BARview: The Neusner Phenomenon—Personality and Substance

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In our last discussion of what has become known as “the Neusner affair,”^a we expressed the hope that our coverage would lead to a substantive consideration of the work of Professor Jacob Neusner, Brown University’s widely known Judaic scholar. We are determined to turn that hope into a reality. But patience, dear reader, patience. We will get there.

After we reported the dramatic episode at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in which Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University announced his concurrence with the late Professor Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary that Professor Neusner’s preliminary translation of the Palestinian Talmud should be consigned to the wastebasket,^b Professor Neusner threatened us with a lawsuit and wrote us that, “Beyond this point, no further communication is possible.”

After we published “BARview: Neusner Joins Ranks of Superman,” BAR 11:03, reporting Professor Neusner’s threat and considering the possibility that our earlier report may have been unfair to Professor Neusner, he withdrew his threat to sue, apologized for comparing BAR to Hustler magazine and BAR’s editor to Larry Flynt, and submitted for publication a ten-page manuscript entitled “Orwell’s 1984—And Mine,” in which he compared his treatment during 1984 at the hands of his critics with George Orwell’s novel 1984. Professor Neusner referred to “thought police, to the resort to newspeak,” and to “people tr[ying] to shove” him “down the memory-hole.”¹

Specifically, Neusner complained of such lapses as Albert J. Baumgarten’s failure to cite either Neusner’s or his students’ work in an article Baumgarten wrote in the Journal of Biblical Literature;² of Steven Katz’s failure in another article in the Journal of Biblical Literature³ to discuss Neusner’s views on what happened at the first-century Council of Jamnia in respect to the treatment of Christians (Katz does, however, cite Neusner several times in the article); of E. P. Sanders’s failure in a book entitled Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People to discuss Neusner’s criticism of an earlier book Sanders wrote or to list Neusner in the bibliography of Sanders’s later book. Neusner claimed he was being ignored—“shoved down the memory-hole,” to use his phrase.

The manuscript Neusner submitted to BAR also referred to a withdrawn invitation to lecture in Jerusalem, withdrawn because of the content of what Neusner proposed to say.⁴ Neusner also discussed Saul Lieberman’s now-famous review of Neusner’s preliminary translation of the Palestinian Talmud, which appeared in the Journal of the American Oriental Society.⁵

In considering whether to print Professor Neusner’s article—we eventually advised him we would print it—we decided to look into the validity of at least some of his charges. One could make a career investigating all of them, and we have no intention of doing so. But we will discuss one of them because it will lead us to a substantive consideration of Professor Neusner’s work.

According to Professor Neusner, one of the terrible things that happened to him in 1984 was the publication of an article by Shaye J. D. Cohen in Conservative Judaism.^c Cohen’s article, according to the manuscript Neusner submitted to BAR, contained “a series of nasty and mean-spirited attacks on my students and on me.” In BAR’s initial report on the confrontation at the Society of Biblical Literature, we quoted from Cohen’s article to provide some background on Neusner’s scholarly views. Although we recalled nothing about “a series of nasty and mean-spirited attacks” on Neusner and his students, we decided we had better reread Cohen’s article. When we did so, we found a reasoned, even brilliant, though critical, review of Neusner’s work. More to the present point, we found nothing that could be interpreted as a “series of nasty and mean-spirited attacks” on Neusner and his students. We reread Cohen’s article still again, line by line this time—with the same result.

We then wrote to Professor Neusner and asked him to send us a photocopy of Cohen’s article with those parts underlined or otherwise marked that he considered to constitute a “series of nasty and mean-spirited attacks” on himself and his students. Neusner replied that we should read the article and see for ourselves.

We pressed:

“Dear Jack:

“What I think of Shaye Cohen’s article is, at this point, irrelevant. I simply ask that you identify the passages that you had in mind in the manuscript you submitted to me.

“Best regards,”

Professor Neusner’s response was to withdraw the manuscript; he would, he wrote, publish it elsewhere.⁶

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Neusner’s accusations concerning the Cohen article are important for two reasons: (1) Cohen’s article is the best overall short discussion we have seen of Neusner’s approach to the rabbinic classics;^d while critical, it is balanced and recognizes the value of Neusner’s work. It is in no sense a defense of the traditional approach to these classics, which Neusner attacks, nor is it a diatribe against Neusner. Cohen’s criticism may thus serve as an effective entry point for further discussion of Neusner’s approach to the rabbinic classics. (2) Neusner has attempted to assassinate this article.

We have charged that Neusner has attempted to assassinate Cohen’s article. How so? In addition to falsely charging the article with containing a “series of nasty and mean-spirited attacks” on him and his students, Neusner has conducted a campaign against it that can only be described as the big lie. Neusner has called the language in Cohen’s article “brutal and vile.” Because of this, “no serious interchange of ideas is possible.” Cohen, according to Neusner, is “a rank beginner” who “turn[s] scholarship into a blood sport.” The editor of Conservative Judaism, in which Cohen’s article appeared, is “witless” for publishing it.⁷ The Journal itself is a “filthy rag.”⁸

Elsewhere, Neusner accuses Cohen of “heap[ing] fire and brimstone on his [Neusner’s] head,” of using “rhetoric out of all proportion to the scholarly, even arcane, character of the issue,” of making “ad hominem attacks,” of taking “cheap shots.”⁹

We challenge anyone, Professor Neusner or his supporters, to quote the passages in Cohen’s article that constitute “a series of nasty and mean-spirited attacks” on Professor Neusner and his students. We challenge anyone to quote for us the “brutal and vile language” that supposedly characterizes this article and prevents any scholarly interchange.

Such charges are especially strange coming from one who is well known for the rhetorical level of the criticism he directs at other scholars. For example, Jerusalem scholars in rabbinics, Neusner has said, write “nitwit articles”; these scholars, Neusner says, have formed “a little cabal of petty, incompetent theologian-thugs”: the journal Judaism, Neusner has said, is a “scholarly embarrassment, a self-celebration of third-rate minds. It’s not even boring!”¹⁰

At the famous Society of Biblical Literature seminar at which Neusner’s appreciators delivered papers, Dean A. T. Kraabel of Luther College, in a generally approving paper, noted that “Neusner can be very difficult to work with. His kind of academic debate often resembles an exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles.” Especially for Neusner, therefore, it is strange that he has heaped such polemical scorn on Cohen’s article. After all, it is Neusner who has said, “There is nothing bad about disagreement, even in strong terms.”¹¹ In the manuscript he submitted to BAR, Neusner himself wrote, “I give better than I get.”

But the point is not the rhetorical level of Neusner’s response to Cohen. It is that rhetoric is being used in an attempt to avoid meeting the substance of Cohen’s criticism.¹² Neusner rants and raves, but he does not answer Cohen’s criticism. That is the point. There is nothing in Cohen’s article that, despite Neusner’s claim to the contrary, prevents a serious interchange of ideas.

In the manuscript Neusner submitted to 064BAR, he stated, “I am not complaining about criticism, however harsh.” Yet his reaction to Cohen has been just that, to complain instead of to reply.

We have belabored this point because, as we have said, Cohen’s article provides an effective entry to a substantive consideration of Neusner’s work in talmudic history.

But before considering his work in talmudic history, a few remarks about Professor Neusner and his work in general are in order.

First, Professor Neusner is extraordinarily prolific. In the early years of his career, he produced a book a year. More recently, he has been producing, on the average, a book a month. He writes articles without number. One of his close colleagues told us, “Jack doesn’t have an unpublished thought.” Frequently, articles will be reprinted in books, and parts of books will be reprinted as articles. As Cohen has remarked, “Whatever Neusner considers worthy of publication is published at least twice.” In the Society of Biblical Literature seminar in Neusner’s honor, one of his admirers, Dean Kraabel, told the audience, “There is probably no one among his students and probably no one in this room who does not wish Neusner would slow down a bit and live longer with the composition of each paragraph.”

Nevertheless, regardless of what qualifications one may put on it, Neusner’s scholarly production has been enormous with profound effect.

Second, Neusner’s writing has an extraordinary range In the words of another admirer, James A. Sanders, director of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, California:

“[Neusner’s] writing ranges from the most technical marshaling of evidence in the flattest style imaginable, to the soaring of musical strains that touch the heart and betray the depth of the man’s vision and faith. He writes for the esoteric scholar, the seminary student, the pastor and rabbi, the college student, laity and children. He writes not only about Formative Judaism but modern American Judaism, not only about the Mishnah and Talmud but about the holocaust, not only about Tosefta and Midrash but about modern ecumenism, and even the principles and policies of higher education.”

Third, considering the range and volume of his work, Neusner may perhaps be forgiven his inattention to, and consequent errors in, details. Cohen called Neusner’s inattention to details “infamous,” a “journalistic haste to publish his results.” But even an ardent admirer of Neusner’s like Dean Kraabel has remarked, “Part of the attack on Neusner is justified. There are problems at times with the precision and the accuracy of his work.”

Fourth, both in person and in writing, Jack Neusner can be the most charming, urbane and delightful of companions. To those who are the objects of his invective, on the other hand, he can sometimes seem vicious and hate-filled. Unfortunately, he can switch quickly—and often. One long-time friend of Neusner’s who read some of the correspondence that followed BAR’s coverage of “the Neusner affair,” wrote us, “I sense a truly towering ego slowly crumbling into paranoia.”

Fifth, Professor Neusner is positively brilliant. There is absolutely nothing he has written that is not worthwhile and stimulating to read. Even the late Professor Saul Lieberman in his damning review of Neusner’s preliminary translation of the Palestinian Talmud recognized that Neusner’s essays “abound in brilliant insights and intelligent questions.”

Now let us turn more specifically to Neusner’s contributions to talmudic history, and more specifically the history of the Mishnah.^e

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Professor Neusner has developed a different approach to the study of the rabbinic classics—the Mishnah, the Talmuds (Babylonian and Palestinian), the Tosefta, Leviticus Rabbah—all written between about 200 and 600 A.D. In the words of Professor Sanders, Neusner has applied “totally new methods to the study of the Talmud.”^f

Traditionally, the study of these rabbinic classics has been confined largely to the yeshiva, or theological seminary. Here they are considered divinely prescribed sources of Jewish law and are studied minutely. The entire corpus of rabbinic classics has been regarded as a single unit, each word of which is potentially useful in understanding every other word.^g What was stated as having happened or having been said was accepted as fact. In more recent times, the principal change in the traditional methodology of study has been to bring to bear modern philology on the words of the text.

In Neusner’s own words:¹³

“Earlier historians of the Talmud took for granted that what a man was said to have done is what actually was done. What was attributed to him is what he really said. What people claimed happened actually took place. And the record before us is the accurate, detailed account of what really was said and done. The legal scholar or textual exegesis is interested in the content of the texts; it would not matter to him whether a man really said what is attributed to him, for he wants only to know the legal principles at issue and to trace the rabbis’ discussion of those principles through legal literature.”

For the traditional Talmudists, the scholar’s task “is to mine the encyclopedias and come up with important observations on the 066basis of the facts at hand. The work of the historian then is the collection and arrangement of facts, the analysis of facts, the synthesis of facts. It is not in the inquiry into the source and character of the facts at hand.”¹⁴

“[A]ll they’re [traditional Talmudists] doing is collecting and arranging variant readings, and working on enormously erudite philology that doesn’t make much difference to the meaning of the text. There’s no critical program, no method and no system.”¹⁵

To revert to the words of Professor Sanders, Neusner applied “form analysis which he adapted from form criticism in biblical studies. His focus was not on what the texts said about the people they talked about so much as on what the texts said about people they did not talk about, namely those who produced the texts and those who received them and read them.”¹⁶ The question for Neusner is “how to probe into the reality that lies behind the text. … He constantly searches for the internal hermeneutics of the ancient writers and readers, the real human beings of these texts.”¹⁷

To turn once more to Neusner:¹⁸

“As I have stressed in every work of mine, we begin the search with the smallest details, we then ask what the details of the text repeatedly stress. This commonly emerges not from what the text says, but from how it says what it says. In the main beams of rhetoric, in the repeated details, ubiquitous, implicit, self evident, and therefore definitive, I claim to find that principal message that speaks for the work as a whole. The deepest structures of syntax may convey the principles of order. The techniques of rhetoric, broadly construed, properly understood, may speak also to us. They accordingly may deliver a text’s substantive message through the forms of proportion and of intelligible, therefore logical, speech.”

Not only does Neusner’s method desacralize rabbinic writings; it has moved them from the seminary to the university, and this has produced some of the tensions frequently referred to in the debate.^h

The situation is effectively summarized by Cohen in his condemned article:

“Anyone who follows Neusner’s popular and semipopular writings knows that this professor at Brown University is an articulate spokesman on behalf of the integration of Jewish studies into American universities. They have a place in the humanities, he argues, because they embody important values and teachings which even outsiders can appreciate. They speak not only to Jews. No less than Homer or Plato, Dante or Chaucer, they speak to everyone. Hence throughout his scholarly career Neusner has attempted to break the grip on rabbinic studies held by theologians and ‘traditional’ scholars. He translates everything into English, publicly admits that he is not a ‘traditional’ scholar of rabbinics, attempts to make ancient Judaism accessible to everyone, and is raising a generation of graduate students many of whom have minimal expertise in the ‘traditional’ aspects of the study of rabbinics. The climax (for the moment) of this enterprise is Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah which presents the Mishnah not as a book of arcane laws which interest only law-observant Jews, but as a book of philosophy which should interest all who would attempt to understand the human condition.”

Neusner reads each significant classic of rabbinic Judaism, such as the Mishnah “on its own.” In each classic rabbinic text, Neusner “attempts to trace the history of ideas, not the history of texts.”¹⁹

In so doing, Neusner has applied “totally new methods to study of the Talmud than had ever before been attempted.”²⁰ By so doing, Neusner has made an enormous contribution to rabbinic scholarship that will secure his reputation for generations.

He has asked the right new questions, all agree. And for this, Cohen—in the article Neusner reviles—gives Neusner full honor. Neusner’s work, says Cohen, is:

“Brilliant, because it asks provocative new questions, because it treats the Mishnah from a thoroughly novel perspective, and because it shows how ancient texts can be made to come to life. … Some ‘traditional’ Jews may find [Neusner’s] approach disturbing since it removes the Mishnah from the realm of the holy and the true. But historians (like myself) will endorse the approach completely.”

Cohen recognizes the importance of Neusner’s questions and the validity of his general approach. But, he says, the answers 067Neusner supplies are wrong—and this is where he incurs Neusner’s wrath. Cohen argues intelligently, reasonably, toughly, but without polemics. Cohen’s analysis is provocative and legitimate. Right or wrong, it makes a significant contribution to an ongoing discussion. It should be treated in that vein, not castigated as Neusner has tried to do.

Applying his method, Neusner interprets the Mishnah as a philosophical, existential reaction to the failures of the two Jewish revolts against Rome, the first of which ended in 70 A.D. with the destruction of the Temple and the second of which, the so-called Bar Kokhba revolt, ended in 135 A.D.—a final confirmation of the loss of Jewish statehood, dashing any hope, according to Neusner, that the Temple and its cult might be restored. From the ashes, like Phoenix, came the Mishnah.

Although Cohen applauds the questions Neusner raises, as well as his general critical approach to the sacred literature, Cohen sees problems not only with the answers Neusner supplies but also with some of his methodology. Cohen asks, for example, how Neusner knows that the Mishnah is to be understood in terms of a reaction to the failures of the two Jewish revolts against Rome. The Mishnah itself does not speak in these terms.

Neusner’s argument is summarized by Cohen:²¹

“Living in a world without a temple, the Jews [after 135 A.D.] were in spiritual disarray. Their planet had been thrown off its axis. They were no longer sure that God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous, that God takes an interest in their actions, or that they could obtain forgiveness for their sins without the intermediation of the sacrificial cult. The Gnostics who flourished in the second century argued that the world is evil and controlled by an evil god. They counseled escape through heavenly ascents and ascetic (or libertine) behavior. The Christians argued that the destruction of the temple signaled the rejection of the Jews by God, and that without the sacrifice of Christ atonement was unobtainable.

“Into this spiritual maelstrom stepped the rabbis, or, as Neusner likes to call them, the philosophers of the Mishnah. In a world that seemed so unholy the rabbis affirmed the continued validity of the laws of holiness which separated between Life and Death, between Jew and Gentile. In a world without a temple the rabbis centered much of their world view on the Temple and its rituals, affirming 068that the ideal temple still determines the boundaries of sacred space and time. In a world which seemed to care little for the piety and behavior of the Jews the rabbis declared that the intentions of individuals matter. By their actions and thoughts men can consecrate and sanctify (or pollute and profane) God’s creation. In a world which threatened a Jew with the loss of his identity, the rabbis determined with exquisite precision the limits of mixtures and the nature of the ‘excluded middles’ of the law. The rabbis were philosophers addressing the existential questions of their age.”

Cohen acknowledges that “this reconstruction is brilliantly imaginative,” but asks, “How much of it is really in the Mishnah itself?”

Neusner’s method, says Cohen, is based on “impressionism”:²²

“How do we read the Mishnah ‘on its own terms’ [as Neusner says he does]? Freed from parallel texts and sources, oblivious to the interpretations of the ancients themselves, and interested only in certain themes and issues, the impressionist exegete is king, able to select whatever he feels is found in the Mishnah on its own (i.e., on his own, the interpreter’s) terms.”

According to Cohen, Neusner “converts the theme of a small part of the Mishnah into the central theme of the entire Mishnah.” Neusner gives this theme “a context which hardly appears in the Mishnah itself. In contrast, Neusner ignores almost all of the passages in which the Mishnah speaks about itself.”²³

Cohen argues that “If we read the Mishnah on its own terms … we do not discover any theological crisis [as Neusner posits].²⁴

The sages of the Mishnah, says Cohen:²⁵

“occasionally refer to the destruction of the Temple (Neusner should have collected and analyzed this material, but, as usual, he ignores ‘historical’ passages), but there is no sign of any deep theological crisis. Why this is so, is a question worth pursuing. Perhaps even when the Second Temple was standing, many Jews were uncertain of its holiness and effectiveness … [A]n atmosphere of crisis cannot be found in the Mishnah. Similarly, the idea that the cessation of the sacrificial cult caused theological difficulties is nowhere to be found in the Mishnah. … There is even less evidence for a crisis after the downfall of Bar Kokhba at Betar. Neusner himself and scholars in his circle emphasize that the rabbinic movement was not deeply involved in the Bar Kokhba uprising. Therefore the nature of the trauma felt by the rabbis after 135 is not clear. The Mishnah never mentions Bar Kokhba, mentions Betar only once, and refers only fleetingly to the Bar Kokhba war. Whether other Jews sensed a deep loss after 135, we can only speculate. … Similarly, the Mishnah contains no support for the [fact] that after 135 the Jews finally recognized that for the foreseeable future there would be no temple and no cult. On the contrary, the Mishnah’s utopian legislation about the future temple and its cult might indicate that the hopes for the future were still very much alive. … Neusner has not read the Mishnah ‘on its own terms.’”

Cohen recognizes that “the Mishnah is certainly not a work of history, and … the rabbis were certainly not historians.”²⁶

“Nevertheless,” argues Cohen:²⁷

“the Mishnah contains a substantial body of historical information about itself. … The Mishnah refers to various ‘enactments’ and ‘decrees,’ to ‘the words of the scribes,’ and to various historical events. It contains numerous historical narratives about the Temple, the Sanhedrin, the rituals for a fast day, and other matters. It has brief historical disquisitions on the importance of the fast days and on the gradual decline of the rabbinic estate since the deaths of some ancient worthies. It contains numerous anecdotes (ma‘asim). Even if the historical value of much of this material is negligible, it is first rate evidence for an understanding of 069the Mishnah on its own terms, of the Mishnah’s conception of self. And yet, Neusner ignores virtually all of this material. He similarly ignores the explicit theological data of the Mishnah its names for God; its references to the afterlife, reward and punishment, mysticism and messianism; and its creedal formulae. The excessive importance assigned to this material by theologians and ‘traditional’ scholars cannot excuse Neusner’s thorough neglect of it.”

Cohen raises fair questions. He deserves to be answered in scholarly, as well as polemical, terms. He has advanced the debate, at the same time recognizing Neusner’s enormous contribution. Cohen applauds the questions Neusner raises, although he disagrees with Neusner’s answers. In short, Cohen has met Neusner on Neusner’s own turf. Cohen recognizes that Neusner’s approach to the rabbinic classics is:²⁸

“bold, imaginative, innovative, and brilliant. Jacob Neusner is attempting to reveal Judaism’s treasures to the outside world and to revolutionize Jewish scholarship in the process. This endeavor is analogous to the work of Gershom Scholem who laid bare Judaism’s mystical core and revolutionized Jewish scholarship in the process.”

Although Cohen finds that “Neusner’s philosophical exegesis of the Mishnah fails to convince,” he nevertheless concludes that Neusner’s book on the Mishnah, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah is—despite its flaws, “both massive and minute”—“a brilliant and imaginative book of the first rank, an important and stimulating contribution to the modern study of rabbinics.”²⁹

Obviously, any short treatment like this is a vast oversimplification. But we hope this will give our readers a fair idea of the substance, as well as the polemics, of the debate. Professor Neusner has made an enormous contribution to opening up new avenues of approach in the study of the rabbinic literature. Almost everyone accepts this. It is only natural that some of his methods and some of his answers will need to be modified. It is time to move beyond the old debate—traditional rabbinics versus Neusner’s approach—and consider the substantive validity of what this new approach has thus far produced.

We encourage our readers to pursue the matter in greater depth. Because Professor Cohen’s article is relatively inaccessible, we have made arrangements to send copies to any reader who requests it. Please enclose $1.50 and a stamped self-addressed envelope if you would like us to mail you a copy.

In our last discussion of what has become known as “the Neusner affair,”a we expressed the hope that our coverage would lead to a substantive consideration of the work of Professor Jacob Neusner, Brown University’s widely known Judaic scholar. We are determined to turn that hope into a reality. But patience, dear reader, patience. We will get there. After we reported the dramatic episode at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in which Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University announced his concurrence with the late Professor Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary that Professor Neusner’s preliminary translation of […]