Judaism and Story: The Evidence of The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan

Couverture
University of Chicago Press, 15 sept. 1992 - 241 pages
In this close analysis of The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, a sixth-century commentary on the Mishnah-tractate The Fathers (Avot), Jacob Neusner considers the way in which the story, as a distinctive type of narrative, entered the canonical writings of Judaism. The final installment in Neusner's cycle of analyses of the major texts of the Judaic canon, Judaism and Story shows that stories about sages exist in far greater proportion in The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan than in any of the other principal writings in the canon of Judaism of late antiquity. Neusner's detailed comparison of The Fathers and The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan demonstrates the transmission and elaboration of these stories and shows how these processes incorporated the newer view of the sage as a supernatural figure and of the eschatological character of Judaic teleology. These distinctions, as Neusner describes them, mark a shift in Jewish orientation to world history.

Judaism and Story documents a chapter of rabbinic tradition that explored the possibility of historical orientation by means of stories. As Neusner demonstrates, this experiment with narrative went beyond the borders of rabbinic preoccupation with rhetorical argumentation focused on the explication of the Torah. The sage story moved in the direction of biography, but without allowing biography to emerge. This development, in Neusner's account, parallels the movement from epistle to Gospel in early Christianity and thus has broad implications for the history of religions.
 

Table des matières

The Forms of the Fathers and of The Fathers
14
The Topical Program of The Fathers and
30
Part
41
The SageStory in Particular
75
The Stories in The Fathers
115
Its Function in The Fathers According to Rabbi
138
Judaism and Story
156
Comparing The Fathers to The Fathers
173
The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan Chapters XXIVXXX
200
The Repertoire of Formal Rhetoric of The Fathers According
209
Topics Treated in The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan and Not
221
Abbreviations
229
General Index
239
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À propos de l'auteur (1992)

Jacob Neusner, 1932-2016, was one of the world's foremost scholars of Jewish rabbinical texts. He taught at Dartmouth College, Brown University, the University of South Florida, and Bard College. He was author or editor of more than 900 books for students, scholars, and general readers in Judaism, comparative religion, and the history and analysis of rabbinic texts. He was general editor of The Talmud of the Land of Israel, published in thirty-five volumes by the University of Chicago Press.

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