Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism: Principal theological categories

Front Cover
University Press of America, 2005 - Religion - 312 pages
Rabbinic theological language has made possible a vast range of discourse, on many subjects over long spans of recorded time and in diverse cultural settings. This theological dictionary defines the principal theological usages of Rabbinic Judaism as set forth in the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity, Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash-compilations. It systematically lays 1] the theological categories that are native to those writings; 2] cogent statements that can be made with them; 3] coherent propositions that those statements set forth and (within their own terms and framework) logically demonstrate as true and self-evident, both. Volume One of this dictionary covers vocabulary that permits the classification of religious knowledge and experience, and the organization and categorization of those data into intelligible and cogent sense-units. Volume Two shows how these classifications combine and recombine in sentences. We may deem these rules of theological discourse concerning religious experience to be the counterpart of syntax which words combine (or do not combine) with which other words, in what inflection or signaled relationship, and why. Volume Three shows how the theology accomplishes its goals of analysis, explanation, and anticipation in order to make sense of and impose meaning upon a subject. That marks the point at which constructive theology commences and systematic theology will find its language.

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Contents

VII
3
VIII
11
IX
19
X
23
XI
39
XII
55
XIII
65
XIV
91
XXIV
157
XXVI
167
XXVIII
171
XXIX
175
XXX
185
XXXI
189
XXXII
205
XXXIII
209

XV
105
XVI
107
XVII
117
XVIII
121
XIX
125
XX
135
XXI
139
XXII
143
XXIII
147
XXXIV
213
XXXV
217
XXXVI
223
XXXVII
227
XXXVIII
241
XXXIX
247
XL
251
XLI
259
Copyright

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About the author (2005)

Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Theology and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College. He is also a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, and Life Member of Clare Hall at Cambridge University, England.

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