This collection of essays draws on work done in 2011¬–2012. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, and its theology. The reason for periodically collecting and publishing essays and reviews is to give them a second life, after they have served as lectures or as summaries of monographs or as free-standing articles or as expositions of Judaism in collections of comparative religions. This re-presentation serves a readership to whom the initial presentation in lectures or specialized journals or short-run monographs is inaccessible. Some of the essays furthermore provide a précis, for colleagues in kindred fields, of fully worked out monographs.

Until the 19th century, women were regularly excluded from graduate education. When this convention changed, it was largely thanks to Jewish women from Russia. Raised to be strong and independent, the daughters of Jewish businesswomen were able to utilize this cultural capital to fight their way into the universities of Switzerland and Germany. They became trailblazers, ensuring regular admission for women who followed their example. This book tells the story of Russian and German Jews who became the first female professionals in modern history. It describes their childhoods—whether in Berlin or in a Russian shtetl—their schooling, and their experiences at German universities. A final chapter traces their careers as the first female professionals and details how they were tragically destroyed by the Nazis.

This book is an exercise in the systematic recourse to anachronism as a theological-exegetical mode of apologetics. Specifically, Neusner demonstrates the capacity of the Rabbinic sages to read ideas attested in their own day as authoritative testaments to — to them — ancient times. Thus, Scripture was read as integral testimony to the contemporary scene. About a millennium — 750 B.C. E. to 350 C. E. — separates Scripture’s prophets from the later sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud. It is quite natural to recognize evidence for differences over a long period of time. Yet Judaism sees itself as a continuum and overcomes difference. The latecomers portray the ancients like themselves. “In our image, after our likeness” captures the current aspiration. The sages accommodated the later documents in their canon by finding the traits of their own time in the record of the remote past. They met the challenges to perfection that the sages brought about. Of what does the process of harmonization consist? To answer that question the author surveys the presentation of the prophets by the rabbis, beginning with Moses. To overcome the gap, Rabbinic sages turn Moses into a sage like themselves. The prophet performs wonders. The sage sets forth reasonable rulings. The conclusion expands on this account of matters to show the categorical solution that the sages adopted for themselves, and that is the happy outcome of the study.

This study uses early Jewish sources to analyze the significance of Day of Atonement and High Priest imagery in the narrative of Simon Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus. It then describes the influence of other early Jewish sources on Jesus’ commissioning his main disciple Simon Peter as his own successor in John 21:15-19. Aus relates this event to Moses’ commissioning his main disciple Joshua as his successor.

These five essays deal with the influence of Judaic haggadah or lore, especially in the form of “creative historiography” or “imaginative dramatization,” on four enigmatic passages in the Gospels, and one in Acts. They point to their deeper theological truths and negate the alternatives of true or false, historical or non-historical, usually applied to the narratives.

This book uses rhetorical analysis to illuminate one of the most fascinating and complicated speeches by Saint Paul: 2 Cor 10–13. The main problem of the speech regards Paul’s claim to be a true servant of Christ and to have the right to boast about it. Paul proves he is strong enough to be the leader of Corinth and paradoxically demonstrates that weakness should belong to the identity of an apostle. Another issue regards the legitimacy of his boasting. The egocentric boast based on the comparison with his opponents is the one that Paul calls foolish, but he is forced, nevertheless, to undertake it. The tool that ultimately enables him to transform self-aggrandizing speech into speech that is focused on Christ is his paradoxical boasting of weakness. The careful crafting of his discourse based on Christological principles ultimately speaks for qualifying it as a self-praise speech (periautologia) with a pedagogical, not defensive, purpose.

This collection of eight essays draws on a half-year of work, the second six months of 2009. Neusner takes up three problems in the history of Religions, four essays on fundamental issues in form-history and the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon, and one theological essay.

The result for the history of Judaism of a documentary reading of the Rabbinic canonical sources illustrates the working of that hypothesis. It is the first major outcome of that hypothesis, but there are other implications, and a variety of new problems emerge from time to time as the work proceeds. In the recent past, Neusner has continued to explore special problems of the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon. At the same time, Neusner notes, others join in the discussion that have produced important and ambitious analyses of the thesis and its implications. Here, Neuser has collected some of the more ambitious ventures into the hypothesis and its current recapitulations. Neusner begins with the article written by Professor William Scott Green for the Encyclopaedia Judaica second edition, as Green places the documentary hypothesis into the context of Neusner's entire oeuvre. Neuser then reproduces what he regards as the single most successful venture of the documentary hypothesis, contrasting between the Mishnah's and the Talmuds' programs for the social order of Israel, the doctrines of economics, politics, and philosophy set forth in those documents, respectively. Then come the two foci of discourse: Halakhah or normative law and Aggadah or normative theology. Professors Bernard Jackson of the University of Manchester, England and Mayer Gruber of Ben Gurion University of the Negev treat the Halakhic program that Neusner has devised, and Kevin Edgecomb of the University of California, Berkeley, has produced a remarkable summary of the theological system Neusner discerns in the Aggadic documents. Neusner concludes with a review of a book by a critic of the documentary hypothesis.

The art of interpreting Holy Scriptures flourished throughout the culturally heterogeneous pre-modern Orient among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Different ways of interpretation developed within each religion not without considering the others. How were the interactions and how productive were they for the further development of these traditions? Have there been blurred spaces of scholarly activity that transcended sectarian borders? What was the role played by mutual influences in profiling the own tradition against the others? These and other related questions are critically treated in the present volume.

These strikingly lucid and accessible essays, ranging over nearly a century of Jewish communal life, examine the ways in which immigrant Jews grappled with issues of group survival in an open and accepting American society. Ten case studies focus on Jewish strategies for maintaining a collective identity while participating fully in American society and public life. Readers will find that these essays provide a fresh, provocative, and compelling look at the fundamental question facing American Jewry at the end of the 20th century, as at its start: how to assure Jewish survival in the benign conditions of American freedom.