” The ancient Jew regarded himself quite naturally as the equal of the member of any other race or nation in his contemporary world”
The more the archaeologists dig around Palestine and its environs, the more evidence they discover of the variety and versatility of the activities of the Jewish people. Singularly interested in moral and religious questions they certainly were – else we could not explain Moses, the prophets, … – but not to the exclusion of everything […] continued…“…religion, and such secular or anthropomorphic disciplines as philosophy, psychology, or sociology, have something in common, and that is an awareness of the abiding fact of man’s unhappiness”
What I do suggest is that religion, and such secular or anthropomorphic disciplines as philosophy, psychology, or sociology, have something in common, and that is an awareness of the abiding fact of man’s unhappiness. And it would seem that certain words of ancient provenance – like “good,” “evil,” “free will,” even “original sin” – do […] continued…“Far too many Jews are too lazy mentally to take the trouble to inform themselves about the trends and currents of contemporary life”
Far too many Jews are too lazy mentally to take the trouble to inform themselves about the trends and currents of contemporary life, and of how they and their lives fit into the pattern of what is happening…. They make a virtue out of their ignorance of the Jewish past, thus dispossessing themselves of vital […] continued…“…the Mishnah should still remain an important source for the legal, social and intellectual history of the first two centuries of Roman Palestine”
In light of the creative dimension of the Mishnah’s redaction and a critical refusal to accept on faith the reliability of attributions to Sages in the Mishnah, the Mishnah is sometimes excluded from historical studies of first- and second-century Palestine. this is a shame because even Jacob Neusner, the scholar most identified with a highly […] continued…“today there is a broad consensus that the Mishnah should be viewed as a tightly edited composition”
At times, the redactor preserved his sources as he inherited them, at times, he mildly altered them, and, at times, he significantly shaped them. How to find the precise balance between the conservative and creative dimensions of this editorial process is still unclear, but today there is a broad consensus that the Mishnah should be […] continued…
Granting the importance of the analysis of the explicit and implicit rationales for halakhot, let us describe the refined historical approach mentioned above. History, in his new approach, is not narrowly conceived along political or socio-economic lines as it was sometimes in the past, but rather history is broadly conceived as the locus for a […] continued…
Mishnaic halakhah is presented in various forms such as precedents, enactments, edicts, customs, and, most commonly, casuistic formulations (i.e. case law). General rules also appear in the Mishnah, but they are the exception as mishnaic halakhot are usually embedded in specific cases and circumstances. Since the rationales underlying the halakhot of the Mishnah are rarely […] continued…
The analysis of the halakhah in the Mishnah commenced already in tannaitic times (see Henshke 1997) and has continued unabated until today. The Talmuds and their medieval commentators are well known for their attempts to reveal and interpret the legal concepts and principles underlying mishnaic halakhah. In contrast, modern historians have sometimes interpreted mishnaic halakhah, […] continued…
The Mishnah is primarily an edited anthology of brief and often elliptical pronouncements on matters of Jewish law and practice, frequently providing conflicting views on the individual matters discussed. Some of these pronouncements are attributed to a named rabbi, or group of anonymous rabbis, while others are entirely anonymous. While the content often relates to […] continued…
In those Tosefta layers which parallel the Mishna, the same names of Tannaim appear as in the Mishna and approximately in the same frequency. Abraham Goldberg, “The Tosefta – Companion to the Mishna,” in The Literature of the Sages…, Ed. Shmuel Safrai (Assen/Mastricht: Van Gorcum & Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 295. continued…