Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah, and Ventriloquism
Jacob Neusner's ideas on the Mishnah have already been roundly criticized. Nevertheless many of Neusner's extraordinary ideas still need to be examined. This response to Neusner's reading of the Mishnah raises questions in four areas: (1) his treatment of all documents as manifestos t...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Penn Press
1996
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| In: |
The Jewish quarterly review
Year: 1996, Volume: 87, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 61-78 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Jacob Neusner's ideas on the Mishnah have already been roundly criticized. Nevertheless many of Neusner's extraordinary ideas still need to be examined. This response to Neusner's reading of the Mishnah raises questions in four areas: (1) his treatment of all documents as manifestos that in some way disclose their authors' self-definitions; (2) his adduction of the Mishnah's ritual map as a datum that helps locate it among the philosophies of the ancient world, as if philosophies of sacred space were the exception and not the rule (thus typifying the Mishnah through what does not distinguish it, since the concept of "sacred ontology" typified the Mediterranean world); (3) his use of the Mishnah's "ahistorical" language (including its choice of verb tense) as evidence that the Mishnah has no interest in history (thus again typifying the Mishnah through what does not distinguish it, in that it is not present at all); and (4) his unprofessed but evident use of structuralist analysis to use conclusions about the Mishnah's "ahistorical" language as a corroboration and refinement of his "discovery" of the Mishnah's "sacred ontology." He ends up talking about an anti-eschatological Judaism that hierarchizes the cosmos in the same way as Aristotle. These unusual results are based not so much upon the data of the Mishnah as upon Neusner's eisegetical reading of the text. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-0604 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Jewish quarterly review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1455217 |