Description
Book SynopsisJacob Neusner describes, analyzes, and interprets the transformation of one system of the Israelite social order by a connected but autonomous successor-system. He characterizes the successive systems classifying the one as philosophical and the other as religious. He explains the categorical account of each and sets forth the outcome of a number of topical studies on the category-formations of Rabbinic Judaism with special attention to the social order: politics, philosophy, and economics. These systems emerged as [1] autonomous when viewed synchronically, [2] connected when seen diachronically, and [3] as a continuous construction when seen at the end of their formative age. In their successive stages of categorical autonomy, connection, and finally continuity, the three distinct systems may be classified, respectively, as philosophical, religious, and theological, each one taking over and revising the definitive categories of the former and framing its own fresh, generative categories as well. The formative history of Judaism is the story of the presentations and re-presentations of categorical structures. In method, it is the exegesis of taxonomy and taxic systems. Now, after more than two decades, Neusner has decided to review the initial statement. Since the book summarizes ten years of work, from 1980 to 1990, on the Rabbinic category formations of social science politics, philosophy, and economics in the setting of the law and theology of Rabbinic Judaism from the Mishnah through the Bavli, 200-600 C.E., it seemed well worth the effort to recapitulate the original work. The revised introduction explains the omission of theology in his category-formation philosophy-religion-theology; Neusner''s account of the Bavli produced the decade after this title was completed did not make possible the continuous description of the unfolding of the Rabbinic system. The pattern that appealed to Neusner from philosophy to religion to theology has not yet come to a satisfactory account. In the twenty years
Table of ContentsPart 1 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Part 2 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, REVISED Part 3 INTRODUCTION Part 4 THE RECEPTION OFTHE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM Chapter 5 PROLOGUE TO PART ONE: PHILOSOPHICAL CATEGORIES Chapter 6 1. Modes of Thought: From Philosophy to Religion Chapter 7 2. Scarce Resources: Philosophical Economics Reproduced Chapter 8 3. Legitimate Violence: From Hierarchized Foci to Unitary Focus ofPower Part 9 THE FORMATION OFCOUNTERPART CATEGORIES Chapter 10 PROLOGUE TO PART TWO: COUNTERPART CATEGORIES. CATEGORICAL REFORMATION ANDTHE NEW STRUCTURE Chapter 11 4. Learning and the Category, “Torah” Chapter 12 5. The Transvaluation of Value Chapter 13 6. Empowerment and the Category, “The People Israel” Part 14 ENCHANTED JUDAISM:THE NEW STRUCTURE Chapter 15 PROLOGUE TO PART THREE: COMPARISON AND CLASSIFICATION OF SYSTEMS Chapter 16 7. The New Learning: The Gnostic Torah Chapter 17 8. The New Order: The Political Economy of Zekhut Chapter 18 9. Enchanted Judaism and The City of God Part 19 BIBLIOGRAPHY
