 200 C.E. through the Talmud of Babylonia, ca. 600 C.E. Jacob Neusner argues that governing rationalities may be discerned both within and across these foundation documents. Together these governing rationalities form a single mythic and symbolic system, a coherent theology. Three methods are employed for investigating the inner logic of this symbolic system, including 1) identification of paradigms and models, 2) analysis of systematic prepositional composites, and 3) examination of the recombination of verbal symbols. This prolegomenon lays out a way of accurately describing that system as a whole while exposing the relationships, balance, and order evident among the parts via a detailed and complete survey.

An introduction to the workings of rabbinic interpretation of the Bible prepared by a foremost scholar of the rabbinic period. The book describes Midrash in the various schools of classical Jewish thought.

In this collection of related essays Jacob Neusner reflects on the experience of American Jews. He argues that the generative myth of death and rebirth by which American Jews make sense of themselves is shaped by the defining moments of the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. A final section of essays considers the symbolic meaning of Zionism for the Jewish community, apart from the State of Israel.

Rabbinic Judaism, in its classical writings produced from the first through the seventh century of the Common Era, sets forth a theological system that is orderly and reliable. Responding to the generative dialectics of monotheism, Rabbinic Judaism systematically reveals the justice of the one and only God of all creation. Appealing to the truths of Scripture, the Rabbinic sages constructed a coherent theology, cogent structure, and logical system to reveal the justice of God. These writings identify what Judaism knows as the logos of God--the theology fully manifest in the Torah. This work make its contribution in seeing in the principal conceptions of Rabbinic Judaism a logos--a sustained, rigorous, coherent argument. A narrative story of the Rabbinic sages' theological system sounds remarkably familiar--the age-old story of God's justice (to which his mercy is integral), of humanity's relationship with god as a possessor of the power of will, and of humanity's sin and God's response.