The Unity Of Rabbinic Discourse Halakhah And Aggadah In Concert

Viewed as ideal types, the Halakhah defines the norm, setting forth what is obligatory, the Aggadah, specifies what exceeds the norm and goes beyond the measure of the law. The striking differences of style and substance that differentiate the two categories of discourse present the question of how they intersect in a single coherent statement, a system that holds together its two distinct media of thought and expression. When we have in hand systematic data on how Aggadah contributes to the Halakhah, and where Halakhah serves the purposes of the Aggadah, we find possible the logical next step: where do the two intersect, and at what points do the respective complexes of category-formations stand autonomous of one another, and that leads to the question: how do Aggadah and Halakhah constitute a coherent religious structure and make in common a single systemic statement? Where, within the formative literature of Normative Judaism, they join together, what affect the one exercises upon the other, and how the whole - Rabbinic Judaism - exceeds and transcends the sum of the parts - the Halakhah, the Aggadah - is spelled out.

Viewed as ideal types, the Halakhah defines the norm, setting forth what is obligatory, the Aggadah, specifies what exceeds the norm and goes beyond the measure of the law. The striking differences of style and substance that differentiate the two categories of discourse present the question of how they intersect in a single coherent statement, a system that holds together its two distinct media of thought and expression. When we have in hand systematic data on how Aggadah contributes to the Halakhah, and where Halakhah serves the purposes of the Aggadah, we find possible the logical next step: where do the two intersect, and at what points do the respective complexes of category-formations stand autonomous of one another, and that leads to the question: how do Aggadah and Halakhah constitute a coherent religious structure and make in common a single systemic statement? Where, within the formative literature of Normative Judaism, they join together, what affect the one exercises upon the other, and how the whole - Rabbinic Judaism - exceeds and transcends the sum of the parts - the Halakhah, the Aggadah - is spelled out.

Viewed as ideal types, the Halakhah defines the norm, setting forth what is obligatory, the Aggadah, specifies what exceeds the norm and goes beyond the measure of the law. The striking differences of style and substance that differentiate the two categories of discourse present the question of how they intersect in a single coherent statement, a system that holds together its two distinct media of thought and expression. When we have in hand systematic data on how Aggadah contributes to the Halakhah, and where Halakhah serves the purposes of the Aggadah, we find possible the logical next step: where do the two intersect, and at what points do the respective complexes of category-formations stand autonomous of one another, and that leads to the question: how do Aggadah and Halakhah constitute a coherent religious structure and make in common a single systemic statement? Where, within the formative literature of Normative Judaism, they join together, what affect the one exercises upon the other, and how the whole - Rabbinic Judaism - exceeds and transcends the sum of the parts - the Halakhah, the Aggadah - is spelled out.

Narrative and Document in the Rabbinic Canon, Volume I is a study of the inclusion of biographical narratives about sages in components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the formative age. These documents are of the first six centuries C.E. and are exclusive of the two Talmuds. A sage is defined here as a man who embodies the Rabbinic system. A sage-story, then, is an anecdote about the life and deeds of a Rabbinic sage. In general, a biographical narrative is the record of things done on a concrete and specific past-tense occasion by named individuals. The stories are not told as part of a sustained biographical account of those individuals' lives, birth to death. In this way, one is able to correlate the unfolding of the sage-story in the Rabbinic canonical sequence with the unfolding of the authorized biography in the counterpart-Christian one. The documentary hypothesis yields the correlation between the advent of the Christian authorized biography and the advent of the sage-story in the later documents of the Rabbinic canon. The sage-stories of the Mishnah, Tosefta, Tannaite Halakhic Midrash-compilations, and Rabbah-Midrash collections are subject to examination. The Yerushalmi and the Bavli come next, in volume II. Here, we ask what is to be learned from a documentary reading of the sage-stories as they unfolded in the canonical setting. Book jacket.

In separate multi-volume works, the project has presented form-analytical English translations of the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, outlined the Yerushalmi and the Bavli and compared these outlines. In this volume, the main points of the Halakhah of the topological expositions or tractates of the Mishnah-Tosefta-Bavli Hullin are set forth and the theological message of the tractate is laid out. The project yields a systematic account of the Halakhah in its documentary unfolding.

From his study of the rabbinic literature, Jacob Neusner shows how the rabbinic documents give expression to a theological system. Neusner discusses the how divine thought came to expression and he shows how the implicit theological system is expressed in the rules for the life of God’s chosen people. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

The dual discourse tells a continuous story."--BOOK JACKET.

The canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism impose upon most of their components fixed patterns of rhetoric, recurrent logic of coherent discourse, and a well-defined topic or program, for example, a commentary on a biblical book or on a legal topic. But some few compositions and composites of the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity diverge from the formal norms of the compilations in which they occur. In these pages, Neusner assembles anomalous compositions that occur in the Mishnah, Tosefta, four Tannaite Midrashim, and Genesis Rabbah, and he further tests the uniformity of the forms that govern in a familiar chapter of the Bavli. Neusner's surveys show for the documents probed here that some small segment of the composites and compositions of the surveyed documents does not conform to the indicative rules of rhetoric, topic, and logic. Consequently, we face the challenge of constructing models of lost documents of the Rabbinic canon, conforming to the models governing anomalous compositions. These follow other topical and rhetorical norms and therefore belong in other, different types of documents from those in which they now are located. These anomalous writings in topic, logic, or rhetoric (or all three) in theory reveal indicative characteristics other than the ones defining the compositions and composites of the documents in which they are now located.

In theory and in practice, the Aggadah and the Halakhah work out the logic of a single generative conviction. It is that one -- and only one -- God is engaged in creating the world and sustaining a perfect world-order based on justice, and Israel shares in the task. But how, in fact, do the Halakhah and the Aggadah join together to make such a coherent statement and what distinctive tasks do each undertake? To find the answer, this study asks, what theological statement does the Aggadah make upon an urgent systemic question of Rabbinic Judaism, and what corresponding theological statement does the Halakhah frame in addressing that same urgent issue? After offering a general theoretical statement of how the two categories of writing define themselves, the book sets forth three exercises of comparison and contrast. The upshot is this: Rabbinic Judaism defines the practical norms in belief and behavior of the community that undertakes responsibility in that labor. For doctrine, the Aggadah explores the dialectic of that generative conviction and the logic inherent in it. For deed, the Halakhah focuses upon the consequent relationships, within the contemplated social order, generated by that same dialect.

The result for the history of Judaism of a documentary reading of the Rabbinic canonical sources illustrates the working of that hypothesis. It is the first major outcome of that hypothesis, but there are other implications, and a variety of new problems emerge from time to time as the work proceeds. In the recent past, Neusner has continued to explore special problems of the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon. At the same time, Neusner notes, others join in the discussion that have produced important and ambitious analyses of the thesis and its implications. Here, Neuser has collected some of the more ambitious ventures into the hypothesis and its current recapitulations. Neusner begins with the article written by Professor William Scott Green for the Encyclopaedia Judaica second edition, as Green places the documentary hypothesis into the context of Neusner's entire oeuvre. Neuser then reproduces what he regards as the single most successful venture of the documentary hypothesis, contrasting between the Mishnah's and the Talmuds' programs for the social order of Israel, the doctrines of economics, politics, and philosophy set forth in those documents, respectively. Then come the two foci of discourse: Halakhah or normative law and Aggadah or normative theology. Professors Bernard Jackson of the University of Manchester, England and Mayer Gruber of Ben Gurion University of the Negev treat the Halakhic program that Neusner has devised, and Kevin Edgecomb of the University of California, Berkeley, has produced a remarkable summary of the theological system Neusner discerns in the Aggadic documents. Neusner concludes with a review of a book by a critic of the documentary hypothesis.