Scholarship
Neusner's scholarly activity is vast. Generally, his research centers around rabbinic Judaism of the Mishnaic and Talmudic Eras. He was a pioneer in the application of "form criticism" approach to Rabbinic texts. Much of Neusner's work has been to de-construct the prevailing approach viewing Rabbinic Judaism as a single religious movement within which the various Rabbinic texts were produced. In contrast, Neusner views each rabbinic document as an individual piece of evidence that can only shed light on the more local Judaisms of such specific document's place of origin and the specific Judaism of the author. His Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago, 1981; translated into Hebrew and Italian) is the classic statement of his work and the first of many comparable volumes on the other documents of the rabbinic canon.
Neusner’s method of studying documents individually without contextualizing them with other Rabbinic documents of the same era or genre, led to a series of studies on the way Judaism creates categories of understanding and how those categories relate to one another, even as they emerge diversely in discrete rabbinic documents.
Neusner has translated into English nearly the entire Rabbinic canon. This work has opened up many Rabbinic documents to scholars of other fields unfamiliar with Hebrew and Aramaic. His translation technique utilizes a "Harvard-outline" format which attempts to make the argument flow of Rabbinic texts easier to understand for those unfamiliar with Talmudic reasoning.
Neusner's enterprise has been aimed at a humanistic and academic reading of classics of Judaism. Neusner has been drawn from studying text to context. Treating a religion in its social setting, as something a group of people do together, rather than as a set of beliefs and opinions.
Read more about this topic: Jacob Neusner
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