ABSTRACT
The formative history of rabbinic Judaism, that mode of Judaism which claims that a dual Torah, one in writing, the other transmitted orally, was revealed to Moses at Sinai and in its ramifications is contained in the rabbinic literature. The central mythic structure, fundamental themes of theology and law, and predominant and generative methods and conceptual problematic of rabbinic Judaism had taken shape by that time. In general, pictures of rabbinic Judaism begin within the rabbinic-Judaic picture of its own past. The generality of books on talmudic or rabbinic Judaism is organized in categories drawn from nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories of Christian, particularly Protestant, theology; the intellectual agendum is shaped within Christian theological faculties and not within the Judaic literature which supposedly comes under analysis and description. Inevitably one must characterize the treatment in the available accounts of early rabbinic Judaism of one topic after another as unhistorical and superficial.
