The Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism

Download or read book The Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism written by Jacob Neusner and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History provides one way of marking time, but there are others, like the Judaism of the dual Torah, set forth in the Rabbinic literature from the Mishnah through the Talmud of Babylonia, which tells the story of how a historical way of thinking about past, present, and future, time and eternity, the here and now in relationship to the ages gave way to another mode of thought altogether. At stake are [1] a conception of time different from the historical one and [2] premises on how to take the measure of time that form a legitimate alternative to those that define the foundations of the historical way of measuring time. Fully exposed, those alternative premises may prove as logical and compelling as the historical ones.