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{{Short description|American academic scholar of Judaism}}
{{Cleanup-date|August 2006}}
{{Infobox academic
{{wikify-date|August 2006}}
| name = Jacob Neusner
| image = File:Jacobneusner.jpeg
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1932|07|28}}
| birth_place = ]
| death_date = {{death date and age|2016|10|8|1932|7|28}}
| death_place = ]
| nationality = American
| known_for = Scholarship on Rabbinic Judaism, and over 900 published books
}}


'''Jacob Neusner''' (July 28, 1932 – October 8, 2016)<ref name=":1" /> was an American academic scholar of Judaism. He was named as one of the most published authors in history, having written or edited more than 900 books.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/take-jacob-neusner-seriously|title=Is It Time to Take the Most Published Man in Human History Seriously? Reassessing Jacob Neusner.|last=Magid|first=Shaul|date=2016-08-23|newspaper=Tablet Magazine|access-date=2016-12-08}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625183,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070527144905/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625183,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=May 27, 2007 |title=The Pope's Favorite Rabbi|first=David |last=Van Biema |date=May 24, 2007|access-date=January 8, 2013 |magazine=]}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/us/jacob-neusner-judaic-scholar-who-forged-interfaith-bonds-dies-at-84.html|title=Jacob Neusner, Judaic Scholar Who Forged Interfaith Bonds, Dies at 84|last=Grimes|first=William|date=2016-10-10|newspaper=The New York Times|issn=0362-4331|access-date=2016-12-08}}</ref>
'''Jacob Neusner''' (born July 28, ], ], ]) is an influential as well as controversial academic scholar of ], and the most prolific. He has written or edited ] about the ], ], ], ], ] and other Jewish writings.
==Biography==
Neusner, a leading figure in the American academic ], has achieved this prominence and influence in three ways. He revolutionized the study of Judaism and brought it into the field of religious studies; he built intellectual bridges between Judaism and other religions and thereby laid the groundwork for durable understanding and respect among religions; and, through his teaching and his publication programs, he advanced the academic careers of younger scholars and teachers that he approved of (and set back the careers of those he did not), both within and outside the study of Judaism. Neusner’s influence on the study of Judaism and religion is broad, powerful, distinctive, and enduring.


Neusner's application of ]—a methodology derived from scholars of the ]—to ] was influential, but subject to criticism. Neusner's grasp of Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic has been challenged within academia.
Educated at ], the ], the ], and ], Neusner began his career in the early ]s, when religion was a minor field in American universities, largely limited to ] and Christian (mostly Protestant) theology. However, the study of Judaism was spreading to colleges and universities during the ]s, and courses in "Judaism" became essential parts of the curriculum, just as the wider study of non-Christian religions began to be required topics generally in higher education at the time.


==Early life and study==
Neusner made it his career agenda to bring critical questions to the study of Judaism. He was also interested in the more general study of religion. Neusner was the first to see that the sources of classical Judaism were not constructed to answer standard historical questions. He invented the documentary study of Judaism, through which he showed, relentlessly and incontrovertibly, that each document of the rabbinic canon has a discrete focus and agenda, and that the history of ancient Judaism has to be told in terms of texts rather than personalities or events. His Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (] ]; translated into ] and ]) is the classic statement of his work and the first of many comparable volumes on the other documents of the ] ].
Neusner was born in ], to ] parents.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> He graduated from ] in West Hartford.<ref name=":2" /> He then attended ], where he met ] and first encountered Jewish religious texts. After graduating from Harvard in 1953, Neusner spent a year at the ].


Neusner then attended the ], where he was ordained as a Conservative Jewish rabbi.<ref name=":2" /> After spending a year at ], he returned to the Jewish Theological Seminary and studied the ] under ], who would later write a famous, and highly negative, critique of Neusner's translation of the ].<ref name="Lieberman's Review">Saul Lieberman, "" ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', Vol.104(2) April/June 1984 p. 315-319</ref><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> He graduated in 1960 with a master's degree.<ref name=":2" /> Later that year, he received a doctorate in religion from ].
Neusner’s discovery of the centrality of documents led him to an even more decisive perception of Judaism as a system: an integrated network of beliefs, practices, and values that yields a coherent worldview and picture of reality for its adherents. This approach led to a series of very important studies on the way Judaism creates categories of understanding and how those categories relate to one another, even as they emerge diversely in discrete rabbinic documents. Neusner’s work shows, for instance, how deeply Judaism is integrated with the system of the ], how such categories as "merit" and "purity" work in Judaism, and how classical Judaism absorbed and transcended the destruction of the ] in ]. His work depicts rabbinic Judaism as the result of human labor responding to what its adherents believe is ]’s call and demonstrates its persistent vitality and imagination.


==Career==
In the process of producing his scholarship, Neusner translated, analyzed, and explained virtually the entire rabbinic canon - a massive compendium of texts - into English. The ], the ], the ], the ], and nearly every work of rabbinic ] interpretation are available to scholars of all backgrounds because of Neusner’s scholarship. In all of this, Neusner helped to make Judaism and its study available to scholars and laypeople.


After his studies, Neusner briefly taught at ].<ref name=":1" /> Neusner also held positions at ], ], ], and the ].
Neusner’s work did not stop with his exposition - in translation, description, and interpretation - of Judaism. Neusner deliberately built outward from Judaism to other religions. He sponsored a number of conferences and collaborative projects that drew different religions into conversation on common themes and problems. Neusner’s efforts have produced conferences and books on, among other topics, the problem of difference in religion, religion and society, religion and material culture, religion and economics, religion and altruism, and religion and tolerance. These collaborations build on Neusner’s intellectual vision, his notion of a religion as a system, and would not have happened otherwise. By working toward general questions from the perspective of a discrete religion, Neusner produced results of durable consequence for understanding other religions as well.


In 1994, Neusner began teaching at ], working there until 2014.<ref name=":2" /> While at Bard College, he founded the Institute for Advanced Theology with ].<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Relations |first=Bard Public |title=INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED THEOLOGY AT BARD PRESENTS A TALK BY BRUCE CHILTON AND JACOB NEUSNER FOLLOWED BY A BOOK SIGNING OF THEIR RECENT BOOK ON DECEMBER 13 {{!}} Bard College Public Relations |url=https://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=812 |access-date=2023-04-07 |website=www.bard.edu |language=en}}</ref>
In addition to these efforts, Neusner has written a number of works exploring the relationship of Judaism to other religions around difficult issues of understanding and misunderstanding. For instance, his ''A Rabbi Talks with Jesus'' (] ]; translated into ], Italian, and ], establishes a religiously sound framework for Judaic-Christian interchange and earned the praise of ]. He also has collaborated with other scholars to produce comparisons of Judaism and Christianity, as in ''The Bible and Us: A Priest and A Rabbi Read Scripture Together'' (] ]; translated into ] and ]). He has collaborated with scholars of ], conceiving ''World Religions in America: An Introduction'' (third edition, ] 2004), which explores how diverse religions have developed in the distinctive American context. He also has composed numerous textbooks and general trade books on Judaism. The two best-known examples are ''The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism'' (] ]); and ''Judaism: An Introduction'' (] and ] ]; translated into ] and ]).


He was a life member of ], ]. He was the only scholar to have served on both the ] and the ].{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}}
Throughout his career, Neusner has established publication programs and series with various academic publishers. Through these series, through reference works that he conceived and edited, and through the conferences he has sponsored, Neusner has advanced the careers of dozens of younger scholars from across the globe. Few others in the American study of religion have had this kind of impact on students of so many approaches and interests.


Neusner died on October 8, 2016, at the age of 84.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/scholar-jacob-neusner-dead-at-84/2016/10/09/|title=Scholar Jacob Neusner Dead at 84|last=JNi.Media|date=2016-10-09|newspaper=The Jewish Press|access-date=2016-12-08}}</ref>
Neusner is often celebrated as one of the most published scholar in history. He has written or edited more than 900 books. He has taught at ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. He is a member of the Institute of Advanced Study at ], and a life member of ], ]. He is the only scholar to serve on both the ] and the ]. He also has received scores of academic awards, honorific and otherwise.


== Scholarship ==
Neusner’s solidified a field of scholarship: the academic study of Judaism. He has profoundly influenced the academic study of religion. He has created durable networks of interreligious communication and understanding. Neusner. In additional to his positions as ] ] of Religion and Theology and Bard Center Fellow, Neusner is Senior Fellow of Bard’s Institute of Advanced Theology. He has taught at ] since ].


Neusner's research centered on ] of the ]ic and ]ic eras. His work focused on bringing the study of rabbinical text into nonreligious educational institutions and treating them as non-religious documents.<ref name=":2" />
==Contributions to scholarship==
Neusner's five-volume ''History of the Jews in Babylonia'', published between 1965 and 1969, is said to be the first to consider the ] in its Iranian context.<ref name=":1" /> Neusner studied ] and ] to do so.<ref name=":1" />


Neusner, with his contemporaries, translated into English nearly the entire Rabbinic canon.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Grimes |first1=William |title=Jacob Neusner, Judaic Scholar Who Forged Interfaith Bonds, Dies at 84 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/us/jacob-neusner-judaic-scholar-who-forged-interfaith-bonds-dies-at-84.html |access-date=24 February 2019 |agency=The New York Times |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 11, 2016}}</ref> This work has opened up many Rabbinic documents to scholars of other fields unfamiliar with ] and ], within the academic study of ], as well as in ], ] and ] and ].
Neusner is most well known for applying ] to the documents of classical ]. One of his innovations has been his ] of Rabbinic texts, in which documents are presented in a ] format, which allow the reader to easily follow the flow of the argument.


In addition to his work on Rabbinic texts, Neusner was involved in ] and ]. Neusner saw Judaism as "not particular but exemplary, and Jews not as special but (merely) interesting."<ref name=":2" />
Neusner has aimed to make Rabbinic literature useful to specialists in a variety of fields within the academic study of ], as well as in ], ] and ] and ]. His work has concerned the classic texts of ] and how they form a cogent statement of a religious system. These classical writings form the ] of a particular statement of Judaism. That canon defined the paramount Judaism in both ] and ] from the seventh century to the present. Neusner addresses the circumstances of its formation, in the beginnings of ], the issues important to its framers, the kind of writings they produced, the modes of mediating change and responding to crises.


=== Interfaith work ===
Neusner has translated and reread for historical purposes the classic documents of Judaism as they took shape in the first through sixth centuries ], through interaction between the written ] and the ].)
Neusner also wrote a number of works exploring the relationship of Judaism to other religions. His ''A Rabbi Talks with ]'' attempts to establish a religiously sound framework for ]. It earned the praise of ] and the nickname "The Pope's Favorite Rabbi".<ref name=":0" /> In his book ''Jesus of Nazareth,'' Benedict referred to it as "by far the most important book for the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last decade."<ref name=":1" />


== Political views ==
These documents—the ], ], ]-compilations, and the two ]s—represent the collective statement and consensus of authorships (none is credibly assigned to a single author and all are preserved because they are deemed canonical and authoritative) and show us how those authorships proposed to make a statement to their political and social situation—and, Neusner argues, also a judgment upon the human condition. What Neusner does in this reading of the canonical literature of Judaism is divided into stages.
Neusner called himself a ], but also said "Israel’s flag is not mine. My homeland is America."<ref name=":2" /> He was culturally conservative, and opposed feminism and ].<ref name=":2" />


Neusner was a signer of the conservative Christian ],<ref name=":2" /> which expresses concern over what it called "unfounded or undue concerns" of ] such as "fears of destructive manmade ], ], and ]".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cornwallalliance.org/about/|title=About|website=www.cornwallalliance.org|date=2 April 2014|access-date=2016-12-08}}</ref>
===Systematic analysis of documents===
Neusner's work proceeds in a systematic way, document by document. First, Neusner places a document on display in its own terms, examining the text in particular and in its full particularity and immediacy. Here Neusner describes the text from three perspectives: ], ], and topic (that is to say, the received program of ] in the age at hand).


== Critical assessment of Neusner's work ==
===Reading documents critically===
Neusner's original adoption of ] to the rabbinic texts proved highly influential both in North American and European studies of early Jewish and Christian texts. His later detailed studies of Mishnaic law lack the densely footnoted historical approach characteristic of his earlier work. As a result, these works, focusing on literary form, tend to ignore contemporary external sources and modern scholarship dealing with these issues. The irony was that his approach adopted the analytic methodology developed by Christian scholars for the ], while denying there was any relationship between the Judeo-Christian corpus and rabbinic works, the latter being treated as isolates detached from their broader historical contexts.<ref>Peter J. Tomson, ], 2019 {{isbn|978-3-161-54619-8}} pp.504-505.</ref>
Reading documents one by one represents a new approach in this field, though it is commonplace in all other ] fields. Ordinarily, in studying ], people composed studies by citing sayings attributed to diverse authorities without regard to the place where these sayings occur. They assumed that the sayings really were said by those to whom they are attributed, and, in consequence, the generative category is not the document but the named authority. But if the documentary lines are not assumed to be irrelevant and that the attributions are everywhere to be taken at face value, then the point of origin—the document—defines the categorical imperative, the starting point of all study.


A number of scholars in his field of study were critical of this phase in his work.<ref name="Cohen">Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Jacob Neusner, Mishnah and Counter-Rabbinics," Conservative Judaism, Vol.37(1) Fall 1983 p. 48-63</ref><ref name="Evans">Craig A. Evans, "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context'," Journal of Biblical Literature, (JBL), 112/2 1993, p. 267-289</ref><ref name="Lieberman's Review" /><ref name="Maccoby">Hyam Maccoby, "Jacob Neusner's Mishnah," Midstream, 30/5 May 1984 p. 24-32</ref><ref name="Maccoby2">Hyam Maccoby, "Neusner and the Red Cow," Journal for the Study of Judaism (JSJ), 21 1990, p. 60-75.</ref><ref name="Poirier">John C. Poirier, "Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah and Ventriloquism," The Jewish Quarterly Review, LXXXVII Nos.1-2, July–October 1996, p. 61-78</ref><ref name="Sanders">*E.P.Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. Philadelphia, 1990.</ref><ref name="Zeitlin">Solomon Zeitlin, "A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai. A Specimen of Modern Jewish Scholarship," Jewish Quarterly Review, 62, 1972, p. 145-155.</ref><ref name="Zeitlin2">Solomon Zeitlin, "Spurious Interpretations of Rabbinic Sources in the Studies of the Pharisees and Pharisaim," Jewish Quarterly Review, 62, 1974, p. 122-135.</ref><ref name="Zeusse">Evan M. Zuesse, "The Rabbinic Treatment of 'Others' (Criminals, Gentiles) according to Jacob Neusner," Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Vol. VII, 2004, p. 191-229</ref><ref name="Zeusse2">Evan M. Zuesse, "Phenomenology of Judaism," in: Encyclopaedia of Judaism, ed. J. Neusner, A. Avery-Peck, and W.S. Green, 2nd Edition Leiden: Brill, 2005 Vol.III, p. 1968-1986. (Offers an alternative to Neusner's theory of "Judaisms.")</ref>
Neusner considers the text in terms of rhetoric, logic, and topic shared between documents, and asking how these recurrent points of emphasis draw attention from the limits of the text to the social world that the text's author(s) proposed to address. Here, too, the notion that a document exhibits traits particular to itself is new with his work, although overall he has episodically noted traits of rhetoric distinctive to a given document, and, on the surface, differences as to topic—observed but not explained—have been noted. Hence the movement from text to context and how it is affected represents an initiative on Neusner's part.


Some were critical of his methodology, and asserted that many of his arguments were circular or attempts to prove "negative assumptions" from a lack of evidence,<ref name="Cohen"/><ref name="Evans"/><ref name="Maccoby"/><ref name="Poirier"/><ref name="Sanders"/> while others concentrated on Neusner's reading and interpretations of Rabbinic texts, finding that his account was forced and inaccurate.<ref name="Maccoby2"/><ref name="Zeusse"/><ref name="Zeusse2"/>
==Reframing the paradigm: From Judaism to "Judaisms"==


Neusner's view that the ] were a sectarian group centered on "table fellowship" and ritual food purity practices, and lacked interest in wider Jewish moral values or social issues, has been criticized by ],<ref name="Sanders"/> ]<ref name="Zeitlin"/> and ].<ref name="Maccoby"/>
Neusner calls the encompassing Judaism that the canon presents a "system," when it is composed of three necessary components: an account of a worldview, a prescription of a corresponding way of life, and a definition of the social entity. These components explain the whole of a social order, hence constituting the theoretical account of a system. Systems defined in this way work out a cogent picture, for those who create them, of how things are correctly to be sorted out and fitted together, and of why things are done in one way. When people invoke God as the foundation for their worldview, maintaining that their way of life corresponds to what God wants of them, projecting their social entity in a particular relationship to God, then we have a religious system. When, finally, a religious system looks to the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient ] or the ] for an important part of its authoritative literature or canon, this could be considered a type of Judaism.


Some scholars questioned Neusner's grasp of Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Meacham |first=Tirẓah |date=1986 |editor-last=Neusner |editor-first=Jacob |title=Neusner's "Talmud of the Land of Israel" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1454451 |journal=The Jewish Quarterly Review |volume=77 |issue=1 |pages=74–81 |doi=10.2307/1454451 |jstor=1454451 |issn=0021-6682}}</ref> The most famous and biting criticism came from one of Neusner's former teachers, ], about Neusner's translation of the ].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Smith |first=Dinitia |date=2005-04-13 |title=Scholar of Judaism, Professional Provocateur |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/books/scholar-of-judaism-professional-provocateur.html |access-date=2023-11-09 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Lieberman wrote, in an article circulated before his death and then published posthumously: "...one begins to doubt the credibility of the translator . And indeed after a superficial perusal of the translation, the reader is stunned by the translator's ignorance of rabbinic Hebrew, of Aramaic grammar, and above all of the subject matter with which he deals."<ref>Saul Lieberman, "" ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', Vol.104(2) April/June 1984, p. 315.</ref> Ending his review, Lieberman states "I conclude with a clear conscience: The right place for English translation is the waste basket" while at the same time qualifying that "n fairness to the translator I must add that his various essays on Jewish topics are meritorious. They abound in brilliant insights and intelligent questions." Lieberman highlights his criticism as being of Neusner's "ignorance of the original languages," which Lieberman claims even Neusner was originally "well aware of" inasmuch as he had previously relied on responsible English renderings of rabbinic sources, e.g., ], before later choosing to create his own renderings of rabbinic texts.<ref>Saul Lieberman, "" ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', Vol.104(2) April/June 1984, p. 319.</ref> Lieberman's views were seconded by ], another teacher who resented Neusner's criticism of his views that Jesus was a homosexual magician.<ref>Aaron W. Hughes, ] {{isbn|978-1-479-88585-5}} 2016 pp.61-62,193-196</ref>
==Viewing religions as systems illustrated by cases drawn from Judaism==


Neusner thought Lieberman's approach reflected the closed mentality of a yeshiva-based education that lacked familiarity with modern formal textual-critical techniques, and he eventually got round to replying to Lieberman's charges by writing in turn an equally scathing monograph entitled: ''Why There Never Was a Talmud of Caesarea: Saul Lieberman’s Mistakes'' (1994). In it he attributed to Lieberman 'obvious errors of method, blunders in logic' and argued that Lieberman's work showed a systematic inability to accomplish critical research.<ref>Hughes, ibid pp.192-193</ref>
Neusner describes systems from their end products, the writings. He then works his way back from canon to system, not imagining either that the canon is the system, or that the canon creates the system. He sees the canon as the evidence left by the system as it was at the time. The canonical writings speak in particular to those who can hear, that is, to the members of the community who on account of that perspicacity of hearing, constitute the social entity or systemic community. The community then comprises that social group, the system, of which is recapitulated by the selected canon. The group's exegesis of the canon in terms of the everyday imparts to the system the power to sustain the community in a reciprocal and self-nourishing process. The community through its exegesis then imposes continuity and unity on whatever is in its canon.


== Publications ==
Neusner posits that we cannot account for the origin of a successful religious-social system, its power to persist can be explained. Neusner believes social change comes to expression in a symbolic transaction, which takes place in its ] of the systemic canon that in literary terms constitutes the social entity's statement of itself. The exegesis of the canon then forms that ongoing social action that sustains the whole. A system does not recapitulate its texts, it selects and orders them. A religious system imputes to them as a whole cogency, one to the next, that their original authorships has not expressed in and through the parts, and through them a religious system expresses its deepest logic, and it also frames that just fit that joins system to circumstance.
{{further|Jacob Neusner bibliography}}


== References ==
When Neusner asks that a religious composition speak to a society with a message of the ''is'' and the ''ought'' and with a meaning for the everyday, he focuses on the power of that system to hold the whole together: the society the system addresses, the individuals who compose the society, the ordinary lives they lead, in ascending order of consequence. And that system then forms a whole and well-composed structure. Yes, the structure stands somewhere, and, yes, the place where it stands will secure for the system either an extended or an ephemeral span of life. But the system, for however long it lasts, serves. And that focus on the eternal present underpins Neusner's interest in analyzing why a system works (the urgent agenda of issues it successfully solves for those for whom it solves those problems) when it does, and why it ceases to work (loses self-evidence, is bereft of its "Israel," for example) when it no longer works. He explains that the phrase, "the history of a system," presents us with an oxymoron. Systems endure—and their classic texts with them—in the eternal present that they create. They evoke precedent, they do not have a history.
{{reflist}}


==Methodology== ==Further reading==
* Hughes, Aaron W. (2016). ''Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast''. Albany, NY: NYU Press.


== External links ==
Neusner pioneered modern methods to study the history of Judaism in its formative period, the first six centuries C.E. He aimed to find out how to describe a ] in a manner consonant with the historical character of the evidence, therefore in the synchronic context of society and politics, and not solely or mainly in the diachronic context of theology which earlier defined matters. The inherited descriptions of the Judaism of the dual Torah (or merely "Judaism") treated as uniform the whole corpus of writing called "the oral Torah." The time and place of the authorship of a document played no role in our use of the allegations, as to fact, of the writers of that document. All documents were ordinarily treated as part of a single coherent whole, so that anything found in any writing held to be canonical might be cited as evidence of views on a given doctrinal, legal or ethical topic. "Judaism" then was described by applying all imperative categories—e.g., beliefs about God, life after death, revelation and the like—to all the canonical writings. Insofar as historical circumstance played a role in that description, it was assumed that everything in any document applied pretty much to all cases, and historical facts derived from sayings and stories pretty much as the former were cited and the latter told.
* Dinitia Smith, ''The New York Times'', April 13, 2005
* by Jacob Neusner
*, William Grimes, ''The New York Times'', October 10, 2016


{{Authority control}}
Prior to Neusner, ignoring the limits of documents and therefore the definitive power of historical context and social circumstance, all books on "Judaism" or "classical," "Rabbinic," "Talmudic" Judaism, promiscuously cited all writings deemed canonical in constructing pictures of the theology or law of that Judaism, severally and jointly, so telling us about Judaism all at once and in the aggregate. That approach lost all standing in the study of Christianity of the same time and place, for all scholars of the history of Christianity understand the diversity and contextual differentiation exhibited by the classical Christian writers. Of course, in the Christian case, the various documents genuinely did emerge from a variety of sharply sectarian and opposed groups, so they were self-evidently expressions of a variety of "Christianities." But, by contrast, reflecting the fact that the Pharisaic/Rabbinic movement of late Second Commonwealth and Talmudic periods was a single religious movement (consciously and explicitly rejecting sectarianism and seeking to be as inclusive of the entire society as possible), the received pictures of Rabbinic Judaism prior to Neusner naturally presented the various documents as expressing various aspects of a commonly shared theological, ethical and legal framework within Rabbinic Judaism. Thus they presented themselves as simply mainstream Judaism, the one Judaism characterised by the "Oral Torah," and encouraged a diversity of views within that mainstream as all legitimating a shared non-sectarian religious practice and outlook. Neusner corrected that error in the sources, as he saw it, by insisting that each of those documents be read in its own terms, as a statement—if it constituted such a statement—of ''a'' Judaism, or, at least, for and in behalf of a Judaism. Neusner maintained that each theological and legal fact was to be interpreted, to begin with, in relationship to the other theological and legal facts among which it found its original location, that is, separately from all other documents.


{{DEFAULTSORT:Neusner, Jacob}}
The result of that reading of documents as whole but discrete statements, as Neusner believes we can readily demonstrate defined their original character, is demonstrated in such works as ''Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah'', ''Judaism and Society: The Evidence of the Yerushalmi'', ''Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah'', as well as ''Judaism and Story: The Evidence of The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan''. At the conclusion of that work, for reasons spelled out in its own logic, Neusner stated that the documentary approach had carried him as far as it could. Neusner had reached an impasse for a simple reason. Through the documentary approach Neusner did not have the means of reading the whole all together and all at once. The description, analysis, and interpretation of a religious system, however, require us to see the whole in its entirety, and Neusner had not gained such an encompassing perception. That is why Neusner recognized that he had come to the end of the line, although further exercises in documentary description, analysis, and interpretation and systemic reading of documents assuredly will enrich and expand, as well as correct, the picture Neusner has achieved in the incipient phase of the work.
]

]
Neusner worked on describing each in its own terms and context the principal documents of the Judaism of the dual Torah. He further undertook a set of comparative studies of two or more documents, showing the points in common as well as the contrasts between and among them. This protracted work is represented by systematic accounts of the ], tractate Avot, the ], ], ], the ], ], ], ], ], the ], ], and various other writings. In all of this work Neusner proposed to examine one by one and then in groups of affines the main components of the dual Torah. Neusner wished to place each into its own setting and so attempt to trace the unfolding of the dual Torah in its historical manifestation. In the later stages of the work, he attempted to address the question of how some, or even all, of the particular documents formed a general statement. Neusner wanted to know where and how documents combined to constitute one Torah of the dual Torah of Sinai.
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Time and again Neusner concluded that while two or more documents did intersect, the literature as a whole is made up of distinct sets of documents, and these sets over the bulk of their surfaces do not as a matter of fact intersect at all. The upshot was that while Neusner could show inter-relationships among, for example, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Pesiqta deRab Kahana, and Pesiqta Rabbati, or among Sifra and the two Sifrés, he could not demonstrate that all of these writings pursued in common one plan, defining literary, redactional, and logical traits of cogent discourse, or even one program, comprising a single theological or legal inquiry. Quite to the contrary, each set of writings demonstrably limited itself to its distinctive plan and program and was found not to cohere with any other set. He concludes that the entirety of the literature most certainly cannot be demonstrated to form that one whole Torah, part of the still larger Torah of ], that constitutes the Judaism of the dual Torah.
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Two theological categories occupied Neusner's further attention. The Judaic category, ] "in our image" corresponds to the theoretical component of the worldview, and the Judaic category of the human being "after our likeness" corresponds—though not so self-evidently—to the theoretical component of the way of life. The correspondence will strike the reader as a simple one, when we recall that, in any Judaism, "we" are what "we" do. To all Judaic systems, one's everyday way of life forms a definitive element in the system, and if we wish to know how a Judaic system at its foundations defines its way of life, we do well to translate the details of the here and the now into the portrait of humanity "after our likeness." Neusner spells out both matters in ''"Israel:" Judaism and its Social Metaphors'' and in ''The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism''.
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==Impact==
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Neusner's enterprise has been aimed at a ] and ] reading of ] of Judaism, yet with full regard for their specific statements to their own world. He demonstrates how people wrote these books as a way of asking and answering questions that we can locate and understand. According to Neusner, when we can find those shared and human dimensions of documents, we can relate classic writings to a world we understand and share. That imputes a common rationality to diverse authorships and ages—theirs and ours—and, Neusner believes, expresses the fundamental position of the academic humanities.
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Neusner has been drawn from studying text to context. Treating a religion in its social setting, as something a group of people do together, rather than as a set of beliefs and opinions, he says, prepares colleagues to make sense of a real world of ethnicity and political beliefs formed on the foundation of religious origins. He argues that if colleagues do not understand that religion constitutes one of the formative forces in the world today, they will not be able to cope with the future. He shows how to see precisely the ways in which religion forms social worlds. In the case of Judaism, a set of interesting examples is set forth. Here Neusner shows us that diverse Judaic systems responded to pressing social and political questions by setting forth cogent and (to the believers) self-evidently valid answers.
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==Criticism of Neusner==
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Critical reviews claim that Neusner's results are actually required by his choice of methodology: i.e., his arguments are circular; further, he must make use of the argument from silence to reach his negative conclusions; thirdly, the actual reading of Rabbinic documents is forced and inaccurate, betraying a hostile bias; and finally this bias guides a tendentious historical account of the actual rise of Pharisaic and early Rabbinic Judaism.
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Critics claim that Neusner uses premise that Talmudic and other early Rabbinic documents be studied in isolation from each other, treating each as if it presents its own theology, ethics and worldview, in sum its own "Judaism." They assert that Neusner denies the existence of a unified consensus Oral Torah, or even Rabbinic Judaism as such Poirier characterises this circularity of Neusner's exegesis of the Mishnah as a kind of ventriloquism.
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Some say that Neusner has created a Talmudic Judaism that never existed, and that traditional Jews whether in Talmudic times or presently would not recognize.{{who}}
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Scholars have taken Neusner to task for his secular "humanistic" bias. Shaye J.D. Cohen, has argued, Neusner has produced a veritable "counter-Rabbinics" driven by an anti-Orthodox, anti-Rabbinic agenda. Cohen particularly criticises Neusner's atomizing of the Talmudic literature, which as already mentioned eliminates right from the start any possibility of discovering a coherent Judaism that unites all the Talmudic works, and thus destroys traditional Rabbinic reliance on the Talmud as a coherent consensus source. However, Neusner has written theological overviews of Mishnaic-Talmudic-Midrashic unified thought and values.
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Hyam Maccoby assessed the overall product of Neusner's work as one which paints the rabbis as bereft of spiritual concerns, highly chauvinistic, petty-minded and legalistic, without concern for general Jewish society or decent morality.
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Neusner's alleged linguistic errors in Aramaic and Hebrew in his translations of the Talmud were evaluated by Saul Lieberman. The earliest works of Neusner demonstrated that the Pharisees of the Second Commonwealth period were a marginal sect who devoted themselves to a focus on priestly purity taboos. Critics claim that the contrary evidences of the Second Commonwealth contemporary Josephus, the New Testament including Paul's own championing of his one-time membership in the Pharisaic mainstream, and the testimony of the Mishnah and Gemara of the Talmud itself, were all rejected. Early on Zeitlin and Maccoby drew attention to some of the difficulties in this account. Sanders offered a methodological analysis of Neusner's account of the sectarian table-fellowship of the early Pharisees, and said that many of his interpretations of Pharisaic discussions and rulings are inaccurate and arbitrary, and his findings questionable. He argued that Neusner's attempt to rewrite the Mishnah as a philosophical treatise was misguided in that it must ignore the plain sense of the Mishnah to do so.
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Critics have also debated Neusner's account of the Pharisees in Josephus, his conclusions about Babylonian Jewish religious practices, his account of the relationship between Second Commonwealth Judaism and earliest Christianity.
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Overall Neusner's prolific scholarship has engendered lively collegial debate.
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* ],"Jacob Neusner, Mishnah and Counter-Rabbinics," ''Conservative Judaism,'' Vol.37(1) Fall 1983 p. 48-63
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* Craig A. Evans, "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context'," ''Journal of Biblical Literature, (JBL),'' 112/2 1993, p.267-289
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* ], "A Tragedy or a Comedy" ''Journal of the American Oriental Society,'' Vol.104(2) April/June 1984 p. 315-319
* ], "Jacob Neusner's Mishnah," ''Midstream,'' 30/5 May 1984 p. 24-32
* ], "Neusner and the Red Cow," ''Journal for the Study of Judaism (JSJ),'' 21 1990, p. 60-75.
* John C. Poirier, "Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah and Ventriloquism," ''The Jewish Quarterly Review,'' LXXXVII Nos.1-2, July-October 1996, p. 61-78
* E.P.Sanders, ''Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah.'' Philadelphia, 1990.
* Solomon Zeitlin, "A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai. A Specimen of Modern Jewish Scholarship," ''Jewish Quarterly Review,'' 62, 1972, p. 145-155.
* Solomon Zeitlin, "Spurious Interpretations of Rabbinic Sources in the Studies of the Pharisees and Pharisaim," ''Jewish Quarterly Review,'' 62, 1974, p. 122-135.

== Books by Jacob Neusner ==
A complete list of books by Professor Jacob Neusner may be found here:
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==External links==
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Latest revision as of 04:10, 8 November 2024

American academic scholar of Judaism
Jacob Neusner
Born(1932-07-28)July 28, 1932
Hartford, Connecticut
DiedOctober 8, 2016(2016-10-08) (aged 84)
Rhinebeck, New York
NationalityAmerican
Known forScholarship on Rabbinic Judaism, and over 900 published books

Jacob Neusner (July 28, 1932 – October 8, 2016) was an American academic scholar of Judaism. He was named as one of the most published authors in history, having written or edited more than 900 books.

Neusner's application of form criticism—a methodology derived from scholars of the New Testament—to Rabbinic texts was influential, but subject to criticism. Neusner's grasp of Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic has been challenged within academia.

Early life and study

Neusner was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Reform Jewish parents. He graduated from William H. Hall High School in West Hartford. He then attended Harvard University, where he met Harry Austryn Wolfson and first encountered Jewish religious texts. After graduating from Harvard in 1953, Neusner spent a year at the University of Oxford.

Neusner then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained as a Conservative Jewish rabbi. After spending a year at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he returned to the Jewish Theological Seminary and studied the Talmud under Saul Lieberman, who would later write a famous, and highly negative, critique of Neusner's translation of the Jerusalem Talmud. He graduated in 1960 with a master's degree. Later that year, he received a doctorate in religion from Columbia University.

Career

After his studies, Neusner briefly taught at Dartmouth College. Neusner also held positions at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Brandeis University, Brown University, and the University of South Florida.

In 1994, Neusner began teaching at Bard College, working there until 2014. While at Bard College, he founded the Institute for Advanced Theology with Bruce Chilton.

He was a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He was the only scholar to have served on both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Neusner died on October 8, 2016, at the age of 84.

Scholarship

Neusner's research centered on rabbinic Judaism of the Mishnaic and Talmudic eras. His work focused on bringing the study of rabbinical text into nonreligious educational institutions and treating them as non-religious documents. Neusner's five-volume History of the Jews in Babylonia, published between 1965 and 1969, is said to be the first to consider the Babylonian Talmud in its Iranian context. Neusner studied Persian and Middle Persian to do so.

Neusner, with his contemporaries, translated into English nearly the entire Rabbinic canon. This work has opened up many Rabbinic documents to scholars of other fields unfamiliar with Hebrew and Aramaic, within the academic study of religion, as well as in ancient history, culture and Near and Middle Eastern Studies.

In addition to his work on Rabbinic texts, Neusner was involved in Jewish Studies and Religious Studies. Neusner saw Judaism as "not particular but exemplary, and Jews not as special but (merely) interesting."

Interfaith work

Neusner also wrote a number of works exploring the relationship of Judaism to other religions. His A Rabbi Talks with Jesus attempts to establish a religiously sound framework for Judaic-Christian interchange. It earned the praise of Pope Benedict XVI and the nickname "The Pope's Favorite Rabbi". In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict referred to it as "by far the most important book for the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last decade."

Political views

Neusner called himself a Zionist, but also said "Israel’s flag is not mine. My homeland is America." He was culturally conservative, and opposed feminism and affirmative action.

Neusner was a signer of the conservative Christian Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, which expresses concern over what it called "unfounded or undue concerns" of environmentalists such as "fears of destructive manmade global warming, overpopulation, and rampant species loss".

Critical assessment of Neusner's work

Neusner's original adoption of form criticism to the rabbinic texts proved highly influential both in North American and European studies of early Jewish and Christian texts. His later detailed studies of Mishnaic law lack the densely footnoted historical approach characteristic of his earlier work. As a result, these works, focusing on literary form, tend to ignore contemporary external sources and modern scholarship dealing with these issues. The irony was that his approach adopted the analytic methodology developed by Christian scholars for the New Testament, while denying there was any relationship between the Judeo-Christian corpus and rabbinic works, the latter being treated as isolates detached from their broader historical contexts.

A number of scholars in his field of study were critical of this phase in his work.

Some were critical of his methodology, and asserted that many of his arguments were circular or attempts to prove "negative assumptions" from a lack of evidence, while others concentrated on Neusner's reading and interpretations of Rabbinic texts, finding that his account was forced and inaccurate.

Neusner's view that the Second Commonwealth Pharisees were a sectarian group centered on "table fellowship" and ritual food purity practices, and lacked interest in wider Jewish moral values or social issues, has been criticized by E. P. Sanders, Solomon Zeitlin and Hyam Maccoby.

Some scholars questioned Neusner's grasp of Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic. The most famous and biting criticism came from one of Neusner's former teachers, Saul Lieberman, about Neusner's translation of the Jerusalem Talmud. Lieberman wrote, in an article circulated before his death and then published posthumously: "...one begins to doubt the credibility of the translator . And indeed after a superficial perusal of the translation, the reader is stunned by the translator's ignorance of rabbinic Hebrew, of Aramaic grammar, and above all of the subject matter with which he deals." Ending his review, Lieberman states "I conclude with a clear conscience: The right place for English translation is the waste basket" while at the same time qualifying that "n fairness to the translator I must add that his various essays on Jewish topics are meritorious. They abound in brilliant insights and intelligent questions." Lieberman highlights his criticism as being of Neusner's "ignorance of the original languages," which Lieberman claims even Neusner was originally "well aware of" inasmuch as he had previously relied on responsible English renderings of rabbinic sources, e.g., Soncino Press, before later choosing to create his own renderings of rabbinic texts. Lieberman's views were seconded by Morton Smith, another teacher who resented Neusner's criticism of his views that Jesus was a homosexual magician.

Neusner thought Lieberman's approach reflected the closed mentality of a yeshiva-based education that lacked familiarity with modern formal textual-critical techniques, and he eventually got round to replying to Lieberman's charges by writing in turn an equally scathing monograph entitled: Why There Never Was a Talmud of Caesarea: Saul Lieberman’s Mistakes (1994). In it he attributed to Lieberman 'obvious errors of method, blunders in logic' and argued that Lieberman's work showed a systematic inability to accomplish critical research.

Publications

Further information: Jacob Neusner bibliography

References

  1. ^ Magid, Shaul (2016-08-23). "Is It Time to Take the Most Published Man in Human History Seriously? Reassessing Jacob Neusner". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  2. ^ Van Biema, David (May 24, 2007). "The Pope's Favorite Rabbi". TIME. Archived from the original on May 27, 2007. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
  3. ^ Grimes, William (2016-10-10). "Jacob Neusner, Judaic Scholar Who Forged Interfaith Bonds, Dies at 84". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  4. ^ Saul Lieberman, "A Tragedy or a Comedy?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.104(2) April/June 1984 p. 315-319
  5. Relations, Bard Public. "INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED THEOLOGY AT BARD PRESENTS A TALK BY BRUCE CHILTON AND JACOB NEUSNER FOLLOWED BY A BOOK SIGNING OF THEIR RECENT BOOK ON DECEMBER 13 | Bard College Public Relations". www.bard.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-07.
  6. JNi.Media (2016-10-09). "Scholar Jacob Neusner Dead at 84". The Jewish Press. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  7. Grimes, William (October 11, 2016). "Jacob Neusner, Judaic Scholar Who Forged Interfaith Bonds, Dies at 84". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  8. "About". www.cornwallalliance.org. 2 April 2014. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  9. Peter J. Tomson, Studies on Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries, Mohr Siebeck, 2019 ISBN 978-3-161-54619-8 pp.504-505.
  10. ^ Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Jacob Neusner, Mishnah and Counter-Rabbinics," Conservative Judaism, Vol.37(1) Fall 1983 p. 48-63
  11. ^ Craig A. Evans, "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context'," Journal of Biblical Literature, (JBL), 112/2 1993, p. 267-289
  12. ^ Hyam Maccoby, "Jacob Neusner's Mishnah," Midstream, 30/5 May 1984 p. 24-32
  13. ^ Hyam Maccoby, "Neusner and the Red Cow," Journal for the Study of Judaism (JSJ), 21 1990, p. 60-75.
  14. ^ John C. Poirier, "Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah and Ventriloquism," The Jewish Quarterly Review, LXXXVII Nos.1-2, July–October 1996, p. 61-78
  15. ^ *E.P.Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. Philadelphia, 1990.
  16. ^ Solomon Zeitlin, "A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai. A Specimen of Modern Jewish Scholarship," Jewish Quarterly Review, 62, 1972, p. 145-155.
  17. Solomon Zeitlin, "Spurious Interpretations of Rabbinic Sources in the Studies of the Pharisees and Pharisaim," Jewish Quarterly Review, 62, 1974, p. 122-135.
  18. ^ Evan M. Zuesse, "The Rabbinic Treatment of 'Others' (Criminals, Gentiles) according to Jacob Neusner," Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Vol. VII, 2004, p. 191-229
  19. ^ Evan M. Zuesse, "Phenomenology of Judaism," in: Encyclopaedia of Judaism, ed. J. Neusner, A. Avery-Peck, and W.S. Green, 2nd Edition Leiden: Brill, 2005 Vol.III, p. 1968-1986. (Offers an alternative to Neusner's theory of "Judaisms.")
  20. Meacham, Tirẓah (1986). Neusner, Jacob (ed.). "Neusner's "Talmud of the Land of Israel"". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 77 (1): 74–81. doi:10.2307/1454451. ISSN 0021-6682. JSTOR 1454451.
  21. Smith, Dinitia (2005-04-13). "Scholar of Judaism, Professional Provocateur". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  22. Saul Lieberman, "A Tragedy or a Comedy?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.104(2) April/June 1984, p. 315.
  23. Saul Lieberman, "A Tragedy or a Comedy?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.104(2) April/June 1984, p. 319.
  24. Aaron W. Hughes, Jacob Neusner:An American Jewish Iconoclast, New York University Press ISBN 978-1-479-88585-5 2016 pp.61-62,193-196
  25. Hughes, ibid pp.192-193

Further reading

  • Hughes, Aaron W. (2016). Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast. Albany, NY: NYU Press.

External links

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