Ruth Langer offers an in-depth study of the birkat haminim, a Jewish prayer for the removal of those categories of human being who prevent the messianic redemption and the society envisioned for it. In its earliest form, the prayer cursed Christians, apostates to Christianity, sectarians, and enemies of Israel.
Drawing on the shifting liturgical texts, polemics, and apologetics concerning the prayer, Langer traces the transformation of the birkat haminim from what functioned without question in the medieval world as a Jewish curse of Christians, through its early modern censorship by Christians, to its modern transformation within the Jewish world into a general petition that God remove evil from the world. Christian censorship played a crucial role in this transformation of the prayer; however, Langer argues that the truest transformation in meaning resulted from Jewish integration into Western culture. Eventually, the prayer shed its references to any specific category of human being and lost its function as a curse.
Reconciliation between Jews and Christians today requires both communities to confront a long history of prejudice. Ruth Langer shows through the birkat haminim how the history of one liturgical text chronicled Jewish thinking about Christians over hundreds of years.

The Muslim perception of Christianity and Christians is an issue of longstanding debate among scholars of both Islam and Christianity. In this book, Jane McAuliffe analyses a series of passages from the Qur'an that make ostensibly positive remarks about Christians. She conducts this analysis through a close examination of Muslim exegesis of the Qur'an, spanning ten centuries of commentary. In this effort to trace various interpretations of these passages, the author attempts to determine whether these positive passages can justifiably serve as proof-texts of Muslim tolerance of Christianity. She finds that commentators have consistently distinguished between the vast majority of Christians, who are denounced for having turned from the true word of God, and a small minority, who accepted the prophethood of Muhammed and are praised.

World Scripture is an extraordinary journey through the sacred writings of the world's great religions. Organized by subject, the quotations, passages, and excerpts presented here provide readers with easy access to teachings on several hundred subjects, with quotes from different religious traditions. This unusual anthology provides a new, holistic approach to understanding religion-stressing what unites us rather than what divides us. Among the religious texts represented are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Jainism, Sikhism, Baha'i, Church of Jesus Christ of the Later Day Saints, and Zoroastrianism. Also featured are the oral traditions of various religions of Africa, Native America, Asia, and Oceania along with their recorded prayers and proverbs.

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.

"How do we approach the study of masculinity in the past?" Ruth Mazo Karras asks. Medieval documents that have come down to us tell a great deal about the things that men did, but not enough about what they did specifically as men, or what these practices meant to them in terms of masculinity. Yet no less than in our own time, masculinity was a complicated construct in the Middle Ages. In Thou Art the Man, Karras focuses on one figure, King David, who was important in both Christian and Jewish medieval cultures, to show how he epitomized many and sometimes contradictory aspects of masculine identity. For late medieval Christians, he was one of the Nine Worthies, held up as a model of valor and virtue; for medieval Jews, he was the paradigmatic king, not just a remnant of the past, but part of a living heritage. In both traditions he was warrior, lover, and friend, founder of a dynasty and a sacred poet. But how could an exemplar of virtue also be a murderer and adulterer? How could a physical weakling be a great warrior? How could someone whose claim to the throne was not dynastic be a key symbol of the importance of dynasty? And how could someone who dances with slaves be noble? Exploring the different configurations of David in biblical and Talmudic commentaries, in Latin, Hebrew, and vernacular literatures across Europe, in liturgy, and in the visual arts, Thou Art the Man offers a rich case study of how ideas and ideals of masculinity could bend to support a variety of purposes within and across medieval cultures.

In a profound look at what it means for new generations to read and interpret ancient religious texts, rabbi and philosopher Marc-Alain Ouaknin offers a postmodern reading of the Talmud, one of the first of its kind. Combining traditional learning and contemporary thought, Ouaknin dovetails discussions of spirituality and religious practice with such concepts as deconstruction, intertextuality, undecidability, multiple voicing, and eroticism in the Talmud. On a broader level, he establishes a dialogue between Hebrew tradition and the social sciences, which draws, for example, on the works of Levinas, Blanchot, and Jabes as well as Derrida. "The Burnt Book" represents the innovative thinking that has come to be associated with a school of French Jewish studies, headed by Levinas and dedicated to new readings of traditional texts, which is fast gaining influence in the United States.

The Talmud, transcribed in 500 C.E., is shown to be a text that refrains from dogma and instead encourages the exploration of its meanings. A vast compilation of Jewish oral law, the Talmud also contains rabbinical commentaries that touch on everything from astronomy to household life. Examining its literary methods and internal logic, Ouaknin explains how this text allows readers to transcend its authority in that it invites them to interpret, discuss, and re-create their religious tradition. An in-depth treatment of selected texts from the oral law and commentary goes on to provide a model for secular study of the Talmud in light of contemporary philosophical issues.

Throughout the author emphasizes the self-effacing quality of a text whose worth can be measured by the insights that live on in the minds of its interpreters long after they have closed the book. He points out that the burning of the Talmud in anti-Judaic campaigns throughout history has, in fact, been an unwitting act of complicity with Talmudic philosophy and the practice of self-effacement. Ouaknin concludes his discussion with the story of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who himself burned his life achievement--a work known by his students as "the Burnt Book." This story leaves us with the question, should all books be destroyed in order to give birth to thought and renew meaning?"

Zohar, or "brilliant light," is the central text of Kabbalah. In Jewish mystical tradition, it is the meeting of midrash (storytelling that expands on events in the Bible) and myth. This selection offers original translations of eight of the most well developed narratives in the Zohar along with notes and detailed commentary. The tales deal with the themes of sin and repentance, death, exile, redemption, and resurrection. Most importantly, they are "stories," they are literature, and here they are finally analyzed as such. Using comparative information, Aryeh Wineman places the tales in their historical and etymological contexts. He cites a variety of theorists of myth, including Otto Rank, C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell, all of whom sought to connect the motifs of the Zohar to universal motifs. He ties the stories to the tenets of Kabbalah, to one another, and to the world's universal symbols and meanings.

In "Freedom, Equality and Justice in Islam," M H Kamali presents the reader with an analysis of the three concepts of freedom, equality and justice from an Islamic point of view and their manifestations in the religious, social, legal and political fields. The author discusses the evidence to be found for these concepts in the Qur'an and Sunna, and reviews the interpretations of the earlier schools of law. The work also looks at more recent contributions by Muslim jurists who have advanced fresh interpretations of freedom, equality and justice in the light of the changing realities of contemporary Muslim societies. "Freedom, Equality and Justice in Islam" is part of a series dedicated to the fundamental rights and liberties in Islam and should be read in conjunction with "The Dignity of Man: An Islamic Perspective" and "Freedom of Expression in Islam."

Series: Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Section 1 - The Jewish people in the first century Historical geography, political history, social, cultural and religious life and institutions Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern in cooperation with D. Flusser and W.C. van Unnik Section 2 - The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud Section 3 - Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature

Series: Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Section 1 - The Jewish people in the first century Historial geography, political history, social, cultural and religious life and institutions Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern in cooperation with D. Flusser and W.C. van Unnik Section 2 - The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud Section 3 - Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature

The study of classical Jewish texts is flourishing in day schools and adult education, synagogues and summer camps, universities and yeshivot. But serious inquiry into the practices and purposes of such study is far rarer. In this book, a diverse collection of empirical and conceptual studies illuminates particular aspects of the teaching of Bible and rabbinic literature to, and the learning of, children and adults. In addition to providing specific insights into the pedagogy of Jewish texts, these studies serve as models of what the disciplined study of pedagogy can look like. The book will be of interest to teachers of Jewish texts in all contexts, and will be particularly valuable for the professional development of Jewish educators.

Featuring contributions from internationally-recognized scholars in the study of the Pentateuch, this volume provides a comprehensive survey of key topics and issues in contemporary pentateuchal scholarship. The Oxford Handbook of the Pentateuch considers recent debates about the formation of the Pentateuch and their implications for biblical scholarship. At the same time, it addresses a number of issues that relate more broadly to the social and intellectual worlds of the Pentateuch. This includes engagements with questions of archaeology and history, the Pentateuch and the Samaritans, the relation between the Pentateuch and other Moses traditions in the Second Temple period, the Pentateuch and social memory, and more. Crucially, the Handbook situates its discussions of current developments in pentateuchal studies in relation to the field's long history, one that in its modern, critical phase is now more than two centuries old. By showcasing both this rich history and the leading edges of the field, this collection provides a clear account of pentateuchal studies and a fresh sense of its vitality and relevance within biblical studies, religious studies, and the broader humanities.

Voted one of Christianity Today's 1995 Books of the Year For 40 years, the New Bible Commentary has set the standard for works of its kind. Now in this completely revised fourth edition (including over 80% new and updated material), the New Bible Commentary is positioned to maintain its standing as the leading one-volume commentary on the whole Bible well into the 21st century. This readable and accessible volume brings together many of the finest scholars of our day to meet the needs of students, teachers and Bible readers. The 21st-century edition of the New Bible Commentary offers 66 solid, concise, evangelical commentaries--one on each book of the Bible. These detailed (passage-by-passage or verse-by-verse) commentaries, based on the NIV text, are accompanied by introductory material on date, authorship, purpose, key themes, outlines and discussions of recent developments in biblical scholarship. In addition seven articles overview biblical history and types of biblical literature, including the Pentateuch, poetry, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Apocrypha and other apocalyptic writings. Completely updated for a new generation of readers, the newNew Bible Commentary will be a powerful aid for all who want to understand the foundational book of the Christian faith.

The Bhagavad Gita tells the story of how Arjuna, the great warrior, is seated in his chariot about to engage in battle, when he sees his own kinsmen and his revered teacher arrayed in battle against him, and feels that he cannot fight. It is then that Krishna, the Cosmic Lord, comes to counsel him. Arjuna represents the human soul seated in the chariot of the body and Krishna is the inner Spirit, the God within, who is there to consel him. Today we see humanity divided against itself and threatened with nuclear war and mutual destruction. No political means are adequate to deal with this problem, and many are driven to despair. It is then that the message of the Gita comes to teach us that it is only when we rise above human schemes and calculations and awake to the presence of the indwelling Spirit that we can hope to find the answer to our need.

In Rabbinic Tales of Destruction, Julia Watts Belser examines early Jewish accounts of the Roman conquest of Judea. Faced with stories of 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 do not portray 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.

"Web of Life" weaves its suggestive interpretation of Jewish culture in the Palestine of late antiquity on the warp of a singular, breathtakingly tragic, and sublime rabbinic text, "Lamentations Rabbah." The textual analyses that form the core of the book are informed by a range of theoretical paradigms rarely brought to bear on rabbinic literature: structural analysis of mythologies and folktales, performative approaches to textual production, feminist theory, psychoanalytical analysis of culture, cultural criticism, and folk narrative genre analysis.
The concept of context as the hermeneutic basis for literary interpretation reactivates the written text and subverts the hierarchical structures with which it has been traditionally identified. This book reinterprets rabbinic culture as an arena of multiple dialogues that traverse traditional concepts of identity regarding gender, nation, religion, and territory. The author's approach is permeated by the idea that scholarly writing about ancient texts is invigorated by an existential hermeneutic rooted in the universality of human experience. She thus resorts to personal experience as an idiom of communication between author and reader and between human beings of our time and of the past. This research acknowledges the overlap of poetic and analytical language as well as the language of analysis and everyday life.
In eliciting folk narrative discourses inside the rabbinic text, the book challenges traditional views about the social basis that engendered these texts. It suggests the subversive potential of the constitutive texts of Jewish culture from late antiquity to the present by pointing out the inherent multi-vocality of the text, adding to the conventionally acknowledged synagogue and academy the home, the marketplace, and other private and public socializing institutions.

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.

In the 19th century, many Christians throughout the western world expected the fulfilment of Jesus's promise to return. The widespread expectation culminated in "The Great Disappointment" of 1844. This is a verse-by-verse exploration of Jesus's greatest prophetic sermon, the Olivet Discourse, an examination of 19th century and current Christian interpretations and presents an analysis in the light of Baha'u'llah's teachings.

The first book to examine the controversial Qur'anic phrase which divides Christianity and Islam. According to the majority of modern Muslims and Christians, the Qur'an denies the crucifixion of Jesus, and with it, one of the most sacred beliefs of Christianity. However, it is only mentioned in one verse - "They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, rather, it only appeared so to them" - and contrary to popular belief, its translation has been the subject of fierce debate among muslims for centuries. This the first book devoted to the issue, delving deeply into largely ignored Arabic sources, which suggest the the origins of the conventional translation may lie within the Christian Church. Arranged along historical lines, and covering various Muslim schools of thought, from Sunni to Sufi, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an unravels the crucial dispute that separates the World's two principal faiths.

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of this book possible: Joel D. and Tammy S. Rubin.

The third volume of the acclaimed English edition of "Miqra'ot Gedolot"

First published 500 years ago as the "Rabbinic Bible," the biblical commentaries known as "Miqra'ot Gedolot" have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval Bible commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers.

Each page of this third volume in The Commentators' Bible series contains several verses from the "Book of Numbers," surrounded by both the 1917 and 1985 JPS translations, and by new contemporary English translations of the major commentators. The book also includes an introduction, a glossary of terms, a list of names used in the text, notes on source texts, a special topics list, and resources for further study.

This large-format volume is beautifully designed for easy navigation among the many elements on each page, including explanatory notes and selected additional comments from the works of Bekhor Shor, Hizkuni, Abarbanel, Sforno, Gersonides, and others.

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.

Only preserved in a single manuscript in Tehran, this remarkable twelfth-century Qur'anic commentary by Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Karim al- Shahrastani marks the achievement of a lifelong, arduous quest for knowledge. Shahrastani began writing Mafatih al-asrar or Keys to the Arcana towards the end of his life and the work reflects the brilliant radicalism of his more private religious views. The introduction and opening chapter of this virtually unknown work is presented here in a bilingual edition, which also includes an introduction and contextual notes by Toby Mayer. In Keys to the Arcana, Shahrastani breaks down the text of the Qur'an and analyses it from a linguistic point of view, with reference to the history of Qur'anic interpretation. The author's ultimate aim is to use an elaborate set of complimentary concepts - the 'keys' of the work's title - to unearth the esoteric meanings of the Qur'anic verses, which he calls the 'arcana' of the verses (asrar al-ayat). A historian of religious and philosophical doctrines, Shahrastani has generally been considered to be a spokesman for the Sunni religious establishment under the Seljuqs. The complimentary concepts in question, however, appear to derive from the Isma'ili Shi'i intellectual tradition, indicating that the author may have been secretly involved in the Isma'ili movement. Shahrastani 's unusually esoteric and highly systematic exegesis of the Qur'an provides a vivid picture of the mature state of scriptural commentary in the twelfth-century CE. Dr Mayer's meticulous translation of Shahrastani 's Introduction and Commentary on Surat al-Fatiha, supplemented by the Arabic text, allows the reader and scholar access to this intriguing Muslim intellectual work for the first time.

Does Islam call for the oppression of women? The subjugation of women in many Muslim countries is often used as evidence of this, while many Muslims read the Qur'an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression and inequality. In this paradigm-shifting book, Asma Barlas argues that, far from supporting male privilege, the Qur'an actually affirms the complete equality of the sexes. Offering a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how, for centuries, Muslims have read patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures. In this seminal volume, she takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender and patriarchy, offering an egalitarian reading of Islam's most sacred scripture. This revised edition includes two new chapters, a new preface, and updates throughout.

A murderer, an outcast, a man cursed by God and exiled from his people - Cain, the biblical killer of Abel, is a figure of utter disdain. But that disdain is curiously in evidence well before his brother's death, as God inexplicably refuses Cain's sacrifice while accepting Abel's. Cain kills in a rage of exclusion, yet it is God himself who has set the brothers apart. For Regina Schwartz, we ignore the dark side of the Bible to our peril. The perplexing story of Cain and Abel is emblematic of the tenacious influence of the Bible on secular notions of identity - notions that are all too often violently exclusionary, negatively defining "us" against "them" in ethnic, religious, racial, gender, and nationalistic terms. In this compelling work of cultural and biblical criticism, Schwartz contends that it is the very concept of monotheism and its jealous demand for exclusive allegiance - to one God, one Land, one Nation or one People - that informs the model of collective identity forged in violence, against the other. The Hebrew Bible is filled with narratives of division and exclusion, scarcity and competition, that erupt in violence. Once these narratives were appropriated and disseminated by western religious traditions, they came to pervade deep cultural assumptions about how collectives are imagined - with collective hatred, with collective degradation, and with collective abuse. Recovering the Bible's often misguided role as a handbook for politics and social thought, Schwartz demonstrates just how dangerous it can be.