Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism, The, Volume Two: Seder Mo'ed

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Global Academic Publishing, 2000 - Philosophy - 434 pages
Hermeneutics, conventionally defined as “theory of interpretation,” in Rabbinic Judaism finds its data in the modes of analytical thought that produce useful knowledge out of the facts deriving from three sources. These sources are [1] the Torah, Scripture and tradition, [2] nature, and [3] the social order constituted by holy Israel, the latter two as contemplated and classified to begin with by the Torah. These data require structure, proportion, order, balance and rationalization. What theory of interpretation identifies among those data points of likeness and contrast that define category-formations of cogency and proportion? That is the question I systematically answer, following the sequence of the Halakhic category-formations of the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Bavli. Hermeneutics then articulates the results of a distinctive mode of thought, and, in the Halakhah, it is the analogical-contrastive kind. That is to say, analytical thought defining the category-formations that are subject to hermeneutical reflection proceeds in accord with the rules of analogical-contrastive thinking.

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Contents

C
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555
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Documentary Traits
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by the MishnahToseftaYerushalmiBavli
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Documentary Traits
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D
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Documentary Traits
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The Exposition of the Components of the Given CategoryFormation
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C
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Documentary Traits
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About the author (2000)

Jacob Neusner was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 28, 1932. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard University in 1953. He studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he was ordained a Conservative rabbi and received a master's degree in Hebrew letters in 1960. He also received a doctorate in religion from Columbia University. He taught at Dartmouth College, Brown University, and the University of South Florida before joining the religion department at Bard College in 1994. He retired from there in 2014. He was a religious historian and one of the world's foremost scholars of Jewish rabbinical texts. He published more than 900 books during his lifetime including A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai; The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism; Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah; Strangers at Home: The 'Holocaust,' Zionism, and American Judaism; Translating the Classics of Judaism: In Theory and in Practice; Why There Never Was a 'Talmud of Caesarea': Saul Lieberman's Mistakes; and Judaism: An Introduction. He wrote The Bible and Us: A Priest and a Rabbi Read Scripture Together with Andrew M. Greeley and A Rabbi Talks with Jesus with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. He also edited and translated, with others, nearly the entirety of the Jewish rabbinical texts. He died on October 8, 2016 at the age of 84.

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