What is Jewish Theology?

doi:10.1017/9781108233705.002

2 - What is Jewish Theology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2020

David Novak

Edited by

Steven Kepnes

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Steven Kepnes: Affiliation:
Colgate University, New York

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Summary

This essay advocates that “theology” as “God-talk” is endemic to Jewish discourse throughout the ages. Jewish theology is a dialectic between prescriptive halakhah or law on one side, and descriptive aggadah or narration on the other side. While the term “theology” itself is usually taken to mean human talk about God, Jewish “theology” as the explication of God’s revealed word (dvar Adonai) means, as Abraham Joshua Heschel (the foremost 20th century Jewish theologian) put it, “God’s anthropology.” Thus Jewish theology is the explication of what Jews have accepted as revealed truth, namely, what God wants humans to know of God’s concern for them as evidenced in history, and what God wants humans to do in response to God’s concern for them.

Keywords

aggadah creation halakhah Jewish theology revelation redemption

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology , pp. 20 - 38

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108233705.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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References

Selected Further Reading

Baeck, Leo. This People Israel. Tanslated by A. H. Freidlander. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965.Google Scholar

Benamozegh, Elijah. Israel and Humanity. Translated by M. Luria. New York: Paulist Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Borowitz, Eugene B. Renewing the Covenant. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991.Google Scholar

Cohen, Hermann. Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism. Translated by S. Kaplan. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972.Google Scholar

Diamond, James A. Jewish Theology Unbound. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar

Goodman, Lenn E. God of Abraham. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

Hartman, David. A Living Covenant. New York: The Free Press, 1985.Google Scholar

Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Sabbath. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.Google Scholar

Jacobs, Louis. A Jewish Theology. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973.Google Scholar

Novak, David. The Election of Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Soloveitchik, Joseph B. The Lonely Man of Faith. New York: Doubleday, 2006.Google Scholar