What Were the Early Rabbis?
An Introduction from a Sociocultural Perspective
by Jack N. Lightstone
Paperback (No longer our product)
(November 2024)
ISBN: 9780227180525
Price: $45.00
In stock
An introduction to the earliest rabbinic moment, this book sheds light on this social and religious phenomenon.
Over the first eight centuries of the Current Era, the religious cultures of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and many European lands were transformed by the worship of YHWH and the development from Judaism to Christianity and Islam. What were the Early Rabbis? explores the changes wrought after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, and the impact of this on the new ‘masters’ of law, life, and practice, the ‘rabbis’. Offering the reader an introduction to the earliest rabbinic movement near and soon after its initial movement, Jack N. Lightstone separates the book into two parts that consider early Rabbinic self-definition and how the Rabbis may have thought of themselves or were perceived. What views did these rabbis promote about their emerging authority? What in the surrounding and antecedent sociocultural context lent legitimacy to this profile? Addressing these and other questions, What were the Early Rabbis? sheds light on this social and religious phenomenon for the non-specialist reader.
- By (author) Jack N. Lightstone
"Jack N. Lightstone is in top form as he guides the non-specialist reader to his vision of the origins of rabbinic Judaism. The author utilises all his considerable academic and pedagogical talent to create a lucid and cogent introduction to the rabbis of late antiquity and the movement they spawned. In doing so, he contributes to a better, more nuanced understanding of a crucial era in the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike." Ira Robinson, Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies, Concordia University "What Were the Early Rabbis? addresses intriguing questions and provides stimulating and challenging analyses. The special focus is on the broad emergence of Rabbinic Judaism using social science perspectives but without the burdens of its jargon and always connected to historical and literary contexts. With analytic clarity, Jack N. Lightstone identifies rabbinic culture, its legitimacy, and provides the reader essential ways to understand and study the core rabbinic text, the Mishnah." Calvin Goldscheider, Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies, Brown University "This book is a very readable introduction to the core profile and expertise of the cadre of the rabbis just before and after the turn of the third century CE, a seminal era in the evolution of the group that later became the most influential institution in Jewish religious and civil life. Jack N. Lightstone skilfully places the early rabbis in their Judean, Middle-Eastern, and Greco-Roman social and cultural settings. Based on sound scholarship, the book adopts an engaging style of an experienced teacher and storyteller.Simcha Fishbane, Professor of Jewish Studies, Touro University Graduate School of Jewish Studies What Were the Early Rabbis? both translates the best of current academic scholarship on the early phases of Rabbinic Judaism and offers non-experts and scholars alike a fresh and insightful approach to tracking these developments. By drawing upon social-scientific approaches, Jack N. Lightstone moves away from a typical focus on individuals and ideas alone to social institutional factors that led to and sustained the formation of a group that over time changed the lives of Jews and others in the West." Joel Gereboff, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Arizona State University
—
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Pre-Christian Religions, Rituals, and Beliefs in Central and Northern Europe
Interdisciplinary Investigations
Volume 5
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa