The present volume is the eleventh in the series of the Jerusalem Talmud, the first in a three volume edition, translation, and commentary of the Fourth Order Neziqin. The thirty chapters of Neziqin that deal with most aspects of Civil Law are usually divided into three parts, or “gates”, known as the First Gate, Bava qamma, the Middle Gate, Bava mesi‘a, and the Last Gate, Bava batra. In contrast to the Babylonian Talmud, the treatment in the Jerusalem Talmud is fragmentary. The reason for this is a matter of controversy, discussed in the Introduction to the Tractate.

The academic study of Judaism requires a systematic inquiry into the history, literature, and religion—and eventually the theology—as revealed in the historical documents themselves. Under this premise, Three Questions of Formative Judaism encounters the canonical writings of Judaism in the context of their creation at a certain time and place. How something is said thus becomes as important as what is said. Bringing nearly fifty years of research to bear on these fundamental questions, Jacob Neusner challenges his readers to face the difficult, often unasked or neglected questions about the nature, background, and purposes of Rabbinic Judaism and rewards them with an enriched understanding and a stronger foundation for tackling the even more elusive questions concerning the theology of formative Judaism. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Volume 12 in the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Tractates Sanhedrin and Makkot belong together as one tractate, covering procedural law for panels of arbitration, communal rabbinic courts (in bare outline) and an elaborate construction of hypothetical criminal courts supposedly independent of the king’s administration. Tractate Horaiot, an elaboration of Lev. 4:1–26, defines the roles of High Priest, rabbinate, and prince in a Commonwealth strictly following biblical rules.

Understanding the religious perspectives of the Mishnah starts with asking three questions. First, what is the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture, or “oral torah” to “written torah,” for understanding the religion of Judaism? Second, what is the relationship between religious ideas and the world in which those ideas emerged? Third, what is the formal religious significance of the language of the Mishnah? These questions are posed with regard to a Judaism that existed from just prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. until around 200 C.E. and assumes as well the groundwork of Neusner’s earlier volume The Mishnah: Social Perspectives. In the present volume, Neusner condenses years of research on these questions and offers a clear and thorough analysis through a single lens. He looks closely at how the Halakhah of the Mishnah relates to the events prior to the Mishnah’s writing (e.g., the destruction of the Temple, ca. 70 C.E., and the Bar Kokhba War, ca. 135 C.E.), through the reconstruction following Bar Kokhba until the close of the Mishnah (ca. 200 C.E.). Readers also profit from a thorough sociolinguistic explication of the rhetorical forms of the Mishnah in the light of the social context of that time. The religious perspectives of the Mishnah do not simply record the rules and regulations of bygone times; rather, they mirror the way of life and the social and religious history of Judaism. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

The central theme of Making God s Word Work is that, throughout the rules and norms of the Mishnah, and beneath their surface, is a governing theological pattern which defines the detail relating to social conduct and brings to the fore a coherent system of analysis, thought, and argument.

Describes the Second Temple period (the first few centuries before and after the common era) and its influence on the development of Rabbinic Judaism, which is the foundation for all of modern Judaism.