The eminent Judaica scholar Jacob Neusner provides here the first form-analytical translation of the Mishnah. This pathbreaking edition provides as close to a literal translation as possible, following the syntax of Mishnaic Hebrew in its highly formalized and syntactically patterned language. Demon...

The Talmud is a compilation of rabbinic discussions that comprise the foundation of Jewish law and tradition. The Talmuds are structured as expansions and commentary on the Mishnah, an early written compilation of the Oral Torah produced circa 200 CE. These Talmudic commentaries on Jewish morals, values, customs, history, and biblical interpretation had previously been passed down orally. To preserve these oral traditions, the Talmuds were assembled in written form. Two different Talmuds were produced by Jewish scholars—The Jerusalem Talmud or Yerushalmi circa 400 C.E. and the Babylonian Talmud or Bavli circa 600 C.E. Logos is proud to offer the English translations of both The Babylonian Talmud and The Jerusalem Talmud, edited by the celebrated scholar of Judaism, Jacob Neusner.

The importance of the Tosefta for literary, historical, and religious scholarship has long been known, and this two-volume set makes it accessible to many more readers. The work is a vital supplement to the early rabbinic oral tradition first set to writing in the Mishnah at the end of the second century of the Common Era. Dating to about 220 CE and also set in the Tannaic period, the Tosefta has the same six orders and essentially the same tractates as the Mishnah, often agreeing with it, but sometimes differing significantly in its understanding of the oral tradition. This English translation of the Mishnaic Hebrew (with some Aramaic) is not merely a paraphrase, but aims at a literal rendition into English of the formulary patterns and syntactical traits of the original text. It contains complete references to the passages in the Tosefta that cite verbatim the corresponding unit in the Mishnah, which is printed in italics. The Tosefta is crucial to the study of formative rabbinic...

The Talmud of Babylonia (a.k.a., the Bavli, or Babylonian Talmud), is a sustained commentary on the written and oral law of Israel. Compiled between 500–600 C.E., it offers a magnificent record of how Jewish scholars preserved a humane and enduring civilization. Representing the primary document of rabbinic Judaism, it throws considerable light on the New Testament as well.

The Encyclopaedia of Judaism provides a full and reliable account of Judaism, beginning in ancient Israelite times and extending to our own day. These five volumes encompass much of what we know about Judaism, the religion, its diverse history, literature, beliefs past and present, observances and practices, and place in the context of society and culture.

The authors seek to identify the recurrent tensions, the blatant points of emphasis, the recurring indications of conflict and polemic. Framing the issue of the disposition of the Scriptural heritage in broad terms, they describe what characterizes the Gospels and the Mishnah, the letters of Paul and the Tosefta. In other words, if they take whole and complete the writings of first and second century people claiming to form the contemporary embodiment of Scripture's Israel and ask what they all stress as a single point of insistence, the answer is self-evident. Nearly every Christianity and nearly all known Judaisms appeal for validation to the Scriptures of ancient Israel, their laws and narratives, their prophecies and visions. To Scripture all parties appeal - but not to the same verses of Scripture. In Scripture, all participants to the common Israelite culture propose to find validation - but not to a common theological program subject to diverse interpretation. From Scripture,...

Add nearly 100 volumes of scholarship from preeminent Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner to your Logos digital library. Comprised of 13 collections and four individual volumes, the Jacob Neusner Jewish Studies Bundle examines a broad range of topics directly related to Judaica, including Judaism in contemporary culture, Jewish Law, the Mishnah and Talmud, Rabbinic Judaism and hermeneutics, as well as Jewish history, and Jewish-Christian relations.

Among the world's religions, Christianity and Judaism are the most symmetrical—but in our day of religious tolerance, a tendency to overlook the vital differences between the two religions in the name of good will can undermine constructive Jewish-Christian dialogue. In this book, Bruce D. Chilton describes early Christian thought and Jacob Neusner describes early Judaic thought on fundamental issues such as creation and human nature, Christ and Torah, sin and atonement, and eschatology. At the end of each chapter, each assesses the other's perspective, and a final chapter explains why the authors believe theological confrontation--not just comparison--defines the task of interfaith dialogue today.

In 'Transformations,' Jacob Neusner reasons that the Jewish canonical writings—the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, Talmuds, and the Midrash—illustrate Judaism’s response to those three social, cultural, and political crises. Faced with these catastrophic events, the rabbinic sages explored anew the paradigms of piety and practice that they had received from previous generations. The result was that they discovered a truth both continuous with the past and responsive to the unanticipated crisis—a truth that carved out a path for the future. This process, represented in the Jewish canon, continues to define modern Judaism.

In Introduction to Rabbinic Literature, legendary author and teacher Jacob Neusner distills a lifetime of scholarship into the essence of what has been received from the rabbis. This book gives readers everything they need to know to understand rabbinic literature. It explores the formative age and the forces that gave rise to rabbinic literature, and tells in a simple, straightforward way what these documents are, where to find them, how to read them, and why their content matters. Best of all, Neusner masterfully covers all this in one relatively compact volume that both novice and expert can appreciate.

Connect any Bible verse with ancient Jewish and Christian parallels and allusions. The Ancient Literature Collection presents a comprehensive library of resources that populate your Passage Guide with ancient parallels, quotations, and allusions from the Apostolic Fathers, the Talmud, the Mishnah, apocryphal writings, and more. Instantly see any verse’s interpretation, application, and reuse throughout the ancient world. These ancient religious texts bring key citations and references to your study of Scripture, opening up a new level of connectivity for your research. With 30 volumes covering Ugaritic and Mesopotamean religious parallels to New Testament apocryphal stories and early church writers, you’ll never run short on texts from which your study can draw insight. Curious how these resources work in Logos? Watch the videos below to see for yourself where you’ll be using them:

This collection offers the most recent and extensive scholarship on several important issues relating to the background of the New Testament and the Greco-Roman world around the first century. In Jesus and the Ossuaries, Craig Evans examines recent archaeological discoveries that shed light on the question of the historical Jesus. In Judaism and the Gentiles, Terence Donaldson offers extensive primary-source information on Jew-Gentile relationships in the first century. Associations in the Greco-Roman World is an extensive reference work on inscriptions and papyri from the Greco-Roman world. Finally, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees provides readers with an excellent compilation of scholarship on the identity and nature of the Jewish sect called the Pharisees. These volumes are a must for anyone interested in delving deeper into New Testament backgrounds.

Several generations of scholars have produced histories of Second Temple Judaism, but none have systematically analyzed the Pharisaic-rabbinic traditions those histories cite. Consequently, scholars often refer to rabbinic traditions about the Pharisees as though everyone knows how the Jews of this period passed on these traditions—and to what extent they are historically reliable.

The fourth edition of World Religions in America continues its lauded tradition of providing students with reliable and nuanced information about America’s religious diversity, while also reflecting new developments and ideas. Each chapter was updated to reflect important changes and events, and current statistics and information. New features include a timeline of key events and people for each tradition, sidebars on major movements or controversies, personal stories from members of various faiths, a theme- based organization of subjects, more subheads, three new chapters exploring America's increasing religious diversity, and suggestions for further study.

This work sketches the many portraits of the Pharisees that emerge from ancient sources. Based upon the Gospels, the writings of Paul, Josephus, the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and archeology, the volume profiles the Pharisees and explores the relationship between the Pharisees and the Judaic religious system foreshadowed by the Qumran library. A great virtue of this study is that no attempt is made to homogenize the distinct pictures or reconstruct a singular account of the Pharisee. Instead, by care...

The Jerusalem Talmud, or Yerushalmi, is a commentary on the oral law (the Mishnah) of Israel that ties that oral law to the written law (the Torah, the Hebrew Scripture). Completed about 200 years prior to The Babylonian Talmud. Now all thirty-nine Yerushalmi tractates, as translated by Professor Neusner and Tzvee Zahavy, have been brought together in a single searchable resource. In addition to a preface and general introduction to the whole work, Professor Neusner has provided fresh and helpful introductions to each of the tractates. He has also provided within his translation the references to Bible verses alluded to in the Yerushalmi.

The Bible was not written in isolation or a vacuum. Rather it was written by people who lived in particular times and places far removed from our contemporary world. The Ancient Literature Collection presents a comprehensive library of resources that populate your Passage Guide with ancient parallels, quotations, and allusions from the Apostolic Fathers, the Talmud, the Mishnah, apocryphal writings, and more. Instantly see any verse’s interpretation, application, and reuse throughout the ancient world.

By setting forth the book of Genesis as it is represented in the rabbinic statement Genesis Rabbah, renowned scholar Jacob Neusner demonstrates how Judaism confronted creation and the Genesis story. This event was crucial in the life of Israel and the Jewish people because it helped shape the entire history of Western civilization—the rise of Christianity to the status of the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Judaic sages’ rereading of the Torah’s accounts of the beginning of the world ...

Bringing together scholarship from experts in the field of Judaic studies, including Helmut Koester, William R. Farmer, and George Wesley Buchanan, and celebrated Judiac scholar Jacob Neusner, this multi-volume work provides an extensive evaluation of the beliefs and practices of Judaism, Christianity, and ancient Greco-Roman religions in the Second Temple era.

Do Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims tend to experience pain in fundamentally different ways? Are suffering and human evil equally difficult problems in these particular religious traditions? How is each person to deal with or overcome suffering? In Evil and Suffering, acknowledged experts in each religion offer clear answers to these and similar questions. Through their discussions, the history and diversity of the traditions are also revealed. In this volume, editor Jacob Neusne...

Any valid description of early rabbinic thought must begin with the Mishnah, one of the earliest dated sources of Judaism, and must focus on the subjects the sages considered important. This book introduces the reader to the world of the Mishnah in a thoughtful, engaging, and spirited manner. Neusner formulates a theory of the Mishnah: what it is, how it should be read, and why it is of considerable interest in the study of religious conceptions of the social order. The result is a relatively qu...

Jacob Neusner analyzes descriptions of the Pharisees from historical sources of ancient Judaism and Christianity in order to form an accurate account about Pharisaic Judaism.

Ancient Jewish and Christian literature provides a valuable context for biblical study. The resources included in the Ancient Literature Feature Expansion, L gathers together content that will populate the Ancient Literature guide section within Logos. The Ancient Literature section appears in the Passage Guide and Exegetical Guide. Given a biblical passage, it returns related texts in the literature that surrounds the Bible: Ancient near-eastern, Hellenistic, and other Jewish Source materials, among others. Logos searches the resources in your library to find references to a biblical passage, whether it’s a quotation, an allusion, or on the same topic. This collection includes everything in the Ancient Literature Feature Expansion, M as well more than twenty additional resources to help expand your studies.

The study and research tools in Logos Bible Software are sometimes only as good as the library that comes with them. The larger your library, the more effective you can be in your study of the Bible. Whether you are working with the Factbook, Passage Guide or the Exegetical Guide, the resources in your library, commentaries, grammars, dictionaries, and reference works, are the fuel that drive all the best features in Logos Bible Software. With over fifteen hundred reference works, Master Feature Collection gives you everything you need to make the most of your sermon writing, bible study, exegesis, and research.

Jacob Neusner selects the central Jewish symbol of Torah and describes its role through the ages. Neusner defines the Torah and relates it to Jewish identity, then describes the formation of the written Torah and the development of the Mishnah after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. This leads into an explanation of Midrash and the composition of the Talmud. After a discussion of Torah as a symbol, Neusner overviews Maimonides, the Zohar, Reform Judaism and Zionism.

With the conversion of Constantine in 312, Christianity began a period of political and cultural dominance that it would enjoy until the twentieth century. Jacob Neusner contradicts the prevailing view that following Christianity’s ascendancy, Judaism continued to evolve in isolation. He argues that because of the political need to defend its claims to religious authenticity, Judaism was forced to review itself in the context of a triumphant Christianity. The definition of issues long discussed in Judaism—the meaning of history, the coming of the Messiah, and the political identity of Israel—became of immediate and urgent concern to both parties. What emerged was a polemical dialogue between Christian and Jewish teachers that was unprecedented.

Tracing the relationship between the actual Book of Leviticus and its rabbinic commentary, Jacob Neusner asks how the rabbis who stand behind the text make use of Leviticus and how, through their comments on it, they make intelligible and comprehensible statements of their own. In answering these two questions Neusner shows, through a prime example, exactly how Scripture enters Judaism and how rabbis of the formative age of Judaism chose and taught the lessons they deemed critical to the life of...

The Logos 6 Orthodox Legacy Libraries reintroduce the classic libraries of Logos 6. This library is offered without features and datasets, making it the perfect standalone collection of resources to help grow your library, including advanced reference works and original language materials.

With an emphaisis on communities of faith, this accessible book will introduce students to the classic texts, important events, key figures, defining rituals, essential creeds and symbols of world religions. Contents: Introduction by William Scott Green Judaism A. Judaism: Beginnings: Religion of Ancient Israel by Baruch A. Levine B. Judaism: The Formation by Jacob Neusner C. Judaism in Modern Times: Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative Judaism, Zionism by Jacob Neusner 2. Christianity A. Christianity: Beginnings by Bruce Chilton B. Christianity: Roman Catholicism by Lawrence S. Cunningham C. Orthodox Christianity by J. A. McGuckin D. Christianity: Protestantism by Martin E. Marty 3. Islam A. Islam: Beginnings by Th. Emil Homerin B. Islam: The Shiite Tradition by Liyakat Takim C. Islam: The Sunni Tradition by Th. Emil Homerin 4. Hinduism by Douglas Brooks 5. Buddhism A. Buddhism: Beginnings by Mario Poceski B. Buddhism: The Theravada Tradition by Kristen Scheible C. Buddhism: The…

Jacob Neusner begins with a study of the characteristics of rabbinic literature and a demonstration of why this literature cannot be easily used for the kind of history New Testament scholarship proposes to produce. He then critiques the writings of various New Testament scholars and highlights the differences between his own work and that of his critics.