BARview: The Neusner Phenomenon—Personality and Substance

In our last discussion of what has become known as “the Neusner affair,”^a we expressed the hope that our coverage would lead to a substantive consideration of the work of Professor Jacob Neusner, Brown University’s widely known Judaic scholar. We are determined to turn that hope into a reality. But patience, dear reader, patience. We will get there.

After we reported the dramatic episode at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in which Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University announced his concurrence with the late Professor Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary that Professor Neusner’s preliminary translation of the Palestinian Talmud should be consigned to the wastebasket,^b Professor Neusner threatened us with a lawsuit and wrote us that, “Beyond this point, no further communication is possible.”