Translating the Classics of Judaism: In Theory and in Practice, and: Medium and Message in Judaism (review)

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 171 Reviews through them at the end. (For other themes in Genesis Rabbah see Neusner's other anthology, Genesis and Judaism: The Perspective of Genesis Rabbah: An Analytical Anthology [Atlanta: Scholars, 1985]. For a synthetic analysis of the various ways works of rabbinic literature interact with scripture, see Neusner and William S. Green, Writing with Scripture: The Amhority and Uses of the Hebrew Bible in the Torah of Formative Judaism [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989].) Neusner is certainly correct in his program for interpreting the midrash. He has shown that many of the halakhic and Rabbah midrashim are not miscellaneous collections, but carefully crafted interpretations of Israel's traditions. Instead of atomizing the midrashim and comparing decontextualized exegetical comments, sayings, and stories, readers should apprehend the unified visions of various works within which interpretations are made. This is not to deny the numerous detailed textual and exegetical problems remaining to be solved nor the variety of views and the loose ends comprehended but not fully explained by Neusner's master hypotheses. Rather modem literary studies of textual units, sociological studies of the settings of works, comparisons of documents and historicalphilological analyses of individual problems must take place within the larger setting of whole documents. And ultimately the fruits of these studies must be related to the outlooks and needs of modem communities, as Neusner has begun to relate Genesis Rabbah to Israel today. Anthony J. Saldarini Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 TRANSLATING THE CLASSICS OF JUDAISM: IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE. By Jacob Neusner. Brown Judaic Studies 176. Pp. xix + 158. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989. Cloth. MEDIUM AND MESSAGE IN JUDAISM. First Series. By Jacob Neusner. Brown Judaic Studies 179. Pp. xi + 169. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989. Cloth. For twenty years, Jacob Neusner has edited, translated, and interpreted the Mishna, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, Bavli, and midrashim in order to study literature, the history of ideas, and the history of religion. His impressive Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 172 Reviews oeuvre let us see things we have never seen before, changing forever our approach to the Judaisms of the rabbinic age. For the "sea of the Talmud" and the midrash in their formative centuries, he has created a landscape and vision like the double-visaged god Janus, criticizing both past and contemporary seminary, ethnic, and academic scholarship at the same time he has provided guidelines for the discipline's future dynamics. Neusner's program for studying rabbinic Judaism has impressively joined a history-ofreligions approach to form, source, transmission, and redaction criticisms while reading units both as self-contained literary constructions and also against their cultural and historical background as well as that of the rabbinic mind. Neusner's methodology and philology in translating the classics of the rabbinic canon are laid bare in Translating the Classics ofJudaism. Part One presents his principles of translation by examining structure, text, and literary units in passages from both the Bavli (Arakhin 2a-2b) and the Yerushalmi (Sota 5:2). Part Two compares his work with other translations of the same documents: W. O. Braude and I. J. Kapstein on Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana; J. Goldin on Avot de-Rabbi Nathan; P. P. Levertoff on Sifre to Numbers; and R. Hammer on Sifre to Deuteronomy. Part Three presents the case for "analytical translation," which the author developed out of his imaginative form-critical approach to talmudic studies. The result is an informed discussion on recognizing textual, rhetorical, and logical characteristics as marks of literary subdivisions. This then becomes a ready reference system for a form-literary understanding of any "unit of discourse " in the text. Unfortunately, multiple errors have entered into editing this revision and reorganization of material taken from the author's prior introductions to the classics of Judaism. In Part One, for example, footnotes are missing on pp. 24, 25, 30, and 32; footnotes and text are joined together on pp. 30 and 32; an inaccurate reference is offered in the left column of p. 30, which cites m. Sukk. 2:8 instead of b. Sukk. 28b; "Oen 5:3-4" should read "Num 5:3-4" (p. 82), and redundancy is particularly glaring on p. 13, where three succeeding sentences...