Laudator Temporis Acti

Jacob Neusner (1932-2016), Invitation to the Talmud (1998; rpt. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003), p. xx:

But if all to be heard from the prophets or the rabbis were what we already learn from the politics, economics, and social philosophy of our own day and of our own sector, generally on the leftward wing, of modern life, why listen at all to prophets or rabbis of old? What need do we have to make over into our own image the saints of ancient times? What moral authority is left to them if their message is supplied to them by us, and if in doing so, we distort, misinterpret, or simply obscure their particular meanings? Is this not a peculiarly sophisticated kind of fetishism, something that, for us, is a dishonest ritual? It is false because, if honest, we know we have made the prophets and the rabbis over into what we want them to be, rather than making ourselves over so as to be able to perceive what they were and mean even now. Like the carpenter described by II Isaiah (44:9-17), who plants a cedar and raises it, then chops it down and uses part for fuel, and part for a graven image, who roasts meat over part and turns the rest into a god, his idol, then prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for thou art my god," so are those who turn the prophets into liberal democrats and say, "These are our authorities." "We were right all the time."

Id., p. 175:

Our task is simply to read the chapter in its entirety, step by step and line by line. We shall ask for information external to the analysis and argument only so far as it is intrinsic to the task of "learning." Our primary problem is not what the chapter teaches us about history of the Jews or of Judaism, theology, history of religions, philology, or related sciences. We simply want to know, What does the chapter say?