Jacob Neusner reconstructs and interprets the Mishnah’s intellectual history, presenting a picture of the beginnings and first major expression of Judaism. In this volume, Neusner makes a sustained effort to relate the unfolding of the ideas of the Mishnah to the historical setting of the philosophers of the document, to compare context and concept, and to question the interplay between ideas and reality. He succeeds in this specific task and in the greater task of providing a work with methodological significance for the entire field of the history of religions.