Jacob Neusner

Jacob Neusner (July 28, 1932 – October 8, 2016)[1] was an American academic scholar of Judaism. He was named as one of the most published authors in history, having written or edited more than 900 books.[1][2][3]

Jacob Neusner
Born(1932-07-28)July 28, 1932
Hartford, Connecticut
DiedOctober 8, 2016(2016-10-08) (aged 84)
Rhinebeck, New York
NationalityUnited States
Known forAcademic scholar of Judaism, with over 950 books
Academic work
Main interestsrabbinics

Early life and career

Neusner was born in Hartford, Connecticut to Reform Jewish parents.[1][3] He graduated from William H. Hall High School in West Hartford.[3] He then attended Harvard University, where he met Harry Austryn Wolfson and first encountered Jewish religious texts. After graduating from Harvard in 1953, Neusner spent a year at the University of Oxford.

Neusner then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained as a Conservative Jewish rabbi.[3] After spending a year at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he returned to the Jewish Theological Seminary and studied the Talmud under Saul Lieberman, who would later write a famous, and highly negative, critique of Neusner's translation of the Jerusalem Talmud.[4][1][3] He graduated in 1960 with a master's degree.[3] Later that year, he received a doctorate in religion from Columbia University.

Afterward, he briefly taught at Dartmouth College.[1] Neusner also held positions at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Brandeis University, Brown University, and the University of South Florida.

In 1994, Neusner began teaching at Bard College, working there until 2014.[3] After leaving Bard College, he founded the Institute for Advanced Theology with Bruce Chilton.[3]

He was a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He was the only scholar to have served on both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Scholarship

Rabbinic Judaism

Neusner's research centered on rabbinic Judaism of the Mishnaic and Talmudic eras. His work focused on bringing the study of rabbinical text into nonreligious educational institutions and treating them as non-religious documents.[3]

He was a pioneer in the application of "form criticism" approach to Rabbinic texts. Much of Neusner's work focused on deconstructing the prevailing approach that viewed Rabbinic Judaism as a single religious movement within which the various Rabbinic texts were produced. In contrast, Neusner viewed each rabbinic document as an individual piece of evidence that can only shed light on the more local Judaisms of such specific document's place of origin and the specific Judaism of the author. His 1981 book Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah is the classic statement of his work and the first of many comparable volumes on the other documents of the rabbinic canon.

Neusner's five-volume History of the Jews in Babylonia, published between 1965-1969, is said to be the first to consider the Babylonian Talmud in its Iranian context.[1] Neusner studied Persian and Middle Persian to do so.[1]

Neusner's method of studying documents individually without contextualizing them with other Rabbinic documents of the same era or genre led to a series of studies on the way Judaism creates categories of understanding, and how those categories relate to one another, even as they emerge diversely in discrete rabbinic documents.

Neusner, with his contemporaries, translated into English nearly the entire Rabbinic canon.[5]{{|date=July 2014}} This work has opened up many Rabbinic documents to scholars of other fields unfamiliar with Hebrew and Aramaic, within the academic study of religion, as well as in ancient history, culture and Near and Middle Eastern Studies. His translation technique utilized a "Harvard-outline" format which attempts to make the argument flow of Rabbinic texts easier to understand for those unfamiliar with Talmudic reasoning.

Neusner's enterprise was aimed at a humanistic and academic reading of classics of Judaism. Neusner was drawn from studying text to context. Treating a religion in its social setting, as something a group of people do together, rather than as a set of beliefs and opinions.

Theological works

In addition to his historical and textual works, Neusner also contributed to the area of Theology. He was the author of "Israel:" Judaism and its Social Metaphors and The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism.

Jewish studies

In addition to his scholarly activities, Neusner was involved in Jewish Studies and Religious Studies. Neusner saw Judaism as "not particular but exemplary, and Jews not as special but (merely) interesting."[3]

Interfaith work

Neusner wrote a number of works exploring the relationship of Judaism to other religions. His A Rabbi Talks with Jesus attempts to establish a religiously sound framework for Judaic-Christian interchange. It earned the praise of Pope Benedict XVI and the nickname "The Pope's Favorite Rabbi".[2] In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict referred to it as "by far the most important book for the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last decade."[1]

Neusner also collaborated with other scholars to produce comparisons of Judaism and Christianity, as in The Bible and Us: A Priest and A Rabbi Read Scripture Together. He collaborated with scholars of Islam, conceiving World Religions in America: An Introduction, which explores how diverse religions have developed in the distinctive American context.

Neusner composed numerous textbooks and general trade books on Judaism. The two best-known examples are The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism (Belmont 2003); and Judaism: An Introduction.

Throughout his career, Neusner established publication programs and series with various academic publishers. Through these series, through reference works that he conceived and edited, and through the conferences he sponsored, Neusner advanced the careers of dozens of younger scholars from across the globe.

Political views

Neusner called himself a Zionist, but also said "Israel’s flag is not mine. My homeland is America."[3] He was culturally conservative, and opposed feminism and affirmative action.[3]

Neusner was a signer of the conservative Christian Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship,[3] which expresses concern over the "unfounded or undue concerns" of environmentalists such as "fears of destructive manmade global warming, overpopulation, and rampant species loss".[6]

Critical assessment of Neusner's work

Neusner's original adoption of form criticism to the rabbinic texts proved highly influential both in North American and European studies of early Jewish and Christian texts. His later detailed studies of Mishnaic law lack the densely footnoted historical approach characteristic of his earlier work. As a result, these works, focusing on literary form, tend to ignore contemporary external sources and modern scholarship dealing with these issues. The irony was that his approach adopted the analytic methodology developed by Christian scholars for the New Testament, while denying there was any relationship between the (Judeo-)Christian corpus and rabbinic works, the latter being treated as isolates detached from their broader historical contexts.[7]

A number of scholars in his field of study were critical of this phase in his work .[8][9][4][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

Some were critical of his methodology, and asserted that many of his arguments were circular or attempts to prove "negative assumptions" from a lack of evidence,[8][9][10][12][13] while others concentrated on Neusner's reading and interpretations of Rabbinic texts, finding that his account was forced and inaccurate.[11][16][17]

Neusner's view that the Second Commonwealth Pharisees were a sectarian group centered on "table fellowship" and ritual food purity practices, and his lack of interest in wider Jewish values or social issues, has been criticized by E. P. Sanders,[13] Solomon Zeitlin[14] and Hyam Maccoby.[10]

Some scholars questioned Neusner's grasp of Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic. The most famous and biting criticism came from one of Neusner's former teachers, Saul Lieberman, about Neusner's translation of the Jerusalem Talmud. Lieberman wrote, in an article circulated before his death and then published posthumously: "...one begins to doubt the credibility of the translator [Neusner]. And indeed after a superficial perusal of the translation, the reader is stunned by the translator's ignorance of rabbinic Hebrew, of Aramaic grammar, and above all of the subject matter with which he deals."[18] Ending his review, Lieberman states "I conclude with a clear conscience: The right place for [Neusner's] English translation is the waste basket" while at the same time qualifying that "[i]n fairness to the translator I must add that his various essays on Jewish topics are meritorious. They abound in brilliant insights and intelligent questions." Lieberman highlights his criticism as being of Neusner's "ignorance of the original languages," which Lieberman claims even Neusner was originally "well aware of" inasmuch as he had previously relied on responsible English renderings of rabbinic sources, e.g., Soncino Press, before later choosing to create his own renderings of rabbinic texts.[19] Lieberman's views were seconded by Morton Smith, another teacher who resented Neusner's criticism of his views that Jesus was a homosexual magician.[20]

Neusner thought Lieberman's approach reflected the closed mentality of a yeshiva-based education that lacked familiarity with modern formal textual-critical techniques, and he eventually got round to replying to Lieberman's charges by writing in turn an equally scathing monograph entitled:Why There Never Was a Talmud of Caesarea: Saul Lieberman’s Mistakes (1994). In it he attributed to Lieberman 'obvious errors of method, blunders in logic' and argued that Lieberman’s work showed a systematic inability to accomplish critical research.[21]

Personal life

Neusner died on October 8, 2016 at the age of 84.[22]

References
  1. Magid, Shaul (2016-08-23). "Is It Time to Take the Most Published Man in Human History Seriously? Reassessing Jacob Neusner". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  2. Van Biema, David (May 24, 2007). "The Pope's Favorite Rabbi". TIME. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
  3. Grimes, William (2016-10-10). "Jacob Neusner, Judaic Scholar Who Forged Interfaith Bonds, Dies at 84". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  4. Saul Lieberman, "A Tragedy or a Comedy?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.104(2) April/June 1984 p. 315-319
  5. Grimes, William (October 11, 2016). "Jacob Neusner, Judaic Scholar Who Forged Interfaith Bonds, Dies at 84". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  6. "About". www.cornwallalliance.org. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
  7. Peter J. Tomson, Studies on Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries, Mohr Siebeck, 2019 ISBN 978-3-161-54619-8 pp.504-505.
  8. Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Jacob Neusner, Mishnah and Counter-Rabbinics," Conservative Judaism, Vol.37(1) Fall 1983 p. 48-63
  9. Craig A. Evans, "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context'," Journal of Biblical Literature, (JBL), 112/2 1993, p. 267-289
  10. Hyam Maccoby, "Jacob Neusner's Mishnah," Midstream, 30/5 May 1984 p. 24-32
  11. Hyam Maccoby, "Neusner and the Red Cow," Journal for the Study of Judaism (JSJ), 21 1990, p. 60-75.
  12. John C. Poirier, "Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah and Ventriloquism," The Jewish Quarterly Review, LXXXVII Nos.1-2, July–October 1996, p. 61-78
    • E.P.Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. Philadelphia, 1990.
  14. Solomon Zeitlin, "A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai. A Specimen of Modern Jewish Scholarship," Jewish Quarterly Review, 62, 1972, p. 145-155.
  15. Solomon Zeitlin, "Spurious Interpretations of Rabbinic Sources in the Studies of the Pharisees and Pharisaim," Jewish Quarterly Review, 62, 1974, p. 122-135.
  16. Evan M. Zuesse, "The Rabbinic Treatment of 'Others' (Criminals, Gentiles) according to Jacob Neusner," Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Vol. VII, 2004, p. 191-229
  17. Evan M. Zuesse, "Phenomenology of Judaism," in: Encyclopaedia of Judaism, ed. J. Neusner, A. Avery-Peck, and W.S. Green, 2nd Edition Leiden: Brill, 2005 Vol.III, p. 1968-1986. (Offers an alternative to Neusner's theory of "Judaisms.")
  18. Saul Lieberman, "A Tragedy or a Comedy?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.104(2) April/June 1984, p. 315.
  19. Saul Lieberman, "A Tragedy or a Comedy?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.104(2) April/June 1984, p. 319.
  20. Aaron W. Hughes, Jacob Neusner:An American Jewish Iconoclast, New York University Press ISBN 978-1-479-88585-5 2016 pp.61-62,193-196
  21. Hughes, ibid pp.192-193
  22. JNi.Media (2016-10-09). "Scholar Jacob Neusner Dead at 84". The Jewish Press. Retrieved 2016-12-08.

Further reading
  • Hughes, Aaron W. Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast. New York: NYU Press, 2016.
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