The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs

Rating:
Summary: There are Few Like it
Review: This book is difficult to read if you don't follow Urbach's line of reasoning on a number of issues, but the its scope makes it a valuable tool for virtually anyone in the field of Jewish studies. The book has two indexes (one by topic, one by texts mentioned) which help the reader make use of the many obscurer texts that Urbach quotes, some of them virtually impossible to find in translation anywhere. Urbach himself is deeply steeped in a humanistic concept of the evolution of religions, that is, that Monotheism is something that an originally polytheistic Jewish people 'made up' at some point in history, and they have been refining this invention throughout the ages. This can render the book problematic to Orthodox Jews and Fundamentalist Christians, but the sheer wealth of material has made the book a valuable reference to me, even though I hold to the opinion that the biblical religion is revealed, rather than made up. The book is well organized by 'doctrine' or belief, and Urbach does an excellent job of quoting the texts that he uses to come to his conclusions about what the Rabbis believed, when and where they believed it, and how the belief changed over time. He is guilty of an over reliance on various (fallible) opinions about the dating and authorship of a number of these texts, some of them so nebulous as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Over all, Urbach has the same over confidence betrayed by humanist scholars who sometimes forget to check the limits of their knowledge about this ancient people, but the book he has written is so thorough and massive that it cannot be anything other than valuable to any budding Judaist.

Chapter headings include: Belief in one God, The Shekhina, Omnipresence and Heaven, Power of God, Magic and Miracle, Power of the Divine Name, The Celestial Retinue, Man, Providence, Written and Oral Law, and other fascinating subjects. Sticky subjects such as the two messianic concepts in Judiasm are handled in depth. Ancient Rabbinical sources (Talmud and older Midrash, Halacha, and Aggada) are preferred, and the Judaism that is explained here is that of the 2nd Temple period and early Christian era, closing with the completion of the generation of the Amoraim, as opposed to the Medieval Judaism of Maimonides and the like.

I highly recommend this book, despite Urbach's occasional blunder, to anyone seriously interested in Judiasm and the ancient Jewish literary corpus.