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es in Christianity and Judaism 3) Summary:

By Jack N. Lightstone

* Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University

* Number Of Pages: xiv 1260

* Publication Date: 1988-07-13

* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0889209758

* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780889209756

Product Description:

This work explores the relationship between religion, social patterns, and the perception of the character of scripture in four modes of Ancient Judaism: (1) the Jerusalem community of the fifth to fourth centuries B.C.E. (ie, the Early Second Temple Period); (2) the Judaism of the Graeco-Roman Disapora down to the end of the fourth century of the Christian Era; (3) earliest rabbinic Judaism in the second century C.E. in the land of Israel; (4) Late Antique Talmudic Rabbinism, primarily inn Babylonia, down to the sixth century of the Christian Era. Lightstone attempts not only to describe these perceptions and relationships but also to account for them, to explore why scripture should be thus perceived. His imaginative approach to the challenging descriptive and theoretical tasks is influenced by literary and form-critical methods as well as by the methods and perspectives of social anthropology and sociology of the mind.

This unique attempts at revising the perception of the character of scripture should arouse the interest of scholars and students of Ancient Judaism.

Review: The brevity of this work belies its importance in canonizing the sociological approach to the study of Judaisms in mid- and late antiquity. Dr. Lightstone's methodology offers a grid for interpretation of biblical and rabbinic documents that consistently reveals new facets of those texts and resolves old cruxes with graceful ease. Page after page of this carefully structured book applies the disciplines of sociology of knowledge and symbolic anthropology to the role of scripture in ancient Judaism with iantly illuminating results. Lightstone insists that the social world behind the documents mirrors the structure of the texts and vice versa. Again and again he shows how in four historic settings-the "Restoratio n" community, the Hellenistic Diaspora, Mishnaic Palestine, and the Talmudic communities of Palestine and Babylonia-the canon of the Jewish community reflects its worldview. Using analytic techniques made familiar to students of religion by Emil Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, and Mary Douglas, Lightstone demonstrates the "open" or "closed" nature of community and its scripture. Lightstone makes his arguments most effectively in describing the earlier periods under study. He goes awry, however, when he contrasts and opposes Mishnaic Judaism with both Diasporic and Talmudic Judaism. By following too closely the idiosyncratic views of his mentor, Jacob Neusner, Lightstone offers a flawed picture of Mishnaic Judaism that forces him to depict its society in revolution against earlier Jewish communities. More perplexingly, Lightstone's Mishnaic rabbinism shows no continuity with the Judaism that follows and comments on it. Lightstone would have done better to recharacterize Mishnaic Judaism (pace Neusner) and focus on its continuity with and evolutionary status within Jewish social structures of late antiquity. He also errs in repeating Neusner's dictum "Midrash is to scripture, as Talmud is to Mishnah" (p. 83). Since this is a book about Judaism's relationship to its scriptures, these flawed characterizatio ns and analogies are a serious detriment to fully accepting Lightstone's overall theses. Nevertheless, the work abounds with so many keen perceptions, iant insights, and felicitous applications of sociological method that it remains highly recommended. It is must reading for both students and scholars of Ancient Judaism. All future works on either the history of this period or its biblical interpretation will owe a debt to Lightstone's thought-provoking contribution. Burton L. Visotzky,

Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.

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