Reading Neusner (or at least wanting to)

Kevin Edgecomb of Biblicalia , in response to my claim to want to read everything by Neusner, has kindly shared some of his wisdom on how best to approach this prolific scholar. I thought the information would be of general interest so I'm posting them here, along with my response (in which, as always, I manage to work in a reference to Childs).

Kevin:

I'd recommend starting with his Introduction to Rabbinic Literature, which is part of the Anchor Bible Reference Library (or, now, the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library). But I would also have to recommend the book I've been going through, The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God. I think it would be a very helpful thing to read in order to experience a kind of selective immersion into the literature guided by someone so very familiar with it. For information on structure, dates, and so on of the Rabbinic literature, you simply have to have Guenter Stemberger's Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (the English translation by Markus Bockmuehl is slightly updated since Stemberger's last German edition, as I recall).

Christian scholars simply don't get the in-depth exposure to the Rabbinic literature that they should have. Just look at the various ways so many (ab)use the word midrash as an example. Christian interaction with the Rabbinic literature, the documents of the Oral Torah, seems always to have been according to a Christian agenda, disallowing the documents to speak for themselves, often at best serving as simply a mine for interesting tidbits stripped of context, used in Christian historical or exegetical programs. The Oral Torah must be understood on its own terms, root and branch, and only then can a fruitful comparison begin to be attempted. This is a project only now in its beginnings.

Me

you are a legend. Thank you so much! I agree with you on the issue of midrash. Brevard Childs (the hero of this blog) shared a flat with him for a while when they were both students and I think Neusner had a big impact on him, even though they were to later challenge each other on the significance of "canon." Childs has often critiqued the way that midrash has been indiscriminately used in Old Testament studies (esp. in his articles "Midrash in the OT" and "Retrospective reading of OT prophets").

Update: Jacob Neusner has contacted me and kindly given me the following advice:

If you want to know the books of mine that I most value, I would say JUDAISM: THE EVIDENCE OF THE MISHNAH, THE TRANSFORMATION OF JIUDAISM: FROM PHILOSOPHY TO RELIGION; and THEOLOGY OF THE ORAL TORAH. These cover my work in literature, history, and theology.

Mishna as revelation

“When we say say a blessing before and after we read the Torah in the synagogue, we say ... נתֵן הַתּוֹרה—who gives the Torah—meaning here and now. By our presence we receive the Torah, here and now. This book [i.e. Neusner's] is meant to help you receive and accept, make use of, the Torah in the concrete and everyday world you know: It is not about the past and in no way concerns a book which came down to us from a particular place or time in history. It is about God's revelation which God gives day by day, and which, as I said, we receive day by day. If Mishnah is not that, if Mishnah merely is a work out of “Jewish history,” then Mishnah is not worth your time and attention. For what makes all the effort required to master this difficult book worthwhile is not that it is a monument to a dead past, but that it is an urgent challenge to the living present, to you and me” (Jacob Neusner, Learn Mishnah, Preface).

I find his belief in the ongoing, living dimension of torah as revelation interesting. I wonder how this relates to Barth's understanding of "the three times of the Word"?

This focus on the text as guide for the present, as a kind of pragmatic manual perhaps, carries a different nuance to the Christian approach to the text. Bob MacDonald summarizes it nicely:

Torah is not text but engagement with the one to who the text points. The medium is neither the messenger nor the source of the message.

Though see my qualification of this here.

Update: I've just noticed that Kevin Edgecomb of Biblicalia has been posting an incredibly detailed review of Neusner's theology of the oral torah. If I ever find the time to study Judaism in detail, I think I will simply get hold of all of Neusner's works and read them through. There's a lot to be said for choosing one scholar as an orientation point for grappling with a complex subject.

P.S. Neusner was Childs' roomate for a while in Yale, I believe, and had an impact on Childs' understanding of Judaism.