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Rabbinic Judaism: Structure and System
Neusner (U. of South Florida) introduces and critiques four approaches to describing the structure, system, and Western context of formative rabbinic Judaism -- casting his lot with the nominalist, harmonistic, theological, and historical. Indexed by biblical and Talmudic reference as well as subject.
241 pages, Paperback
First published December 20, 1995
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About the author
Jacob Neusner
1,224 books58 followersBorn in Hartford, Connecticut, Neusner was educated at Harvard University, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (where he received rabbinic ordination), the University of Oxford, and Columbia University.
Neusner is often celebrated as one of the most published authors in history (he has written or edited more than 950 books.)Since 1994, he taught at Bard College. He also taught at Columbia University, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Brandeis University, Dartmouth College, Brown University, and the University of South Florida.
Neusner was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He is the only scholar to have served on both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. He also received scores of academic awards, honorific and otherwise.
Neusner is often celebrated as one of the most published authors in history (he has written or edited more than 950 books.)Since 1994, he taught at Bard College. He also taught at Columbia University, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Brandeis University, Dartmouth College, Brown University, and the University of South Florida.
Neusner was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He is the only scholar to have served on both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. He also received scores of academic awards, honorific and otherwise.
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January 18, 2026
A FAMED SCHOLAR’S HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THE MISHNAH AND RABBINIC TRADITION
Jacob Neusner (1932-2016) was one of the most famous American Jewish scholars. He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, “This book introduces the structure and the functioning system of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age. The audience for this book comprises readers who wish to know the formative history of the Judaism that from antiquity to our own day has predominated: How did Rabbinic Judaism come into being? What were its traits of mind and heart, where and why were they worked out, and what problems did its founders propose to solve?
“Under discussion is the particular religious system set forth by the sages or ‘rabbis’ who flourished in the first six centuries CE. This same Judaism is called ‘talmudic,’ because its main statement is set forth by the Talmud of Babylonia… It is further known as ‘classical’ or ‘normative,’ by reason of its definitive status through the history of Judaism. The history and the description and analysis of its structure and system derive from the analysis of the traits of the documents of rabbinic literature… Hence this is a documentary history of Rabbinic Judaism.”
He explains, “The Mishnah certainly is the first document of Rabbinic Judaism. Formally, it stands at the center of the system, since the principal subsequent rabbinic documents, the Talmuds, lay themselves out as if they were exegeses of Mishnah…” (Pg. 22)
He notes, “The framers of the Mishnah nowhere claimed, implicitly or explicitly, that what they had written forms part of the Torah, enjoys the status of God’s revelation to Moses at Sinai, or even systematically carries forward secondary exposition and application of what Moses wrote down in the wilderness. Later on, two hundred years beyond the closure of the Mishnah, the need to explain the standing and origin of the Mishnah led some to posit two things. First, God’s revelation of the Torah at Sinai encompassed the Mishnah as much as Scripture. Second, the Mishnah was handed on through oral formulation and oral transmission from Sinai to the framers of the document as we have it. These two convictions, fully exposed in the 9th century letter of Sherira, in fact emerge from the references of both Talmuds to the dual Torah. One part is writing. The other was oral and now is the Mishnah. As for the Mishnah itself, however, it contains not a hint that anyone has heard any such tale. The earliest apologists of the Mishnah… know nothing of the fully realized myth of the dual Torah of Sinai.” (Pg. 47)
He states, “The Mishnah is held in the Talmud of the Land to be equivalent to Scripture… But the Mishnah is not called Torah. The Yerushalem’s sages drew the outlines of the final solution to the problem of defining the Torah, distinguishing between the Torah in writing and the Torah in the medium of memory, further bearing the implication that the Mishnah formed part of that other Torah, the oral one.” (Pg. 54)
He says of the thought of the Christian apostle Paul, “In his representation of ‘Israel,’ Paul presents us with a metaphor for which, in the documents of the Judaism of the dual Torah, there is no counterpart in this context. ‘Israel’ compared to an olive tree, standing for ‘Israel’ encompassing Gentiles who believe but also Jews by birth who do not believe, ‘Israel’ standing for the elect and those saved by faith and therefore by grace---these … metaphors and definitions form a coherent and simple picture when we see them … as part of a larger whole of Paul’s entire system. For the issue of ‘Israel’ for Paul forms a detail of a system centered upon a case in favor of salvation through Christ and faith in him alone, even without keeping the rules of the Torah…. For Paul, ‘Israel’ is ‘the circumcised nation’ and an ‘Israel’ is a circumcised male.” (Pg. 93)
He outlines, “the two principal stages in the formation of Rabbinic Judaism were marked by two massive crises, each presenting to sages an urgent question. The first of the two, the collapse, with the defeat of Bar Kokhba, of the inherited, prophetic paradigm of exile and return, yielded the urgent question of chaos and order. The second, the political triumph of ancient Israel’s other heir, Christianity, provoked the urgent question of the authenticity of the ‘Israel’ of our sages of blessed memory. This question required sages to explain history, formulate a doctrine of emotions, and define the future for which Israel could and should wait in patience and hope.” (Pg. 107)
Of the Palestinian/Yerushalmi Talmud, he states, “We find materials that fall entirely outside the framework of historical doctrine established within the Mishnah. So the Yerushalmi contains an expanded view of the range of human life encompassed to begin with by the conception of history.” (Pg. 116)
He observes, “The Mishnah finds little of consequence to say about the Messiah as savior of Israel, one particular person at one time, but manages to set forth its system’s teleology without appeal to eschatology in any form. For the Mishnah, ‘Messiah’ is a category of priest or general. The Messiah theme proved marginal to the system’s program. By about 400 CE, by contrast, a system of Judaism emerged in the pages of the Talmud of the Land of Israel in which the Mishnah as foundation document would be asked to support a structure at best continuous with, but in no way fully defined by the outlines of the Mishnah itself… we ask the Mishnah to answer the questions at hand. What of the Messiah? When will he come? To whom, in Israel, will he come? And what must, or can, we do while we wait to hasten his coming?… Answering these questions out of the resources of the Mishnah is not possible… the Mishnah presents no large view of history, It contains no reflection whatever on the nature and meaning of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, an event that surfaces only in connection with some changes in the law explained as resulting from the end of the cult. The Mishnah pays no attention to the matter of the end time. The word ‘salvation’ is rare, ‘sanctification’ commonplace. More strikingly, the framers of the Mishnah are virtually silent on the teleology of the system; they never tell us why we should do what the Mishnah tells us, let alone explain what will happen if we do… However… their document manages to provide an immense account of Israel’s life without explicitly telling us about such matters. The Mishnah sets forth the decline of generations, in which the destruction of the Temple and the death of great sages mark the movement of time and impart to an age the general rules that govern life therein.” (Pg. 145)
He states, “The Mishnah’s system, whole and complete, has remained reticent on the entire Messiah theme. By contrast, our Talmud finds ample place for a rich collection of statements on the Messianic theme. What this means is that, between the conclusion of the Mishnah and the closure of the Talmud, room had been found for the messianic hope, expressed in images not revised to confirm to the definitive and distinctive traits of the Talmud itself. We do not have to argue that the stunning success of Christ (in the Christians’ views) made the issue urgent for Jews. The issue has never lost its urgency, except in the tiny circle of philosophers who, in the system of the Mishnah, reduced the latter to a minor detail of taxonomy. Yet, in that exercise, the Mishnah’s sages confronted a considerable social problem, one that faced the 4th century authorities as well.” (Pg. 163)
He says, “From the time of its closure to the present, this [Babylonian] Talmud has served as the summa of Rabbinic Judaism. The Judaic systems that succeeded from then to now have referred back to the Bavli as authoritative; formulated their statements in relationship to the Bavli, often in the guise of commentaries or secondary expositions of statements made in it; and taken over the Bavli as the backbone for the law and culture that these continuator systems and successor systems proposed to set forth… we have to ask ourselves, why among all the documents of Rabbinic Judaism did the Bavli gain priority, indeed utter hegemony?… The Bavli presents the law, now in the philosophical sense of the abstract issues of theory, the principles at play far beneath the surface of detailed discussion, the law behind the laws.” (Pg. 210-211)
He concludes, “Israel kept the faith, abided by the covenant, lived in stout hope and perfect trust in God. That fact defines the power of this Judaism, this dual Torah. The act of defiance of fate in the certainty of faith in God’s ultimate act of grace is the one thing God cannot have commanded at Sinai. God can have said, and many times the Torah did say, ‘Serve me,’ but God could only ask, but not compel: the gifts of the heart, love and trust, for which the loving God yearns, which only the much-loved Israel can yield freely, of its own volition. This is what Israel, in response to Sinai, willingly gave, and by its loyal persistence in its life as Israel, whether in the Land or in the patient exile, freely gives today. Then the time has come to discover, that same dual Torah, the God that speaks and so is made manifest. Out of the facts of history and philosophy, but also into the far and distant spaces beyond history and philosophy, theology calls.” (Pg. 236)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the historical development of Judaism.
Jacob Neusner (1932-2016) was one of the most famous American Jewish scholars. He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, “This book introduces the structure and the functioning system of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age. The audience for this book comprises readers who wish to know the formative history of the Judaism that from antiquity to our own day has predominated: How did Rabbinic Judaism come into being? What were its traits of mind and heart, where and why were they worked out, and what problems did its founders propose to solve?
“Under discussion is the particular religious system set forth by the sages or ‘rabbis’ who flourished in the first six centuries CE. This same Judaism is called ‘talmudic,’ because its main statement is set forth by the Talmud of Babylonia… It is further known as ‘classical’ or ‘normative,’ by reason of its definitive status through the history of Judaism. The history and the description and analysis of its structure and system derive from the analysis of the traits of the documents of rabbinic literature… Hence this is a documentary history of Rabbinic Judaism.”
He explains, “The Mishnah certainly is the first document of Rabbinic Judaism. Formally, it stands at the center of the system, since the principal subsequent rabbinic documents, the Talmuds, lay themselves out as if they were exegeses of Mishnah…” (Pg. 22)
He notes, “The framers of the Mishnah nowhere claimed, implicitly or explicitly, that what they had written forms part of the Torah, enjoys the status of God’s revelation to Moses at Sinai, or even systematically carries forward secondary exposition and application of what Moses wrote down in the wilderness. Later on, two hundred years beyond the closure of the Mishnah, the need to explain the standing and origin of the Mishnah led some to posit two things. First, God’s revelation of the Torah at Sinai encompassed the Mishnah as much as Scripture. Second, the Mishnah was handed on through oral formulation and oral transmission from Sinai to the framers of the document as we have it. These two convictions, fully exposed in the 9th century letter of Sherira, in fact emerge from the references of both Talmuds to the dual Torah. One part is writing. The other was oral and now is the Mishnah. As for the Mishnah itself, however, it contains not a hint that anyone has heard any such tale. The earliest apologists of the Mishnah… know nothing of the fully realized myth of the dual Torah of Sinai.” (Pg. 47)
He states, “The Mishnah is held in the Talmud of the Land to be equivalent to Scripture… But the Mishnah is not called Torah. The Yerushalem’s sages drew the outlines of the final solution to the problem of defining the Torah, distinguishing between the Torah in writing and the Torah in the medium of memory, further bearing the implication that the Mishnah formed part of that other Torah, the oral one.” (Pg. 54)
He says of the thought of the Christian apostle Paul, “In his representation of ‘Israel,’ Paul presents us with a metaphor for which, in the documents of the Judaism of the dual Torah, there is no counterpart in this context. ‘Israel’ compared to an olive tree, standing for ‘Israel’ encompassing Gentiles who believe but also Jews by birth who do not believe, ‘Israel’ standing for the elect and those saved by faith and therefore by grace---these … metaphors and definitions form a coherent and simple picture when we see them … as part of a larger whole of Paul’s entire system. For the issue of ‘Israel’ for Paul forms a detail of a system centered upon a case in favor of salvation through Christ and faith in him alone, even without keeping the rules of the Torah…. For Paul, ‘Israel’ is ‘the circumcised nation’ and an ‘Israel’ is a circumcised male.” (Pg. 93)
He outlines, “the two principal stages in the formation of Rabbinic Judaism were marked by two massive crises, each presenting to sages an urgent question. The first of the two, the collapse, with the defeat of Bar Kokhba, of the inherited, prophetic paradigm of exile and return, yielded the urgent question of chaos and order. The second, the political triumph of ancient Israel’s other heir, Christianity, provoked the urgent question of the authenticity of the ‘Israel’ of our sages of blessed memory. This question required sages to explain history, formulate a doctrine of emotions, and define the future for which Israel could and should wait in patience and hope.” (Pg. 107)
Of the Palestinian/Yerushalmi Talmud, he states, “We find materials that fall entirely outside the framework of historical doctrine established within the Mishnah. So the Yerushalmi contains an expanded view of the range of human life encompassed to begin with by the conception of history.” (Pg. 116)
He observes, “The Mishnah finds little of consequence to say about the Messiah as savior of Israel, one particular person at one time, but manages to set forth its system’s teleology without appeal to eschatology in any form. For the Mishnah, ‘Messiah’ is a category of priest or general. The Messiah theme proved marginal to the system’s program. By about 400 CE, by contrast, a system of Judaism emerged in the pages of the Talmud of the Land of Israel in which the Mishnah as foundation document would be asked to support a structure at best continuous with, but in no way fully defined by the outlines of the Mishnah itself… we ask the Mishnah to answer the questions at hand. What of the Messiah? When will he come? To whom, in Israel, will he come? And what must, or can, we do while we wait to hasten his coming?… Answering these questions out of the resources of the Mishnah is not possible… the Mishnah presents no large view of history, It contains no reflection whatever on the nature and meaning of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, an event that surfaces only in connection with some changes in the law explained as resulting from the end of the cult. The Mishnah pays no attention to the matter of the end time. The word ‘salvation’ is rare, ‘sanctification’ commonplace. More strikingly, the framers of the Mishnah are virtually silent on the teleology of the system; they never tell us why we should do what the Mishnah tells us, let alone explain what will happen if we do… However… their document manages to provide an immense account of Israel’s life without explicitly telling us about such matters. The Mishnah sets forth the decline of generations, in which the destruction of the Temple and the death of great sages mark the movement of time and impart to an age the general rules that govern life therein.” (Pg. 145)
He states, “The Mishnah’s system, whole and complete, has remained reticent on the entire Messiah theme. By contrast, our Talmud finds ample place for a rich collection of statements on the Messianic theme. What this means is that, between the conclusion of the Mishnah and the closure of the Talmud, room had been found for the messianic hope, expressed in images not revised to confirm to the definitive and distinctive traits of the Talmud itself. We do not have to argue that the stunning success of Christ (in the Christians’ views) made the issue urgent for Jews. The issue has never lost its urgency, except in the tiny circle of philosophers who, in the system of the Mishnah, reduced the latter to a minor detail of taxonomy. Yet, in that exercise, the Mishnah’s sages confronted a considerable social problem, one that faced the 4th century authorities as well.” (Pg. 163)
He says, “From the time of its closure to the present, this [Babylonian] Talmud has served as the summa of Rabbinic Judaism. The Judaic systems that succeeded from then to now have referred back to the Bavli as authoritative; formulated their statements in relationship to the Bavli, often in the guise of commentaries or secondary expositions of statements made in it; and taken over the Bavli as the backbone for the law and culture that these continuator systems and successor systems proposed to set forth… we have to ask ourselves, why among all the documents of Rabbinic Judaism did the Bavli gain priority, indeed utter hegemony?… The Bavli presents the law, now in the philosophical sense of the abstract issues of theory, the principles at play far beneath the surface of detailed discussion, the law behind the laws.” (Pg. 210-211)
He concludes, “Israel kept the faith, abided by the covenant, lived in stout hope and perfect trust in God. That fact defines the power of this Judaism, this dual Torah. The act of defiance of fate in the certainty of faith in God’s ultimate act of grace is the one thing God cannot have commanded at Sinai. God can have said, and many times the Torah did say, ‘Serve me,’ but God could only ask, but not compel: the gifts of the heart, love and trust, for which the loving God yearns, which only the much-loved Israel can yield freely, of its own volition. This is what Israel, in response to Sinai, willingly gave, and by its loyal persistence in its life as Israel, whether in the Land or in the patient exile, freely gives today. Then the time has come to discover, that same dual Torah, the God that speaks and so is made manifest. Out of the facts of history and philosophy, but also into the far and distant spaces beyond history and philosophy, theology calls.” (Pg. 236)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the historical development of Judaism.
December 22, 2017
It's hard to review this book. As a Christian pastor trying to learn more about rabbinic Judaism, I found this book both helpful and frustrating. Helpful because Neusner certainly covers a range of historical and theological Judaisms, but frustrating because the book assumes some previous engagement and education.
Also frustrating because this book is essentially just a compilation of previous essays or summaries of previous books. If I had known that, I may have just purchased one or two of those other books and gotten a more detailed and thorough understanding of parts of rabbinic Judaism. Even so, I did learn quite a bit and for that, I have to give at least three stars.
Also frustrating because this book is essentially just a compilation of previous essays or summaries of previous books. If I had known that, I may have just purchased one or two of those other books and gotten a more detailed and thorough understanding of parts of rabbinic Judaism. Even so, I did learn quite a bit and for that, I have to give at least three stars.
January 11, 2008
One of the most difficult books I have read. Picked up, put down many times, took me almost 2 years to read. The last few chapters, finally made things clear & understandable. It has great insights into Rabbinics and shows the differences between Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity & there are sizeable. A great book worth wading through.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews