Theology Comes Home: The Role of Theology in the Academic Study of Religion and the Role of Theology of Judaism in the Academic Study of Judaism

Religion (2001) 31, 1–18 doi:10.1006/reli.2000.0307, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Theology Comes Home: The Role of Theology in the Academic Study of Religion and the Role of Theology of Judaism in the Academic Study of Judaism* J N* In the academic setting, theology examines the intellectual structure and system of a corpus of religious writings and rites. The study of religion analyses the data of religion, the texts in words and artifacts. Theology articulates the systematic consequences of those facts, the generative logic. The study of theology is particular to the study of a given religious tradition; philosophy of religion asks questions concerning religious truth claims in general. Theology of Judaism seeks evidence of the interior logic that imparts coherence to entire structure of distinct systems of that religion adumbrated in the written documents of Judaism(s). In the context of a Judaic system, that requires the identification of norms that all authorities within that system affirm.  2001 Academic Press

By theology I mean systematic thinking about the data of a religion, with special reference to the propositions of a religion concrning what we know about matters of heaven and of the heart. Theology engages in system-building out of the inchoate convictions of a religion. It promises an intellectual adventure of critical construction, an inquiry into the generative, governing logic of facts that we think cohere. The academic study of theology returns to the campus a long-time presence, one absent in the recent past from the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum. The advent of a discipline unfamiliar to the contemporary academy requires a definition and an explanation. The new subject has to present itself, define its facts, give the questions to be addressed to those facts and state what is at stake in the answers. The newcomer has, further, to explain why the host body should accord a warm welcome to a new presence in the common intellect of learning. And so it is with theology, and so it is with the theology of Judaism as exemplary of the larger discipline. Ingolf U. Dalferth, the German theologian, defines the work of theology as ‘thinking philosophically about religion’ (Dalferth 1988:1). In its classical formulation, philosophy asks how cases yield rules—for instance, not why a given ruling is just but what is justice. In that framework, theology presents the results of the effort to form hypotheses and shape generalisations concerning religious truth and then rigorously test them. That is what I mean by ‘systematic thinking about the data of a religion’. Religions generate a vast corpus of data, facts not only of a historical or political or economic or social character but also of allegations of propositions of religious weight. How do these data fit together into a coherent statement, a set of coherent, consistent truth claims as to how things are or ought to be? A concrete exemplary case is simple to construct: the monotheistic religions allege that God is just and merciful, bound by rules of righteousness. Yet they also recognise that the wicked prosper and that the good suffer. How do they form of these conflicting allegations a coherent system, accommodating what are on the face of matters contradictory facts and mutually exclusive propositions? In ordinary contexts, up cannot *Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology and Senior Fellow in the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. This article is his Inaugural Lecture, presented 11 September 2000.

 2001 Academic Press 0048–721X/01/010001+18 $35.00/0

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be down, black cannot be white, and yes cannot be no unless we contemplate the contradictions and rationalise them. Thus it is with religion when theology takes over. In the academic study of religion, we describe, through the study of the texts of religions, the fact of the matter. In theology we aim at constructing the logic of those facts, seeing how, in appropriate contexts, the data of religion yield allegations as to the coherence, the cogency and the compelling logic that inheres in what we think we know. The study of religion, like the study of art and literature and music, leads us deep into the interior world of the human imagination. It explores how, in transcendent imagination, we perceive and understand the ordinary. The study of religion, like other approaches to the study of humanity in community, describes what is public and shared: the things that people do together because of convictions pertaining to transcendent matters. No one need doubt the facticity of the data. Here are the things that people do together by reason of shared beliefs and opinions concerning God. One need not share those beliefs or even view them with sympathy to concur that they constitute generative facts of the social order. Accordingly, the humanities and the social sciences alike accord a comfortable home for the academic study of religions.

The Role of Theology in the Academic Study of Religion Religion/Theology=Musicology/Music Religion/Theology=Physics or Economics/Mathematics The academy accepts that religions shape the facts of this world and that they form important foci of study for the social sciences. Learned opinion concurs in most colleges and universities that religions define a range of cultural artifacts that, like literature and art and music, represent the human capacity to imagine and transcend ordinary perceptions and that these artifacts yield insight for humanistic learning. The study of religion aims at discerning the inner structure and construction of the facts of religion and forming them into a cogent system. These are givens of the contemporary academy in the USA, Canada, Britain and the English-speaking world generally.1 But what of theology under academic, neutral auspices, in relationship to the academic study of religion? Analogies clarify, so I ask, Where, within the spectrum of the academic disciplines, do I locate its counterparts, beyond the established humanities and social sciences, both of which find ample accommodation for the data of humanity’s religious activities? In defining theology, Dalferth has already pointed us to one of the abstract sciences that pertains: philosophy, to which I may add mathematics and music, the three forming the trilogy of generalising disciplines. Take the case of music. Musicology is to music as religion is to theology. If you talk about it, its musicology. If you do it, its music. Musicology describes the things that have been heard in the imagination of composers and their outcomes. Music, the theory and the realisation of music alike, explains what musicology exposits. Music shows what musicology tells, specifies the theory that renders cogent and logical the data set forth by the labour of description of the organised sound that music constitutes. So, too, with the relationship of religion to theology: if you talk about it, it’s religion, if you do it, it’s theology. Just as we include in the curriculum not only music theory but also exercises in the practice of music, so we now include not only the study of religion but also the engagement with applied religion in its intellectual form: theology. How, exactly, that can take place in the academy it remains to be explained.

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My second analogy is to mathematics. Mathematics forms of the data of everyday models or philosophies. Specifically, mathematicians compose models that, in the language and symbols of mathematics, set forth a structure of knowledge that forms a ‘surrogate for reality’ (Maclean 1992:257). These models state in quantitative terms the results of controlled observations of data, and among them the one that generates plausible analytical generalisations will serve. Seeking not so much the regularities of the data as a medium for taking account of a variety of variables among a vast corpus of data, the framer of a model needs more than observations of fact. What is needed is a structure of thought, or what mathematicians call ‘a philosophy’. As a philosophy, it has a centre from which everything flows, and the centre is a definition (see Maclean 1992:261). What is needed for a model are not data alone, however voluminous, but some idea of what one is trying to compose. One needs a model of the model: ‘Unless you have some good idea of what you are looking for and how to find it, you can approach infinity with nothing more than a mishmash of little things you know about a lot of little things’ (Maclean 1992:262). It follows that, in order to frame a model of explanation, we start with a model in the computer and then test data to assess the facility of the model. We may test several models, with the same outcome: the formation of a philosophy in the mathematical sense. Mathematics is to economics or physics or any other body of data subject to mathematical abstraction as theology is to religion: once more, the effort to systematise, to identify the model, to impose order on the data. Mathematics uses symbols to make matters abstract and subject to generalisation. Religion uses theology for the intellectual exercise of that same character. And so to philosophy, the essence of the matter is the quest for a valid generalisation, the definition of matters in abstract terms, not truths but truth, not beautiful things but beauty. Whether philosophy takes the path of the analysis of the traits of language or of the cogency of argument, the upshot is the same: the exploration of the possibilities of generalisation and comprehensive, rigorous definition. I claim that, just as is musicology to music, as are the data of the everyday, whether physics or economics, to the models, the mathematics thereof, and as are cases to philosophical generalisations, so is the relationship of religion to theology. The study of religion sets forth the social and aesthetic facts of humanity’s interior aspirations of transcendence. Theology portrays the claims, as to truth and orderly system, of those facts. The study of religion analyses the documents, the texts in words and in artifacts of religions. Theology articulates the systematic consequences of those facts, just as mathematics proposes to state the generative logic that inheres in them and that makes them cohere into a cogent construction. The study of religion is comparable with the study of physics or of economic activity, producing data for the regularisation accomplished by mathematics through its abstract symbols representative of concrete things. Theology then aims at responding to the challenge of generalisation, of model-making, that in its realm mathematics accomplishes. But defining by analogy does not complete the task of definition. It only sets out the boundaries of the work to be done. How, specifically, do I see the role of theology in the study of religion, within the academy in particular? And what does it mean to allege that theology thinks philosophically about religion?

Defining the Academic Role of Theology: Theology as Distinct from Philosophy of Religion What I have said brings to the fore an important question. If theology is philosophical thinking about religion, how does theology differ from philosophy of religion? The

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short answer is: theology is particular to the religion that produces the data subject to generalisation and analysis. Philosophy of religion asks questions concerning religious truth in general. The one knows God through revelation. The other proves the existence of God through knowledge that is available to the generality of humanity. The fields represent quite different realms of discourse. Philosophy of religion aims at making statements pertinent to all kinds of religion. Theology systematises and generalises the truth claims of a particular religion. There is no such thing as ‘theology in general’, any more than we know how to define ‘religion in general’. There is (a) theology of Christianity or (a) theology of Judaism, and we all recognise that any religious system sustains more than a single theological system. Accordingly, ours is an analytical task within the framework of the religious ideas of a distinctive religious tradition, not an exercise in ‘general theology’. Philosophy of religion commences with proofs for the existence of God. The theology of a religion begins with the knowledge of God afforded by that particular religion. The facts that theology regularises and subjects to generalisation derive from a particular religion. The counterpart for philosophy of religion may derive from all religions or from no particular religion. To revert now to the simple definition that marks the starting point, theology sets forth in a systematic way the truth claims of a religion, and in evaluating the truth claims of religions, theology forms the counterpart, for religion in particular, of philosophy for all learning in general. I emphasise that I refer here to religions in the plural, not religion as a singular, unitary phenomenon. The various religions set forth their respective allegations as to knowledge of God (a.k.a. the transcendent, the supernatural) and the human condition in relationship to God. As far as these allegations as to the facts of the matter pertain to objective statements of truth, the theologies of these several religions will form of the alleged facts systems of generalisations and coherent propositions. We may frame matters simply: it is alleged that these facts yield the following implications and that the generalisations and conclusions to be drawn therefrom are such and so. Theology as an academic discipline investigates the traits of truth allegations of one or another religion and attempts to discern the system and order, the construction and the structure, of their respective bodies of religious data. The aim is to think philosophically about religion. It is a labour of criticism, analysis, taking things apart to see how they work and (perhaps) putting them back together as well. But one may wonder whether this is not what philosophy or mathematics does. What is the difference between philosophy of religion and theology? To frame the question more precisely: how does theology, as the study of the logic of various religions’ allegations concerning the supernatural, compare with the philosophy of religion? The answer emerges from the framing of the definition: theology by definition represents a way of describing, analysing and interpreting the intellectual dimensions of a religion, any religion. Philosophy of religion, by contrast, expresses that generalising impulse of philosophy in general, speaking of not religions but religion, defining not this religion but all religion. Certainly the rhetoric of philosophy of religion exploits the possibilities of generalisation from the conception of God in Judaism, Islam or Christianity to the conception of God in general. Theology finds its data in the particularities of God’s alleged self-manifestation or revelation, and revelation, though framed in general terms, always is particular to the faithful who believe in that revelation and no other. Philosophy finds its data in the traits of religions in general, in the amalgam of their allegations about God here, there and everywhere, defining not the God portrayed by the diverse data of

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Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but God manifest in objective proof of a broad, universal character. Hence philosophy offers proofs for the existence of God, not the special evidence of a determinate sector of humanity concerning that sector’s distinctive knowledge of the same. It follows that theology models its modes of thought and inquiry after those of philosophy, seeking through rigorous argument to state what can be known. But theology takes as its task the inner logic of a particular tradition. It seeks to generalise within a determinate body of data of a coherent character facts that are deemed by the religion they embody as givens, as the minima of the faith. Religions find exceedingly difficult the engagement with truth claims beyond their boundaries, and framing theology out of the data of more than one religion at a time demands what cannot be done: treating religions in particular as religion in general when it comes to matters of truth. Evidence that homogenisation of truth claims of religion into a single religious truth is futile is readily adduced. Just look at the sorry results of those who have tried to do it: the dreary trail of banalities and hopeless vacuities that litter the libraries of religious ‘thought’. We may grasp matters simply in a geography of academic learning: philosophy begins where theology ends. The territory of philosophy of religion commences where the respective theologies of religions mark their outer frontiers. A coloured map of theology and philosophy of religion would resemble Russia and the Islamic adjacent republics: a large undifferentiated territory of Russia, corresponding to philosophy of religion, and then the diverse colours of the small republics, each with its own clearly demarcated territory, corresponding to theologies of religions. But it goes without saying that a comparison of theological systems, such as those of Judaism and of Christianity, yields perspective on the systems that are compared.2 If there were such a thing in nature as ‘religion in general’, then philosophy of religion would suffice. Since there is not, theology finds its unique assignment, not in competition but in collaboration with philosophy.

Defining the Academic Role of Theology: Diverse Theological Enterprises and Those that Suit, or do not Suit, the Academy So far, I have treated theology as a whole, comparing the field with its counterparts music, mathematics and, above all, philosophy. But by ‘theology’ or ‘the study of theology’ is meant a number of different things, some of them properly belonging to the academy, some to both the academy and the community of the faithful, and some only to the community of the faithful. Let me, then, spell out the range of theological learning and specify which components of the larger theological enterprise belong to the academy and which do not. The work of differentiating kinds of theological learning grows complicated as we draw nearer to the activities of the field, for many who do quite distinct things nonetheless regard what they do as theological. Out of the range of kinds of learning devoted to the inner logic of religious data, three stand out: history of theology, including the comparison of theological systems that have been worked out over time; constructive theology; and apologetics. (When we come to Judaism in particular, I shall point to a fourth kind of theological learning that I think suitable for academic inquiry.) History of theology finds an entirely natural place within the academy. Constructive theology may or may not fit. And apologetics cannot claim to be accommodated. 1. The history of theology and comparison of theological systems, like the history and comparison of philosophies or of any other systems of analytical and constructive

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thought, fits naturally within the academic programme. For one of our tasks is to sift and resift the constructions of the prior generations, analysing the problems they solved, proposing to learn from their methods, even re-evaluating the results they produced. Whether persons take seriously the truth claims of theology, their analysis of the principles of cogency of thought and discourse yields only exemplary results of system building over time. Everybody knows that, while nonsense is nonsense, the history of nonsense is scholarship. Thus, too, in the case at hand, one need not engage with the truth claims of theological systems to find engaging the logic of coherent discourse that sustains them. An example of the descriptive history of theology is easy to provide. Christianity over time has produced a variety of theological systems, for example, Augustine’s, Kierkegaard’s and Luther’s. These systems require not only description, each in its own terms, and analysis of how they hold together, but also relationships to one another, as theological system builders respond to one another’s systems. The history of theology, like the history of other intellectual constructions, shows lines of development and affords a perspective on theological systems through comparison. 2. Constructive theology, the effort not only to describe someone else’s system but to compose one’s own, may or may not find a natural place. System building certainly presents theology with its most formidable challenge: entering into the logic of the religion that is under study and finding the principles of coherence and conviction that animate the data of that religion all together, all at once. Constructive theology makes the move from description and analysis to the specification of implicit truth claims. That is a parlous step to take, leading as it does to advocacy. But just as in the academy we tolerate the claim of political scientists or economists to say not only what persons suppose but also what is so, to advocate a particular position in public policy or to set forth a determinate view of economic reality, so in the realm of theology, the academy gains from the passion of civil discourse about matters of truth. Admittedly, in the field of theology, it is something to which we have made ourselves unaccustomed. But we would do well to learn from the social scientists, who, unlike contemporary humanists, still advocate norms and specify truths. Certainly constructive theology, as much as system-building philosophy, finds a natural home in the academy. The academy in the West for many centuries studied religion principally in its intellectual form: the theological systems, some built on philosophy, some built on Scripture, constructed by Christian thinkers. Whether constructive theology of Islam or of Judaism or of other religions can make its way into the pluralist framework of contemporary colleges and universities it remains to be seen. Much depends on whether constructive theologians of Islam or of Judaism or of Christianity wish to address students of other religions or of no religion. The models are not many. In the more recent past, system builders did their work in divinity schools. I think of Abraham Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan for Judaism and of Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr for Christianity. 3. If the analysis of theological systems and the enterprise of constructive theology belong to the academy in its secular, pluralistic formulation, what are the rules of engagement, and what about the advocacy embodied in theological apologetics? By ‘apologetics’ is generally meant arguments for the truth of a given proposition, so formulated as to focus upon persons or groups at hand and to say why they should believe what is advocated. Theological apologetics, the formulation of arguments on behalf of the religious beliefs of a given theological system, serves synagogue or church. It is the intellectual arm of religious proselytism. But its basic task—to persuade people

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of religious truth rather than to help them analyse the constructions of religious conviction into coherent compositions—does not match the vocation of the academy. Why do we exclude theological apologetics from the academic classroom? There are two sufficient reasons, one concerning the intellectual enterprise, the other concerning the circumstance of the diverse classroom, made up of believers in various religions and in none. We cannot do our work when considerations beyond the limits of learning and logic intervene. So far as academic theology is a discipline of critical thought practiced independently of religious organisations, theological apologetics impedes our particular work in the academy. When the academic study of religion attained a normal place within the curriculum, one theory of the work called for rabbis to teach Judaism to Jews; priests to teach Catholicism to Catholics; and ministers to teach normative religion, meaning Protestant theology, to everybody else. That theory, called ‘the zoo department’, collapsed of its own weight, though practitioners of religious advocacy continue to survive here and there. But it is an approach to religion and to theology that ignores its venue. The academic classroom defines the conditions of the work, and they are plural in character and intellectual in context. There, for diverse students, we analyse a construction, interrogate a text for its logic, investigate the efforts of considerable intellects to compose a construction of complexity. We do not serve our students by advocating one religion over another, or religion over not-religion, and so, too, in the study of theology, the history of theology and the analysis of its movements fit well. Constructive theology shows how theologians do their work and why the work is worth the effort can work. But, the framing of truth claims that the plural classroom can accommodate requires a certain restraint. It means framing the issues so that outsiders can grasp their gravity, even while not engaging with their substance. I cannot envisage any role in the academic classroom for the practice of theological apologetics, and I see no place for the advocacy of particular religious truth outside of the framework of the Church or Synagogue or Mosque that sustains, and is sustained by, that conviction. These theoretical remarks represent my best effort to explain what I understand academic theology to undertake: the intellectual challenges of teaching, learning, research, and writing and publication in the general area of theology descriptive, historical and comparative in particular. They apply, I hope, to the theological study of any religion that sets forth in an orderly, systematic way propositions of truth and of meaning, that is to say, to all religions that produce written testimony to their character and conviction. But what of Judaism in particular, and, if I may, what about me?

What do we Study When in the Academy we Address the Theology of Judaism Since this is an inaugural lecture of a specific person in a particular position, let me speak of myself for a moment. It suffices to say, this is not a position that I should have defined for myself for most of my career. Had a prophet come to me forty years ago, when I got my Ph.D. in Religion at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary and my Rabbinical degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary, with the news, ‘Just four decades from now, you will inaugurate a professorship for yourself not only in Religion but also Theology—and it will be your idea!’, I would have believed not one whit! Nor would anyone who knew me. At that time I thought of myself as a historian working on materials of religion, just

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as do the Bible scholars then and today. With a Ph.D. in Religion, I could not then explain what the religious study of religion, as distinct from the historical study of religion, consisted of. But I knew without doubt what I did not do, and did not think in the academic study of religion that anyone should do: viz., theology, however defined. That belonged in seminaries (in Judaism, yeshivas and synagogues), and its task, so I thought, was principally theological apologetics. I could never have distinguished the study of religion from the study of theology. And, anyhow, everybody assumed that ‘Judaism has no theology, that’s for the Christians’. They bought into the Greek philosophical tradition to produce theology, we didn’t.’ Tout court, theology laid no claim on a position within the academic study of Judaism. From that starting point, forty years ago, a long road stretched out. To spare you the journey, it suffices to say that it took ten years for me to move from the field of history to the field of the study of religion, and to define, in the case of Judaism, what the study of religion entailed. It then took twenty-five years for me to realise my particular project in the study of Judaism, a project of definition, out of the classical sources of Judaism, of the history and structure of the religious structure that coheres out of the diverse data of those sources. I have now described the world-constructing system that inheres in the data and that imparts cogency to them all. About ten years ago, and in scholarly activity about five years ago, I began to move from the analysis of the structure and system of the religion contained within the classical sources of Judaism to a fresh problem altogether. It is a problem of finding evidence of the interior logic that imparted coherence to the entire structure and system of that religion adumbrated in the written documents of the formative age of Judaism. I wanted to know more than how the data cohere. I wanted to find out whether the data respond, all together, in an orderly and systematic manner, to a governing principle, to a generative logic, and, if so, what the principle is, and how that logic defines and disposes of specific cases in favour of large and encompassing generalisations.3 In pursuing questions of interior logic, I realised that I was moving away from the study of religion in its this-worldly phenomena, indeed of the phenomenology of Judaism in its written evidence of the formative age, on which I had concentrated for a quarter of a century. I was moving towards another discipline altogether, one correlative with, but separate from, the academic study of religion. It was the academic study of theology, on the definition of which I have now laboured sufficiently. To spell out what I mean, I may refer to my Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (1999d). There I asked whether there is a single principle that governs all of the Judaic writings that enjoy normative standing in the formative age of Rabbinic Judaism. And is there, within that principle, a logic that generates problems and dictates how they are resolved? In other words, I found myself square in the middle of a labour of historical theology, joined with the analysis of what I posited was constructive theology. Could I describe the normative theological system that animates a particular body of writings? And could I reconstruct that system? The work of finding what is fundamental poses few problems. But showing how the fundamental postulates of the system generate problems that, when solved, precipitate new postulates and further problems, that is, following up the system in all its dialectical density—that represents the intellectual challenge! That is to say, did I have the powers of analysis and imagination hypothetically to put together into a single, coherent construction, hence constructive theology of a historical type, the diverse data set forth by the sources of a religion? And could I identify the

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dialectics that impart to that structure the traits of a system, that is, a corpus of thought capable of generating new truth and engaging with new problems? For it does not suffice, in a hypothetical reconstruction, to describe the basic components of a system of thought as they cohere in stasis. It is necessary to investigate the working, the movement, of the system, in time and in change, its dialectics, the rules that govern the articulation of thought beyond first principles. This reconstructive hypothetical Judaic theology emerges in my Theology of the Oral Torah. I, of course, do not claim to be the first to attempt such a project. In the century just passed, from George F. Moore and Abraham Heschel through Ephraim Urbach, historians of religion and theologians of Judaism have crossed the line into systematic theology—in the case of Moore, theological dogmatics; in the case of Heschel, systematic theology; in the case of Urbach, set-piece histories of ideas. But philosophers of Judaism, as they called themselves, represented by the names of Maimonides and Judah Halevi for the mediaeval epoch and, by Heschel and Kaplan for modern times, undertook no less and penetrated more deeply into the interiorities of logic and intellect of Rabbinic Judaism than moderns can ever hope to do. What have I claimed to contribute to the theological enterprise? My method begins with the question, What is the single fundamental truth claim that everywhere pervades the Rabbinic-Judaic sources and that animates them in every detail? Asked in that way, the question answers itself. Of course, the ground of all thought is: God is one, unique, just and merciful. The theological starting point of Judaism is ethical monotheism. That ethical monotheism, the doctrine of the unity and justice of God, forms the first principle of the Rabbinic-Judaic writings of antiquity, and their reading of Scripture hardly requires elaborate demonstration. Not only so, but Christianity and Islam concur on the same matter, in response to the same Scriptures, those of ancient Israel, that Judaism valued as God’s teaching. It follows that I claimed to begin only where everyone else had always commenced. From that point, I hypothetically reconstructed the system that animates the Rabbinic documents of the formative age, the first six centuries .., the writings that defined matters from then to the present. Responding to the generative dialectics of monotheism, the Oral Torah, the Oral part of the Torah revealed by God to Moses at Sinai, systematically reveals the justice of the one and only God of all creation. God is not only God but also good. Appealing to the facts of Scripture, the Written part of the Torah, in the documents of the Oral part of the Torah, the sages in the first six centuries .. constructed a coherent theology, a cogent structure and logical system, to present the justice of God. Here is identified what Judaism knows as the logos of God, the theology seen whole in the Torah, Written and Oral, as set forth by sages in its originally oral, memorised component. It is not in identifying but in forming the principal conceptions of Rabbinic Judaism into a logos— a sustained, rigorous, coherent argument that can be set forth in narrative, sequential form—that this work makes its contribution. What was the result of my hypothetical reconstruction of the Rabbinic theology? The theology of the Oral Torah is animated by, and sets forth, four wholly cogent, coherent and proportionate principles: 1. God formed creation in accordance with a plan, which the Torah reveals. World order can be shown by the facts of nature and society set forth in that plan to conform to a pattern of reason based upon justice. Those who possess the Torah—Israel—know God, and those who do not—the gentiles—reject Him in favour of idols. What happens to each of these sectors of humanity reflects its relationship with God. Israel in the present age is subordinate to the nations because God has designated the gentiles as the

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medium for penalising Israel’s rebellion—this through Israel’s subordination and exile to provoke Israel to repent. Private life as much as the public order conforms to the principle that God rules justly in a creation of perfection and stasis. 2. The perfection of creation, realised in the rule of exact justice, is signified by the timelessness of the world of human affairs, which conform to a few enduring paradigms that transcend change (theology of history). No present, past or future marks time, only the recapitulation of those patterns. Perfection is further embodied in the unchanging relationships of the social commonwealth (theology of political economy), which ensure that scarce resources, once allocated, remain in stasis. A further indication of perfection lies in the complementarity of the components of creation on the one side and, finally, the correspondence between God and man, in God’s image (theological anthropology), on the other. 3. Israel’s condition, public and personal, marks flaws in creation. What disrupts perfection is the sole power capable of standing on its own against God’s power: man’s will. What man controls and God cannot coerce is man’s capacity to form intention and therefore to choose either arrogantly to defy or humbly to love God. Because man defies God, the sin that results from man’s rebellion flaws creation and disrupts world order (theological theodicy). The paradigm of the rebellion of Adam in Eden governs the act of arrogant rebellion leading to exile from Eden, thus accounting for the condition of humanity. But as in the original transaction of alienation and consequent exile, God retains the power to encourage repentance through punishing man’s arrogance. In mercy, moreover, God exercises the power to respond to repentance with forgiveness, that is, a change of attitude evoking a counterpart change. Since, commanding his own will, man also has the power to initiate the process of reconciliation with God through repentance, an act of humility, man may restore the perfection of that order that through arrogance he has marred. 4. God ultimately will restore that perfection that embodied his plan for creation. In the work of restoration death that comes about by reason of sin will die; the dead will be raised and judged for their deeds in this life; and most of them, having been justified, will go on to eternal life in the world to come. In the paradigm of man restored to Eden is realised in Israel’s return to the Land of Israel. In that world or that age to come, however, that sector of humanity that through the Torah knows God will encompass all of humanity. Idolators will perish, and the humanity that comprises Israel at the end will know the one, true God and will spend eternity in his light. Recorded in this way, the story told by the Oral Torah proves remarkably familiar, with its stress on God’s justice (to which his mercy is integral), man’s correspondence with God in his possession of the power of will, man’s sin and God’s response. That, sum and substance, constitutes the coherent statement, the cogent system, that the books of the Oral Torah set forth. It is one result of the theological study of Rabbinic Judaism, as distinct from the religious study of that same Judaism.

The Role of Theology of Judaism in the Academic Study of Judaism: The Theological Study of Judaism and the Religious Study of Judaism One may argue that theology forms a chapter in the study of religion, of which theology constitutes the intellectual component. One may argue that religion—its history, sources and position in the comparison of religions—forms a chapter in the study of theology. Both positions lay claim on plausibility, and I should not want to have to argue against either. I see merit in both. But we at Bard have taken the position that the

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two represent each a distinct episteme. Each is possessed of its own logic and rules, each faced with its own tasks. Rather than offer a theory of the matter, let me turn forthwith to the case at hand: the religious study of Judaism, contrasted to the theological study of Judaism.

The Religious Study of Judaism When we engage in the religious study of Judaism, we aim, for the formative age, at an account of how the Rabbinic sources cohere, both within themselves and with the formative events of the age. We want to know how the ideas that persons hold respond to the world in which they live. We seek the interplay of religion and the social order, which encompasses politics, economics and sociology and all the other social sciences, including history. The basic problem is one of the relationship between the religious ideas that persons put forth and the world in which they live. What we seek is to correlate their ideas with their social world, asking how their circumstance has made an impact upon how they think and what they think. For example, a massive shift in the documents produced by the sages of Judaism in the fourth and fifth century .. shows the entry of new problems and themes, absent in the earlier writings. I asked myself how the new tensions on which the sages dwelt related to events of the fourth and fifth centuries, such as the advent of the Christian empire, and produced a systematic account of the challenges of the age and of the responses of the sage. So much for the religious study of Judaism, which means a chapter in the study of religion and society, a this-worldly problem of social analysis of religious ideas. When we undertake the theological study of Judaism, as just now defined, we want to investigate the interiorities of logic and structure that sustain, and of hermeneutics that mediate, the writings of a religion, whenever produced, wherever cherished. This is not the study of particular times and places, the circumstances of persons who thought one thing rather than some other. It is an inquiry into the thought processes and their outcomes, into logic and analysis, that compel credence anywhere and at any time. We claim that principles inhere, establishing a presence in intellect that is entirely distinct from the particularities of time, place and circumstance.4

The Theological Study of Judaism: The Definition of the Norms But theology speaks not of diverse opinion but of norms. The classical literature of Judaism is laden with diverse opinions about everything on which persons pass opinions, so how can I allege that I know the system that animates all opinion? What basis do I have for doing an analysis of the ideas of these complex, diverse documents, and how these ideas form a coherent system? For I claim to know the difference between a given authority’s opinion and the governing principles that animate the intellect of all authorities. I allege that I can differentiate between (1) normative statements, truth claims that are representative all together and all at once of the structure and system of thought that inheres throughout, and (2) episodic opinions, that represent only the authority to whom they are attributed. How do I identify the normative against the schismatic? These questions presuppose the givens of theological study of religion, not the religious study of religion. Let me spell out briefly how I answer them. It is not easy to describe, analyse and interpret normative opinion formed into coherent structures of data, native category-formations re-framed in the contemporary

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context of social inquiry, in Rabbinic Judaism. For the documents contain masses of conflicting opinions on any number of topics. Therefore it will not suffice to find topically germane sayings. One has to establish grounds for classifying all cited data as normative, as representative of a system constituting ‘Judaism’ rather than as merely idiosyncratic opinion. That means to claim to differentiate the normative from the schismatic and the episodic. But how to do so, and on what basis out of bits and pieces of evidence, much of it free-floating, and some of it contradictory? A literature such as the Rabbinic literature of antiquity represented by the Talmud of Babylonia, a corpus that records contradictory opinions, that values difference and debate, and that rarely declares openly who is wrong poses problems for systematic hypothetical reconstruction such as is attempted in theological research. Take the case of the laws, to the exposition of which much of Rabbinic literature is devoted. These are called, collectively, ‘the Halakhah’, and the Halakhic documents form a mass of contradictory rulings. That canon of Halakhah is absolutely open to diverse opinion, so that we may find nearly everything and its opposite in some setting or other. The character of the literary evidence presents obstacles to validating the claim to speak of the legal doctrine of Rabbinic Judaism. When it comes to the teaching by these same writings for the social order, we confront the problem that discerning the theological structure and system poses. How are we to know what represents the whole, viewed all together and all at once? To articulate the problem is simple enough. The documents convey a vast corpus of singleton-sayings, representing individual authorities. Were we to compose an account of the theological teaching of Rabbinic Judaism out of this episodic evidence, we would know everything but the main thing: the shape and construction of the whole. For, as all who have studied the documents even in small parts affirm, the Rabbinic compilations contain many conflicting statements, and much that simply does not cohere at all. On what basis, then, are we able to assert knowledge of ‘the theology’ or ‘the social teaching’ of Rabbinic Judaism, as distinct from notional and occasional sayings on this and that in the name of this one or that one? What transforms hunting and gathering sayings on topics, joined with free association on this or that, into a systematic account of a structure and system of thought? In using the form ‘Judaism’, along with ‘normative’ and its equivalents, we claim to describe a cogent, coherent system of thought. Speaking figuratively, we thereby allege that we know what, without regard to temporal or locative differentiation, ‘the Rabbis’—the Judaic sages of the Mishnah, the Midrash and the Talmuds— think everywhere. Certain principles permeate their thought and shape the detail. Determinate conceptions and doctrines animate the whole. That identification and definition of the prevailing logos define the task of anyone who undertakes to describe theology or social teaching. On what basis, then, do we allege as representative any account of theology or of social thought?

1. What ‘The Jews’ Believed First, let us exclude any claim to know what, in general, ‘the Jews’ thought: the state of opinion, the ethnic consensus, if any. Here theology parts company from the study of religion. Theology is concerned with ideal structures; the study of religion, with concrete relationships between religious ideas and the social order formed by those who hold them. This method then finds its rules and regulations in the analysis of ideas that are set forth.

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2. What is Representative of Rabbinic Opinion We also do not know what proportion of sages held which opinion, so that that sense of ‘representative’, the political and sociological dimension, does not figure. And, all the more so, we know very little about what Jews other than sages and disciples thought. No one today imagines that the Oral Torah on its own can portray the opinions of those who flourished outside of the circles that produced the documents of the Oral Torah. That is because, to exaggerate only slightly, every page of the Rabbinic writings of late antiquity attests to the tension and conflict between ‘our sages of blessed memory’ and the rest of that holy Israel that, sages insisted, in its entirety belongs within the Kingdom of Heaven and under the domain of God, made manifest in the Torah. But then on what basis do we portray the sages and their beliefs and opinions? By what is ‘representative’ we mean what fits the generative logic that everywhere governs. We do not mean what stands for broadly held opinion but rather what in this detail or that expresses the prevailing rationality of the system viewed in its entirety. By that we refer to: (1) what embodies the ubiquitous and governing modes of rational thought, on the one side, and (2) what sets forth the necessary and sufficient and integral doctrines generated by that rationality, on the other. By this criterion of ‘representative’, the first, the modes of thought, are alleged to define rationality, and the second, the propositions, from simple to complex, are claimed to define the logos, the logical principle that pervades the whole. This for theology takes form in the idea that creation reveals God’s justice, defined in terms that man comprehends and appears in many forms. Matters of social thought and doctrine are embodied in the normative Halakhah that sages construct for their Israel’s governance. Since the Talmuds systematically demonstrate the logical coherence of the laws, showing how Halakhot, or laws, constitute the Halakhah, the completely harmonious and coherent Law, we do not claim more than the evidence itself attests. Not only so, but by limiting the evidence to the native category formations defined by the sages themselves, we define an exceedingly solid ground for our construction. It is within that logic of system and the cogency of the native category formations that we invoke the claim of normativity. One thereby claims not only to recapitulate what is implicit in the details of the Halakhah but also to identify what is at stake for the social order: no more than the sages said themselves.

3. What is Normative By what is normative is meant the official position of the Rabbis, viewed as a collegium. In intellectual terms, the canonical documents correspond to the political outcome of a council in the model of the councils that declared Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Christianity had the institutional capacity to assemble the authorities, the bishops and their counterparts, and to determine the Church consensus, and this they did with the backing of the Roman state at critical turnings in the unfolding of their faith. To accomplish the same goal, the Rabbinic sages produced their authoritative writings, both recording difference and declaring the consensus and the rule. Their counterpart to the Church council’s institutional, political authority they devised out of the compelling power of reason and logic—consensus demonstrated and discovered, not (merely) declared and then enforced in the exact sense of the word. How, then, are we to know what composition or composite represents the whole and was deemed obligatory for all

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who practiced the religion of ‘the whole Torah of Moses, our rabbi’, which the world has long known as Judaism? As to what is representative of the entirety of opinion in the documents of the Oral Torah, two approaches strike us as plausible—the one self-indulgent, the other rigorous. The first is to rely upon subjective impressions, buttressed by a broad sample of data. That approach speaks of ‘they’ but means ‘I’. For how are we to know whether we might be wrong in our characterisation of matters, if there is no system or order to the work? If, for example, we may find expressed in various ways in the diverse documents a given view, we may claim that that view represents the generality of opinion. The position is assigned hither and yon, to many rabbis, in many writings. But what would tell us that we err in that characterisation of broadly held opinion, short of interviews, access to letters, a vast sample of data? Still, not a few have taken that route in characterising ‘the rabbis’ ’ views of this and that, even turning the recurrence of a given saying in several places or versions into ‘he often used to say’ (or, for scholarship on the Gospels, ‘the Sermon on the Mount’ and ‘the Sermon on the Plain’). But to declare representative a statement that occurs here and there and to treat as idiosyncratic one that occurs fewer times or in only one or two documents strikes us as lazy and as resorting to intellectual labour-saving devices. For not much thought goes into counting up occurrences, as opposed to reflecting upon inner architectonics of ideas. A given idea may prove critical to the structure over all, even though it appears only in a document that came to closure early on (then to be taken for granted thereafter) or only very late among documents read in sequence (then articulated only long centuries after the initial impact, such as an event in logic before articulation in a particular case). An ambitious venture requires more thought than is invested in adding up occurrences and finding the common denominator.

The Logos of the Theology of Judaism The second approach appeals to the character of the logic that inheres in the Halakhic native category formations and imparts to them coherence. That inquiry into what represents the logic of the whole, what proves coherent to the principal doctrines of the whole, forms the subtext of our entire account. We claim only that the Oral Torah attests to its own integrity by the common criteria of reasoned thought. By ‘the logic of the whole’ we therefore mean modes of thought that govern throughout, for instance, analysis through comparison and contrast on the one side and through paradigmatic thinking on the other. By coherence we mean doctrines that fit in place and that do not impose stresses or strains on the structure that encompasses them. They not only do not contradict one another (‘God is one’, ‘God is many’) but reinforce one another (‘God is just’, ‘God is merciful’—two aspects of a single rationality). What represents the structure and system that sustain a variety of kindred writings emerges in positions that logically hold together among them all. These positions, whether concerning doctrine or concerning correct modes of thought, will dictate not only what may be said but also what must not be said. More consequentially, the governing logic will form a tight fabric, of gossamer weight, to be sure, spread over the whole, a thin translucent tent that holds within everything that belongs and keeps out everything that does not. For theology, beginning with the principle of one, sole, omnipotent, just God, opens the way for inclusion: what fits in good order. Theology also identifies contradiction among parts. But for the Halakhah that embodies the social teaching of Rabbinic Judaism, beginning with the native category formations rather than with an intuited generative principle, however justified,

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defines the surer way. Sages themselves have defined these category formations and on their own have carefully and systematically inspected the contents of those native category formations for consistency and logical sequence. If, to take an obvious example already introduced in these remarks, the one God who created all things is just, then that generative doctrine cannot accommodate without comment cases of structural injustice. Logically, therefore, the doctrine that the wicked (nevertheless) prosper cannot on its own find a place. Some solution to anomalies that confront the theologians has to accommodate reality to the system, and the system to reality. It cannot be a solution that posits two gods or no god or a weak god or an unjust god. That is an obvious instance of systemic coherence. And it is where the parts of the system cohere that we identify what is normative. Now to state simply how this works. What is representative is that corpus of convictions that fit together, logically and doctrinally, and what does not is noted but excluded from the account of representative views. To state the matter with heavy emphasis: To describe theology is to identify the logos, the logic, of religious ideas contained principally in the Aggadah but expressed aso in the Halakhah. This demands thinking philosophically about religion. To describe social philosophy, a subset of theology in the case of normative Judaism, is to discern the logos, the logic of thought about the social order, that is given concreteness in the applied reason and practical logic of the Halakhah. This demands thinking analogically about the Halakhic norms in their rich detail. The result of this thought for theology sets forth in the correct and inexorable order, from start to finish, the structure and system that order the whole, even making provision for the preservation of views that do not fit and of modes of thought that jar.

What If We Cannot Uncover a Theology, and How Are We to Know that Theology Animates (a) Religion? At the end, let me raise an objection to what has been said. Some may reasonably wonder about the diversity of theologies within the several religions. Specifically, how are we to know that a theological system and structure animate a corpus of religious writings and rites when diverse, even contradictory, theologies compete within the same religious tradition? What of the view that intellectual constructions respond to the social order and therefore change as society changes? How are we to know that a unifying, consistent theology is there to be uncovered? These objections underscore the theological task within the academic framework. It is not to demonstrate that a single, normative theology animates the diverse data of a religious tradition. That task represents the work of councils and episcopal bodies, assemblies of rabbis and their counterparts in Islam and other great religious systems. We who advocate the academic study of theology within the academic study of religion take as our task the inquiry into the ordering of religious ideas. We ask whether a theological structure and system govern and sustain a corpus of religious writings and rites. If so, what are its primary propositions, and how, logically, do they hold together? We do not question that systems of thought respond to the social order that provokes thought. As society changes, other systems take shape and impart proportion and order. We do not imagine for a minute that a single, unifying, consistent theology is to be uncovered within and among all of the religious expressions of such complex social constructions as ‘Judaism’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Islam’.

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Theologies represent the intellectual aspiration of communities of religious faithful—and, more especially, of textual communities. So social change forms not a barrier to our discovery of a timeless truth but rather the source of the problematic that animates our inquiry: change and the passage of time. We ask, in a systematic and analytic manner, what ideas lay claim to eternal truth, and how do they hold together? From the social order that the faithful claim to constitute, how do they, and we, make sense of the world that they constitute? I began by defining theology as systematic thinking about the data of religion, and that definition comes to its full realisation in this response to a challenge: allowing for the possibility of not finding a theology. We accommodate that possibility at the centre of our intellectual inquiry. And we leave to constructive theology the task of making determinations on matters of eternal truth. The inquiry into systematic theology, such as we undertake, leaves open the questions of apologetics and theological construction that sustain the religious communities, the ideas of which we propose to examine in their logical, not only their social, context.

Theology Comes Home The study of theology in Christianity, like the study in Judaism of Torah, and particularly the normative law, or Halakhah, of the Torah, in formal, enduring institutions organised for that purpose and given a principal place in the social order, long antecedes the founding of universities in the West. The subject in Judaism, Christianity and, as a matter of fact, Islam as well grounds itself in the modes of thought of ancient Greece and its philosophy, and finds its subject matter in the revealed truth of Scripture, Torah, Bible and Quran (and Hadith). When Universities began, first in Bologna nine hundred years ago and then in Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere, the curriculum was already old. It was the institutional arrangements that were novel. And primary to the University curriculum for nearly the whole history of the University in the West, theology occupied a principal place in the work of the academy. But with the rise of the academic study of religion (‘Religious Studies’, ‘Religion’) theology found itself set aside and excluded. That is because, for good and substantial reason, it was understood by the framers of the new episteme of Religious Studies to involve inappropriate advocacy, apologetics, proving the existence of God, for instance, through meretricious rhetoric; it had no intellectual programme worthy of the Academy, which, anyhow, was secular. Overseas, moreover, in the German and British universities and their counterparts, theology excluded the study of religion, so that the religious study of religion was scarcely even carried on. Even now, America and Canada form the centres of the academic study of religion. In the state of Israel departments and programmes of religious studies get under way only slowly, and the religion, ‘Judaism’, is scarcely studied at all, though the history of the Jews, including religious ideas and expressions produced by the ethnic group, is subjected to minute and erudite analysis indeed. We at Bard, with our free-standing Institute of Advanced Theology as well as our Department of Religion, innovate by giving theology what is at present a unique venue: equal but separate. The study of theology is correlated with the study of religion. But it also is restored to that position of intellectual autonomy that, in our view, when done right, theology claims for itself. I have spelled out to the best of my ability my understanding of the grounds for that claim of epistemic autonomy. I have explained why in my view the study of theology is separate from the study of religion, though both religion and theology may investigate the properties of the same data. But how

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these theoretical matters play themselves out in the curriculum and in scholarly inquiry and publication, these remain to be seen in the days and years to come. There are miles to go, and, as I approach the age of seventy, I’m not sleepy yet.

Notes 1 In other educational systems, religion is not studied at all, or very much. Theology takes its place, and it is theology in the service of the Church, as in Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Continental Europe. Where religion is studied, it tends to be subsumed within the social sciences, e.g., sociology and anthropology, or in the philological humanities, and the study of religion then is subordinate to a programme framed within a different episteme altogether from that which defines matters in North America. I am inclined to think that the absence of a liberal arts B.A. in favour of essentially professional specialisation beyond the Abitur or high school diploma accounts for the different shape of the study of religion in Europe. The intervention of Church bodies in Theology Faculties in Central Europe defines the work; a non-Christian cannot find an appointment in the Theology Faculty of Göttingen University, for example, and Judaism is generally a chapter in Semitics, or ancillary to New Testament studies, depending on the local requirements. 2 Professor Bruce Chilton and I have produced a variety of works of comparison of Judaism and Christianity, including Judaic and Christian theological structures of the formative age. These works include Chilton and Neusner (1995a, 1995b, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1998, 1999a, 1999b and 2000). I omit reference to my prior theological work on the Judaeo-Christian dialogue. 3 The principal works are Neusner 1997, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c and 1999d. 4 That is why, immediately upon completion of Theology of the Oral Torah, I turned to problems of hermeneutics, which yielded Neusner 2000a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and i.

Bibliography Chilton, Bruce D., and Jacob Neusner 1995a 1995b 1997a 1997b 1997c 1998 1999a 1999b 2000 Dalferth, Ingolf U. 1988 Maclean, Norman 1992 Neusner, Jacob 1997 1999a 1999b

Christianity and Judaism: The Formative Categories. I. Revelation: The Torah and the Bible. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Judaism in the New Testament. Practices and Beliefs. London: Routledge. Christianity and Judaism: The Formative Categories. II. The Body of Faith: Israel and Church. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Christianity and Judaism: The Formative Categories. III. God in the World. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Intellectual Foundations of Christian and Jewish Discourse: The Philosophy of Religious Argument. London: Routledge. Judaeo-Christian Debates: God, Kingdom, Messiah. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Jewish and Christian Doctrines: The Classics Compared. London: Routledge. Types of Authority in Formative Christianity and Judaism: Institutional, Charismatic, and Intellectual. London: Routledge. Comparing Spiritualities: Formative Christianity and Judaism on Finding Life and Meeting Death. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Theology and Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Young Men and Fire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Theology of Rabbinic Judaism: A Prolegomenon. Atlanta: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies on the History of Judaism. Theological Grammar of the Oral Torah. Vol. Two: Syntax: Connections and Constructions. Binghamton, NY: Dowling College Press/Global Publications of Binghamton University (SUNY). Theological Grammar of the Oral Torah. Vol. One: Vocabulary: Native Categories. Binghamton, NY: Dowling College Press/Global Publications of Binghamton University (SUNY).

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1999c 1999d 2000a 2000b 2000c 2000d 2000e 2000f 2000g 2000h

2000i

Theological Grammar of the Oral Torah. Vol. One: Vocabulary: Native Categories. Binghamton, NY: Dowling College Press/Global Publications of Binghamton University (SUNY). Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. One: Introduction: Berakhot and Seder Mo’ed. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. Two: Seder Nashim. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. Three: Seder Neziqin. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. Four: Seder Qodoshim. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. Five: Seder Tohorot. Part Kelim through Parah. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. Six: Seder Tohorot: Tohorot through Uqsin. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judjaism. Vol. Seven: The Generic Hermeneutics of the Halakhah. A Handbook. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Comparative Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism. Vol. Eight: Why This, Not That? Ways Not Taken in the Halakhic Category-Formations of the Mishnah-ToseftaYerushalmi-Bavli. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism Series. Hermeneutics of the Rabbinic Category-Formations: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Studies in Ancient Judaism Series.

JACOB NEUSNER is Research Professor of Religion and Theology at Bard College and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard as well. He also is a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He has published more than 800 books and unnumbered articles, both scholarly and popular. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees, including seven American and European honorary doctorates, from the University of Chicago, the University of Rochester, Bologna University in Italy (in celebration of the University’s nine hundredth anniversary), Cologne University, Tulane University, St Louis University and Dowling College. In addition, he holds fourteen academic medals and prizes, including the University Medal of Excellence, Columbia University, the Medal of Collège de France, the University of Tübingen Medal (commemorating that University’s five hundredth anniversary), the Queen Christina of Sweden Medal of Åbo Akademi (Finland) and the Abraham Berliner Prize in Jewish History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, as well as numerous other academic awards and prizes. Department of Religion, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504, U.S.A. E-mail [email protected]