The Economics of the Mishnah
The Economics of the Mishnah is the first book to examine the place of economic theory generally in the Judaic system of the Mishnah. Jacob Neusner begins by surveying previous work on economics and Judaism, the best known being Werner Sombart's The Jews and Modern Capitalism. The mistaken notion that Jews have had a common economic history has outlived the demise of Sombart's argument, and it is a notion that Neusner overturns before discussing the Mishnaic economics.
Only in Aristotle, Neusner argues, do we find an equal to the Mishnah's accomplishment in engaging economics in the service of a larger systemic statement. Neusner shows that the framers of the Mishnah imagined a distributive economy functioning through the Temple and priesthood, while also legislating for the action of markets. The economics of the Mishnah, then, is to some extent a mixed economy. The dominant, distributive element in this mixed economy, Neusner contends, derives from the belief that the Temple and its designated castes on earth exercise God's claim to the ownership of the holy land. He concludes by considering the implications of the derivation of the Mishnah's economics from the interests of the undercapitalized and overextended farmer.
1. The Economics of Judaism
2. The Initial Statement: The System of the Mishnah and Its Economics
3. Economics in Antiquity
4. The Mishnah's Market Economics: The Household
5. The Market
7. The Mishnah's Distributive Economics: Householder, Market, Wealth
8. Theology, Class Ideology, and Distributive Economics: Cui Bono?
1. Toward the Analysis of Systems and the Comparison of Rationalities
2. The Mishnah in Canonical Context and the Next Stages in Study of the Economics of Judaism