The Implicit Norms of Rabbinic Judaism: The Bedrock of a Classical Religion

Implicit norms of law and theology governed in Rabbinic Judaism from the onset of its canon in the Mishnah (concluded at ca. 200) to its climax in the Talmud of Babylonia four centuries later. These norms of conviction and conception prevailed in a complete system, which was logically present, if not fully realized, from the very beginning of the canon. Norms of belief, not only behavior, governed in the canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism and defined its orthodoxy and its heterodoxy. T...