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Joseph Norment Bell: Love theory in later Hanbalite Islam . (Studies in Islamic Philosophy and Science.) Albany, N. Y.: State University of New York Press, 1979. $35.

Professor Neusner's output is astonishing. Of the six orders of the Mishnah he has produced ' histories ' on the order ' Purities ' (in 22 volumes, reviewed over the years in this journal); on ' Women ' (the five volumes here reviewed); and on ' Holy Things ' (which, so far as I am aware, has not been published but is referred to by the author as if the reader were already acquainted with it). It is extremely difficult for a reviewer to keep pace with Neusner since, while he insists on treating each order as a unit, a ' system ' in his words, he appears to be suggesting repeatedly that final conclusions will only emerge when his work on the whole corpus of the Mishnah has been brought to a close. Judging by his performance until now, it will not be very long before an assessment of the complete work will be possible. If he keeps up the current rate of production, there will be something like fifty volumes to consider, their cost placing them beyond all except universities, libraries and those fortunate enough to be reviewers. Furthermore, he is not averse to tentativeness or to changing his mind. He even records without any reply the criticism by colleagues of some of his theories. Neusner continues to apply form-critical method to the Mishnah, skilfully detecting material from four periods: the decades before the destruction of the Temple in the year 70; the age of Yavneh (c. 70-140); the age of Usha (c. 140-70); and that of the redaction of the Mishnah (c. 200). Thanks largely to Neusner and his school, all students of the Talmud have learnt to ask the right questions concerning this literature: when was a particular text redacted; how much reliance can we place on the attribution of sayings to this or that early teacher; what kind of development can be traced through the various periods ; and how do we go about dating these periods accurately ? For this contribution all modern Talmud scholars are heavily indebted to him. Far less convincing, however, are Neusner's vast theories, unsupported by the evidence, regarding the concepts behind the Mishnaic formulations. In ' Women ' he advances the thesis that the principle of selection by the editors of the Mishnah has to do with their attitudes towards women in society. In those situations when a woman becomes bound in the bond of relationship to a man, either by his act of betrothal with her consent or by the act of Heaven in levirate marriage, and when she is released from a man to be free to marry another, either through a bill of divorce issued by the husband or by the death of her husband, the stability of society is threatened unless it is all brought into close relation with the sacred. Here, and in the other ' orders ' of the Mishnah, the material is so arranged as to emphasize this theme of ' order'. But this approach ignores the evidence of a purely formal arrangement of the material in a good deal of the Mishnah, by association of ideas and even of words. The first chapter of tractate Qiddushin (' Betrothals '), for example, begins with the law about the ways in which a woman is acquired, through betrothal, as a wife, and then proceeds to list other examples of acquisition such as slaves, real estate and moveables. Chapter ii begins with the theme of betrothal and continues to deal with it, but whereas in ch. i the term used is ' acquires ', in ch. ii and in the remainder of the tractate, the term used is ' betrothal' (qiddushin). The only convincing explanation is that originally the first chapter of the tractate was an early and quite separate treatise on ' acquisition ' and this was only later attached to tractate Qiddushin with the seams still showing. There are so many instances of this arbitrary arrangement in the Mishnah that it is perilous to attempt to uncover the real intentions of the creators of the Mishnaic system. Neusner, so good in his appeal to detailed evidence for his literary criticism, is surprisingly weak in adducing evidence for his broader theories.