History

Jacob Neusner was invited in 1984 to give a lecture to the Historical Society of Israel at a conference to commemorate the fifty-year anniversary of its journal Zion. The organizers of the conference had asked for his paper in advance so that they could prepare a translation into idiomatic Hebrew, which he would subsequently read at the conference. A month after he sent them the paper, he received a note in the mail saying he was no longer invited because the organizers had decided at the last minute not to make it into an international gathering.1 Neusner subsequently published the English version of the paper as “Methodology in Talmudic History” (Neusner 1984b), to which he added the following note at the beginning of the essay:

Written for the Historical Society of Israel Conference in celebration of its journal, Zion, on the occasion of its fiftieth volume. Jerusalem, Israel. Scheduled for July 2, 1984. This paper was mailed to Jerusalem on January 27, 1984, and the invitation to present it was withdrawn in a letter dated March 5, 1984. The facts speak for themselves but I prefer not to suggest what they say.