Jacob Neusner THE MISHNAH An Introduction 1994 Paperback ARONSON Pub.

Description: Book in great shape like new Preface In the age beyond catastrophe, the problem is to reorder a world off course and adrift, to gain reorientation for an age in which the sun has come out after the night and the fog. Having survived the loss of roots in the Jewry of Europe, we live in one such age. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 c.. and the defeat in a war fought to reconstruct the Temple in 132-135 c.E., three generations later, the authorship of the Mishnah lived in an earlier one. They built a world that defied defeat and denied distasteful facts. For the Mishnah stands in contrast with the world to which it speaks. Its message is one of small achievements and modest hope. It means to defy a world of large disorders and immodest demands. The heirs of heroes build an unheroic folk in the new and ordinary age. The writing of survivors, the Mishnah is a document of imagination and fantasy, describing out of the shards and remnants of reality how things are, meaning how they are supposed to be, but, in larger measure, building social being out of beams of hope. The Mishnah tells us a bit about how things were, but everything about how a small group of men wanted things to be. The document is orderly, repetitious, careful in both language and message. It is small-minded, picayune, obvious, dull, routine-everything its age was not. The Mish-nah's message is that what a person wants matters in important ways. It states that message to an Israelite world after massive defeat and disas-ter, a world that can no longer shape affairs in any important way. The Mishnah, therefore, speaks to people who by no means will the way things are now. It lays down a practical judgment upon, and in favor of, the imagination and will to reshape reality, regain a system, reestablish that order upon which trustworthy existence is to be built. "Jacob Neusner, one of the world's foremost Mishnaic scholars, explores the logical and literary patterns to be discerned in the complete Mishnaic text. His introduction sums up the goal he sets for himself: 'How do you read a book that does not identity its author, tell you where it comes from, or explain why it was writ-ten—a book without a preface? And how do you identify a book with neither a beginning nor end, lacking the table of contents and title? The answer is you just begin and let the author of the book lead you by paying attention to the information that the author does give, to the signals that the writer sets out.' "Neusner points out that study of the Mishnah, as the basis of the Talmud, is essential to an understanding of Judaism. He provides an outline of the structural way of understanding Mishnah, and adduces Mishnayot from many tractates. He cites Baba Batra and Baba Mesia, the tractates dealing with economy and damages, Yebamot and Kiddushin on women and caste, and others dealing with the Mishnah's theological and philosophical vision, and its relationship to Torah. Neusner provides an outline for each mish-nah he discusses and carefully points out recurring structures and language use." — The Jerusalem Post Magazine "In this basic introduction, the author introduces the Mishnah in a way that is challenging to both the newcomer and the sophisticated reader. Neusner describes how the Mishnah should be read and takes special care to delineate how the thinking of second-century Jewish sages applies to our own time. In addition to giving us a thorough exploration of the Mishnah's language, contents, organi-zation, and inner logic, Neusner also provides us with a broad understanding of how it communicates its own worldview—its vision of both the concrete and spiritual worlds." - Menorah About the Author Jacob Neusner is distinguished research professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

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