Product Description
This is a study of the relationship between two cognate religious documents of Judaism, the Pentateuch and the corpus of Halakhah set forth by the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Balvi. Both contain normative rules or Halakhah. In this study, by "Halakhah" I mean not random rulings on this or that, wherever they surface. Rather, I refer to the entire corpus of law laid out by its native categories as defined by The Halakhah set forth in the permanence ("writing") in the primary legal documents of Rabbinic Judaism. At stake in this sustained study is the characterization of the Halakhic process and program in the interim between-in literary categories--the closure of the Pentateuch and the formulation of the native categories of the Halakhah that organize the Mishnah and the Tosefta and the writings that build upon the Mishnah and the Tosefta.
About the Author
Jacob Neusner is the Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Professor of Religion at Bard College. Dr. Neusner has published more than seven hundred fifty books and holds twenty honorary degrees and academic medals from academic institutions worldwide.
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By "Halakhah based on Scripture," I mean, a halakhic category in the Oral Torah that corresponds to a well-articulated category in the Written Torah and that is comprised by the information supplied by the Written Torah and defined by the issues or problems or even propositions set forth in the Written Torah. Scripture here provides not only random facts but large-scale composites of information that set down an articulated judgement upon a given subject. The Oral Torah, correspondingly, amplifies and extends, clarifies and enriches, the category-formation defined to begin with in Scripture.