The Rabbis of the first five centuries of the Common Era loom large in the Jewish tradition. Until the modern period, Jews viewed the Rabbinic traditions as the authoritative contents of their covenant with God, and scholars debated the meanings of these ancient Sages words. Even after the eighteenth century, when varied denominations emerged within Judaism, each with its own approach to the tradition, the literary legacy of the talmudic Sages continued to be consulted. In this book, Michael S. Berger analyzes the notion of Rabbinic authority from a philosophical standpoint. He sets out a typology of theories that can be used to understand the authority of these Sages, showing the coherence of each, its strengths and weaknesses, and what aspects of the Rabbinic enterprise it covers. His careful and thorough analysis reveals that owing to the multifaceted character of the Rabbinic enterprise, no single theory is adequate to fully ground Rabbinic authority as traditionally understood. The final section of the book argues that the notion of Rabbinic authority may indeed have been transformed over time, even as it retained the original name. Drawing on the debates about legal hermeneutics between Ronald Dworkin and Stanley Fish, Berger introduces the idea that Rabbinic authority is not a strict consequence of a preexisting theory, but rather is embedded in a form of life that includes text, interpretation, and practices. Rabbinic authority is shown to be a nuanced concept unique to Judaism, in that it is taken to justify those sorts of activities which in turn actually deepen the authority itself. Students of Judaism and philosophers of religion in general will be intrigued by this philosophical examination of a central issue of Judaism, conducted with unprecedented rigor and refreshing creative insight.

Rabbinic Authority : The Authority of the Talmudic Sages

Religion & Spirituality

Berger, Michael S.

Judaism

Oxford University Press

"Should we inquire of a modern historian of philosophy or of any educated person well acquainted with the history of ideas we he understands by the word 'man,' he would immediately advise us about a basic controversy concerning the destiny or essence of this being. By the sheer force of associative thinking, he would at once refer to three disparate anthropological-philosophical viewpoints: the Biblical (referred to by many as the Judeo-Christian view), the classical Greek, and the modern empirico-scientific. Pressed further, he would probably say that the discrepancy between the concepts of man dating back to antiquity - the Biblical and the classical Greek - is by far not as wide as the gap separating those two from the empirico-scientific one. As a matter of fact, he would say, we may speak of some degree of affinity, of commensurability between the Biblical and classical anthropologies. Both are united in opposition to the scientific approach to man: they set man apart from other forms of organic life." - Excerpted from The Emergence of Ethical Man

the Emergence Of Ethical Man (MeOtzar HoRav, 5)

Soloveitchik, Rabbi Joseph B.

Ktav Pub & Distributors Inc

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Books by Berger, Michael S.