The Mishnah : : religious perspectives / / by Jacob Neusner.

• Superior document: Handbuch der Orientalistik. Erste Abteilung, Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten, 45. Bd.
• Author: Neusner, Jacob, 1932-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 1999.
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Language: English
• Series: Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East 45.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xii, 249 pages).
• Notes: " ... this book completes the condensation and recapitulation of large-scale research of mine"--Preface.

Condensing research concerning questions of religion which encompass the social history of ideas and the religious uses of language, this book deals with three questions: the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture, the relationship of the religious ideas people hold to the world in which they live, and the religious meaning of the formalization of language that characterizes the Mishnah in particular. In discussing how the Mishnah relates to Scripture - in the (later) mythic language of Rabbinic Judaism: \'the oral Torah\' to \'the written Torah\' - a complete analysis is presented, based on a systematic application of a single taxonomic program. Then an examination is made of how the stages in the unfolding of the Halakhah of the Mishnah relate to the principal events of the times, which delineate those stages. Here focus is given to those pre-70 C.E. components of the Halakhah that later come to the surface in the Mishnah, but discussion extends to the periods from the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. to the Bar Kokhba War, concluded in circa 135 C.E., then from the reconstruction, 135 C.E., to the closure of the Mishnah, 200 C.E. Finally attention is given to methods of interpreting the rhetorical forms of the Mishnah in the context of the social culture laid bare by the socio-linguistics of the documents concerned. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Table of Contents

Preliminary material -- THE MISHNAH AND SCRIPTURE -- THE MISHNAH AND ITS TIMES: THE THREE STAGES IN HALAKHIC CATEGORY-FORMATION -- FORM AND MEANING IN THE MISHNAH -- INDEX -- HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK: Abteilung I: DER NAHE UND MITTLERE OSTEN.