An essential history of the greatest love poem ever written The Song of Songs has been embraced for centuries as the ultimate song of love. But the kind of love readers have found in this ancient poem is strikingly varied. Ilana Pardes invites us to explore the dramatic shift from readings of the Song as a poem on divine love to celebrations of its exuberant account of human love. With a refreshingly nuanced approach, she reveals how allegorical and literal interpretations are inextricably intertwined in the Song's tumultuous life. The body in all its aspects-pleasure and pain, even erotic fervor-is key to many allegorical commentaries. And although the literal, sensual Song thrives in modernity, allegory has not disappeared. New modes of allegory have emerged in modern settings, from the literary and the scholarly to the communal. Offering rare insights into the story of this remarkable poem, Pardes traces a diverse line of passionate readers. She looks at Jewish and Christian interpreters of late antiquity who were engaged in disputes over the Song's allegorical meaning, at medieval Hebrew poets who introduced it into the opulent world of courtly banquets, and at kabbalists who used it as a springboard to the celestial spheres. She shows how feminist critics have marveled at the Song's egalitarian representation of courtship, and how it became a song of America for Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Toni Morrison. Throughout these explorations of the Song's reception, Pardes highlights the unparalleled beauty of its audacious language of love.

Millions of people who cast the I Ching to find answers to their deepest questions refer to the classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the ancient Chinese divinatory text, The I Ching or Book of Changes, published by Princeton University Press. The I Ching Companion: An Answer for Every Question is a study guide to be used in conjunction with the Wilhelm/Baynes translation. The I Ching oracle has survived millennia exactly because of its elusive nature. It is replete with phrases and imagery that are unfamiliar to the Western mind. The text in itself tells many stories from ancient China, when the Chou overthrew the Shang dynasty, and contains every aspect of the human experience, both secular and spiritual. Richards has compiled a concordance of the primary symbols in the Wilhelm/Baynes text -- such as "to cross the great water", "furthering", the four directions, colors, "the great man", "the inferior man", and the "superior man" -- so that students of the I Ching can conduct their own study and gain their own understanding of how the changes described by the I Ching are connected in an eternal cycle of beginning, conflict, and resolution.

Richards offers detailed, yet easy-to-follow instructions for consulting the oracle. Drawing parallels between the body's chakras and the lines of a hexagram, she reveals an entirely new way in which the I Ching can be used as a tool for achieving emotional balance. The I Ching answers questions, and in so doing, peace of mind -- our life's quest -- is attained. This guide can help facilitate that quest.

What do we know about the Book of Job? Not very much. The hero complains endlessly. He has just lost his children all his livestock. He scratches his ulcers. The misfortunes of which he complains are all duly enumerated in the prologue. They are misfortunes brought on him by Satan with God's permission. We think we know, but are we sure? Not once in the Dialogues does Job mention either Satan or anything about his misdeeds. Could it be that they are too much on his mind for him to mention them? Possibly, yet Job mentions everything else, and does much more than mention. He dwells heavily on the cause of his misfortune, which is none of those mentioned in the prologue. The cause is not divine, satanic nor physical, but merely human.

In Rabbinic Tales of Destruction, Julia Watts Belser examines early Jewish accounts of the Roman conquest of Judea from the perspective of the wounded body and the scarred land. Faced with stories saturated with sexual violence, enslavement, forced prostitution, disability, and bodily risk, Belser argues, our readings of rabbinic narrative must wrestle with the brutal body costs of Roman imperial domination. She brings disability studies, feminist theory, and new materialist ecological thought to accounts of rabbinic catastrophe, revealing how rabbinic discourses of gender, sexuality, and the body are shaped in the shadow of empire. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud's longest sustained account of the destruction of the Temple, Belser reveals Bavli Gittin's distinctive sex and gender politics. While Palestinian tales frequently castigate the 'wayward woman' for sexual transgressions that imperil the nation, Bavli Gittin's stories resist portraying women's sexuality as a cause of catastrophe. The Bavli's resistance to Rome makes a critical difference. While other rabbinic texts commonly inveigh against women's beauty as the cause of sexual sin, Bavli Gittin's tales express a strikingly egalitarian discourse that laments the vulnerability of the beautiful Jewish body before the conqueror. Bavli Gittin's body politics, Belser maintains, align with a significant theological reorientation. While most early Jewish narratives link the destruction of the Temple to communal sin, Bavli Gittin's account does not explain catastrophe as divine chastisement. Instead of imagining God as the architect of Jewish suffering, it evokes God's empathy with the subjugated Jewish body. As it navigates the ruins of Jerusalem, Bavli Gittin forges a sharp critique of empire. Its critical discourse aims to pierce the power politics of Roman conquest, to protest the brutality of imperial dominance, and to make plain the scar that Roman violence leaves upon Jewish flesh.

This book is the first to present current scholarship on gender and in regional and sectarian versions of the Ramayana. Contributors explore in what ways the versions relate to other Ramayana texts as they deal with the female persona and the cultural values implicit in them. Using a wide variety of approaches, both analytical and descriptive, the authors discover common ground between narrative variants even as their diversity is recognized. It offers an analysis in the shaping of the heterogeneous Rama tradition through time as it can be viewed from the perspective of narrating women's lives. Through the analysis of the representation and treatment of female characters, narrative inventions, structural design, textual variants, and the idiom of composition and technique in art and sculpture are revealed and it is shown what and in which way these alternative versions are unique. A sophisticated exploration of the Ramayana, this book is of great interest to academics in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religion, Asian Gender and Cultural Studies.

The Qur'an is the foundational sacred text of the Islamic faith. Traditionally revered as the literal word of God, its pronouncements and discussions form the bedrock of Islamic beliefs and teachings. Notwithstanding its religious pre-eminence and the fact that it is the sacred text for over one billion of the world's Muslims, the Qur'an is also considered to be the matchless masterpiece of the Arabic language. Its historical impact as a text can be discerned in all aspects of the heritage of the Arabic literary tradition. Over recent decades, academic engagement with the Qur'an has produced an impressive array of scholarship, ranging from detailed studies of the text's unique language, style and structure, to meticulous surveys of its contents, concepts and historical contexts. The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies is an essential reference and starting point for those with an academic interest in the Qur'an. It offers not only detailed reviews of influential subjects in the field, but also a critical overview of developments in the research discourse. It explores the tradition of Qur'anic exegesis and hermeneutics, making it a comprehensive academic resource for the study of the Qur'an. No single volume devoted to such a broad academic survey of the state of the field currently exists.

6 Ezra is a short, oracular writing that is included in the biblical Apocrypha as the final two chapters (chapters 15-16) of 4 Ezra or 2 Esdras. Cast as the words of God mediated through an unnamed prophet, the main part of the work sets forth predictions of impending doom for the world. It is reminiscent of, and stands in the tradition of, Jewish and Christian prophetic writings that enunciate God's woes and threats against a sinful humanity, and envisage imminent destruction on the earth as a result. 6 Ezra is also concerned to exhort a group of God's chosen people to remain faithful and resist sin in order to escape the impending destruction. There has never been a major study of 6 Ezra or even a complete critical edition of the book, and indeed little has been written about it since the nineteenth century. This book is designed to fill that gap, offering a detailed analysis of the text itself, and addressing the question of its social setting, provenance, date, religious affiliation, and recensional situation of the text. It will also serve to make this important text accesible to a wider audience, while laying the foundations for its further study.

This commentary demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a result of a consistent, strictly sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of three of Paul's letters: Galatians, First Corinthians and Philippians. Consequently, it shows that the Marcan Jesus narratively embodies the features of God's Son who was revealed in the person, teaching, and course of life of Paul the Apostle. The analysis of the topographic and historical details of the Marcan Gospel reveals that they were mainly borrowed from the Septuagint and from the writings of Flavius Josephus. Other literary motifs were taken from various Jewish and Greek writings, including the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato. The Gospel of Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one.

In this book Vincent Wimbush seeks to problematize what we call "scriptures," a word first used to refer simply to "things written," the registration of basic information. In the modern world the word came to be associated almost exclusively with the center- and power-defining "sacred" texts of "world religions." Wimbush argues that this narrowing of the valence of the term was a decisive development for western culture. His purpose is to reconsider the initially broad and politically charged use of the term: "scriptures" are excavated not merely as texts to be read but understood as discourse: as mimetic rituals and practices; as ideologically-charged orientations to and prescribed behaviors in the world; as structures of relationships and social formations; as forms of communication. Wimbush is naming and constructing a new transdisciplinary critical project, which uses the historical and modern experiences of the Black Atlantic as resources for framing, categorization, and analysis. Using Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart as a touchstone, each chapter offers a close reading and analysis of a representative moment in the formation of the Black Atlantic, regarded as part of a history of modern human consciousness and conscientization. Such a history, he says, is reflected in the major turns in what he calls scripturalectics, part of the construction of the modern world, defined as efforts to manage or control knowledge and meaning.

One of India's greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country's moral and cultural consciousness. For generations it has served as a bedtime story for Indian children, while at the same time engaging the interest of philosophers and theologians. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, the Ramayana tells the tragic and magical story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of Lord Visnu, born to rid the earth of the terrible demon Ravana. An idealized heroic tale ending with the inevitable triumph of good over evil, the Ramayana is also an intensely personal story of family relationships, love and loss, duty and honor, of harem intrigue, petty jealousies, and destructive ambitions. All this played out in a universe populated by larger-than-life humans, gods and celestial beings, wondrous animals and terrifying demons. With her magnificent translation and superb introduction, Arshia Sattar has successfully bridged both time and space to bring this ancient classic to modern English readers.

In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom the Paris Review has called 'a literary institution', explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas. Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left behind almost no objects, images, ruins. Only a 'Parthenon of words' remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life. 'If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities,' writes Calasso, 'they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture.' This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos. With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that define the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, he shows how these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more than neuroscientists have been able to offer us up to now.

Part 1 is a comprehensive study of the Qur'anic data about each prophet, with a full portrait of every figure and dealing also with all the major scholarly literature on the subject and with the Qur'anic concept of prophetology. Part 2 is a history and study of the general Muslim literature dealing with the prophets.

Traditionally, the Talmud was read as law, that is, as the authoritative source for Jewish practice and obligations. To this end, it was studied at the level of its most minute details, with readers often ignoring the composite whole. Methods of reading have shifted as more readers have turned to the Talmud for evidence of rabbinic history, religion, rhetoric, or anthropology; still, few have employed a genuinely literary approach. In Reading the Rabbis, Kraemer attempts to fill this gap by developing a method for reading the Talmud as literature. He draws on the tools developed in the study of other literatures, particularly rhetorical and reader-response criticisms, to unearth previously unnoticed levels of meaning. The result is that readers will gain a new understanding of the complexity of Rabbinic Judaism, and a new model of rabbinic piety.

This is a literary and theological study of the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo--a long, well-written reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible written by a Palestinian Jew of the first century C.E. Using the methodologies of redaction and literary criticism, Murphy provides an analysis of the whole of the Biblical Antiquities. After a chapter-by-chapter analysis, Murphy addresses several topics more generally--major characters, major themes, and the historical context of the work. Full concordances to the Latin text are provided to assist future research on Pseudo-Philo. This book will prove an important resource for students of Jewish interpretation of the Bible at the end of the Second Temple period. It also sheds light on Jewish thought of the period regarding covenant, leadership in Israel, women in Israel, relations with Gentiles, divine providence, divine retribution, eschatology, and many other subjects. Furnishing a broad interpretive context for future work on the Biblical Antiquities, this study gives students of the Bible access to an important literary and religious product of first-century Judaism.

This second edition of a popular introduction to the Qur'an includes an essential updated reference guide, including a chronology of the revelation, links to internet resources, and suggestions for further reading. Exploring the Qur'an's reception through history, its key teachings, and its place in contemporary thought and belief, this volume analyzes: the Qur'an as the word of God; its reception and communication by the Prophet Muhammad; the structure and language of the text; conceptions of God, the holy law, and jihad; and Islamic commentaries on Qur'anic teachings through the ages. The Qur'an: The Basics, Second Edition is a concise and accessible introduction.

In this important new book, Paul T. Phillips argues that most professional historians - aside from a relatively small number devoted to theory and methodology - have concerned themselves with particular, specialized areas of research, thereby ignoring the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning. This is less so in the thriving general community of history enthusiasts beyond academia, and may explain, in part at least, history's sharp decline as a subject of choice by students in recent years. Phillips sees great dangers resulting from the thinking of extreme relativists and postmodernists on the futility of attaining historical truth, especially in the age of "post-truth." He also believes that moral judgment and the search for meaning in history should be considered part of the discipline's mandate. In each section of this study, Phillips outlines the nature of individual issues and past efforts to address them, including approaches derived from other disciplines. This book is a call to action for all those engaged in the study of history to direct more attention to the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning.

This new edition of Scriptures of the World's Religions uses selections from scriptures to examine the world's religions. It emphasizes religions that are practiced today and features English translations that are accessible to the layperson. This edition examines the collected sacred texts revered by these religions themselves. There are special benefits to exploring the world's religions through selections from their scriptures. In most cases, the sacred texts are the oldest written documents in the tradition, and we gain a sense of immediate connection with these religions by studying the same documents that followers have been reading for millennia.

Leo Strauss articulates the conflict between reason and revelation as he explores Spinoza's scientific, comparative, and textual treatment of the Bible. Strauss compares Spinoza's "Theologico-political Treatise" and the Epistles, showing their relation to critical controversy on religion from Epicurus and Lucretius through Uriel da Costa and Isaac Peyrere to Thomas Hobbes.
Strauss's autobiographical Preface, traces his dilemmas as a young liberal intellectual in Germany during the Weimar Republic, as a scholar in exile, and as a leader of American philosophical thought.
"[For] those interested in Strauss the political philosopher, and also those who doubt whether we have achieved the 'final solution' in respect to either the character of political science or the problem of the relation of religion to the state." --"Journal of Politics"
"A substantial contribution to the thinking of all those interested in the ageless problems of faith, revelation, and reason." --"Kirkus Reviews"
Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago. His contributions to political science include "The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, The City and the Man, What is Political Philosophy?," and "Liberalism Ancient and Modern."

In recent decades Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek have shown the centrality of Paul to western political and philosophical thought and made the Apostle a central figure in left-wing discourses far removed from traditional theological circles. Yet the recovery of Paul beyond Christian theology owes a great deal to the writings of the Jewish rabbi and philosopher Jacob Taubes (1923-1987). Pauline Ugliness shows how Paul became an effective tool for Taubes to position himself within European philosophical debates of the twentieth century. Drawing on Nietzsche's polemical readings of the ancient apostle as well as Freud's psychoanalysis, Taubes developed an imaginative and distinct account of political theology in confrontations with Carl Schmitt, Theodor Adorno, Hans Blumenberg, and others. In a powerful reconsideration of the apostle, Taubes contested the conventional understanding of Paul as the first Christian who broke definitively with Judaism and drained Christianity of its political potential. As a Jewish rabbi steeped in a philosophical tradition marked by European Christianity, Taubes was, on the contrary, able to emphasize Paul's Jewishness as well as the political explosiveness of his revolutionary doctrine of the cross. This book establishes Taubes's account of Paul as a turning point in the development of political theology. Loland shows how Taubes identified the Pauline movement as the birth of a politics of ugliness, the invention of a revolutionary criticism of the 'beautiful' culture of the powerful that sides instead with the oppressed.

The first comprehensive, down-to-earth introduction to explain the primary message of Kabbalah that we are to become like God.

Unlike the faddish books that just discuss Kabbalah as a magical system, or those that treat it as if it were separable from Judaism, this inspiring book makes accessible the mysteries of Kabbalah with thorough scholarship and depth of spiritual insight. It traces the evolution of Kabbalah in Judaism and sets forth its most important gift: a way of revealing the connection that exists between our "everyday" life and the spiritual oneness of the universe. Including hands-on "personal Kabbalah" exercises that help bring the teachings into your life, "The Gift of Kabbalah"explores: Healing from the Source Holiness in the Ordinary Contemplating Your Place in History Building a Positive Structure for Life The Soul's Contract with God ... and much more.

This book breaks fresh ground in the interpretation of the Apocalypse with an interdisciplinary methodology called aural-performance criticism that assesses how the first-century audience would have heard the Apocalypse. First-century media culture is probed by assessing the dynamics of literacy, orality, aurality, and performance in the Gospels, parts of the Pauline corpus, and also Jewish apocalyptic literature. The audience constructs of informed, minimal, and competent assist the interpreter to apply the methodology. Sound maps and an aural-performance commentary of Revelation 1 and 11 are developed that analyze aural markers, sound style, identity markers, repetition, themes, and the appropriation of the message by the audience. The book concludes by examining the sociological, theological, and communal aspects of aurality and performance and its implications for interpreting the Apocalypse.

Solomon is the figurehead who holds the family of 'wisdom' texts together. In this study, Katharine Dell argues that a core of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes forms the inner sanctum of the 'Solomonic wisdom corpus', with the Song of Songs as a close relative, but Job at one remove. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song contain attributions to Solomon and demonstrate key 'wisdom' connections. Solomon is also portrayed as an idealized character in the narratives about him in 2 Sam. 24-1 Kings 11. He is the embodiment of wisdom, thus linking both the narrative portrayal and canonical memory of his significance. His connections with Egypt and Sheba shed light on how Solomon gained his reputation for wisdom, as do the roles in his court for scribes, sages, and seers. Formative wisdom themes, notably that of God as creator, characterize the book of Proverbs and also influenced certain 'wisdom psalms' and the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, texts which share links to wisdom ideas and contexts. For these prophets criticism of 'the wise' is a key concern. Dell introduces an intertextual method to open up fresh possibilities of ranging together different texts alongside the Solomonic corpus, without the constraints of probing literary or historical linkages: Ruth is considered with Proverbs, Genesis 1-11 with Ecclesiastes and the wider theme of gardens and water in the Hebrew Bible with the Song of Songs. While Solomon probably had very little to do with such readerly text-play, Dell's argument in The Solomonic Corpus of 'Wisdom' and Its Influence is that he is the lynch-pin that holds 'wisdom' in its core texts and wider family together.