Talmud

The Essential Talmud

Everyman's Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages

The Talmud is among the great books of wisdom--like the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita--whose citation gives a speaker instant credibility. Also like the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita, the Talmud is a powerful source of allusion in large part even though so few people have really read it. People don't read the Talmud because they think it's inaccessible--the sprawling collection of rabbinic writings is added to in each generation, and its significance is nothing less than the summary of Judaism. The best guide to the Talmud's labyrinthine form is Abraham Cohen's Everyman's Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages--a monumental work of scholarly summary that describes all the basic doctrines of Judaism. Everyman's Talmud includes concise chapters on everything from sin to superstitions to a Jew's duty to animals. You probably won't be able to read it straight through--doctrine, even elegantly distilled, is hard to take in big doses--but you'll be led back to it again and again, by questions that arise in daily life, at dinner parties, and from the pages of the daily newspaper. --Michael Joseph Gross

"To some readers of this book, the Talmud represents little more than a famous Jewish book. But people want to know about a book that, they are told, defines Judaism. Everyman's Talmud is the right place to begin not only to learn about Judaism in general but to meet the substance of the Talmud in particular. . . . In time to come, Cohen's book will find its companion-though I do not anticipate it will ever require a successor for what it accomplishes with elegance and intelligence: a systematic theology of the Talmud's Judaism."
--From the Foreword by Jacob Neusner

Long regarded as the classic introduction to the teachings of the Talmud, this comprehensive and masterly distillation summarizes the wisdom of the rabbinic sages on the dominant themes of Judaism: the doctrine of God; God and the universe; the soul and its destiny; prophesy and revelation; physical life; moral life and social living; law, ethics, and jurisprudence; legends and folk traditions; the Messiah and the world to come.

Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation

While there are many books on hermeneutics, Graeme Goldsworthy's perception is that evangelical contributions often do not give sufficient attention to the vital relationship between hermeneutics and theology, both systematic and biblical.

In Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, Goldsworthy moves beyond a reiteration of the usual arguments to concentrate on the theological questions of presuppositions, and the implications of the Christian gospel for hermeneutics. In doing so, he brings fresh perspectives on some well-worn pathways.

Part I examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief, particularly with regard to biblical interpretation.

Part II offers a selective overview of important hermeneutical developments from the sub-apostolic age to the present, as a means of identifying some significant influences that have been alien to the gospel.

Part III evaluates ways and means of reconstructing truly gospel-centered hermeneutics.

Goldsworthy's aim throughout is to commend the much-neglected role of biblical theology in hermeneutical practice, with pastoral concern for the people of God as they read, interpret and seek to live by his written Word.

Jesus in the Talmud

Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus--and they're not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible book, Peter Schäfer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity.

The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus' birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell--and that a similar fate awaits his followers.

Schäfer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels--especially Matthew and John--and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis' proud and self-confident countermessage to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power and the Jews therefore suffered.

A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus, Jesus in the Talmud posits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives.

Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash

The first complete English translation of the Hebrew classic Sefer Ha-Aggadah brings to the English-speaking world the greatest and best-loved anthology of classical Rabbinic literature ever compiled. First published in Odessa in 1908-11, it was recognized immediately as a masterwork in its own right, and reprinted numerous times in Israel.

The Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik and the renowned editor Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, the architects of this masterful compendium, selected hundreds of texts from the Talmud and midrashic literature and arranged them thematically, in order to provide their contemporaries with easy access to the national literary heritage of the Jewish people -- the texts of Rabbinic Judaism that remain at the heart of Jewish literacy today.

Bialik and Ravnitzky chose Aggadah -- the non-legal portions of the Talmud and Midrash -- for their anthology. Loosely translated as "legends", Aggadah includes the genres of biblical exegesis, stories about biblical characters, the lives of the Talmudic era sages and their contemporary history, parables, proverbs, and folklore. A captivating melange of wisdom and piety, fantasy and satire, Aggadah is the expressive medium of the Jewish creative genius.

The arrangement of this compendium reflects the theological concerns of the Rabbinic sages: the role of Israel and the nations; God, good and evil; human relations; the world of nature; and the art of healing. Here, the reader who wants to explore traditional Jewish views on a particular subject is treated to a selection of relevant texts at his fingertips but will soon become immersed in a way of thinking, exploring, and questioning that is the hallmark of Jewish inquiry.

"Whatever the imagination can invent is found in the Aggadah," wrote the historian Leopold Zunz, "its purpose always being to teach man the ways of God." The Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah, now available in william Braude's superbly annotated translation, enables modern Jews to experience firsthand the richness and excitement of their cultural inheritance.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Talmud

An insightful look at one of the most unusual written works ever created. Compiled centuries ago by a group of wise men as a way to preserve the oral traditions of the Jewish faith, the Talmud has challenged and thrilled some of the world's greatest minds with its complex approach to exploring ideas and subjects from virtually every possible angle. This essential guide makes the ancient text of the "oral Torah" accessible for all readers, whether they're Jewish or not.

Swimming in the Sea of Talmud

If you have found the study of Talmud daunting, this book is a perfect jumping off point for this central body of rabbinic literature.

The Oral Law of Sinai: An Illustrated History of the Mishnah (Arthur Kurzweil Books)

Written by the Orthodox historian Rabbi Berel Wein, The Oral Law of Sinai is an extraordinary and beautifully illustrated book that explores the Talmud—a law book that is a faithful transmission of the Oral Law of Sinai. As Rabbi Wein explains, the Talmud is two separate books comprising the Oral Law. This work offers an explanation of the first book of the Talmud, the Mishnah

Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash

The classic work on the field.

Talmud Jmmanuel