Making God's Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah

✍ Scribed by Jacob Neusner

• Publisher: Continuum (Bloomsbury Academic)
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 378
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

"The Mishnah is the crown jewel of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age," so says the distinguished author of this book. Initiated in the aftermath of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and developed and amplified over the next five centuries, the Mishnah is the product of an age of calamity giving birth to a renewed search for recovery. As such, it speaks to every age, but to none more particularly and clearly than to our own which has witnessed the destruction wrought by the Shoah and the return to the land of Israel.

Nevertheless, the Mishnah does not explicitly address the agenda of the contemporary world. To reduce the social theology and legal system of the Mishnah to a specific historical setting would be to distort its religious mission which, as Jacob Neusner affirms, is to influence while transcending the world of time and circumstance.

The Mishnah is not a series of niggling precepts, as its misinterpreters contend, but neither is it simply a source of interesting information or of legal directives for shaping everyday life. Rather, 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 both defines the detail relating to social conduct as well as brings to the fore a coherent system of analysis, thought, and argumen. "The Mishnah is a law code in form, a work of philosophy and theology in substance, and a work of natural history in execution. Its medium of expression and mode of thinking mark it as close to unique among philosophical and theological writings."

Making God's Word Work will be of interest not only to students of Judaica or those who practice Judaism, but also to students of the history of religions and of comparative religion. Additionally, the book will fascinate philosophers, theologians, literary critics, and humanists in general for its remarkable insights into a way of discursive analysis and rigorous argumentation that is without parallel among the foundational documents of the great world religions.

✦ Table of Contents

Introduction

The Mishnah in Religious Context
1. Making God's Word Work: Tractate Abot

Monotheism and Justice
2. God's Justice and the Ordeal of the Accused Wife: Tractate Sotah
3. God's Justice: Israel and the Gentiles. Tractates Sanhedrin-Makkot and Abodah Zarah

Corporate Israel and the Individual Israelite
4. Corporate Israel as a Moral Entity: Tractates Sheqalim and Bikkurim
5. Personal Autonomy: Tractates Arakhin and Nedarim-Nazir
6. Ownership and Possession: Tractates Shebiˁit and Shabbat-Erubin
7. The Norm and the Exception: Tractates Demaˁi and Tohorot
8. When Israelites Deliberately Violate the Norms: Tractates Sanhedrin-Makkot Keritot, and Horayot

Israel: The Family and the Household
9. The Israelite Family: Tractates Qiddushin, Ketubot, Sotah, Gittin, and Yebamot
10. The Israelite Household: Responsibility and Intentionality. Tractates Baba Qamma and Baba Mesia (Chapters 1-5)
11. The Israelite Household: When Intention Does Not Count. Tractates Baba Mesia (Chapters 6-10) and Baba Batra

God's Presence in Israel's Social Order
12. God's Perpetual Presence in Israelite Contention: The Oath. Tractate Shebuˁot
13. God the Landlord, Israel the Tenant. God the Landlord: Tractates Shebiˁit, ˁOrlah, and Kilayim; Israel the Tenant: Tractates Maˁaserot and Hallah-Makhshirin
14. Eating Together: Israel's Presence in God's House. Tractates Hagigah, Maˁaser Sheni, and Bikkurim (Again)
15. Dwelling Together: God's Presence in the Israelite Household. Tractates Pesahim, Sukkah, and Yoma

Israel in God's Context
16. God and the Individual Israelite: Tractate Hullin
17. Israel in History and in Eternity: The Messiah: Tractates Rosh Hashanah, Taˁanit, Zebahim, and Sotah

The Mishnah as Model
18. How the Topical, Rhetorical and Logical Media of the Mishnah Convey its Theological Message
19. The Mishnah in Context: Making God's Word Work Today

An Afterword