Softbound. 8vo. 347; 373; 373 pages. 23 cm. First edition. Three volume set: v. 1. The pointless parallel: Hans-Jürgen Becker and the myth of the autonomous tradition - v. 2. Paltry parallels: the negligible proportion and peripheral role of free-standing compositions in rabbinic documents - v. 3. Peripatetic parallels: extra- and non-documentary writing in the canon of formative Judaism. "Rabbinic literature in its formative age, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, ca. 100–600 c. E. , is comprised by documents that relate to one another in three ways. First, they are autonomous and self-contained; second, they are connected with one another; and third, they are continuous with one another. Some point to the connections, in the form of parallel versions of sayings or stories, as evidence against the theory that the documents possess integrity. Volume One addresses the contrary position as represented by the writings of three generations, the Goldberg-Schaefer-Becker group, of the German academic school of Rabbinic studies. That school holds that for antiquity there is nothing we may call "Judaism, " a religious system realized in its canonical writings. In Volume One of Neusner’s canonical compilations, these parallels make no point at all. They are random, trivial, and prove nothing. Volume Two samples the other-than-documentary components, compositions, and composites of the Bavli, Mishnah, Tosefta, Sifra, and Genesis Rabbah that do not exhibit the distinctive traits of those documents. It shows that, for the analyzed samples of Bavli, Mishnah, Tosefta, and Sifra, the extra- and non-documentary writing forms a paltry proportion of the whole. Free-standing compositions furthermore undertake no critical documentary task within the document (s) in which they occur. Volume Three reprises Neusner’s The Peripatetic Saying: The Problem of the Thrice-Told-Tale in Talmudic Literature (Chico, 1985; Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies) . It responds to critics of the documentary reading of the canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism in the formative age who make much of the variations in manuscript readings of sayings and stories. These variations are so different from one another that, so the critics maintain, they call into question the very conception of a document. Each manuscript (let alone each compilation) has its own representation of a given compilation; there are no determinate documents. That is because the documentary program of rhetoric, topic, and logic of coherent discourse makes no impact on sayings or stories that circulate beyond the limits of any one document. All we have are diverse versions of we-know-not what. For the sample covered in these pages, claims that parallels move from document to document vastly exaggerate the range of variation. The variant readings are paltry and pointless, just like the parallels to which Volumes One and Two are devoted. " (Publishers description) . Subjects: Midrash - History and criticism - Theory, etc. Rabbinical literature - History and criticism - Theory, etc. Rabbinische Literatur. Becker, Hans-Jürgen, 1956- Grossen rabbinischen Sammelwerke Palästinas. Talmud - Criticism, Form. Light wear to wraps, otherwise fresh. Very good condition. (NEUSNER-2-7). Bookseller Inventory # 32788
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