The Sages: The World and Wisdom of the Rabbi's od theTalmud (Paperback)

~ Ephraim E. Urbach (Author), Israel Abrahams (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Review

[This book] remains a unique thematic survey of Rabbinic theology, cosmology, ethics, eschatology, theodicy, and philosophies of law and history...The thematic continuities which the Talmud, Midrash, and other great texts of the Rabbinic tradition embody but refuse to explicate for us are and have always been the real nerve of rabbinic dialogue. And these are what the vast and clearheaded erudition of Urbach makes accessible. -- L. E. Goodman "Philosophy East and West"

Review

Authoritative and comprehensive. Professor Urbach's The Sages is an indispensable book for all those who are curious to know how the rabbis of the Talmud handled philosophical and theological issues. It has few peers.
--David Weiss Halivni

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1084 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 3rd edition (September 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674785231
• ISBN-13: 978-0674785236
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,500,429 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There are Few Like it, December 23, 2000

By	Jonathan Bailey (Lawton, OK USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.