James Kugel's "The Bible As It Was" (1997) has been welcomed with universal praise. Here now is the full scholarly edition of this wonderfully rich and illuminating work, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference work.

Focusing on two dozen core stories in the Pentateuch--from the Creation and Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Kugel explains how and why the writers of this formative age of interpretation--roughly 200 B.C.E. to 150 C.E.--assumed such a significant role. Mining their writings--including the Dead Sea Scrolls, works of Philo and Josephus and letters of the Apostle Paul, and writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the rabbinic Sages--he quotes for us the seminal passages that uncover this crucial interpretive process.

For this full-scale reference work Kugel has added a substantial treasury of sources and passages for each of the 24 Bible stories. It will serve as a unique guide and sourcebook for biblical interpretation.

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.

Critical scholarship on the Qur'an and early Islam has neglected the enigmatic earliest surahs. Advocating a more evolutionary analytical method, this book argues that the basal surahs are logical, clear, and intelligible compositions. The analysis systematically elucidates the apocalyptic context of the Qur'an's most archaic layers. Decisive new explanations are given for classic problems such as what the surah of the elephant means, why an anonymous man is said to frown and turn away from a blind man, why the prophet is summoned as one who wraps or cloaks himself, and what the surah of the qadr refers to. Grounded in contemporary context, the analysis avoids reducing these innovative recitations to Islamic, Jewish, or Christian models. By capitalizing on recent advances in fields such as Arabian epigraphy, historical linguistics, Manichaean studies, and Sasanian history, a very different picture of the early quranic milieu emerges. This picture challenges prevailing critical and traditional models alike. Against the view that quranic revelation was a protracted process, the analysis suggests a more compressed timeframe, in which Mecca played relatively little role. The analysis further demonstrates that the earliest surahs were already intimately connected to the progression of the era's cataclysmic Byzantine-Sasanian war. All scholars interested in the Qur'an, early Islam, late antique history, and the apocalyptic genre will be interested in the book's dynamic new approach to resolving intractable problems in these areas.

Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud selects key themes in animal studies - animal intelligence, morality, sexuality, suffering, danger, personhood - and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud. Beth A. Berkowitz demonstrates that distinctive features of the Talmud - the new literary genre, the convergence of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, the Talmud's remove from Temple-centered biblical Israel - led to unprecedented possibilities within Jewish culture for conceptualizing animals and animality. She explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud, showing how it is ripe for reading with a critical animal studies perspective. When we do, we find waiting for us a multi-layered, surprisingly self-aware discourse about animals as well as about the anthropocentrism that infuses human relationships with them. For readers of religion, Judaism, and animal studies, her book offers new perspectives on animals from the vantage point of the ancient rabbis.

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." Reflecting on this verse from the Gospel of Luke (2:11), Martin Luther declared it to be a summary of the gospel: "See here what the gospel is, namely, a joyful sermon about Christ our Savior. Whoever preaches him rightly preaches the gospel and pure joy." Reformation commentators meditated upon the significance of the good news of Jesus Christ during a vibrant era in the history of the church that was characterized by spiritual renewal and reform, doctrinal controversy (especially over matters such as the presence of Christ in the Lord?s Supper) and the overriding desire to understand the meaning and implications of Scripture for Christian belief and practice. While in many ways similar to the other Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Luke also testified to this good news through unique material, including the announcement of Jesus? birth to the shepherds in the fields, the parable of the prodigal son and Jesus? appearance to his disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection. In this volume, Beth Kreitzer skillfully leads readers through the rich diversity of Reformation commentary on the Gospel of Luke. Readers will be able to listen to both well-known and lesser-known voices from a variety of theological traditions, including Lutherans, Reformed, Radicals, Anglicans and Roman Catholics, many of whose comments appear for the first time in English. By drawing from an array of Reformation resources - including commentaries, sermons, treatises and confessions - this volume will equip scholars to understand better the depth and breadth of Reformation commentary, and it will provide contemporary preachers with resources from those in the Reformation church who sought to understand the meaning of this "good news of great joy" (2:10).

Garfield translates Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika and provides a philosophical commentary. Mulamadhyamakakarika is the foundational text for all Mahayana Buddhism and is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy.

The Ashtavakra Gita is a very ancient Sanskrit text, probably dating back to the classic Vedanta period. It was appreciated and quoted by Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, and Radhakrishnan, as it presents the traditional teachings of Advaita Vedanta with a clarity and power very rarely matched. It has been called 'a quantum leap into the absolute'. Its message is that there is neither existence nor non existence, right nor wrong, moral nor immoral. In the view of the sage Ashtavakra, the apparent author of this text, one's true identity can be found by simply recogniSing oneself as pure existence, or the awareness of all things. The text is the response to a question posed by King Janaka to Sage Ashtavakra: "Tell me, O Lord, how can true knowledge be acquired, renunciation made possible and liberation attained?" Ashtavakra's answer is a sincere and unhesitating statement of the ultimate truth. It is said that Janaka posed his question to Ashtavakra while placing one foot in the saddle to mount his horse. Ashtavakra told him that by following his instructions, Janaka could attain liberation by the time he sat astride the horse. With Ashtavakra's forceful, direct instructions Janaka is emancipated instantaneously. In this edition, the text is expounded on by Swiss mystic and therapist, Manuel Schoch.

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.

Written by a leading authority on Chinese philosophy, Decoding Dao uniquely focuses on the core texts in Daoist philosophy, providing readers with a user-friendly introduction that unravels the complexities of these seminal volumes. * Offers a detailed introduction to the core texts in Daoist philosophy, the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi, two of the most widely read and most challenging texts in China s long literary history * Covers the three main ways the texts can be read: as religious, mystical, and philosophical works * Explores their historical context, origins, authorship, and the reasons these seminal texts came into being, along with the key terms and approaches they take * Examines the core philosophical arguments made in the texts, as well as the many ways in which they have been interpreted, both in China itself and in the West * Provides readers with an unrivalled insight into the multifaceted philosophy of Daoism and the principles underlying much of Chinese culture informed by the very latest academic scholarship

This Very Short Introduction explores the significance of the Koran both in the modern world and in traditional Muslim culture. Michael Cook provides a lucid and direct account of the Koran as codex, as scripture, as liturgy, and as the embodiment of truth, and examines its means of formation and dissemination. He also discusses issues of interpretation for certain key verses, demonstrating that fecundity of the text for readers throughout the world.

"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.

"Precious volumes," or "pao-chuan," were produced by popular sects in the Ming and early Qing dynasties. These scriptures were believed to have been divinely revealed to sect leaders and contain teachings and ritual instructions that provide valuable information about a lively and widespread religious tradition outside mainstream Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Largely neglected until now, they testify to the imagination and devotion of popular religious leaders. This book, the most detailed and comprehensive study of "pao-chuan" in any language, studies 34 early examples of this literature in order to understand the origins and development of this textual tradition. Although the work focuses on content and structure, it also treats the social context of these works as well as their transmission and ritual use.

Essays challenging the orthodox opinion of anchorites as entirely divorced from the world around them. Much of the research into medieval anchoritism to date has focused primarily on its liminal and elite status within the socio-religious cultures of its day: the anchorite has long been depicted as both solitary and alone, almost entirely removed from community and living a life of permanent withdrawal and isolation, in effect dead to the world. Considerably less attention has been afforded to the communal sociability that also formed part of the reclusivelife during the period, The essays in this volume, stemming from a variety of cross-disciplinary approaches and methodologies, lay down a challenge to this position, breaking new ground in their presentation of the medievalanchorite and other types of enclosed solitary as playing a central role within the devotional life of the communities in which they were embedded. They attest also to the frequent involvement of anchorites and other recluses in local, national and, sometimes, international matters of importance. Overall, the volume suggests that, far from operating on the socio-religious periphery, as posited previously, the medieval anchorite was more often found at theheart of a sometimes intersecting array of communities: synchronic and diachronic; physical and metaphysical; religious and secular; gendered and textual. CATE GUNN has taught in the Continuing Education and LiteratureDepartments of the University of Essex; LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University. Contributors: Diana Denissen, Clare Dowding, Clarck Drieshen, Cate Gunn, Catherine Innes-Parker, E.A. Jones, Dorothy Kim, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Godelinde Perk, James Plumtree, Michelle Sauer, Sophie Sawicka-Sykes, Andrew Thornton OSB,