In this publication new light is shed on the Qumran community, its organisational structure, its ultra conservative way of life, and how its leaders interpreted the books of the Old Testament by compiling their own commentaries. Emphasis is also placed on facilitating an understanding of references in the Gospels whilst providing an insight into a community that existed parallel to the New Testament community, and to which some of Jesus' followers could have belonged.

In hierdie publikasie word nuwe lig gewerp op die Qumran-gemeenskap, die struktuur waarin hulle georganiseer was en hul ultrakonserwatiewe leefwyse. Die wyse waarop hul leiers die boeke van die Ou Testament geinterpreteer het, blyk uit die kommentare wat hulle geskryf het. Hierdie publikasie help die leser om verwysings in die evangelies beter te begryp en bied insig in 'n gemeenskap wat in dieselfde tyd as die Nuwe-Testamentiese gemeenskap geleef het en waaraan sommige van Jesus se volgelinge moontlik behoort het.

A completely new, expanded edition of this classic college text book about two key kinds of writing in the Old Testament: wisdom and law. Completely revised and updated, the book also includes much more on literary interpretation. This book is intended for primarily aimed at college students studying the Old Testament, on religious studies courses.

This volume delves into the socio religious milieu of the authors, editors, and propagators of the ""Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra"" (Questions of Rastrapala), a Buddhist text circulating in India during the first half of the first millennium C.E. Daniel Boucher first reflects upon the problems that plague historians of Mahayana Buddhism, whose previous efforts to comprehend the tradition have often ignored the social dynamics that motivated some of the innovations of this new literature. Following that is a careful analysis of several motifs found in the Indian text and an examination of the value of the earliest Chinese translation for charting the sutra's evolution.The first part of the study looks at the relationship between the bodily glorification of the Buddha and the ascetic career that produced it within the socioeconomic world of early medieval Buddhist monasticism. Boucher then focuses on a third-century Chinese translation of the sutra and traces the changes in the translation to the late tenth century. He concludes with an annotated translation of the sutra based on a new reading of its earliest extant Sanskrit manuscript.

This book examines religions across the world, offering an insight into each tradition's views of the world, through their scriptural texts and spiritual practices. As we increasingly move toward a global world view, it is important that we understand the traditions of other members of the global community. "Sacred Scriptures of the World Religions" examines religions across the world, offering an insight into each tradition's views of the world, through their scriptural texts and spiritual practices. By taking this perspective, the author has produced an indispensable introductory textbook which provides students with an overview of the meaning and guidance that people find in their religion through these sacred wisdoms. Each chapter provides introductory explanations of key issues to provide undergraduate religion students with a unique sense of each faith, followed by illustrative scriptural passages. "Sacred Scriptures of the World Religions" is essential reading for those studying religion, honoring both the richness and universality of religious truths contained in the world's great scriptures.

An original and uncompromising study of the Qur'anic foundations of women's identity and agency, this book is a bold call to Muslim women and men to reread and reinterpret the Qur'an, Islam's most authoritative source, and to discover within its revelations an inherent affirmation of gender equality. Nimat Hafez Barazangi asserts that Muslim women have been generally excluded from equal agency, from full participation in Islamic society, and thus from full and equal Islamic identity, primarily because of patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and the entire range of early Qur'anic literature. Based on her pedagogical study of the sacred text, she argues that Islamic higher learning is a basic human right, that women have equal authority to participate in the interpretation of Islamic primary sources, and that women will realize their just role in society and their potential as human beings only when they are involved in the interpretation of the Qur'an. Consequently, a Muslim woman's relationship with God must not be dependent on her husband's or father's moral agency. Barazangi, an American Muslim of Syrian origin, is a scholar, an activist, and a concerned feminist. Her analysis of the complex interaction of gender, religion, and the power of knowledge for self-identity offers a paradigm shift in Islamic studies. She documents the historical development of Islamic thought and describes how Muslim males have arrived at the prevailing exclusionary positions. She considers the issues of dependent morality and of modesty, especially in attire - a polarizing subject for many Muslim women - and she concludes that the majority of Muslim women today are not educated even for a complementary role in society. The book offers a curricular framework for self-learning that could prepare Muslim women for an active role in citizenship and policy making in a pluralistic society and may serve as a guideline for moving toward a ""gender revolution."" Her main thesis, if carried out in the lives of Muslims in America or elsewhere, would be so radical and liberating that her discourse is more powerful than those of many Muslim feminists. She writes, ""I intend this book to affirm the self-identity of the Muslim woman as an autonomous spiritual and intellectual human being.

This first full-scale account of Leviticus by a world renowned anthropologist presents the biblical work as a literary masterpiece. Seen in an anthropological perspective Leviticus has a mystical structure which plots the book into three parts corresponding to the three parts of the desert tabernacle, both corresponding to the parts of Mount Sinai. This completely new reading transforms the interpretation of the purity laws. The pig and other forbidden animals are not abhorrent, they command the same respect due to all God's creatures. Boldly challenging several traditions of Bible criticism, Mary Douglas claims that Leviticus is not the narrow doctrine of a crabbed professional priesthood but a powerful intellectual statement about a modern religion which emphasizes God's justice and compassion.

Viewed through the lens of the ancient talmudic, midrashic, and kabbalistic commentaries, this book examines, in biblical sequence, the scriptural passages related to our ancestral mothers, wives, and daughters. The chosen excerpts, clearly documented, seek to illuminate the question of what it may mean to be truly feminine, truly wise-how actions which appear to be malevolent, or at the very least, misguided, when superficially viewed, may, in fact, have been engineered to produce the greatest good. Barbara L. Thaw Ronson has not chosen to view the Bible as an historical document, attempting to uncover its often cryptic meanings based upon the societal dictates at the time in question; rather, she explores the Bible by perceiving it solely as a timeless Divine doctrine: to illuminate the value and significance of prayer and the individual woman's relationship with her Creator (which informs her relationship with family and neighbor). and to discover and highlight the idea of Woman that exists independently of the era into which she finds herself born.

aFor the general reader, and the ever-burgeoning number of students in Jewish studies programs, the "Essential Papers" series brings together a wealth of core secondary material, while the commentaries offered by the editors aim to place this material in critical comparative context.a
--"Jewish Journal of Sociology"

No work has informed Jewish life and history more than the Talmud. This unique and vast collection of teachings and traditions contains within it the intellectual output of hundreds of Jewish sages who considered all aspects of an entire peopleas life from the Hellenistic period in Palestine (c. 315 B.C.E.) until the end of the Sassanian era in Babylonia (615 C.E.). This volume adds the insights of modern talmudic scholarship and criticism to the growing number of more traditionally oriented works that seek to open the talmudic heritage and tradition to contemporary readers. These central essays provide a taste of the myriad ways in which talmudic study can intersect with such diverse disciplines as economics, history, ethics, law, literary criticism, and philosophy.

Contributors: Baruch Micah Bokser, Boaz Cohen, Ari Elon, Meyer S. Feldblum, Louis Ginzberg, Abraham Goldberg, Robert Goldenberg, Heinrich Graetz, Louis Jacobs, David Kraemer, Geoffrey B. Levey, Aaron Levine, Saul Lieberman, Jacob Neusner, Nahum Rakover, and David Weiss-Halivni.

In this groundbreaking study, Avi Sagi outlines a broad spectrum of answers to important questions presented in Jewish literature, covering theological issues bearing on the meaning of the Torah and of revelation, as well as hermeneutical questions regarding understanding of the halakhic text.This is the first volume to attempt to provide a comprehensive map of the available views and theories concerning the theological, hermeneutical, and ontological meaning of dispute as a constitutive element of Halakhah. It offers an attentive reading of the texts and strives to present, clearly and exhaustively, the conscious account of Jewish tradition in general and of halakhic tradition in particular concerning the meaning of halakhic discourse.The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library of Judaic Studies publishes new research which serves to enhance the quality of dialogue between Jewish classical sources and the modern world, to enrich the meanings of Jewish thought and to explore the varieties of Jewish life.

The text of the Qur'an appears to many to be desperately muddled and lacking any coherence. The Composition of the Qur'an provides a systematic presentation of the writing processes (or rhetoric) and argues that there is indeed a coherence to the Qur'anic text. Michel Cuypers shows that the ancient Semitic texts, of which the Qur'an is a part, do not obey the Greek rhetoric and that their basic principle is therefore not progressive linearity, but symmetry which can take several forms, following precise rules. He argues that the knowledge of this rhetorical code allows for a radically new analysis of the structure and rhetoric of the Qur'an. Using copious amounts of examples from the text, The Composition of the Qur'an provides a new theoretical synthesis of Qur'anic rhetoric as well as a methodology for their application in further exegesis. A landmark publication in the field of Qur'anic Studies, this volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers in Islamic Studies, Religious Studies and Arabic Studies.